Astute longtime DIA intelligence analyst John McCreary reviews what happened Tuesday in Kabul and doesn’t like what he sees:
Three major Taliban attacks have taken place in Kabul this summer…One such attack is a perhaps good fortune. A second might have been a coincidence, but three is a strategic trend. Violent instability is
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Since reporting Monday on Rep. Judy Chu’s revelation that her nephew, Lance Corporal Harry Lew, killed himself after being hazed by fellow Marines in Afghanistan, we’ve spoken to several people about the tragic case. It turns out it wasn’t so much tragedy as torment; some might even call it torture. “LCPL Lew was identified …
The Taliban on Sunday drove a massive truck bomb into a U.S. combat outpost in the central-east province of Wardak, killing two Afghans and wounding 77 U.S. service members. CNN reported that, “Investigators are looking at the possibility that insurgents originally planned to use the bomb against a high-profile target in Kabul around the …
Some old-timers speak of deja vu all over again: just as Afghanistan became the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, it could also become America’s. Tuesday’s complex attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul — reputed to be a safer place — raises anew questions about the scope of the decade-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, and its chances for success.
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In the decade after 9/11, just how much did the U.S. military have to recalibrate to fight the wars it found itself launching in Afghanistan and, 18 months later, in Iraq? This week, on Command Post, we discuss the retooling of the American armed forces with Eric Schmitt of the New York Times — co-author of Counterstrike: The Untold …
At the tail end of last Friday’s hearing into military suicides before the House Armed Services Committee’s personnel subcommittee, Rep. Judy Chu finally got a chance to speak. Although not a member of the panel — she serves on the Education and Labor, Judiciary, and Small Business committees — chairman Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., …
If the U.S. is going to stick to its timetable to pull its forces out of Afghanistan in 2014, it’s going to have to negotiate with the Taliban. It’s strange to say that the morning after the 10th anniversary of the attacks that led the U.S. to invade Afghanistan in an effort to drive the Taliban from power. It was the Taliban, after …
The past decade has generated a wealth of stories for anyone lucky enough to be covering national security since 9/11. It’s sort of the third chapter in my career. My first, which ran from 1979 to 1991, involved the Cold War and the possibility of superpower conflict with the Soviet Union. When it collapsed, I wondered what we’d …
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Roadside bombs kill too much. Pilots cost too much. Answer: an unmanned helicopter to ferry supplies to troops in the most dangerous corners of the world. This recent exercise shows it can be done. Next stop: a six-month field test in Afghanistan starting …
There are many horrific videos easily found on the web showing the Taliban or al Qaeda brutally killing their foes. It’s televised terrorism, and we don’t post such gratuitous gruesomeness on Battleland. But this story, about the apparent desecration of a corpse earlier this week, passes muster. First, it doesn’t involve killing. …
The GOP has been demonstrably hawkish for decades. Part of this is philosophical, but acting tough has also been reliable currency in the Republican Party for years.
It’s interesting what 10 years of war will do.
Politicians know which way the wind blows, and America is war-weary — ten-years-of-war weary. They are sick of the …
The Air Force brass has nominated Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez for the Air Force Cross, its second-highest award for bravery. He was the lone Air Force targeteer assigned to an Army special-forces team in Afghanistan nearly two years ago. The unit’s night-time missi0n: capture a top Taliban leader in the western part of the …
