Afghanistan has journeyed through nearly thirty years of war and dislocation. It should be no surprise then that it may take just as long for the country to arrive in its own.
After 10 years of Soviet war and occupation in the 1980s, then the Civil War in the early 1990s led by the corrupt warlords, then the years of oppression under the Taliban, and now 11 years of American war and occupation, they are sick of war.
One argument for staying the course is to recall the extraordinary costs already expended. What will withdrawal say to those who served and sacrificed?
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber killed at least 25 civilians and wounded another 30 at a funeral for a village elder in a remote part of e...
When the United States finally tired of the corruption and waste of Vietnam, we pulled out our props, only to witness the unviability of our client state without massive U.S. aid. What happens when we finally tire of Afghanistan?
The war for hearts and minds is over. It's lost in Afghanistan, and it's lost at home. The president and Congress should do us all a favor and stop letting people get killed for it, and get our people out of there.
It turns out that after all this time, all these lives, and all this money, not only have we not won over the Afghan street, we've not even won over the hearts and minds of the people we're giving guns and paychecks.
Not only do Weeda and her co-workers assemble stories, documents and pictures from the families of victims of war, they also help build supportive communities amongst the families whose trust they have gained through their repeated visits.
The war profiteers' shady lobbying campaign took another hit to its credibility today, as an accounting firm on which they relied to support their bogus "military spending = jobs" argument was cited for severe audit deficiencies.
Nothing about the Iraq fiasco should be called a success, despite President Obama's attempt to provide closure to the troops misused and abused since the launch of that war.
Today, Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, a middle path between a secular and theocratic form of government. It's time to realize the potential of this compromise, and to allow the great powers of democracy and Islam to finally reconcile in Afghanistan.
The United States can help Afghans build a dynamic, prosperous country at a far lower cost than the current military effort.
With bin Laden dead and al Qaeda largely gone from Afghanistan, I believe it is long past time to bring our troops home. On this 10th anniversary, I offer 10 reasons we should end the war in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is on the verge of blossoming into a modern nation and sweeping the Taliban aside, though almost no one believes this.
Political leaders and military commanders will dismiss the Taliban's recent coordinated assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul as a "one-off" incident. But the attack is a vivid reminder of how poorly things are going, and why America needs to leave.
"One of the things that people don't appreciate is how dramatically far Afghanistan has come in the last ten years, in terms of the capacity for governance."
Violence in Afghanistan is at the highest levels observed in the 10-year conflict. The simple fact is that security for Afghans is worse now than it was before the Obama Administration's repeated escalations. Nothing General Petraeus can say will change this fact.
We can't afford to spend a trillion dollars a year on the war budget. Thanks to constant pressure from fed-up Americans, Washington, D.C. is starting to get the message.
A Rally for Afghanistan program needs to get everyday Afghans enthused about the potential for growth of their own country. Real change will not come from the top down, but from the bottom up as individual Afghans work to build their own country.
As President Obama prepares to announce his intentions for how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan this year, public opinion polls show a significant spike in the number of people who want to see big numbers of troops brought home.
Memorial Day is a national holiday dedicated to remembering Americans killed in wartime. This year, unfortunately, we remember war dead who didn't have to die, and unless Congress and the president act, we'll remember more needless deaths next year.
With Memorial Day coming up, we should take a moment to consider something that's gone largely unremarked in the mainstream media: more than 1,500 troops have now died in a war the American people oppose.
The number of troops killed in connection with the Afghanistan war now exceeds 1,500. How many more troop deaths and civilian killings will we tolerate before Washington acts to end this war?
A quiet city in the north of Afghanistan ignited today after yet another NATO night raid reportedly tore another family apart. Thousands of people took to the streets, again chanting, "Death to America!" as they pelted Karzai's billboards with mud and stones.
