If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the U.S.'s predicament in Afghanistan, he'd tell you:

The presence of our ground combat troops is not doing anything to defeat al-Qaida.

Think about that for a moment. We are paying roughly $1 million per troop, per...

James Vega -- writing for the Democratic Strategist, co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira -- just published a 2,600+ word memo arguing that "Obama's final decision" to "approve a significant increase in the number of troops" would not be a "betrayal" of the Democratic base.

You...

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit the blog.

Talks between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah broke down today, October 30, according...

Senator John Kerry came back from Afghanistan calling President Hamid Karzai a "patriot" and supportive of a plan "closer to McChrystal than to Biden," meaning he loves him some counterinsurgency, just not in the doses prescribed by Gen. McChrystal. Kerry's Monday speech to the Council on Foreign...

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

Bruce Riedel, the chair of one of the many Obama policy reviews on Afghanistan,...

All hail the birth of Afghan democracy!

The willingness of Americans to allow our political leaders to spend $1 million per troop, per year in Afghanistan has been rewarded: we can now stand back in awe as the unpunished perpetrators of massive election fraud vie for control of...

The U.S. and allied forces now face insurrection all over Afghanistan. The insurgency nearly quadrupled in size since 2006, from 7,000 to 25,000 participants. Recently leaked intelligence assessments reportedly show that Al-Qaida and the jihadist Taliban groups account for only 10 percent of the insurgents.

Now, I hear...

I've just launched an act.ly petition asking the White House to end the war in Afghanistan. Please sign it (you must have a Twitter account to do so) and forward it around to your networks. It includes an embedded section of the Rethink Afghanistan documentary and a link to...

ISAF commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal set out a clear marker for what he considers "success" in Afghanistan:

American success in Afghanistan should be measured by "the number of Afghans shielded from violence," not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

The Pentagon expects...

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

General McChrystal's "

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

The insistence of...

The U.S. is pinwheeling its arms on the edge of a very deep abyss in Afghanistan. In a Nixon-like display of corruption and paranoia, Hamid Karzai and his cronies, who would likely have won a legitimate election, engaged in such widespread vote fraud that Afghanistan likely faces either renewed civil...

Bruce Riedel at Brookings says we have a vested interest in shoring up Karzai's legitimacy. That's not surprising, given that Riedel certainly has such a vested interest. From The New York Times:

"Even if we get a second round of voting, the odds are still high that Karzai will...

When the people of an occupied country want foreign troops out while the people of the occupying country want their troops to come home, and the troops remain, something is wrong. Both the American people and the Afghan people want a troop decrease in Afghanistan. Yet this past weekend, the...

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal.

The poisonous tree of counterinsurgency continues to bear fruit in Afghanistan. Reports indicate that tensions are rising over the fraudulent election. The potential for violence is very real. President Karzai's main opponent in...

I've been mulling over the inability of Ambassador Holbrooke and Defense Secretary Gates to define success in Afghanistan or to speculate about how long Americans should expect to be fighting a war there. (In case you missed it, take a look at the video of these men dodging the...

It's not easy to craft an argument more fringe than those of the Birthers, but Center for American Progress' Lawrence Korb managed to get the job done in his recent wrong-headed piece on Afghanistan.

A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that 59 percent of Democrats want troop...

This is the first in a series of posts to help Americans get to know some of the most powerful figures in the Afghan government for whom our troops are killing and dying. We'll get started with Karzai's running mate in this week's election.

Meet Mohammed Qasim Fahim.

After...

Brave New Foundation just released a new segment of Rethink Afghanistan. "Part Six: Security" includes ex-CIA field agents and station chiefs, along with journalists and regional experts who explain how U.S. policies in Afghanistan undermine American security. Take a look (contains some graphic material).