There might be hope for the future

There might be hope for the future but it seems frought with difficulty and will be slow in coming

From The New Yorker

In Search Of Success

by Steve Coll

May 25, 2009

In Pakistan’s tribal regions, near the Afghan border, the United States deploys the armed flying robots known as Predator drones in attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. About a year ago, the United States began to acquire better intelligence regarding these terrorist groups. The recent accuracy of the attacks has caused Al Qaeda to murder suspected spies in self-defeating fits of paranoia, a trend that has disrupted the organization’s ability to plan attacks against the U.S. and its allies. General David Petraeus, the over-all American military commander in the region, told CNN, “Al Qaeda, in particular, has sustained some very serious losses over the course of the last six to ten months or so, and there is a considerable concern among those leaders because of the losses that they have sustained.”

It would be difficult for any President to set aside military analysis of this tenor; in any event, Obama has persisted with the Predator strikes at roughly the same rate as George W. Bush. There is no evidence, however, that the drone campaign has yet moved closer to Al Qaeda’s senior leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, or dismantled the group decisively; instead, the targeting still seems to be stuck in the middle of Al Qaeda’s leadership lists. Moreover, Pakistan’s government, although it apparently facilitates the drone attacks in private, finds it necessary to vocally oppose them in public, knowing how unpopular they are. Opportunism and hypocrisy hardly seem the foundation for a sustainable political-military partnership that breaks with the unhappy past.

There are some ideas in train that may truly be transformative. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, a bipartisan plan to provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid, for at least five years. The legislation is intended to “mend a broken relationship with the Pakistani people,” as John Kerry, who co-sponsored the bill with Richard Lugar, put it. The bill has been well designed to support, for the first time in years, the long-term goal of rebalancing U.S. aid to strengthen pluralism and democracy in Pakistan. “Most Pakistanis feel that America has used and abandoned their country in the past,” Kerry noted. Indeed, most Afghans feel the same. Obama has inherited a toxic legacy; Congress, at least, could ease his burden.

Yes, it would be very nice if Congress began to work in earnest to ease Mr Obama's burden as well as the burden all the world bears from the toxic legacy of the Bush administration.