Pak-ghanistan
From Joe Klein’s good piece on Afghanistan: “Karzai is not incompetent,” a Western diplomat told me. “He is acting according to his own priorities — his family, his tribe, his nation, in that order.”...
Tagged: Afghanistan
“We are out of the eradication business”
Jason’s 4/20 cri de coeur is well taken, but here’s a bit of hopeful news on the drug war front from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Danger Room: I’m also mystified...
Pakistan’s Endgame for Afghanistan
Scott recently raised some skepticism about the potential impact of the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, former operational commander of the Afghan Taliban. Today word is out that another high ranking Afghan Taliban...
The Other Echo Chamber
Daniel Larison takes a few lumps for resisting knee-jerk opposition to the war in Afghanistan.
Population-centric=Tribal-centric
Elrod at The Moderate Voice, writing in response to criticisms of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy for setting a withdrawal date, argues: (h/t Matt Duss at WonkRoom): Quite simply, the Taliban does not have the luxury...
War Is Politics By Other Means
Scott’s recent post on President Obama’s decision re: Afghanistan is worth the read. He makes a number of very interesting points, but I’m not quite sure I get this part. Scott quotes the following...
Scrambled
I was going to write a longer post on this, but one interesting consequence of Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan (a decision I support, however tentatively) is the ad hoc redrawing...
Common Sense
Damon Linker on appeals to common sense in American politics is worth reading, even if he overlooks the fact that like all rhetorical tropes, celebrating the intuition of the American people is a thoroughly...
For The Record
Jonah Goldberg (among others) seems offended by the fact that Obama blames the situation in Afghanistan on his predecessor. Blaming Bush may be evergreen for the Democrats, but in this case, it happens to...
The Only Thing That Matters in War is Looking Tough
Peter Feaver writing in the Shadow Gov’t blog does an e-squat and drops a steaming pile of foreign policy cow manure. But it’s worth reading insofar as it gives us a sense of Republican...
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Afghanistan?
Spencer Ackerman points me to this Tom Ricks post on David Kilcullen’s speech re: Afghanistan. Ricks on Kilcullen’s central argument: His [Kilcullen’s] bottom line is that there are two real options in Afghanistan: Either...
Pertinent Facts
Jules Crittenden sneers at Ambassador Eikenberry’s recommendation not to deploy troops to Central Asia, noting “that Eikenberry commands no troops in Afghanistan.” Well, bashing the diplomatic corps is de rigueur among the more vulgar...
Larison endorses the McChrystal surge?
I’m not sure if Daniel Larison’s latest column should be interpreted as an endorsement of McChrystal’s political independence or his actual strategy for Afghanistan, but it’s worth reading in full. His criticism of the...
Studying Vietnam Doesn’t Really Help
Evan Thomas and John Barry at Newsweek take a look at (a) revisionist history of Vietnam, now popular in some circles of the military and how it is influencing the current debate on Afghanistan....
Shooting at Ft. Hood Army Base
The numbers of dead and wounded are different according to the source, but it looks like American soldiers opened fire on other soldiers at a Texas Army base. According to the New York Times:
Because, as we all know, Military Spending Doesn’t Count
New York Times: The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,...
Who Wants to Be The President of Afghanistan?
Well, apparently not Abdullah Abdullah. Meanwhile. the second round of Afghan elections–which were called after much US pressure–have been canceled. Yet again the US puts all its eggs in the basket of democratic proceduralism...
Reviewing Obama’s War Part III: Rory Stewart
Part I here, Part II here. The Obama administration has proposed a very, very narrow objective, which is counterterrorism, and a very maximalist, broad definition of how to achieve it, which extends to counterinsurgency...
Reviewing Obama’s War: Part II
For Part I here. So I’m breaking my own rules in this second post (a little bit). I said these posts would only be buitl around the interviews in this PBS documentary, but then...
