Word: afghanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is also a growing sense that the President's inexperience is beginning to show - not in his overall policy, which represents the views of a broad, moderate national-security consensus ranging from Brent Scowcroft to John Kerry, but in his execution of the details. The Afghan strategy review has been too public and taken too long; the Middle East peace hunt has become a wild goose chase. A letter to Iran's Supreme Leader is a productive gesture only if it gets a response; if it doesn't, it seems weak and supplicatory. A call for the Israelis...
...month saga of the fraud-tainted Afghan presidential election was finally resolved as Karzai was declared the winner after his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from a runoff race that he said would not be fair. Abdullah continues to insist that Karzai's re-election was illegitimate, underscoring the fact that the election's outcome leaves Obama saddled with an Afghan partner who is even more discredited than he was at its onset. News from the battlefront is equally grim. October saw the highest monthly death toll of U.S. soldiers since the war began, and on Nov. 3 five British soldiers...
Without a viable opposition opponent like Abdullah, an election would have been pointless. So while Abdullah’s decision may have been a politically expedient tactic, especially considering his probable loss, it is neither a service to the Afghan people nor to the stability of its government...
...Administration compounded its problems by asking McChrystal for his assessment after only 60 days in Afghanistan, well before all the 21,000 U.S. troops ordered there by Obama had arrived and had a chance to make a difference. The "Can this marriage be saved?" relationship between Washington and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also prolonged the U.S. review. (Read "Who's Running the Afghanistan War, Anyway...
...either an ally or a foe of any commander. "You may have the watches," the Taliban like to say, "but we have the time." No one knows that as well as McChrystal. "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," he wrote on Aug. 30. If, as some at the Pentagon expect, Obama won't decide on how many reinforcements to send until near the month's end, that represents three months of McChrystal's critical...