The Obama administration’s decision in 2014 to trade five imprisoned Taliban fighters for Bowe Bergdahl, the deserter captured by Afghan insurgents, continues to spawn ill consequences.
The U.S. captured them after 9/11. Now they’re negotiating the U.S. exit.
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.
Jalaluddin Haqqani is dead. The terror network he created lives on.
A year after President Trump announced his Afghan policy, the Taliban are closer to victory than we are.
A misbegotten ‘ceasefire’ in Afghanistan.
Ned Price is not happy.
More than 16 years after the September 11, 2001, hijackings, America remains at war with jihadist groups around the globe. From South Asia through the heart of the Middle East and into West Africa, American forces are battling terrorist organizations that seek to control territory while threatening…
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:…
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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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?
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,…
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…
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…
The Associated Press reports that things in Afghanistan are not going well:
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…
Jim Michaels of USA Today reports that:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on how President Obama's Bergdahl and Iran Nuke deals keep just getting worse.
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…
Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier held captive in Afghanistan by Taliban-affiliated terrorists for nearly five years, will be charged with desertion. Bergdahl was returned to the United States last year in exchange for five Taliban commanders being held at the detention facility at Guantanamo…
CNN’s Barbara Starr reports that the U.S. military and intelligence community thinks that one member of the so-called Taliban Five “has attempted to return to militant activity from his current location in Qatar.” Officials aren’t saying which one of the five Taliban leaders, who were held at…
A White House spokesman refused to call the Taliban a "terrorist group," though he did admit ISIS is a terrorist organization:
Reuters is reporting that:
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's statement condemning the mass murder in a Pakistan school fails to blame the perpetrators, the Taliban. Here's Obama's full statement:
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.”
A new ad set to be released later today alleges that Mississippi senator Thad Cochran is in part responsible for the release of 5 Taliban commanders from Gitmo. The ad, titled "Cochran Supported the Release of 5 Terrorists," is being released by the Campaign for American Values, a super PAC run by…
Tom Cotton, speaking yesterday on the Bowe Bergdahl-Taliban swap:
President Barack Obama and his advisers have long sought to release the five most dangerous Taliban commanders held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo. Bipartisan opposition scuttled a possible deal in 2012 because of a consensus that the “Taliban Five,” as they’ve come to be known, posed too great a…
Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 31, Barack Obama strode confidently to a lectern in the White House Rose Garden flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who had gone missing from his platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2009.
Hillary Clinton says the Taliban 5, released more than a week ago by President Obama, are "not a threat to the United States."
A spokeswoman for the State Department referred to the Taliban operatives released from Guantanamo Bay as part of the deal to retrieve Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl as "gentlemen." In a Monday afternoon appearance with Andrew Mitchell on MSNBC, Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson at State and an alumna of…
There is a concerted push to sanitize the records of four of the five Taliban leaders transferred from Guantanamo to Qatar. But before delving into some of the specifics, let us recount the basic facts.
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,…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the political moment created by the Sgt. Bergdahl-Taliban 5 swap.
Time magazine is reporting that during an interview about the deal to trade Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo, when "[a]sked whether the Taliban would be inspired by the exchange to kidnap others, a commander laughed. 'Definitely.'" The response should not come as a…
Harry Reid on when the White House notified Congress of the Bergdahl-Taliban swap: "What difference does it make?"
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…
Not even the vice president supported the trade of the Taliban 5 for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. According to a new report, Vice President Joe Biden remained "neutral on the prisoner swap."
Congressman Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and U.S. Senate candidate, told Neil Cavuto of Fox News Wednesday afternoon that the decision to exchange five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay for the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has put the remaining American troops in Afghanistan in…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the Obama administration's changing explanations of the Bergdahl prisoner swap.
A U.S. Army soldier goes missing at night from a remote post on the edge of enemy territory. Depressed and anxious, he has expressed doubts about the U.S. mission and disillusionment with the war. He allegedly leaves behind a note recording these doubts. There are some reports that he consumes…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Thomas Joscelyn, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and frequent contributor on why the Bergdahl swap is a terrible deal for American Security.
From 2005 through 2008, legal scholars and Democratic politicians heaped relentless scorn upon the Bush administration for arguing that the president's constitutional commander-in-chief powers superseded statutes that might limit his discretion. And so it is quite interesting to watch the Obama…
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.
Senator Lindsey Graham has written a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin and ranking member Jim Inhofe asking for them to hold a hearing on the Obama administration's deal with the Taliban.
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…
Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, doesn’t make statements often. Omar is so reclusive that some have even speculated that he is either dead, or otherwise incapacitated in Pakistan. But on Sunday the Taliban released a statement attributed to Omar, who declared the release of the top five…
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…
The Obama administration announced today that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban for several years, has been freed from his captors. Reading the stories of his newfound freedom it is impossible not to feel joy for Bergdahl and his family. NBC News reports that Bergdahl held up a…
Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
The head of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in an American drone strike in northern Pakistan late last week. Mehsud can now be added to an impressive list of senior terrorists killed in the U.S. drone war. But how effective are such decapitation strikes?
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…
Shortly after opening its political office in Doha, Qatar earlier this week, the Taliban floated the idea of exchanging U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been in captivity since 2009, for the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. The offer, which has been a longstanding…
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…
The New York Post editorializes:
The Pakistani Taliban is now recruiting new hires on Facebook. "The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have created a Facebook page to recruit persons to write for a planned quarterly magazine and to work on tasks like video editing and translation," the Times of India reports.
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…
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.
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…
The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began on July 20 and will end on August 17 or August 19 (depending on lunar observations around the world). Muslims will donate for relief of the poor during Ramadan, but they will be especially generous after its end, during the first three days of the…
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranian government is expanding its ties to the Taliban and even allowing Mullah Omar’s organization to set up an office in eastern Iran. The arrangement works as follows:
The State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism on Tuesday. Once again, the U.S. government has deemed Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorism includes troubling relationships with al Qaeda (“AQ”) and the Taliban.
In a report to Congress authored in April, and posted online earlier this week by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department has once again accused Iran of supporting the Taliban. The unclassified assessment, which is titled “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” makes it clear that the U.S.…
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.
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…
During a hearing on Thursday, Democratic senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, publicly doubted the Obama administration’s decision to consider transferring five senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo to Qatar.
The Obama administration is continuing to pursue peace talks with the Taliban, even as the Taliban openly rejects the goals of those talks.
The Hill: "Poll: Romney slipping in South Carolina, holds just two-point lead over Gingrich"
In one of my few real conversations with President George W. Bush, I was struck by the degree to which he seemed always to have given thought to this question: How would what he said, and what his subordinates said, affect the morale of those fighting for our nation, and their families? Bush was…
White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about Vice President Joe Biden's comments on the Taliban earlier today. "Look," Biden said in an interview in Newsweek, "the Taliban per se is not our enemy."
The Obama administration is still pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, even if it doubts a viable negotiating partner sits across the table. And, as part of this ad hoc diplomatic effort, the administration is considering the transfer of Taliban members held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan.…
The New York Times reports today that senior officials within the Obama administration are pressing for an accelerated withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. The “rationale” for that pressure is supposedly the success of America’s efforts against al Qaeda and the fact that “the counterterrorism…
Later this month, President Obama will decide the size and scope of the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. July 2011 marks the beginning of a process that should ultimately result in the complete transfer of security responsibilities to the Afghans by 2014. Although the American public has…
In an interview with President Obama on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft asked:
"How Obama turned on a dime toward war"
General David Petraeus testified earlier today at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Afghanistan. The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan sounded optimistic, yet cautious:
Yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," White House chief of staff William Daley had this to say about America's war in Afghanistan:
How our Marines are "destroying the Taliban"
Nir Rosen, as it turns out, had pro-Taliban inclinations for quite some time. And so it should not really come as a surprise that a person who’d be willing to defend the terrorist organization might mock a woman—in this case, CBS’s Lara Logan—for being sexually assaulted in Cairo.
In a report titled, “Defining Success in Afghanistan,” Fred and Kim Kagan write:
The New York Times reports:
From Afghanistan, some surprising news: U.S. and coalition forces have arrested a member of Iran’s notorious Qods Force who was simultaneously serving as a Taliban commander. But sophisticated foreign policy observers have said for years that the Taliban and Iran were adversaries, even enemies –…
The New York Times doesn't come right out and say the surge is working--actually a Taliban commander tells the Times that the surge is working in Kandahar:
A State Department cable released by WikiLeaks earlier this week contains a stunning new detail about the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda. The Saudis have privately complained to the Obama administration that Iran harbors a dangerous network of al Qaeda operatives who are targeting the…
In his op-ed for the Washington Post this morning, David Ignatius writes (emphasis added):
The Sunday Times (UK) reported yesterday, based on Taliban sources, that the Iranians are paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. (The Times's account is behind a pay wall, but summaries of the story can be found elsewhere in the press.) We learn that the going rate is $1,000 per…
When Ghaleb Nassar al Bihani traveled to Afghanistan to fight alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban, he probably never imagined that he would be captured and his detention would be turned into a legal fight over what role, if any, international law plays in restricting the president of the United…
The Taliban's responsibility for the vast majority of civilian deaths is perhaps the most underreported story from Afghanistan since the war began. A United Nations report, which was released today, shows that more than three-fourths (76 percent) of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over the past year…
Time magazine's cover, featuring a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears were chopped off by her Taliban husband for dishonoring him, has sparked plenty of outrage from folks who should be rising to the young woman's defense. Time's cover, and the accompanying article, is seen as a propaganda ploy…
The cover of Time magazine shows the shocking image of a young Afghan girl named Aisha who was disfigured when her husband sliced off her nose and ears. But rather than serve as an example of intolerable spousal abuse, this is instead a sample of the Taliban's justice: Aisha’s husband was acting…
Thomas Joscelyn reported on the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009, and noted Iran's support for terrorist groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. Just two days prior to Foggy Bottom's long-delayed report, the U.S. Treasury Department designated two top officers in…
The government of France is joining Britain in taking a tough stand on Pakistan for its double-dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. From Reuters:
When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the massive leak of more than 90,000 classified documents, he claimed that he was exposing “thousands” of possible American war crimes. The documents show nothing of the sort. Some of the documents do detail the brutality of war, and the unsurprising…
The Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Omar has come out with a directive, ordering his guys "to kill or capture any civilians, including Afghan women, who cooperate with Coalition forces." Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio have the scoop over at the Long War Journal:
In war, victory belongs to the most persevering. Unfortunately, the endurance and political will to persist through a tough military slog like Afghanistan are precious commodities -- particularly given tough economic times and given complicated military and political objectives. No one would accuse…