Watch Rethink Afghanistan’s latest video at RethinkAfghanistan.com. I spent several days last week giving guest lectures about the Afghanistan War to freshmen and seniors at Anderson High School in Austin, Texas. It’s no secret that I loathe this brutal, futile war that’s not making us safer. So, when I talk to kids about it, I [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Afghanistan, Year Ten
Posted: October 8, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, afghanistan year 10, Brave New Foundation, COIN, counterinsurgency, McChrystal, mckiernon, Pentagon, Petraeus, Rethink Afghanistan, war in Afghanistan, white house, year 10
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Losing a Gamble in Afghanistan
Posted: September 15, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Joshua Foust, Judah Grunstein, Robert Green, Rommel, The 33 Strategies of War
Judah Grunstein writes [h/t Joshua Foust, emphasis mine]: To my mind, the problem that the debate reveals, and that no one has addressed so far, is the degree to which Afghanistan now represents policy paralysis: We cannot achieve our goals with our current approach, but we can neither afford the costs that a fully resourced [...]
Who’s Really “Relying on Assumptions and Beliefs to Shape Reality” in Afghanistan War Debate?
Posted: September 14, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan Study Group, Andrew Exum, COIN, counterinsurgency, Joshua Foust, Matthew Hoh
The Afghanistan Study Group report is out, and the fight is on. A number of critiques have been leveled at the report, one of the most influential being Joshua Foust’s over at Registan.net, chunks of which are percolating upward into larger outlets. Foust is a smart guy with whom I regularly debate, but there’s a [...]
Security in Afghanistan Crumbles as Counterinsurgency Fails
Posted: September 12, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghan National Army, Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, anti-war, Army, Brave New Foundation, COIN, corruption, counterinsurgency, failure, Hamid Karzai, Kabul Bank, Kabulbank, military, Obama, Pashtuns, peace, Rethink Afghanistan, strategy review, war in Afghanistan, white house
As President Obama’s strategy review for Afghanistan commences, let’s hope he’s balancing the information coming to him from his happy-talking generals with some independent news reading of his own. While General David Petraeus serenades the major news media in the United States with the siren song of “progress,” security in Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating, and [...]
Media Failing to Ask Tough Questions on Afghanistan War…Again
Posted: August 15, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: act.ly, Afghanistan, Air Force, Army, Brave New Foundation, David Gregory, insurgents, journalism, Katie Couric, marines, media, Meet the Press, military, Navy, Obama, petition, Petraeus, propaganda, Rethink Afghanistan, Robert Greenwald, spin, Taliban, troops, violence
Sign our act.ly petition to tell the next journalists on Petraeus’ media tour to ask tough questions and expose his effort to extend the Afghanistan War. General Petraeus is on a media tour to sell the idea that the U.S. military is “making progress” in Afghanistan, a well-worn message aimed at convincing elites to extend [...]
A Response to Rafia Zakaria’s Response to My Response to TIME Magazine
Posted: August 5, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, Left, Ms. Magazine, political equality, Rafia Zakaria, Rethink Afghanistan, women, women's rights
Over on Ms. Magazine‘s blog, Rafia Zakaria takes issue with my response to TIME Magazine’s pro-war, propaganda cover art. Zakaria and I agree on the critical importance of getting women into real decision-making positions in the reconciliation and reintegration processes. However, Zakaria falls right into the bad frame pushed by TIME’s cover art, and in [...]
Busting White House Spin on WikiLeaks: No Leak Required
Posted: July 29, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, fail, Obama, Rethink Afghanistan, Rose Garden, spin, white house, WikiLeaks
President Obama managed to show just how nimble and how disingenuous an administration can be in his response to the WikiLeaks fiasco: Obama, speaking from the Rose Garden after a meeting with congressional leaders to discuss funding for the war and other issues, deplored the leak, saying he was concerned the information from the battleground [...]
