The Ides of Berlusconi approach for Italy.
The Long Knives Close in On “Caesar” Silvio
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Afghanistan
The Great Myth: Counterinsurgency
There are moments that define a war. Just such a one occurred on June 21, when Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry helicoptered into Marjah for a photo op with the locals. It was to be a capstone event, the fruit of a four-month counterinsurgency offensive by Marines, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, and the newly minted Afghan National Army (ANA) to drive the Taliban out of the area and bring in good government.
Review: ‘I Go to the Ruined Place’
The infamous torture photos from Abu Ghraib were first released to the public in 2003. The horrific images of prisoners hog-tied and beaten naked, leashed like dogs with bags over their heads, and posed in forced sexual positions — all with grinning U.S soldiers in the background — rode with us on the morning commute, made their way onto our computers at lunchtime, and sat with us during the six o’clock news. The pictures were a challenge as well as a revelation. As editors Melissa Kwasny and M.L Smoker write in their introduction of I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights: “We suddenly seem[ed] to be asked to decide to what extent we will stand up and speak out for human rights.”
It’s Not an “Anthropology of Afghanistan” We Need, But of Us
Our intervention in Afghanistan should evoke a national soul-searching, as we thought we did after Vietnam.
The Land Where Theories of Warfare Go to Die: Obama, Petraeus, and the Cult of COIN in Afghanistan
In December, when Obama decided (for the second time in 2009) to add tens of thousands of additional American forces to the war, he also slapped an 18-month deadline on the military to turn the situation around and begin handing security over to the bedraggled Afghan National Army and police. Speaking to the nation from West Point, Obama said that he’d ordered American forces to start withdrawing from Afghanistan at that time.
Patraeus Circles Two Camps
Nearly a week after the abrupt departure of Washington’s top commander in Afghanistan, United States strategy for reversing the flood of bad news that has been recently pouring out of that strife-torn country remains as unclear as ever.
Here We Go With the Pallets of Cash Again (Remember Paul Bremer?)
On the heels of the firing of Gen. McChrystal, the $3 billion in cash openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years provides further impetus for the drawdown of our troops from Afghanistan.
A Confirmation for Petraeus Is a Confirmation of the Surge Narrative
Ever since the surge narrative took root, there has been little public debate about the situation in Iraq. Thus, it is no surprise that, instead of an ongoing conflict, Iraq figured into the Petraeus confirmation hearings as an historical event.
Hummer Rules
Anti-government rhetoric is all the rage these days. And “rage” is the operative word here. Small-government enthusiasts are like the drivers of Hummers incensed at all the difficulties they encounter on the roadway — pesky speed limits, red lights, construction-related delays. Fuming at these restrictions on their liberty, they suddenly have a profanity-laced meltdown and take it out on those around them.
Afghanistan by the Book — THE Book, That Is
If Afghanistan is, in fact, a COIN engagement then the Obama administration should be using the best available COIN guidelines to assess it. Towards that end, the author has taken the liberty of extracting key points from Gen. Petraeus’s seminal work on the subject, Field Manual 3-24, to use as metrics.