Afghanistan

Negotiating with terrorists won’t bring peace to Afghanistan.

The Taliban, which knows the U.S. is desperate to leave, just attacked a meeting between Afghan officials and the top U.S. military commander.

A year after President Trump announced his Afghan policy, the Taliban are closer to victory than we are.

Enough with the Randstanding already.

Tuesday night is Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the annual event where the president speaks to a joint session of Congress with lofty rhetoric about where the country is and where he wants it to go. The Constitution doesn’t require the chief executive to deliver the State of the…

When President Trump and Congress come back to Washington in January, will infrastructure be first on the to-do list? My new piece for the magazine looks at the White House’s plans for building new roads and bridges. Here’s an excerpt:

On the penultimate day of the Obama administration, less than 24 hours before the president would vacate the White House, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a press release meant to put to rest what had been a pesky issue for his office. “Closing the Book on Bin Laden:…

We don't use the word “lie” with abandon in these pages. It’s used far too often in public life, to the point at which nearly every statement someone disagrees with is characterized as a “lie.” The L-word is tightly regulated in parliamentary bodies—in Congress, for example—and rightly so. Once you…

The American Humane Association (AHA) awarded its K-9 Medal of Courage to five dogs this past week for their exceptional service in the U.S. military. After multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent searching for explosives and chewing up insurgents who regard them as unclean (dogs: 1,…

The Scrapbook was dismayed but not surprised when, in the waning days of his presidency, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. We have been equally dismayed and unsurprised at the desire of left-leaning institutions to treat Manning as some sort of folk hero. It is cold comfort…

When he won election, Donald Trump—along with his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his all-purpose counselor Stephen Bannon, and, perhaps, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was fond of the idea that Russia and Iran, comrades-in-arms in Syria, weren’t natural partners. Flynn was particularly…

In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush worried less about rallying the nation to action against the terrorist threat than about warning an enraged public that the campaign would not end anytime soon. The president referred to the emerging “global war on terror” as a…

When he won election, Donald Trump—along with his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his all-purpose counselor Stephen Bannon, and, perhaps, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was fond of the idea that Russia and Iran, comrades-in-arms in Syria, weren’t natural partners. Flynn was particularly…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, deputy managing editor Kelly Jane Torrance discusses how Iran is also helping the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan.

Seven months after taking office, President Donald Trump finally announced how his administration plans to fight the longest-running war in American history. “My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my instincts,” Trump told the nation in a prime-time address…

President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.

This week on the Kristol Clear podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol talks with host Eric Felten about the president's topsy-turvy week. Does Donald Trump have a strategy, or is he just lurching from thing to thing?

Seven months after taking office, President Donald Trump finally announced how his administration plans to fight the longest-running war in American history. “My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my instincts,” Trump told the nation in a prime-time address…

President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that the administration’s new Afghanistan strategy is designed to send a message to Taliban insurgents: You have no path to victory here.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about President Trump's Afghanistan policy speech.

In a primetime speech Monday night, President Trump offered his plan for the war in Afghanistan. The president did not articulate his new war strategy in full, and it is doubtful that the modest troop increase will lead to “victory,” which the president said is his goal.

Donald Trump provided some much-needed clarity about his plan for Afghanistan in a speech to the nation on Monday. The United States won’t be withdrawing anytime soon. We won’t announce in advance our departure dates. We’re not doing nation-building. Afghan security forces will be the offensive…

Republican lawmakers praised President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he would maintain U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and base further action on conditions on the ground rather than a predetermined timeline.

President Donald Trump opened his statement of policy on Afghanistan and South Asia by offering a rare allowance that he had changed his mind about an issue—namely, about withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my…

President Donald Trump announced a troop increase for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, promising Monday night that “our troops will fight to win” our nation’s longest-running conflict while acknowledging his own change of heart on U.S. foreign policy.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, deputy managing editor Kelly Jane Torrance talks with host Eric Felten about what to expect from tonight's presidential address on the war in Afghanistan.

In a primetime speech Monday evening, President Trump is expected to announce the deployment of several thousand more American troops to Afghanistan. We doubt this will be enough to win the war, but it is better than the alternatives offered to the president. A complete withdrawal would have been…

Throughout the entire length of the administration’s internal debate about Afghanistan, President Donald Trump was torn between two competing impulses: his desire to end the 16-year-long war, and his need to win. When it came time to make a decision on Afghanistan, which he will announce in a…

President Donald Trump is meeting with his national security team at Camp David today to consider a thorny question: What course should the United States pursue for the conflict in Afghanistan, its longest-running war?

Vice President Mike Pence is returning from his Latin American trip to Washington on Thursday, a day earlier than planned. Could a decision on the war in Afghanistan be in the offing?

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

A presidential decision on a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, long delayed and the subject of bitter dispute inside the White House, may finally be at hand. Key members of the Trump administration’s war council met with the president on August 10 at the summer White House in Bedminster,…

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

A presidential decision on a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, long delayed and the subject of bitter dispute inside the White House, may finally be at hand. Key members of the Trump administration’s war council met with the president on August 10 at the summer White House in Bedminster,…

President Trump has another Russian problem. Like other American presidents since 2001, Trump has been following in the footsteps of the failed Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989).

The war on White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster continues, with allies of Steve Bannon using sympathetic media outlets to push a narrative that McMaster is thwarting the will of President Donald Trump. Senior White House aides now wonder among each other whether Bannon himself and/or…

President Trump has authorized his secretary of defense, James Mattis, to determine American troop levels in Afghanistan. Mattis confirmed this Wednesday morning in a hearing before the Senate Appropriations committee. "At noon yesterday, President Trump delegated to me the authority to manage…

President Trump is thinking about dispatching more troops to Afghanistan. Given his past insistence on withdrawing American forces, one might have expected this switcheroo to raise eyebrows in Washington and the media. Yet it hasn't.

On Monday secretary of Defense James Mattis appeared to break with the Obama administration's position of the preceding eight years that there is "no military solution" to the conflict in Afghanistan. At an appearance with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Defense and Foreign ministers of…

A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near the German Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, at 8:22 local time this morning. The death toll has steadily risen in the hours since. The Afghan government says that at least 90 people were killed and 400 more wounded, according to the…

President Trump will be making a decision soon—though likely not this week, I'm told—about whether to send at least 3,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. That's the main element of a proposal presented to Trump by the National Security Council's principals committee (the whole of the president's…

In two weeks Donald Trump will serve his one-hundredth day as President of the United States of America. He approaches that milestone with an approval rating of 40 percent, the lowest of any modern-day president at this stage of his tenure. The man who made his reputation, and part of any fortune…

President Donald Trump has named U.S. Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster to be his new national security advisor. The Monday afternoon announcement comes nearly one week after Mike Flynn was asked to resign from the job following revelations he had misled the White House on his conversations…

Is the United States "bogged down" in military conflict? That's the phrase President Donald Trump used in a series of tweets Thursday morning responding to a Republican senator who was critical of a recent U.S. military raid in Yemen.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said he is a few thousand NATO troops short to meet his mission to train, advise and assist local forces.

Character is often revealed in seemingly small gestures. Amid all the speculation about how retired Marine general James Mattis will manage to lead the behemoth called the Department of Defense, one personal experience I had a decade ago as a young staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense…

Los Angeles

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.

The Associated Press reports that things in Afghanistan are not going well:

Secretary of State John Kerry recently spoke at the Oxford Union and addressed a range of issues from climate change to extremism to political corruption. During the question and answer after Kerry's remarks, one audience member asked the secretary of state to name the "proudest achievements of the…

Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, writing in the New York Times:

Fred Kagan, writing for the New York Daily News:

The recent outrage over reports of systematic child rape by Afghan security forces may be justified, but sadly there is little novelty to the reports themselves. Even the Sunday New York Times article that brought the matter into public view cited a list of earlier dispatches addressing it:…

You have to give Barack Obama credit for consistency.

Until mid-September, the half-million migrants who had been marching northwards into central Europe seemed like the Old World equivalent of Hurricane Sandy survivors. Families uprooted by the war in Syria were seeking safety, according to this view of things. It was sad to see little girls sleeping…

The New York Times has a truly horrifying story about how the U.S. military has turned a blind eye to child sex abuse in Afghanistan as a matter of official policy: 

For the first time since an American-led coalition toppled the Taliban in 2001, Afghan officials are engaged in formal talks with Taliban leadership. Afghan president Ashraf Ghani confirmed that members of the Afghan High Peace Council sat down for face-to-face negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan…

That is the guidance from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in what will likely be his last message to the troops and commanders serving under him. 

The Taliban is conducting an offensive in Afghanistan that included the recent attack on the country's

Susan Rice, speaking at the German embassy, on Tuesday night:

Most American wouldn't know a donkey drop from a paddle scoop, but nevertheless, half a million taxpayer dollars will be going to support a cricket league in Afghanistan. The current grant opportunity looks to  build on what was considered a successful 2014 program. The plan is for at least five…

Jim Michaels of USA Today reports that:

The ouster of ISIS fighters from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, has been widely celebrated. Although this victory was brought about in no small part by American airpower, it was a triumph for Iran more than for the United States. The vast majority of fighters on the front lines belonged to…

The United States Army has charged Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and "misbehavior before the enemy." Bergdahl allegedly abandoned his post in Afghanistan and was held captive by Taliban-aligned forces for nearly five years before the Obama administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban…

Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times report:

This week, prosecutors in New York introduced eight documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan as evidence in the trial of a terrorism suspect. The U.S. government accuses Abid Naseer of taking part in al Qaeda’s scheme to attack targets in Europe and New York City. And…

While answering questions from service members in Kandahar, Afghanistan, newly sworn-in Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter revealed that he is "open-minded" about transgendered individuals serving in the military, adding, "I don't think anything but their suitability for service should preclude…

Missy Ryan of the Washington Post reports that:

Lynne O'Donnell of the AP is reporting that:

Reuters is reporting that:

President Obama released this statement, marking the end of America's "combat mission" in Afghanistan:

Speaking with troops in Hawaii on Christmas, President Obama repeated his pledge to end the "combat mission" in Afghanistan "next week."

The New York Times reports from Afghanistan on the renewed threat of the Taliban in previously secured parts of the country. Rod Norland writes from Helmand Province:

Bill Roggio reports at Long War Journal that:

For the U.S. and NATO, Afghanistan is about withdrawing troops and ending their role in the fighting.  For the Taliban, it is a different story with Reuters reporting that:

President Obama will mark the end of America’s combat mission in Afghanistan by welcoming home service members in New Jersey on Monday. Denis Slattery of the Daily News writes that, in his remarks, the president will note that:

Ben Watson of DefenseOne reports that:

Kabul

Vice President Joe Biden misstated the number of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by 47,000 at a Veterans Day event today at Arlington National Cemetary. Here's audio of his remarks:

The American presence is ending but the war in Afghanistan continues with the Afghan government’s forces taking casualties that “cannot be sustained, according to a top officer within the international coalition.”

The scheduled date for an American pullout in Afghanistan grows closer and so do worries that it may be premature; that the troops we have trained and will be leaving behind to carry on may not be ready, quite yet, to handle the job. As Gopal Ratnam of the FP reports:

The war in Afghanistan is nearing an end – the American part, at any rate – but there is no letup in the fighting and dying of Afghan soldiers. Time, quoting from a Wall Street Journal story, reports that:

Lost in the excitement over ISIS, the battle for Khobani, and the possible threat to Baghdad is news of the nation’s longest war, the one in Afghanistan, which the President once called a “war of necessity.”

With the announcement in Kabul of a power-sharing government between the two presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan election comes closer to a resolution. What is missing, however, is an actual result. The “national unity government” was one part of a deal brokered…

President Obama addressed troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on Wednesday regarding his strategy to "degrade and destroy ISIL," but also reminded the audience about his plans for the U.S. military in Afghanistan [emphasis added]:

Tim Craig of the Washington Post reports that:

The AP reports that

Barack Obama’s foreign policy is in shambles. He had a dream, expressed in Cairo, of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” of “a world where extremists no longer threaten our people.” So he got out of Iraq and failed to follow through in Libya, seeing no need for…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on why you shouldn't bet on President Obama using any muscle on his foreign policy.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the war goes on and does not necessarily go well.  As the AP reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the President's speech on his non-existent ISIS policy in the Middle East.

The United States may be withdrawing its combat troops from Afghanistan but that does not mean the war is ending.  To the contrary as Hamid Shalizi of Reuters reports:

As the date for the Obama administration's scheduled end of the war in Afghanistan draws near, the U.S. government is arranging security for U.S. personnel who will remain in the country. One agency, the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL),…

Moments of clarity often come when you least expect them. In a speech to contributors last week in Seattle, Barack Obama made the case that his presidency has made America better. In most respects, it was precisely the kind of political pablum you’d expect from a president who seems more concerned…

Joe Lieberman and Vance Serchuk, writing in the Washington Post:

While some top Obama administration officials are downplaying threats posed the five senior Taliban officials released from Guantanamo in the prisoner exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, not long ago the administration went to court to prevent one of those men from going free. In a decision on May 31,…

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough got in a heated debate with colleague Chuck Todd Thursday morning over whether the father of recently released POW Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl should be subject to criticism over his actions. Scarborough criticized the Obama administration for including Bob Bergdahl in a Rose…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was recently traded for five Taliban prisoners from terrorist captivity.

The Obama administration is facing mounting questions about the controversial prisoner swap that freed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from jihadists in Pakistan in exchange for the transfer and ultimate release of five senior Taliban commanders previously held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

Six American soldiers died in their search for Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Time magazine's Mark Thompson provides the names, photos, and stories of the men who did not return from their mission: staff sergeant…

President Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, said on ABC that Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that "Sergeant Bergdahl wasn't simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield." 

Former Obama administration national security official Michael Leiter called the release of five top Taliban leaders from Gitmo a "big win" for the Taliban:

Several men who served with Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan say Bergdahl deserted in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. Bergdahl's release this weekend as part of an exchange with the U.S. for five top Taliban operatives who were being held in Guantanamo Bay has prompted those…

Two top ranking Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees released a joint statement on the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for the release of five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay. From Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services committee, and James…

Elliott Abrams says that "Obama just accidentally explained why his foreign policy hasn’t worked." He writes in the Washington Post:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Obama's Afghanistan speech and the European elections.

Today in the Rose Garden, President Obama announced that he’s going to keep a little under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan through 2014, half that number by the end of 2015, and will have all those forces out by the end of 2016. Putting aside the fact that this is the lowest number military advisors…

Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

In response to a report that the Obama administration may cut U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to below 10,000, senators Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, and John McCain have released a statement. Read it below:

Media reports suggest that President Obama is looking to declare victory and withdraw from Afghanistan, as he did from Iraq. The military commander in Afghanistan, General Joe Dunford, has said that he needs 10,000 US troops to accomplish the missions the president has said he wants to accomplish…

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, commanders face the question of what to do with all that equipment.  It costs too much to bring it home where it is not needed so, as Richard Sisk at DoD Buzz reports:

With a presidential election less than two months away, all eyes in Afghanistan should be on the coming vote. It could be Afghanistan’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power, and 11 candidates are running. Instead, Kabul is buzzing over the actions of term-limited outgoing president Hamid Karzai,…

The war in Afghanistan is winding down and al Qaeda is on the run. Perhaps. But the war goes on.

President Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union Address on Tuesday that was important less for what he said than for what it says about him.

David S. Cloud of the Los Angeles Times reports:

In the summer of 2008, Barack Obama, senator and presidential candidate, toured the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama had endeared himself to the antiwar left by denouncing President Bush’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein and repeatedly claiming that the war in Iraq had diverted resources…

This is the year when the U.S. Military withdraws from Afghanistan.  Entirely, if status-of-forces negotiations go badly.  Not quite that severely if things can be worked out with the regime of President Karzai.  Either way, the bases from which U.S. troops once operated are being disassembled,…

Heath Druzin of Stars & Stripes reports that a member of the ISAF  (International Security Assistance Force):

A recent intelligence report on the future of Afghanistan, as outside support (from the U.S., largely and other NATA nations at the margins) is slowly withdrawn, is not encouraging.  As reported in a Washington Post article by Ernesto Londoño, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller, the report:

It is taken as a given that the Obama administration has lost interest in Afghanistan and cannot get out of that country soon enough. And that the Karzai regime is doing its part by dragging its feet on a status-of-forces agreement. But to have things come to this:

Back when he had not been in the White House very long, President Obama called the fight in Afghanistan as “a war of necessity.”  That, to distinguish it from his predecessor’s “war of choice,” in Iraq and to justify the decisions he would make and the actions he would take to make sure that the…

Today in Afghanistan, as Gayle Tzemach Lemmon at Defense One reports:

In a November 8 letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned that a contractor that had been identified with the insurgency had been granted access to a Coalition facility last November, and that the threat of further access…

A recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recalls the 1980s stories of $640 toilet seats and $500 hammers.  In a report primarily addressing the construction of a hospital in Afghanistan that is two years behind schedule, SIGAR also found…

Secretary of State Kerry and Afghanistan's Karzai say they are this close to an agreement that will keep some U.S. forces in the country after the big, 2014 pullout. As Indira A.R. Lakshmanan & Eltaf Asefy Najafizada of Bloomberg report:

The fighting goes on in Afghanistan.  As does the dying.  United States troops have been in the country for 13 years and more than 2,000 of them have been killed there, four of them last Sunday.  As Adam Ashton of the Tacoma News Tribune reports, the dead included: 

The U.S. State Department announced today that it has designated a terrorist who has fought for the Taliban since the late 1990s and continues to support al Qaeda. Bahawal Khan is the leader of the Commander Nazir Group (CNG), which is “behind numerous attacks against international forces in…

In the midst of a fair amount of depressing news from Afghanistan (e.g., al-Qaeda backers get U.S. military contracts, U.S. cites “due process rights” as reason not to cancel), here's a report from the front that offers some grounds for hope.

Ten days ago, as John McCormack noted, in the midst of a speech about the economy President Obama mentioned some other issues:

Anne Jolis, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Are we watching the demise of al Qaeda or its rebirth?

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a war veteran, gave an optimistic speech about Afghanistan yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives: 

We, and our allies, are getting out, but it will, not evidently, be easy.  The enemy has something to say about that and as Heath Druzin of Stars and Stripes reports: 

It is not enough for the Taliban that the U.S. is getting out of Afghanistan and abandoning vast amounts of equipment as it goes.  The departure must be made deadly and humiliating.  So as Rahim Faiez of AP reports:

The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it was moving forward with its attempt to negotiate with the Taliban, which has opened a long-awaited political office in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban released a statement trumpeting its new political front. Within hours, Afghan president Hamid Karzai…

On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden moderated a conference call with two unnamed senior administration officials to provide background for reporters on today's transition in Afghanistan handing over the lead on security in the country to the Afghan National Security…

In a speech at the National Defense University on May 23, Barack Obama declared an end to the global war on terror. The threat posed by al Qaeda, its affiliates, and those it inspires can be managed, he said. “As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely…

Undisclosed location in Afghanistan

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?They were, those people, a kind of solution. How many times in the last century have these concluding lines of C. P. Cavafy’s famous 1898 poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” been quoted? How many modern intellectuals have pondered the…

White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked at today's press briefing, in the context of the Boston bombings, whether U.S. bombings in Afghanistan last month that killed civilians were "terrorism." Carney gave a long answer, but never says "no."

State Department employee Anne Smedinghoff was killed in Afghanistan last weekend. At first reports suggested the young diplomat was part of an armed convoy that was bombed, but new reports say that she was actually on foot. And that the group she was with got lost on its way to deliver books.

Who are the Hazaras and why are they marked for annihilation in Pakistan? Two frightful terror bombings, taking 185 lives and wounding hundreds more, were reported from the city of Quetta, near the border with Afghanistan, and the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, in the first two months…

As conservatives wrestle with the question of their movement’s commitment to national security, one young war veteran made the case for a strong national defense and Ronald Reagan’s entreaty that America pursue “peace through strength.” Speaking Thursday morning at CPAC, freshman congressman Tom…

President Obama’s decision to withdraw another 34,000 troops from Afghanistan over the course of the next year is unwise. It greatly increases the risk of mission failure in that important conflict, jeopardizing gains already made in the Taliban heartland in the south and compromising the ability…

The State Department this week announced more than $18 million in awards to provincial governments in Afghanistan in the fight against the illicit opium industry in that country.  The award comes after news this past November that countrywide there was an "alarming" 18 percent increase in 2012 in…

Two contributing editors to THE WEEKLY STANDARD analyzed Kentucky senator Ron Paul's foreign policy address earlier this week. First, Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post:

At the Munich Security Conference today, Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama "doesn't want to go" to Iraq and Afghanistan. The audience laughed. 

In Germany for the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Joe Biden sounded relieved. "It’s a delight to be back in Germany," he said. "I -- the President, since I’m the Vice President, sends me mostly to Afghanistan and Iraq.  It’s a pleasure to be back in Germany.  And it’s a pleasure to see…

A young Marine infantry officer, a combat veteran of Afghanistan writes:

President Barack Obama gave a shout out last night at an Inaugural ball to our "comrades in arms" in Afghanistan. After hearing from troops in Afghanistan through a video a satellite, the commander in chief said, "I can tell you that you've got a room full of patriots here.  And although I've got…

In remarks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the White House this afternoon, President Barack Obama said the U.S. has fallen "short of the ideal" in Afghanistan:

When Senator Barack Obama was running for president back in 2008, he accused the Bush administration, his opponent Senator John McCain, and their supporters of taking their eyes off the ball by fighting a war in Iraq and ignoring the “necessary war”—the war in Afghanistan. Well, four short years…

ABC’s White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, is known in some circles as a contentious or even difficult reporter. In others, he’s hailed as perhaps the most objective journalist covering the president, more willing than most of his colleagues to push Obama and his aides with questions that are…

Marine Lance Corporal Christian Brown is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who lost both of his legs and a part of a Marine Lance Corporal Christian Brown is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who lost both of his legs and a part of a finger after stepping on an explosive device in the…

The Spirit of America announces the launch of the 68,000 Remember campaign:

The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and…

New Hampshire Republican senator Kelly Ayotte asks General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., why Afghanistan matters. Watch Dunford's response here:

President Obama heads abroad Saturday for a four-day visit to Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. One assumes the president was going to add on to this trip a visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which would certainly be the fitting and proper thing to do. Wouldn't it also be fitting and proper, and an…

With Barack Obama’s reelection, withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014—except for trainers of an Afghan national army—remains high on his agenda. The leading rival Islamic powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are meanwhile competing for future influence over the…

Max Boot writes:

Mitt Romney’s aim was to present himself with the demeanor and grasp of foreign and national security issues of a president of the United States. He succeeded. President Obama sought to make Romney appear unqualified to be president and commander in chief. He failed. And that was the story of the…

It's been acknowledged that Vice President Biden's criticism of Paul Ryan in Thursday night's debate for the Wisconsin congressman's support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rings hollow, since Biden, when he was a senator from Delaware, also voted for the wars. Here's what Biden said Thursday:

In the Thursday night vice presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden criticized Congressman Paul Ryan for voting to "put two wars"--those in Afghanistan and Iraq--"on a credit card." But as the Washington Free Beacon points out, Biden's suggestion that he didn't vote for those wars is simply…

Things are getting ugly in Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents somehow managed to penetrate the coalition’s main base in Helmand Province, Camp Bastion, and blow up six Marine Corps Harrier jump jets and damage two others, making this the greatest single-day loss of American warplanes since the Vietnam…

Yesterday, speaking at a campaign event in Florida, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I ask every day, what's the exact number of the fallen angels -- not generally, not an estimate, the exact number -- because for every one of those women or men, it has transformed a family, a family we owe. And…

President Obama's address at the United Nations was at times eloquently aspirational, and for the most part conventionally unobjectionable. But there was one sentence that gave away the fundamental lack of seriousness of the Obama worldview: "We have begun a transition in Afghanistan, and America…

In the Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn writes about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's disappointing silence on Afghanistan:

We’re at war. More than 68,000 troops are deployed to Afghanistan. More than 2,000 Americans have died in over 10 years of fighting. The war has quiet bipartisan support. Too quiet.

Fred Hiatt, writing for the Washington Post, notes that the war has been "almost forgotten":

The United States has some 68,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Over two thousand Americans have died in the more than ten years of that war, a war Mitt Romney has supported. Yet in his speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander in chief, Mitt Romney said not a word about the war in…

Spirit of America is a wonderful charity that helps provide equipment—or whatever else is needed—to help American soldiers complete their mission in Afghanistan. We last wrote about their successful campaign to raise money to get cleft palate surgery for two Afghan children, and WEEKLY STANDARD…

In an interview with Laura Ingraham, White House reporter Jake Tapper said that the media is failing the country. 

The presidential candidates should listen to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta when he reminds us that there is still a war being fought in Afghanistan. And we should remember what Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, had to say about Afghanistan in 2010, too.

One of the minor disgraces of this year's campaign is that the presidential candidates act as if the war in Afghanistan doesn't exist. We have 84,000 troops fighting over there in very difficult circumstances; they've had a tough few weeks, with 41 killed in the last month, but the candidates…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously said that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. Obama’s notion of diplomacy with the mullahs was widely ridiculed at the time, including by his then rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. More than…

Max Boot reviews Little America by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Wall Street Journal:

At the Washington Free Beacon, Bill Gertz has a piece about Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Rodriguez warns that the CIA is “out of the business” of interrogating senior al Qaeda terrorists and this will eventually lead to a hole in America’s counterterrorism…

During a trip to Afghanistan last week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta chastised Pakistan for its ongoing support for the Haqqani Network – an insurgency organization that is closely tied to al Qaeda. The Haqqani Network has long been a proxy of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate…

Max Boot wrote last year about a visit by a small group of us to Afghanistan in October. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was the day we spent with the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 10th Mountain Division:

A striking chart showing that, over the last decade, 65 percent of federal expenditures went to pay for entitlement commitments, not wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense, or national security: 

Spirit of America is a fantastic charity that raises money to help provide whatever American troops overseas need to complete their mission. Recently, they raised the funds necessary to pay for the cleft palate surgeries of two Afghan children at the request of U.S. special operations soldiers.

We have been anxiously awaiting the release of the documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. According to informed U.S. intelligence officials, thousands of documents were captured in bin Laden’s lair, as was video and other types of media.

The boss offers his thoughts on President Obama's Afghanistan speech in a piece for the Washington Post:

Here are the prepared remarks of President Obama's Afghanistan speech, as prepared for delivery: 

A NewsCore report on the New York Post's website reported earlier that President Obama had arrived in Afghanistan to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Bill Kristol, with Kirsten Powers and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

White House spokesman Jay Carney reacted to the publication of photos in the Los Angeles Times of U.S. soldiers posing with corpses in Afghanistan by  saying the Obama administration is "disappointed.. [with] the decision to publish two years after the incident," according to a pool report.

On Sunday, insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks on Western embassies in Kabul, as well as other targets throughout Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s interior minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, said that at least two detained terrorists – one captured in Kabul, the other in Jalalabad – have…

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the State Department’s man in Kabul, is clearly concerned about a premature drawdown of American and Western forces from Afghanistan.

The Obama administration’s attempt at peace talks with the Taliban has been fraught with problems. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on another: Qatar.

It’s been a bad few weeks in Afghanistan. The burning of several Korans by U.S. military personnel at the Bagram airbase on February 20 sparked protests and riots. More troubling were several incidents of “green on blue” attacks in which Afghan security personnel turned on their American advisers;…

Louisiana Poll: "Santorum 42, Romney 28, Gingrich 18, Paul 8."

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee today, General John Allen said the mission in Afghanistan remains on track, despite the infamous Quran burnings and last week’s civilian casualty incident. Allen, who will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday morning,…

The two leading GOP candidates were asked about Afghanistan on the Sunday talk shows yesterday. Both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum gave pretty good responses and refused to go wobbly on Afghanistan.

The Obama administration’s fantasyland attempt at talks with the Taliban took another significant blow on Thursday. In a statement released online, Mullah Omar’s organization announced that it “has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the…

Robert Kagan: "America has made the world freer, safer and wealthier."