With all the necessary caveats about polling in Afghanistan, this new BBC poll finds a surprisingly robust acceptance among Afghans for the U.S. troop presence:
If you were an Afghan, and maybe you had a family member or a friend or someone you knew detained at the vast U.S. prison at Bagram Air Field, how would you feel about the Pentagon sending this fluffy news piece around?
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Dec. 22, 2009 –
Not that he wasn’t before. But during the White House debate over Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy this fall, Vice President Joe Biden argued for a “Pakistan-first” approach that tamped down U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan in favor of counterterrorism strikes in both countries and civilian aid to Pakistan. Since the More…
The Obama administration announced this afternoon that Sharon Burke, a vice president of the Center for a New American Security, is headed to the Pentagon as its next director of Operational Energy Plans and Programs. Fitting: Burke pioneered CNAS’s focus on the role of natural resources in global security More…
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) doesn’t buy into the new Afghanistan strategy. She worries that if Gen. McChrystal doesn’t make the progress he thinks he needs to make in six months, a year and 18 months, he’ll just come back to Congress and make minor adjustments — that he’ll never say More…
Defense Secretary Robert Gates just gave his opening statement at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is “necessary” and “mutually reinforcing” to take on al-Qaeda in Pakistan, he said. He spoke about the “porous border” between Afghanistan and Pakistan that to strengthen the point, but More…
One of the joys of Internet journalism is that when a piece is too long to incorporate every intelligent perspective from smart analysts, you can just peel some off and put it on the blog. So here are a few reactions I couldn’t fit into my wrap More…
An official with the Afghan government’s human rights commission is blasting an important new U.S. military initiative in Afghanistan as a potential road to warlordism.
The new program, known as the Community Defense Initiative, seeks to aid Afghan local or tribal leaders who control paramilitary forces outside of the U.S.-sponsored More…
If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.
According to More…
Fresh from a trip last week to Afghanistan, where he scored a diplomatic coup by securing Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s acquiescence to a runoff election, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) urged President Obama to endorse a counterinsurgency campaign targeted More…
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