At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday on strategy for the war in Afghanistan, a discussion of the Obama administration’s approach to securing the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — a crucial test for the escalated war — was overshadowed by a partisan dispute over the meaning of the More…
So far, this Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan is less about Kandahar and more about parsing what President Obama meant when he established July 2011 as an “inflection point” for beginning a transition to Afghan security.
Trying to clarify after yesterday’s initial back-and-forth with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), More…
According to an early-morning press release from ISAF, the NATO force in Afghanistan, Afghan troops supported by NATO forces have concluded a “five-day operation” north of Kandahar city that sounds major:
Directly contributing to the ongoing efforts of Hamkari security operations in Kandahar City and nearby districts, the five-day operation
Shortly after Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told a Senate panel this morning that “we are regaining the initiative and insurgency is beginning to lose momentum,” insurgents assassinated Hajji Abdul Jabar, the governor of Arghandab district in Kandahar. According to The Wall Street Journal, insurgents More…
Today’s now-postponed Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan was overshadowed by Gen. David Petraeus’s brief but frightening loss of consciousness. But before Petraeus momentarily took ill about 45 minutes into the hearing, he and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, made a vigorous case that training More…
Gen. Stanley McChrystal is citing these figures in the expansion of the Afghan security forces as an accomplishment of his first year in command of the Afghanistan war:
“A year ago, there were about 150,000 total Afghan national security forces,” he said. “Today, there are 230,000. That’s a significant
Few communities of Washington wonks run into greater structural and institutional obstacles than advocates of reduced defense spending. Defense companies put billions into PR campaigns for the necessity of this or that project that runs over cost. Legislators have every career incentive to lard the defense budget with job-creating bloat More…
Just to be clear: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not talking about leaving the Pentagon. But when he ultimately does depart, possibly as soon as next year, a leading candidate to succeed him is his undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy. And judging by her speech Thursday at the annual conference More…
Speaking at the Center for a New American Security’s annual Washington policy conference, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy (and CNAS co-founder), made some news: The Obama administration is taking a new look at just why it is that the U.S. faces a challenge from terrorism.
“We are More…
Gen. Stanley McChrystal effectively settles this calibration of how his strategy for the “process” of securing Kandahar shifted in reaction to local perspectives:
The operation to secure the Kandahar region will unfold more slowly and last longer than the military had planned, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. The slower pace
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