In painstaking detail, he worked to establish a few baselines: al Qaeda and the Taliban were allied but distinct—the former a terrorist group trying to attack the United States, the latter a domestic political actor inside Afghanistan; the Taliban could not be defeated so long as it had political support in Afghanistan and a safe haven in Pakistan; Pakistan would not abandon its support for groups like the Taliban so long as their primary concern was having proxies against neighboring India. It was clear he wanted to focus on defeating al Qaeda, not on remaking Afghanistan. That, in turn,
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