Earlier posts have commented on the Obama administration’s defective foreign policy apparatus as well as its highly dysfunctional management of the war in Afghanistan (here and here). Both problems are conjoined, a point that is amply underscored in Vali Nasr’s forthcoming book, The Dispensable Nation. Nasr served as a key adviser to the embattled Richard […]
There are several updates to the key points I outlined in last week’s post about President Obama’s handling of the Afghan war. The first concerns the success of the surge of 30,000 extra troops that Mr. Obama announced in December 2009, most of which were deployed in southern Afghanistan. As I noted, one of the significant […]
There are major dents in the president’s foreign policy claims A spate of new books offers critical appraisals of President Obama’s stewardship of national affairs. Bob Woodward’s latest volume, “The Price of Politics,” draws an unflattering portrait of his management of fiscal policy, echoing themes in Ron Suskind’s “Confidence Men.” On foreign policy, Ahmed Rashid’s […]