RealClearWorld - Afghanistan

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U.S. Can Live With an Afghan Loss - James Traub, Foreign Policy

"It was Leon being Leon." This is the take you get when you ask Obama administration officials exactly what it was that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta meant when he said ...

Afghanistan: Asia's Congo - Sanjeev Miglani, Pakistan Now or Never

For many in the West, Afghanistan and Iraq have much in common. Both are Islamic countries whose nasty regimes were kicked out bythe U.S. after September 11 2001; in both places,...

Pakistan's Most Dangerous Place - Zahid Hussain, Wilson Quarterly

Pakistan's remote and poorly understood tribal region has emerged as key to the future of both Pakistan and Afghanistan....

U.S. Can't Force Afghan Reconciliation - Peter Tomsen, Los Angeles Times

In 1989, soon after I was appointed U.S. special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan, the late mujahedin commander Abdul Haq conveyed a warning to me. Attempts by foreigners t...

China's Long Game in Afghanistan - Nick Bryant, The Interpreter

With the headlines out of Afghanistan dominated by America's revised exit strategy, it has been easy to miss the news of China's enhanced engagement, both commercially and diplomat...

U.S. Failing in Afghanistan - Daniel Davis, Armed Forces Journal

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significan...

Taliban Mind Games in Afghanistan - Richard Weitz, The Diplomat

Last week’s mysterious leaking of a secret U.S. report summarizing thousands of interrogations of detained Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other suspects in Afghanistan has weakened th...

The U.S. Cannot Defeat the Taliban - George Friedman, Stratfor

Ultimately, the United States could remain in Afghanistan indefinitely and there is nothing the Taliban could do about it. But the United States cannot defeat the Taliban. The Ta...

India Should Train Afghan Officers - Deepak Kapoor, Times of India

European leaders are working around the clock to prevent a Greek default -- as if they had a choice....

Taliban Eating Into Afghanistan's Core - Ameer & Mehsud, Asia Times

As the United States steps up efforts to engage the Taliban and al-Qaeda in a peace process for ...

Is Obama's Drone War Really Effective? - Trefor Moss, Flashpoints

The question that not enough people are asking, however, is whether the drone strikes actually work. Drone attacks are a tactic, not a strategy. Certainly, they are a good means ...

Lies About Afghanistan - Daniel Davis, Armed Forces Journal

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army took me into every significant area where our soldiers e...

U.S. Comes Up Short in Afghanistan - Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

The United States' announcement that it plans to end the combat role of its troops in Afghanistan earlier than expected, and before the end of next year, is a crucial milestone in ...

Obama Made the Right Call on Afghanistan - James Joyner, The Atlantic

Hastening America's exit will be painful, and undercuts years of U.S. efforts, but it's our least bad choice in this doomed war....

The Coming Civil War in Afghanistan - Arif Rafiq, Foreign Policy

By the end of this summer, the 30,000 U.S. troops "surged" into Afghanistan by President Barack Obama's administration will have returned home. And according to Defense Secretary L...

America Rushes for the Afghan Exit - The Economist

SPEAKING on February 1st shortly before a meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels, Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, dropped a bombshell. He said that he now hoped America...

A Disaster in Afghanistan - Frederick & Kimberly Kagan, Weekly Standard

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced a new timeline for American combat operations in Afghanistan—or did he? He said, “Hopefully, by mid- to the latter part of 2013, we�...

Romney Is Boxed in on Afghan Pullout - Spencer Ackerman, Attackerman

Mitt Romney does not like the new accelerated timetable for ending combat in Afghanistan. But he's about to find that there's nothing he can do about it....

Afghanistan: Noble Project Turned Noble Failure - Jonathan Kay, Natl Post

This was a bad week for Afghanistan optimists. First, the British media leaked a classified U.S. report — based on thousands of interrogations of Taliban and former Taliban...

The Hard Way Out of Afghanistan - Luke Mogelson, New York Times

The Marines didn’t arrive in force in Helmand until 2009. Previously, the British controlled the region. Undermanned, ill equipped and far too thinly spread, they were u...

Mr. President, Our Wars Are Not Over - Lawrence Kaplan, The New Republic

“In America, and in Iraq,” Vice President Joe Biden assured an audience in Baghdad last December, “the tide of war is receding.” For its callowness, this ob...

Wishful Thinking About Taliban Talks - Michael Boyle, The Guardian

Whenever a policy position becomes conventional wisdom in Washington, there are usually good reasons to be suspicious of it. Such is certainly the case with the growing bipartisan...

Taliban 'Poised to Retake Afghanistan' - Taylor & Ferris-Rotman, G&M

The U.S. military said in a secret report the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, raising the p...

Repeating Old Afghan Mistakes - Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

With the stage set for secret talks in Qatar between the United States and the Taliban, US President Barack Obama’s strategy for a phased exit from war-ravaged Afghanistan is n...

The U.S.'s Cowardly Drone War - George Monbiot, The Guardian

As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will be become bloodier – and less accountable....

Obama's Bagram Problem - Candace Rondeaux, Foreign Affairs

The prison base in Afghanistan will complicate the U.S. drawdown....

In Defense of Drones - David Bell, The New Republic

Drone technology certainly opens up a new, and in some ways extreme chapter. But it far from certain that the arc of the story points in the dangerous directions feared by the cr...

Why Drones Won't End Islamic Militancy - David Rohde, Reuters

My time in captivity filled me with enormous sympathy for the Pakistani civilians trapped between the deranged Taliban and ruthless American technology. They inhabit a hell on ea...

U.S. Needs a True Picture of Afghan War - Sarah Chayes, Los Angeles Times

How should we measure success in Afghanistan? It is a crucial question, but there is not much agreement on an answer. In mid-January, this newspaper ran a story on the latest Natio...

Escaping the Graveyard of Empires - Brahma Chellaney, Japan Times

As in the covert war it waged against the nearly nine-year Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, so too in the current overt war, U.S. policy has been driven by short-term...

What the Soviets Learned in Afghanistan - Anatol Lieven, NYRB

The United States and its allies today find themselves in a position in Afghanistan similar to that of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, after Mikhail Gorbachev decided on milita...

Obama on the Changing Nature of American Power - Fareed Zakaria, Time

In an exclusive interview with TIME's Fareed Zakaria, President Obama opens up on Iran, Afghanistan, China and the challenges the U.S. faces in navigating a rapidly changing worl...

Enough: Time to Talk to the Taliban - Hadley & Podesta, Foreign Policy

Over the past two years, the United States has made enormous strides in Afghanistan. The U.S. military has undertaken a devastating campaign against al Qaeda and its affiliates, as...

America Embracing the Taliban, Again - Praveen Swami, The Hindu

In the spring of 1839, the extraordinary Indian adventurer and spy, Mohan Lal Kashmiri, engineered one of the greatest intelligence coups of the 19th century: using nothing more le...

Suicidal Standards for America's Troops - Arthur Herman, New York Post

If experience is anything to go by, the Marines who misbehaved in that video will be disciplined and punished - while those who are trying to exploit those images to undermine th...

Expect the Best from U.S. Troops - Kurt Sanger, Chicago Tribune

The video showing Marines urinating on dead enemy bodies in Afghanistan has refocused America's attention on the behavior of service members. We have been painfully aware of the ...

The Taliban Declares Victory - Matthew Rosenberg, At War

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader, seems to have taken a page from George W. Bush’s playbook. Just as the former president declared “mission acc...

The State of the World in 2012 - Chi, Sullivan & Scoblete, RealClearWorld

As the United States heads into a crucial presidential election in November, it must keep a wary eye beyond its borders. Will there be a conflagration - of either an economic or mi...

Is Afghan Urination Video Such a Big Deal? - Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard

The foolishness of these few young Marines is as nothing compared with the foolishness of Obama administration officials....

U.S. Must Make Up Its Mind on Afghanistan - Anthony Cordesman, WaPo

It may be fair to argue that the last thing the nation needs at the start of an election year is yet another budget crisis and another decade of war. Yet this is the path the Uni...

Avoiding a Second Vietnam in Afghanistan - RAND Corporation

In 1968 I began my life in diplomacy as an aide to Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, who were heading peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. Thirty-four years later, I end...

To Pave Way for Peace, Taliban Should Cease Assassination - Globe & Mail

A precondition to any talks must be an immediate end to the Taliban's assassination campaign against Afghan civilians – which is far worse than the desecration of dead bodi...

Getting the Taliban to the Table - David Ignatius, Washington Post

For some intrigue at the start of this new year, take a look at the secret diplomacy under way between the United States and the Taliban. Most observers are skeptical the process ...

U.S. Can't Negotiate Just with the Taliban - M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times

United States diplomats might have put the cart before the horse in their hurry to get a peace process going before No...

Was $73 Billion of Afghan Aid Wasted? - James Petersen, Politico

The money isn't going where we think it is - and $73 billion is a ton of treasure to waste....

Are the Taliban Serious About Talks? - Richard Weitz, The Diplomat

After years of stagnation and secrecy, the peace talks to end the Afghanistan war are finally making progress. Last week, an Afghan Taliban spokesman said that his group had agree...

Karzai's Ultimatum Complicates U.S. Exit Strategy - Matt Rosenberg, NYT

President Hamid Karzai's denunciation last week of abuses at the main American prison in Afghanistan — and his abrupt demand that Americans cede control of the site within ...

Obama Closes the Book on the 9/11 Era - David Ignatius, Washington Post

When you ask Obama administration officials to explain their foreign policy agenda for 2012, they point first to the defense budget. That's where they want to make a 'pivot' in U...

Canada Picked Its Kandahar Moment - Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail

What on earth were we doing in Kandahar? Now that it’s all over, that question hangs in the air. Decades hence, students will be stumped by that question in much the same w...

Why a One-War U.S. Policy Will Work - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Post

Threats from Iran or China, at least in the short term, are much more likely to involve U.S. naval, air and special forces (which should retain a capacity for handling more than ...

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