Cheney in Afghanistan

While visiting Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney urged other NATO allies to contribute more troops to Afghanistan. The US, UK, Canada and the Dutch are bearing most of the fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Reuters

NATO has served it's purpose, now it is time to replace it with a new alliance. An alliance of countries that are actually willing to fight for what we stand for.

KABUL (Reuters) - Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Afghanistan on Thursday and met President Hamid Karzai ahead of a NATO summit where Washington will urge its allies to send more troops to the war-torn country.

NATO's Afghan mission is one of the toughest challenges faced by the 59-year-old alliance and has led to open differences among allies over strategy and troop levels.

Cheney said the mission of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan would be high on the agenda of the summit in Bucharest in early April.

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U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch troops are engaged in the bulk of the fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan, while other NATO allies, notably France and Germany, have so far resisted U.S. pressure to allow their soldiers to operate outside the relative safety of the north of the country.

"The United States and the other members of the coalition need to have a sufficient force here to be able to ensure security to deal with the threat that's been represented by continuing activities by radicals and extremists, the likes of the Taliban and al Qaeda," Cheney said.

[...]

The Afghan army is relatively well-trained and has taken a much greater role in fighting the Taliban over the last year, but the police lag far behind, are poorly trained, notoriously corrupt and often flee in the face of Taliban attacks.

"The continuation of NATO in Afghanistan is very, very important," Karzai told the news conference alongside Cheney at the heavily guarded presidential palace. "As the Afghan National Army gets stronger, there will be less pressure and responsibility on the foreign security forces."

Afghanistan has in the past accused Pakistan of harboring militants along the neighbors' rugged mountainous border, but cooperation between the two has improved since last year and both countries are now targets of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

Cheney said he thought a coalition government agreed in Pakistan between Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would remain an ally of the United States.

"I expect they will be good and effective friends and allies of the United states just as the previous government has been," Cheney told the news conference.

I'm not as optimistic about Pakistan remaining an 'ally'.