Obama’s effort to strike a Faustian bargain with the Afghan Taliban, whose top leaders enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan, indicates that he is more interested in confining terrorism to the Middle East than defeating it – even if it means leaving India to bear the brunt of terrorist activity. (In fact, Pakistan’s ongoing war of terror against India also sprang from America’s anti-Soviet operation in Afghanistan – the largest in the CIA’s history – as the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence siphoned off a large share of the billions of dollars in military aid for the Afghan rebels.)