Recent Posts

How Dangerous Is Afghanistan’s Islamic State Group?

The Islamic State offshoot that Americans blame for Thursday’s deadly suicide attacks outside the Kabul airport coalesced in eastern Afghanistan six years ago and rapidly grew into one of the more dangerous terror threats globally. Despite years of military targeting by the U.S.-led coalition, the group known as Islamic State …

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Did The Taliban Win? – OpEd

On February 29, 2020, the US and the Taliban signed a peace deal following months of tense, highly publicized bilateral peace talks. The finalized agreement had four key points, firstly a staggered withdrawal of foreign troops over fourteen months. Secondly assurances by the Taliban that Afghanistan will not be used …

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The Long, Quiet Death of American Foreign Policy

With the protection of the nation’s interests abroad entirely subordinate to domestic politics, it’s now almost impossible to maintain a prudent strategy. A sked for his opinion of Western civilization, Mohandas K. Gandhi wryly replied: “I think it would be a good idea.” We could say the same about U.S. …

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The Day Afghanistan Died

If you’ve read the plethora of post-mortem reports on Afghanistan, there are plenty of enemies to go around, from corruption, to incompetent leadership, to 20 years of rosy assessments from our own defense establishment. For me, there is a single day that Afghanistan died, and it was June 16, 2021. …

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Why Exactly Did We Abandon Bagram Air Base?

The Economist’s Shashank Joshi tweeted an important observation that deserves to be highlighted. President Biden was either confused or — worse — actively misleading the American people when he said at Thursday’s press conference that senior military officers advised him to abandon the Bagram air base because there “was not …

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