Taliban Steps Up Attacks in Pakistan, 41 Killed in Monday Attack

A suicide car bomb detonated earlier today killed 41 people in Pakistan, with military personnel being the intended target of the blast. Earlier in the week, Taliban forces attacked a Pakistani military compound and held hostages before 19 more people were killed. Taliban officials have cited the recent string of attacks as revenge for the killing of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA missile strike in August.

This is all set against the backdrop of a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, with officials there investigating possible election fraud and violence escalating throughout many regions. President Obama and his administration are now faced with formulating a new strategy for Afghanistan at a time when many will view a U.S. departure there as total defeat.

Eight years after the 9/11 attacks that marked the start of the global War on Terror, al Qaeda and the Taliban are both fully operational and are still wreaking havoc in many areas of the world. Saddam Hussein was ousted and killed, and the U.S. will soon have the majority of its fighting forces out of Iraq. But now we know that Saddam Hussein and Iraq presented no real danger to the U.S. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was never really a safe haven for potential terrorists.

Instead, Afghanistan and Pakistan have become further entrenched as the homes of terrorism. U.S. forces are struggling to make any tangible progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan is critically unstable at a time when the U.S. public has had about enough of the country's involvement in a vague and unwinnable war.