At the bottom of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s deeply reported story about why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen relieved Gen. David McKiernan from his command in Afghanistan is this bit of insight into some of the value added by the 60-day strategy review recently More…
A pattern is developing with respect to the Afghanistan war. No one who advises Gen. Stanley McChrystal on his 60-day strategy review — results coming soon! — thinks the war effort is adequately resourced. First Andrew “Abu Muqawama” Exum of the Center for a New American Security came back from More…
President Obama should be commended for his reality-based presentation of what the United States is after in Afghanistan:
ABC’S TERRY MORAN: Define victory in Afghanistan, or maybe that’s not the right word.
OBAMA: I’m always worried about using the word “victory” because, you know, it invokes this notion of
Nate Fick — whom Center for a New American Security chairman Richard Danzig announced this morning as the next CNAS CEO; he’s barely in his 30s — and Andrew “Abu Muqawama” Exum are talking about their new paper on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I blogged about that paper More…
After initially promising to come up with benchmarks for judging the success or shortcomings of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy — the term preferred by the administration, I understand, is “metrics,” which I’m cool with — the Obama administration has yet to come up with any, and has resisted More…
Take a look at this New York Times op-ed call for a moratorium on the Pakistan drone strikes by counterinsurgency luminaries Andrew Exum and Dave Kilcullen. (This, if I’m not mistaken, is the furthest Kilcullen has gone: in a recent discussion of his book, “The Accidental Guerrilla” at a More…
Two new Obama administration senior officials got sent up for nomination today: Phil Mudd, undersecretary-designate for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security; and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary-designate for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department.
More from Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ conference call. Yesterday, Andrew Exum thought I was a bit too breathless in describing the budget as a victory for the counterinsurgency crowd, and it’s a fair point. But I asked Gates if he thought he had reached consensus within the Pentagon More…
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