Washington is sending tremendous amounts of military material into autocratic Middle Eastern nations and building-up bases in countries whose governments often prefer that no publicity be given to the growing American military "footprint."
It is amazing how a presidential junket and the meanderings of a silly little woman with pretensions to the White House can bump a war off the front pages or as the lead stories of broadcast news.
Hamid Karzai tolerates corruption, accommodates warlords, is not doing enough against drug trafficking and looks the other way when it comes to the Taliban.
Nobody's manning the calculator at NATO. War never delivers clean numbers, but no matter how you look at these, something doesn't add up.
This week saw what happens when an ugly little thing like empirical evidence collides with what might best be called faith-based health consumerism, which dictates that more is always better.
If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the United States' predicament in Afghanistan, it's that the presence of our ground combat troops is not doing anything to defeat al Qaeda.
The Past Two Week's Top Stories in Foreign Affairs: Increased Tension Over Iran's Program SI Analysis: After an IAEA report suggests that Iran's rece...
The problem with these stimulus programs is that they are inefficient ways to create and preserve jobs. This has to be the lamest economic thinking since Hoover started tightening the screws at the onset of the Great Depression.
Having toured it, I give the new Bagram detention facility a "vastly improved" grade compared to what it was before. But, that being said, U.S. detention policy still has a long way to go.
After years of propping up corrupt and ineffective governments in South Vietnam, the U.S. finally decided to enter into peace talks with the North Vietnamese. The same should happen with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Bad decision after bad decision after bad decision really has suggested that the last decade has seen the ascension of a full-fledged Idiocracy.
The cost of war in in dollars alone requires a choice not only to stop sending troops but also to withdraw all U.S. military forces and invest in civilian-led development of Afghanistan's devastated communities.
While we don't know what exactly is going through Obama's mind, or just when or in what form he will address us on his plan for the war in Afghanistan, we do know something about what his conclusions are likely to be.
Whatever the President decides, he must rhetorically prepare the public for the costs of his Afghanistan strategy, a feat that cannot be accomplished until he clearly differentiates the two approaches to this war.
Already, thousands of our readers have signed a letter and contacted the White House urging a new way forward in Afghanistan. I encourage you to read it and to endorse this message if you have not done so already.
It might have seemed unfathomable back in 2001 to think that this war would have gone on so long, but here we are eight years in and no end in sight.
International drug prohibition, headed by the United States, has, in effect, created a global mechanism that is in the process of eating our civilization alive. Fortunately, we can reverse it with a pen stroke.
U.S. invasions of Vietnam and Afghanistan have eerie similarities. Both had ill-defined military goals, especially exit strategies, making them seemingly endless.
Look, "strategists," this is very simple. Decisive majorities of Democrats oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan.
The president will put forward his decision on Afghanistan soon. It will involve a troop increase. If progressives stay in full opposition mode, they will exist on the margin of the debate.
There's no armor, it turns out, for conscience. So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greete...
