Not since the oil shocks that first brought the world’s superpowers together in 1974–back then they called themselves the “Library Group” because they met in the White House library–has the G8 had so much substantive business on a summit agenda.
In its story today about Mitt Romney’s rather opaque views about Afghanistan, the New York Times mentions, almost in passing, something important that has drawn strangely little attention: Romney opposes talking to the Taliban. That’s a relatively extreme position. For some time now, it’s been widely accepted within the foreign policy establishment that any realistic [...]
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 [...]
Mark Benjamin notes that it’s not just Jon Huntsman who is fatigued with Afghanistan and wary of Libya:
War supporter Robert Kagan posits it: If the war is going badly in the summer and fall of 2012, it will be because of the decision the president made this week. Everyone will know he did it against the advice of his commanders. Everyone will know he did it for political reasons. So if the [...]
In November of 1986, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the Politburo about his country’s futile war in Afghanistan. The conflict had already dragged on for six years, Gorbachev told his comrades, but no end was in sight. “In general, we haven’t found the key to resolving this problem,” the communist leader explained, according to Gregory [...]
President Obama arranged for the television networks to break from local programing Wednesday so he could announce his decision to withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer, and transition out of combat there by 2014. But the Americans who tuned in got to watch a different speech altogether.
As esteemed Swampland alum Mark Thompson explains, the devil is in the details: The outlines seem clear: Obama will declare some kind of success tonight and call for the 30,000 troops he sent into Afghanistan as a “surge” force over the last 18 months to come home by the end of next year. The key [...]
In 2008 Mitt Romney ran a Gumby campaign, turning himself inside out trying to be everything to everybody. He bought in to every straw poll, competed in Iowa, signed most pledges–and lost. This time around, Romney seems intent on avoiding the same mistake. He’s not competing in Iowa any straw polls. He refused to take [...]
Massimo suggests Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman inadvertently stepped into dovish foreign policy territory and that they’ll soon correct — or overcorrect — the mistake. That’s a credible explanation for the former, whose aides spent the day making hawkish reassurances to The Weekly Standard, among others. I don’t buy it for Huntsman.
