Most congressional hearings bring administration officials up for a grilling. Others present interest group-backed pseudo-experts to give canned analysis. Rarely do congressional hearings present eclectic analysts who address a given policy option from a first-principle perspective to an engaged group of lawmakers. Yet that’s exactly what happened Wednesday afternoon when More…
That’s the real question, isn’t it? Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) asks it of the witnesses at today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security: “An Afghan state able to secure itself against internal threat with minimal external help”; one that “does More…
Rory Stewart, the Afghanistan-war skeptic who heads the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, has one advantage over his fellow witnesses at this Senate panel: he’s better with quips. Stewart compares the Obama administration’s twinning of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy to a policy of dealing with “an angry More…
As I reported today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ thoughts on the proper U.S. force posture in Afghanistan “is a work in progress,” according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. If there’s a Senate hearing that stands a chance of tipping the undecided — or even changing minds — it’s More…
We still don’t know what it says. Not even Defense Secretary Bob Gates does, apparently, though it went to the Pentagon and NATO. The initial reports are that it says a lot of what it’s been expected to say: the war is hard but not hopeless; more Afghan More…
Anthony Cordesman, a highly respected defense analyst and adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s review of Afghanistan strategy, writes an op-ed that has an undercurrent of “McChrystal versus the world” running through it. For instance, there’s this blink-and-you’ll miss it reference, in a section about what it will take More…
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…
As Bloomberg reports, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirms. I don’t yet have the full transcript of his press briefing today, but he said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s forthcoming 60-day review of the Afghanistan war won’t include any requests for new troops. That’s not because McChrystal won’t request More…
True fact: talk to the advisers to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 60-day strategy review on Afghanistan and they say that they’re attuned to an erosion of support for the Afghanistan war in Washington. They may be a bit jumpy. Polling Report, which aggregates polls, doesn’t show much of an erosion, 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…
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