In a pair of attacks over the weekend in northwest Pakistan, militants destroyed more than 150 Humvees and other vehicles bound for U.S. troops and allies fighting in Afghanistan - the third attack on NATO supply lines inside a month. Those attacks have highlighted an ongoing vulnerability along the overland routes through mountain passes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier that are used to transport more than 75% of the supplies sent by the U.S. to its 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. So, as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to send more troops to join the fight in Afghanistan, Pentagon planners are scrambling to figure out how to keep those already there - and the anticipated reinforcements - supplied with food, fuel, bullets and everything else a modern army needs.
It's a mobius war, I've explained. I won't sleep well at night with perhaps 60,000 Americans fighting in Afghanistan at the end of that supply line and no real alternative to the Pakistan route. I don't actually worry that these Taliban attacks can cut our supply line. These are inconveniences.
But if Pakistan no longer wants to defend the route, we are screwed. If we lose that route, we'd best be looking at how to get our people--and our NATO friends--out of that pocket.
But at least people are moving beyond the simplistic "good war" construct that has shaped the Iraq versus Afghansitan argument the last several years.
