I wouldn't propose to give this committee an exit strategy from Iraq for the United States, because I'm not sure at all what it is. Afghanistan is going to be tough enough, as Dr. Rubin has just said.
I've been impressed over the last year or so by how much we have increased our development assistance into Afghanistan as a whole, but particularly focused on the Kandahar area. I think you know that when one makes this nine-to-one comparison, the military is a very expensive thing to have and to use and to equip. The ratio of the military budget to the CIDA budget is probably in the order of five to one all the time, in any event. So I don't think the answer is transferring resources from the military to development. I also think that we're not doing badly on the development side. I think the international community has to do more. That comes back to what I was saying earlier about a lot of people not seeing this as their war.
But I do agree very much with what you've said about the need for more creative political approaches--at least, I'm not aware of them, let me put it that way--both to deal with Pakistan and to deal with the issues of whether it's possible to split off al-Qaeda from the Taliban and the more far-out people in the Taliban from others who just kind of go along. There is a big diplomatic content that seems to be in again. Dr. Rubin can comment on this. The United States, which is the natural leader, is so preoccupied by the war in Iraq that Afghanistan barely comes onto centre stage. That's too bad, because we need U.S. leadership.