of issues. focusing only in afghanistan will only get us in trouble. we need to look the the whole thing as a chess game, an checker game. so how much of that chess game, that really we are using it as a point ever military bases to deal with the middle east? we have rights in a wide variety of areas near there. we don t necessarily have to be in afghanistan but suffice it to say we will stay there with special forces and special operation forces as long as we possibly can. the really interesting thing is what happens when afghans want to go conduct raids and we mentioned it before. they won t do anything without american air power and that s why the people will be on the ground for a while. yes, we re there in order to put pressure on both pakistan and iran. but to be quite frank, we don t have to be in afghanistan at all. so in other words, we could apply the staple pressure to iran and pakistan without churning in the dirt in