Word: afghan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heart of military culture. If a President wants to send young people off to war, he must buy into that culture. It is not enough to construct the best argument - or the best policy - in a bad situation, as this President has done. (See pictures of life in the Afghan National Army...
...said he rejected that argument "because if you follow the logic ... then you would never leave. Right? Essentially you'd be signing on to have Afghanistan as a protectorate of the United States indefinitely." And the time limit, he suggested, might give him leverage over Hamid Karzai, the recalcitrant Afghan leader: "In my discussion with President Karzai yesterday," Obama said, "I was able to articulate to him exactly what he's going to need to do over the next two years to be prepared for this transition." (See a video about the soldier's experience: Iraq vs. Afghanistan...
...lost ground to the Taliban this year, by Obama's own admission. And the President could only come up with speed of deployment and a clearer sense of mission as strategic game changers. Later, when I asked him about what changes he had ordered for the training of the Afghan army and police - a frustrating proposition, so far - he deferred to his commanders in the field but said the new order of battle would include "a partnering situation, a one-to-one match between Afghan troops and U.S. troops" in combat, which "produces much stronger results...
...Pakistani military officials say limited resources force them to prioritize going after the Pakistani Taliban, while leaving militant groups focused on Afghanistan largely unmolested. But observers say that, in fact, the Pakistani military views the Afghan Taliban leadership and groups such as Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami and the Haqqanis as a means of securing its interests in Afghanistan. "It's leverage in the sense that it allows them to have a government in Kabul that is neutral, if not pro-Pakistan," says Nawaz. "That's why they've always hedged on the Afghan Taliban...
...dozen senior al-Qaeda operatives and even Baitullah Mehsud, the founding leader of the Pakistani Taliban. But the perceived violation of sovereignty has also enraged the Pakistani public. If the U.S. decides to expand the target range of such strikes beyond the tribal areas to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Quetta, that shift would be intolerable for the Pakistani leadership...