Two important pieces in the Washington Post today. One is this editorial, making the point — yet again — that we can’t expect Pakistan to keep up the fight against the Taliban if we abandon the fight in Afghanistan. Here is a key passage:

All of this is bad news for the United States, which has a vital national interest in preventing an extremist takeover in Pakistan and the destabilization of the region stretching from Afghanistan to India. So it’s curious that spokesmen for the Obama administration continue to talk down the Taliban threat and to describe it as unequal to that posed by al-Qaeda. “I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week. “Their capability is somewhat different, [from al Qaeda] though, on that continuum of transnational threats.”
That analysis — which is being used by many who oppose sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan — made some sense in the first years after Sept. 11, 2001. Now it is badly out of date. Al-Qaeda, though still dangerous, has suffered serious reverses in the past several years, while the Taliban has gone from struggling for survival to aiming for control over both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though it is not known to be planning attacks against the continental United States, success by the movement in toppling the government of either country would be a catastrophe for the interests of the United States and major allies such as India.

And another:

For years the United States has been trying to persuade Pakistan to fully confront the threat of the Taliban, even as its government and army dithered and wavered. Now that the army at last appears prepared to strike at the heart of the movement in Waziristan, the Obama administration is wavering — and considering a strategy that would give up the U.S. attempt to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Adopting such a strategy would condemn American soldiers to fighting and dying without the chance of winning. But it would also cripple Pakistan’s fight against the jihadists. With the pressure off in Afghanistan, Taliban forces would have a refuge from offensives by Pakistani forces. And those in the Pakistani army and intelligence services who favor striking deals or even alliances with the extremists could once again gain ascendancy. After all, if the United States gives up trying to defeat the Taliban, can it really expect that Pakistan will go on fighting?

Also, there’s this report from Afghanistan. Reconciliation is often offered as an alternative (see this Fareed Zakaria column) to sending the additional troops in Afghanistan to turn around the fight on the ground. That’s a fantasy because no one is going to reconcile with us so long as we are losing:

KABUL — As Washington policymakers debate the U.S. role in Afghanistan, most agree that one element will be important to whatever strategy emerges: the need for reconciliation with insurgents who can be bought off or persuaded to lay down their weapons.
But those efforts have become increasingly difficult in recent weeks as the Taliban gains strength and as Afghans grow more and more anxious that the United States is not committed to their country for the long term.