Peter Feaver of Shadow Government has penned (keyboarded?) a provocative analysis of coming dilemma facing President Obama and his forthcoming Afghan war decision. Feaver first recalls the candidate Obama’s rhetoric on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, reminding us all how hawkish the future president sounded on Afghanistan. Feaver than discusses how some things have […]
A new poll covering all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces was released today by The Washington Post, ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and ARD television. Let’s go over some of the polls main findings: Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its […]
It was obvious a year ago that the 2010 midterms were going to be about domestic issues, specifically the economy, jobs, and health care. But it was hard to predict just how little foreign policy, the Afghanistan war included, would play in this political season. The war in Afghanistan has to be considered the top […]
The story of US/Karzai government negotiations with members of the Taliban have already taken so many twists (mostly rhetorical rather than substantive) that one should not feel ashamed to be confused as to what exactly is going on between the two warring parties. One second the Obama administration admits (Gates) to ongoing negotiations and the […]
The Washington Post editorial page shares my concern of President Obama’s seeming lack of commitment in his Afghanistan strategy, as portrayed in Bob Woodward’s ‘Obama’s Wars’ series: What’s most disturbing in Mr. Woodward’s book is the evidence it offers that Mr. Obama’s own commitment to his plan is weak. The president is described as preoccupied […]
Well, I just finished the 1st of Bob Woodward’s three-part series ‘Obama’s War’ in the Washington Post and came away keying a different aspect than Woodward and likely the Obama administration wanted to get across. Woodward’s main theme in this first section is that the high brass of the US military (Mullen, McChrystal, Petraeus) failed […]
With all the hub-bub about the Wikileaks, tragic death of the humanitarian workers, President Karzai’s anti anti-corruption crusade, etc. an important seachange in the Obama administration’s Afghan strategy has appeared; The administration is discreetly walking back its July 2011 drawdown date. Here is Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week [my emphasis]: “I think we need […]
After Faheem poignantly detailed President Karzai’s disapproval of the Wikileaks document leak, we now have Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ strong reaction from the incident: “I’m not sure anger is the right word. I just — I think mortified, appalled,” Gates said. “And if I’m angry, it is because I believe that this information puts those in Afghanistan […]
Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Bush administration national security leader, has come out with a sobering critique of the current war in Afghanistan. Off the bat, he discusses how the war has changed from one of necessity to know one of choice. Here’s Haass: The war being waged by […]
Here are a few observations from Michael Hasting’s Rolling Stone article Obama-McChrystal seemed to be on same page in terms of actual Afghanistan war strategy/policy – This has been an underreported aspect of the whole incident. McChrystal and his aides were mainly critiquing (if ‘bite me’ is a critique) the political process and not the […]
President Obama did as good a job as was possible in his short speech to the country on Gen. McChrystal’s dismissal and the placement of Gen. Petraeus as the leader of all foreign military forces in Afghanistan. In his talk, President Obama emphasized that this was a change in military leadership and not one of […]
Afghanistan is so boring to cover. Sometimes I just sit at my desk screaming in my head ‘SOMETHING HAPPEN ALREADY!!!’ So Gen. McChrystal is now a goner and Gen. Petraeus is back to save the day yet again. Anyway you cut it, this is a sad situation that can only make a difficult situation even […]
It wasn’t long ago I wrote a piece titled ‘Obama-Karzai: Fighting Alone in a Locked Room‘ and now look at where we are….hugs and kisses of the political flavor are all the rage. The Obama administration has literally and figuratively rolled out the red carpet for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his entourage and relations […]
When President Obama announced that he was sending an additional 30,000 American troops to work under Gen. McChrystal’s leadership in Afghanistan, his very next sentence stated that US forces would be starting a withdrawal 18 months later on July 2011. I was critical of this at the time and still am. The US and the […]
Barack Obama made his first trip to Afghanistan as president a few days ago, and during his 6 hours in the country he met with President Karzai, Gen. McChrystal, and Ambassador Eikenberry. It has been reported that Obama pressed Karzai on clamping down on corruption and that their conversations were very much ‘down to business’. […]