Officials Deliver Warning in Pakistan Over Extremists

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/asia/clinton-issues-blunt-warning-to-pakistan.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 10:52 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Officials Deliver Warning in Pakistan Over Extremists
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   As commanding general of MNF-I, David Petraeus conceived and implemented a strategy of deferring the Iraqi civil war until we leave. That war is still inevitable--we ourselves armed the partisans--unless we stay forever.  Now, as head of our CIA, he appears in meetings between our secretary of State and Pakistan's (military) head.  Will he propose a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan? Will he tamp down the violence there only long enough for us to leave? However brilliant he is as a soldier and as a leader of soldiers, he was not elected to write our foreign policy.

Barry Haskell Levine