Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) wants to know the answer to the million-dollar question: how will we know when the Afghanistan war is over? He specifically references Petraeus’ famous half-joking question to reporter Rick Atkinson during the Iraq invasion, “tell me how this ends.”
Joining Petraeus and Flournoy is Adm. Eric Olson, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, who’s here to explain the irregular-warfare on top of the Af-Pak counterinsurgency strategy. Will he say anything about the drones?
Al-Qaeda’s surviving leaders “have proven adept at communicating and surviving” and “remain a draw” to More…
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, are set to go before the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 (ish) this morning to discuss/explain the Obama administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Here are a couple things More…
It’s difficult to see how Beitullah Massoud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has the capability to launch attacks against the United States, but consider yourself on notice about his intentions:
The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, a man with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, threatened
I’ve been writing for weeks now that President Obama’s approach to Af-Pak is a counterinsurgency strategy to meet a counterterrorism objective. And — just saying! — Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy described the approach exactly like that during her press briefing today:
What we’re
How bad is the Afghan insurgency? What will it take to roll it back?
During his confirmation hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Eikenberry gives a standard answer. It’s going to require “additional commitment of U.S. and importantly NATO forces into eastern and southern Afghanistan.” Also “faster and further” More…
Here’s the highlight reel from soon-to-be-retired Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry‘s opening statement during his confirmation hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), the committee chairman — who will probably be briefed by special envoy Richard Holbrooke on More…
Just one thing before the Hill confirmation hearings begin. There’s a reprint of the U.S. Army’s stability operations field manual out now. Tom Ricks reads it and recontextualizes it entirely:
What we really are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think, is instability operations. I don’t think the
I missed the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama yesterday, but The New York Times gives me the highlight reel. On Afghanistan:
“There’s got to be an exit strategy,” Mr. Obama said in a wide-ranging interview shown Sunday on “60 Minutes” on CBS. “There’s got to be a sense
A smart piece in The New York Times on Sunday noted that the Pentagon is rethinking its defense posture that prepares for fighting two wars at the same time, a mainstay for the past fifteen years. This might be the first theoretical test for the counterinsurgency theorist-practitioners that have More…
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