Apparently Afghanistan/Pakistan is critical in the "War on Terror" and the current President (who has read the Pulitzer-winning "Ghost Wars") understands that.

Unlike the last president who pulled troops at a critical moment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora) to assemble the best troops for an alleged WMD threat from Iraq, which of course, was pre-ordained from the Wolfiwitz-PNAC-crowd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century) coupled with Bush Jr.'s obvious daddy issues:

""As a matter of fact, in interviews in 1999 with respected journalist and long-time Bush family friend, Mickey Herskowitz, then Governor George Bush stated, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander in chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

And of course the last presidency thought waterboarding would acheive actionable intelligence just like "24" because the same facile way they understood Katrina/New Orleans would apply to a captured Arab (ahem, disregard the bounty being paid by asshole neighbors.)

In summary, read "Ghost Wars."