The individual or group, such as the Taliban, with more available options — harassing, pursuing or retreating — is most likely to prevail.
Memo to US — You’ve Been Out-Adapted. Go Home!
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Afghanistan
One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappear into the Darkness
Remember as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin, when the Bush administration decided to seriously enforce a Pentagon ban, in existence since the first Gulf War, on media coverage and images of the American dead arriving home at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware? In fact, the Bush-era ban did more than that. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote then, it “ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.”
There’s Light at the End of the Tunnel — or, It’s Deja Vu All Over Again
Lowering the benchmark for COIN success.
Fireground Rules, Part 2: A Scheme is Not a Vision
As with wildfires, conflicts between states are the interplay of multiple factors which can generate manifestly different outcomes.
Petraeus Played
Ambition on the part of Gen. Petraeus may have blinded him to truth that Taliban impostor was too good to be true.
U.S. Out of Afghanistan by 2014? Don’t Hold Your Breath
400 military bases and a mega-embassy are not the face of an impending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Could Gandhi Have Halted Night Raids?
Just Foreign Policy’s Robert Naiman wonders whether Gandhi’s satyagraha can work in Afghanistan.
Election Was Missed Opportunity to Convince Voters to Abandon Current Afghanistan Strategy
Americans forget that the $3 billion a week it spends on Afghanistan and Iraq makes the bank bailout and stimulus look like chump change.
Of Horns and Beaks and the Afghanistan War
There is always another “strategic” battle — in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam — that’s “key” to winning a war against an insurgency. But there are millions of hills and valleys and they are as meaningless in Afghanistan as they were in Vietnam.
Will Rockets or Schools Tell the Tale of Afghanistan?
Even at its most successful, a military-led counterinsurgency campaign remains inherently unsustainable.