Afghanistan is a gatherer of metaphors: "crossroads of Asia," "graveyard of empires," and the "Great Game," to name a few. It might be more accurate, however, to think of it as a Rubik's Cube, that frustrating puzzle of intersecting...

There is a new acronym in the lexicon of Obama administration national security moguls. "AfPak" stands for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The term denotes the administration's desire to take a unified approach to policy and strategy for these two countries....