Those who know me professionally know that my 1st Rule of Emerging Market investing is never put a dollar in a country ending in "stan". I have that rule because you cannot trust those countries to behave by rules that we recognize. Unfortunately, the U.S. government cannot follow that rule because when you leave the "stan's" to their own natural outcome you end up with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan is the big problem now and we cannot invade Pakistan. Unfortunately, we cannot keep the troops in Afghanistan without the fuel they need passing through Pakistan. Mike Mullen called out the ISI for things I have believed for some time and he has more access to hard evidence then I do. We can't give the ISI money to shoot at our troops and we can't keep our troops in Afghanistan if ISI will not allow the fuel to be delivered to them.
It would be nice if Afghanistan military/police were ready to battle the Taliban on their own without U.S. help, but since Pakistan wants Afghanistan to be on their side, maybe the Afghan's could cut a deal with ISI and we could leave sooner rather than later. Then we could use the money we give Pakistan to pay for drone coverage of anywhere Al Qaeda and its affiliates hide out. The drone's are a big improvement on the cruise missiles that we missed Osama bin Ladan with in 1998.
And we could bring the troops home, call out ISI for what it is, a sponsor of state terrorism, and save a lot of $ in the effort to balance the budget.
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