On what we should learn from 11 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
War
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.
It’s sad that what should be a day of quiet satisfaction – the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, the killer of nearly 3,000 innocents – has degenerated into a political spitball fight. We well remember Jimmy Carter’s failed mission to rescue the U.S. hostages held by Iran’s government in Tehran 30 years aqo. [...]
Our photo site, LightBox, has a powerful collection of images by some of the world’s best photojournalists from the Bosnian War, which began 20 years ago this month. I wrote the following brief observation to accompany the spread:
For my print column this week, which TIME subscribers can find here, I decided to check in with some of the military veterans I wrote about last summer my “New Greatest Generation” cover story–especially the sergeants–to see how they were reacting to the news of the alleged massacre perpetrated by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. Not [...]
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 [...]
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement Wednesday that the U.S. plans to hand off all combat missions in Afghanistan sometime in 2013 has triggered howls from hawks who maintain it’s a step down a slippery slope headed to defeat. They may have a point. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has plainly decided that its goals are better [...]
Charts can make clear too often what words only obscure. Take this arresting graphic, contained in a new Congressional Research Service study made available by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists (CRS reports are generated solely for congressional use, and aren’t released to the public; Aftergood gets a lot of them somehow and [...]
The debate over Iraq’s future – hopeful, according to the Obama Administration, hopeless, according to its critics – has begun in earnest. It was kicked off by the Administration’s recent decision that all U.S. troops will be home for the holidays. The White House blames Iraq’s parliament, which has refused to grant U.S. troops the [...]
