Obama’s new policy toward Pakistan was outlined to President Zardari and the Pakistani military earlier this month in a two-page letter delivered by Obama’s national security adviser James Jones.
Obama’s speech Tuesday night at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., will address primarily the Afghanistan aspects of the strategy. But despite the public and political attention focused on the number of new troops, Pakistan has been the hot core of the months-long strategy review. The long-term consequences of failure there, the review concluded, far outweigh those in Afghanistan.
“We can’t succeed without Pakistan,” a senior administration official involved in the White House review said. “You have to differentiate between public statements and reality. There is nobody who is under any illusions about this.”
One problem has been double-dealing with violent extremists that has long made Pakistan a state sponsor of these groups, and it appears Obama has called them out on this, a marked difference from the Bush administration where Musharraf was favored by Dick Cheney who would not allow any criticism:
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