setting up their own pashtun-controlled punjabi taliban among the disillusioned youth, a new and dangerous dynamic has taken hold. washington's third major issue regarding afpak is washington itself. the politic of both afghanistan and pakistan over the last 60 years have been so entwined in washington's vast web of special interests that the obama administration's afpak policy is actually more about washington than it is about either country. burlded by a bureaucratic structure created for a bipolar cold war, washington's inability to adjust to a politically complex, multiethnic religiously-divided south asia has hobbled the american effort from the start. by marrying its war on terror to the political agenda of the use beck northern alliance of the 1990s, it set itself against the traditional rulers of afghanistan, the pashtuns, setting the stage for the traditional conflict it now endures. from a purely american political perspective, claims that the u.s. is repeating vietnam are valid. what america did in world war ii in korea it did in vietnam, and what it did in vietnam