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Wishing I Was at the USIP Event
democracyarsenal.org — ... So I'm not at the superfantastisch USIP foreign policy event today, but if I was, I would definitely pick up a copy of their latest report, the Future of Afghanistan.  Just a short glance yields two reasons for why this report is a must-read for anyone concerned over the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan and the surrounding region.  First, it correctly places a healthy amount of responsibility for Afghanistan's deteriorating condition on the shoulders of the Bush Administration.  The Obama folks are inheriting a huge mess, and its ...

MEDIA ALERT: Rachel Maddow Show Tonight
The Washington Note — At 9:15 pm EST, I will be discussing Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke's soon to be made appointment as Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Related Issues, and the just released US Institute of Peace report on Afghanistan and its indictment of US policy there. I caught this realistic and bleak statement by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist Dana Priest in an online commentary she did which touched on the Afghanistan morass: Richmond, Va.: Tell me, Ms. Priest, after studying the history of those ...

Open Thread for Night Owls, Early Birds and Expats
Daily Kos — ... by General David Petraeus, in which he "predicted a long war in Afghanistan, without quantifying it." The report, The Future of Afghanistan, is a collection of essays were written by 10 experts whose résumés you can read ...

The Afghanistan Good War/Bad War Problem
The Washington Note — ... And here is a link to a new U.S. Institute of Peace Report titled "The Future of Afghanistan" which indicts the Bush administration for seven years of short-term thinking and the absence of strategy in Afghanistan. ...

Bad Bush policy Mad Libs
Daily Kos — ...     by focusing on short-term goals pursued without a cohesive strategy or a clear understanding of how                   works." Emergency preparedness. Energy policy. Education. Environment. (And those are just the E's.) It's like a Mad-Lib for every conceivable horrible policy undertaken in the last eight years. [If anyone wants to view the report on Afghanistan in full, it's located here.] ...

Get Afghanistan Right
Daily Kos — ... Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has written Obama Must Get Afghanistan Right, and Ann Jones, who has written The Afghan Scam: The Untold Story of Why the U.S. Is Bound to Fail in Afghanistan. Last week, Rachel Maddow took note of a report from the United States Institute of Peace and spoke with Steve Clemons of The Note on the growing discomfort in some quarters over Afghanistan policy: The Future of Afghanistan, a collection of essays by 10 experts whose résumés you can read ...

Report: McChrystal Offers 40,000 Or Nothing
Newshoggers.com — ... American and British counterinsurgency forces now face an evolving insurgency rooted much more in local communities than in itinerant Taliban paramilitaries. The context of this situation is that many Taliban elements may be far more embedded in local communities than had been assumed - or that they are being joined or supported by local militias motivated to act primarily against foreign occupiers, rather than impelled by any fierce religious orthodoxy. ...