Will You Love Every Future President?

October 7th marked the eighth anniversary of the Bush administration's invasion of Afghanistan and so of the... well, can we really call it a war?... that won't end, that American commanders there now predict could last for another decade or more. And yet, here's the...

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Apocalypse Then, Afghanistan Now

Here's the thing: This may be our next "Vietnam moment," but Afghanistan is no Vietnam: there are no major enemy powers like the Soviet Union and China lurking in the background; no organized enemy state with a powerful army like North Vietnam supporting the...

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Cold War’s Ghost Blocks Mideast Peace

And you thought "don't ask, don't tell" was a U.S. law on gays in the military that Barack Obama has promised to change. As it turns out, the same phrase plays quite a different role in the Middle East, where Obama seems to have no intention of changing it at all....

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Jumpin’ Jack Verdi, It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas

Back before email, a world traveler who wanted to keep in touch and couldn't just pop into the nearest Internet café, might drop you a series of postcards from one exotic locale after another. Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter for one of my...

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Will NATO’s 60th Anniversary Be Its Last?

  If you think the Afghan War is increasingly unpopular in the United States, try Europe. A recent German Marshall Fund poll offered these figures on the question of the "share of population who want to reduce or withdraw troops" from that country: Romania, 71...

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Us or Them in Afghanistan?

In Washington, calls are increasing, especially among anxious Democrats, for the president to commit to training ever more Afghan troops and police rather than sending in more American troops. Huge numbers for imagined future Afghan army and police forces are now...

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