President Obama’s goal at the NATO summit this week is looking increasingly clear: wrap up U.S. troops’ combat role over the coming year, and get the allies to pay more money to enable the Afghan military to fill the gap. All signs are that NATO will agree to the first of those two goals Monday in Chicago.
Afghanistan
President Barack Obama on Tuesday made his third unannounced trip to Afghanistan – the first in more than two years — this time to sign a strategic pact that will guide U.S. relations with the country for the next decade. The pact, negotiated over the past 20 months, could be key to the withdrawal of U.S. forces [...]
I think Max Boot is on the right track, dismissing the coordinated Haqqani Taliban attacks in Kabul and elsewhere as no big deal–and while I’m sure Max sees this as a reason for staying the course in Afghanistan, I see it as the exact opposite: another good argument for speeding our withdrawal. Why? Three reasons:
Just how unpopular has the war in Afghanistan become? In the latest CBS News-New York Times poll, 69% of respondents said they didn’t think the U.S. should be at war there. Just 29% say we’re “doing the right thing” by continuing the conflict. Incredibly, that opposition is even greater than the levels seen in some [...]
The massacre of sixteen Afghan civilians near Kandahar has thrust Afghanistan back into the political debate. (Yes, there is a real war going on, and it’s not the one for bound delegates in Tampa.) For a moment early this week it looked like we might be near a tipping point, at which Republicans could lunge [...]
Pentagon officials won’t concede it, but privately defense officials say the spate of “green-on-blue” killings by Afghans of their purported U.S. allies over the past two weeks could lead to major changes in U.S. strategy. If they continue, the U.S. will face a brutal choice: pull out, or double down.
Two more Americans were killed today in Afghanistan–in Zhari district, just outside Kandahar, a place I know well, having embedded twice with U.S. units there. This has become business as usual in Afghanistan, especially since U.S. troops accidentally burned some Qurans a few weeks ago. It is, of course, infuriating. And it raises a larger [...]
So just how close to the tipping point – that’s the phase heard most over the past several days – is the U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan? Not close, according to the Obama Administration. Remember, this was the “good war” – justifiable in 9/11′s wake, unlike the invasion of Iraq two years later. So Administration [...]
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 world. A full transcript of their conversation follows
The great debate about whether Mitt Romney was a vulture capitalist or venture capitalist at Bain Capital is useful and interesting, but not for the reasons many people pretend it is. The country benefits from a frank discussion about the wages of capitalism and what limits, if any, we should place on free markets. But [...]
