Word: afghan
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Despite the uncertain road ahead, Obama is correct in asserting that, if Afghan security forces cannot begin to keep the Taliban at bay and al-Qaeda out of its borders on their own, an American military drawdown would be disastrous for America’s own security...
...some Americans to swallow. Already, hawks have slammed Obama for negotiating with Iran's mullahs while the blood of Iranian protesters is still fresh on their hands. And "reconciliation" with the Taliban, while necessary for the U.S.'s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, might be a horror show for Afghan women. It is worth noting that while many historians applaud Nixon's retreat from global containment, his decision to cozy up to dictators in Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere elicited revulsion from Americans on both left and right...
...repaired. His foreign policy in the greater Middle East amounts to an elaborate effort to peel back eight years of onion in hopes of finding the war on terrorism's lost inner core: the struggle against al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda alone. That's the subtext underlying his new Afghan strategy. He's raising troop levels, but less to vanquish the Taliban than to gain the leverage to effectively negotiate with them - in hopes of isolating alQaeda from its Afghan allies. He's boosting America's means but narrowing its ends. The same logic underlies his outreach to Iran...
...Afghanistan, Obama has sharply narrowed the U.S.'s goals. While still aiming to "defeat al-Qaeda," we're now trying only to "reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government." In other words, we'll tolerate Taliban control over large chunks of the Afghan countryside...
...Obama Administration is making exactly that distinction. "There is clearly a difference between" the Taliban and al-Qaeda, press secretary Robert Gibbs said recently. A host of Obama officials have insisted that the Taliban is a tribal and national movement and that while it may want to terrorize Afghan secularists and women, it is not particularly interested in terrorizing the American homeland...