Max Boot , Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and most importantly a Petraeus advisor, had a chat with Charlie Rose. I invite you, my reader, to watch the whole interview here. There are a few takeaways that you might want to keep in mind as you watch Boot […]
1) Two female teachers were gunned down in northwest Pakistan. This is, obviously, an abhorrent crime, and the United States should do what it can to promote the rights of women in AfPak. But women’s rights alone are not a sufficient reason to continue the military effort there. 2) Croatia’s bid to join the EU […]
The announcement that Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai are not interested in a coalition government after the Afghan Presidential run-off is, in fact, not bad news. There’s no reason why a power-sharing agreement would make Afghanistan’s political system more stable, as both Karzai and Abdullah are aligned with the United States. The problems are more […]
General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops is, of course, expected. Military commanders are always going to want more resources to utilize, regardless of whether they know how to use them or not (McChrystal’s insistence on a population-centric strategy in rural Afghanistan seems to make little sense). As reported in today’s New York Times, President […]