The outcome in Afghanistan won't resemble the vision of America and its allies, who wanted a strong, Western-aligned central government keeping the Taliban at bay. The goals should now be less ambitious.
Pakistan's military-intelligence complex is too preoccupied with countering India to mount a serious campaign against radicals who threaten the nation's survival. The country is being destroyed from within.
Al-Qaeda has accomplished the unthinkable: establishing an embryonic recruitment, radicalization and operational capacity on our shores. Our current strategy risks another 9/11.
A military surge will not win Afghanistan. Karzai and his corrupt clan have failed the Afghan people. Former presidential candidate Ghani shows us a way out: counterinsurgency economics.
The United States has allowed the Afghan War to slip from apparent victory to possible defeat. Kabul is no longer the center of battle. The fulcrum has shifted to Pakistan.
There is simply no justification for having a single American killed or wounded on the Afghan battlefield if all is certain to come to naught in a year’s time or less.
There is no simple answer to the causes of terrorism. But three books offer insight into the complexities of man and his motivation to kill. These explanations come not from academic tomes, nor expositions by the burgeoning cottage industry of ter
