President Biden Sets Date For Afghanistan Exit, For Real This Time, Supposedly
We’ve heard it through three different administrations, but President Biden says he means it: America is getting out of Afghanistan
Tagged: Taliban
Three Questions About The Bergdahl Deal Answered
Three questions, all of which have easy, obvious answers. So why are we talking about this?
Waiting for Halabja
~by Creon Critic What exactly is the delay in formulating a comprehensive strategy to transition the Assad regime out of power in Syria? However reluctant President Obama is to get further involved in another...
Let’s Get Our Islamic Terminology Straight
Image via Wikipedia Playing off of Mark’s post against the Oklahoma ban on sharia law, it’s important to note that most of the contemporary debate over Sharia law in the United States seems to...
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.”...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
