Reviewing Obama’s War: Part I
This weekend I finally managed to have the time to sit down and watch this excellent PBS Frontline documentary called Obama’s War. Highly recommended and hats off to the folks at Frontline for a...
Tagged: Afghanistan
Governments Matter: Afghanistan Edition
George Packer has been digging through books on Vietnam as to what they may tell us about Afghanistan. (George is smart enough to know that actually Vietnam is probably not the best place to...
The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
I think it’s safe to say that former NFL player Pat Tillman – an Army Ranger killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan – was the first hero of the War on Terror. Like many,...
The Peace Prize Winner Debates War
Video here. [Still having trouble embedding MSNBC, see ps below for more details]. Richard Engel is one of the few bigger name TV correspondents on foreign policy I actually tune in for. And I...
Yes, withdrawal means more indiscriminate airstrikes
The New York Times explains “The Biden Plan”: Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden made it clear that the option Mr. Biden had proposed was not a pure counterterrorism alternative, relying only on drones and...
Agnosia Afghanistania
From Washington Post piece on the continued discussion around the McChyrstal’s strategic troop increase request: But White House officials are resisting McChrystal’s call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London,...
Behind Door #3 in Afghanistan
Br. Will is right that scaling down the Afghanistan effort in favor of civilian air strikes, just “air raiding the place” as then Candidate Obama called it, would by itself lead to more civilian...
Less Troops = More Indiscriminate Air Strikes
The relationship between boots on the ground and civilian casualties in Afghanistan doesn’t get much clearer than in this Washington Post article: On July 2, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO...
Strange Bedfellows
It seems that Ralph Peters – best known as an unfailing advocate of the Chechen school of counter-insurgency tactics – has jumped aboard the “get out of Afghanistan now” bandwagon: Yet, in Afghanistan, we’ve...
“Among the many parallels being offered between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War, one of the most disturbing concerns inadequate examination of core assumptions.”
A sharp op-ed on why safe havens for terrorists in Afghanistan don’t matter.
Learning to Float in the War on Terror
Jamelle makes some persuasive points in this post on Afghanistan–arguing that the administration and its supporters have yet to make a solid case that the war is in the US interests. As he says,...
Afghanistan’s strategic importance is still up in the air
Michael Gerson is entitled to his belief that the war in Afghanistan is a strategic necessity, but he could probably make the point without thoughtlessly dismissing critics of the war: The strategic importance of...
Yes, facts do change minds
I have my own reservations about George Will’s column on Afghanistan, but accusing Will of slavishly following public opinion is just silly. The argument – such as it is – seems to be that...
Likelihood of Success in Afghanistan
Spoiler Alert: Not likely. Dr. Andrew Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli (a grad student of Enterline’s) have co-written a report surveying the history of counterinsugency success rates in the 20th century. In this instance, counterinsurgency...
Kagan doesn’t get it
Of the four or five thinkers who have had the greatest impact on my thinking, I would probably rank Reinhold Niebuhr near or at the top. I’m not really in the mood to give...
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains . . .
I first read The New American Militarism a few years ago for a class in college. Then came Andrew Bacevich’s latest book, The Limits of Power, which I picked up just as soon as...
The Taliban as Mafia
Here’s what I wrote the other day: Now they [The Taliban] are more like a mafia, in which case syndicate is a better term, but one that works against the grain of the US’...
Not Knowing the Meaning of Words: Special Diplomacy Edition
Christian Brose writing at the Shadow Gov’t on the ForeignPolicy blogroll: Is negotiating akin to appeasement? No, not inherently, but as with everything, the devil’s in the details. Diplomacy is not just a synonym for...
Winning the War Fought in the Wrong Location (While Still Losing the Peace)
Freddie thinks that those (like Reihan) who are nervous about new so-called modest (or lowered) expectations should be. Br. F-reddie also raises an question of feasibility of non-lowered expectations given Afghan history. (Also check...
modesty in Afghanistan
I think Reihan is right to be distressed, given his inclinations for Afghanistan, by the perceptible shift in expectations for the country. And he’s right to note that it’s a major shift with some...
