Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater – AfPak, in Pentagonspeak – is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Obama’s relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why deploy 17,000 troops against “the Taliban” in the poppy-growing province of Helmand, not in the east near the Pakistani tribal areas, where “al-Qaeda” is holed up, plus 4,000 advisers to train the Afghan Army, when Washington actually wants to fight no more than 200 or 300 al-Qaeda jihadis roaming in Afghanistan, plus another 400 maximum in the Pakistani tribal areas?
