It looks as if the Trump administration will soon send 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan, the theater of America’s longest war. The mission — training and advising (and bolstering) the Afghan national security forces — will remain the same even though we’ve seen this play out more than once: the verdict… Keep reading →

U.S-enabled corruption lost the Afghan War. The Afghan government is a failed state, incapable of effectively governing or defending its citizens. Corruption funds the enemy, with hundreds of millions of dollars skimmed from U.S. logistics and aid money. Former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said in 2016: “The ultimate point of failure for our efforts … wasn’t an insurgency.… Keep reading →

ARMY AND NAVY CLUB, WASHINGTON: “The biggest concern of my great Afghan security force partners is abandonment,” said Maj. Gen. James Huggins. “We have invested a great deal [in Afghanistan] for a long time,” he said, “[but] the Afghans have done it three times longer than us.” Speaking at an event this morning organized by… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The US must not go ahead with planned cuts to the Afghan National Army and police, a panel of experts urged the House Armed Services Committee today. Instead, we must keep spending $6 billion a year to support 350,000 Afghan security personnel, go slowly on drawing down our own forces — and escalate… Keep reading →

We aren’t leaving Afghanistan — except, of course, to the extent we are. That’s the high-wire balancing act that the top commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, had to perform in his remarks today ahead of the upcoming NATO conference in Chicago. “We will say to the Afghan people with one voice, ‘we are… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With the Taliban reeling, it is the Afghan government’s own corruption that is the biggest threat to US goals and the biggest reason to keep US advisors in place through 2014 and beyond. That’s the verdict of Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, who just finished a year commanding the international force called Regional Command… Keep reading →

U.S. troops will start pulling out of Afghanistan this summer. This raises the basic question — is the Afghan military ready to take over and would it survive the departure of much of the U.S. military. The plan is still to end the “combat mission,” whatever that means, in 2014, leaving behind trainers, advisers and… Keep reading →