Some opponents of a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, most prominently George Will, have said we need to pull out of Afghanistan so we can focus on Pakistan. The problem is that a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan would undermine Pakistan, as the Pakistanis will tell you. From a Washington Post editorial this morning:

Funny, then, that Pakistan’s civilian government doesn’t think much of the idea. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said without reservation that Taliban advances in Afghanistan were a mortal threat to his country. “We see Mullah Omar,” the leader of the Afghan Taliban, “as a serious threat. If the likes of Mullah Omar take over in Afghanistan, it will have serious implications for Pakistan,” Mr. Qureshi said. “They have a larger agenda, and the first to be impacted by that agenda is Pakistan. . . . Whether they do it in Pakistan or whether they do it in Afghanistan, it will have implications on Pakistan and it will have implications on the region.” …
Mr. Qureshi expressed a diplomatic version of dismay at President Obama’s public wavering on fighting the Taliban. “If that is going to happen, why have we stuck our necks out?” he asked. “Why did Benazir die?” Benazir Bhutto, the former leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, was assassinated after she campaigned in favor of a decisive move by Pakistan to take on the Taliban movement — something the government and army declined to do until this year. Elements of the military or its intelligence service may still quietly support some Taliban groups; if the United States appears to retreat, those forces will be strengthened — at the expense of the pro-Western civilian government.