Real Security

America’s Confused Approach to Afghanistan

Richard Holbrooke's comments on reconciliation with the Taliban in Afghanistan, made during the recent Munich Security Conference, echoed earlier remarks by U.N. officials and American military commanders in Kabul that suggest that diplomacy might be coming alive on the Afghan front. This could be true despite, or in coordination with, a new NATO offensive in southern Afghanistan. For it to succeed, however, it has three enormous obstacles to overcome.

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Our Wars Are Killing us

The tea-party crews don’t rail against Pentagon giveaways, nor do Massachusetts voters grumble about them. Unfettered Pentagon budgets pass in the tick-tock of a Washington clock and no one seems fazed when the Wall Street Journal reveals that military aides accompanying globe-hopping parties of congressional representatives regularly spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on snacks, drinks, and other “amenities” for them, even while, like some K Street lobbying outfit, promoting their newest weaponry. Think of it, in financial terms, as Pentagon peanuts shelled out for actual peanuts, and no one gives a damn.

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Does Flying a Plane Into a Building Make You a Hero or a Terrorist?

Here's a question I bet you thought didn't need to be asked in a post-9/11 America: Does flying a plane into a building make you a terrorist or a hero?

Let's break this down.

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Contractors in Afghanistan, A Recipe for Failure

Similar to Iraq, the use of contractors by the U.S. government in Afghanistan stands at unprecedented levels. In fact, contractors in Afghanistan outnumber American troops –and will continue to do so despite Obama’s troop increase in 2010. more »

Imperial Blues

..."[O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

—President Obama

But Afghanistan comes first?

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Afghanistan: Financial Folly

President Obama’s expected announcement Tuesday night of a 34,000 troop surge in Afghanistan is indeed a worrisome as well as costly decision. more »

Commander-in-What, Again?

If you're worried that this country is drifting inexorably, even under Barack Obama, from a republic to a national-security state with a President/Decider, you may have worried about his comment in Oslo that "I am the commander in chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars." He is, indeed, but how did the nation get into those two wars — and an endless war on terror — when, Constitutionally, the nation is the President's commander-in-chief?

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Afghanistan Policy Not Working, There and Here

As today marks the eighth anniversary of the tragic September 11th attacks, it is also a reminder of the calamitous road of foreign policy that the Bush administration took us down shortly after. The Iraq War was of course an outright disaster, but Obama’s recent troop escalation into Afghanistan should worry progressives equally. more »

War and Peace

President Obama accepted the Nobel for peacemaking by delivering an eloquent, often grim treatise on the nature and necessity of warfare. Anyone who doubts his commitment to the war in Afghanistan, which he has escalated with an "extended surge" of 30,000 new U.S. troops, should read a transcript of the Oslo speech. Hawks who suspected — and doves who hoped — that Obama was a secret pacifist will see that although he did not set out to be a "war president," he has accepted his fate.

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A Fearful Price

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

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