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Newsweek: "Obama's Vietnam" Is Afghanistan
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... In a companion piece, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria offers a four-step plan to help fix the situation in Afghanistan. Zakaria argues that we need to rethink our military strategy--focusing more on securing the roads and major population centers--and help clean up the Kabul government. "Reduced to its simplest level, the goal of American policy in Afghanistan should be to stop creating accidental guerrillas," Zakaria writes. It should make villagers "see U.S. forces as acting in their interests." The most important departure from current thinking would ...

Newsweek: "Obama's Vietnam" Is Afghanistan
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — ... In a companion piece, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria offers a four-step plan to help fix the situation in Afghanistan. Zakaria argues that we need to rethink our military strategy--focusing more on securing the roads and major population centers--and help clean up the Kabul government. "Reduced to its simplest level, the goal of American policy in Afghanistan should be to stop creating accidental guerrillas," Zakaria writes. It should make villagers "see U.S. forces as acting in their interests." The most important departure from current thinking would ...

NSN Daily Update 2/2/09
democracyarsenal.org — ... candidates debate the outcome of the Gaza war. Greek riot police fired tear gas at farmers to stop a tractor demonstration in continuing clashes over financial woes. China orders efforts to stem potential social unrest after 20 million migrant workers lose their jobs. Commentary of the Day Fareed Zakaria lays out the key steps for success in Afghanistan. Roger Cohen visits Tehran and writes about U.S.-Iranian ...

Fareed Zakaria Travels to Foggy Afghanistan
democracyarsenal.org — ... Fareed Zakaria enters the Afghanistan foray to take a crack at his own version of what the U.S. strategy should be, and in spite of the pretty bad misquote of Admiral Mullen (Hint - "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must"), it's worth reading.  I'm not sure you will see anything new here in terms of policy (5 principles - using COIN effectively, bolstering Afghanistan's Gov't, getting the timing right, talking to the Taliban and pressuring Pakistan), but Zakaria has good insights into how these recommendations cohere: ...

Defining Victory Down
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Fareed Zakaria addresses Afghanistan: It will help immeasurably if we keep in mind the basic objective of U.S. policy there. "My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and its allies," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week. That is an admirably clear statement. It is not that we don't have other goals—education, female literacy, centralized control of government services, drug eradication, liberal democracy. But many ...

Sahil Kapur: Don't Let Afghanistan Become Obama's Vietnam
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... Afghan historian Stephen Tanner. No foreign power has ever managed to conquer the region. Nothing confuses and provokes rural Afghans into violence more than seeing unfamiliar soldiers in uniform carrying weapons. Abandoning the region entirely may be infeasible in the short-run as it could lead to the rise of the Taliban and create a haven for terrorist organizations, but as Fareed Zakaria deftly points out, the United States is "better at creating enemies in Afghanistan than friends." We haven't heard an explanation on how to reverse this trend. ...

Re: Lost and Found
The Corner on National Review Online — ... new President but could not locate Afghanistan on a map, and how many hope that with more troops we may be able to rubble the damn place and then get out of there, is not known. The Afghan war has a standing even in Left precincts that the Iraq war never had, just because there was good and obvious cause to attack Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban had been willing hosts to al Qaeda, who had attacked us . It is none the less the case that the Taliban is not al Qaeda; and that, as Fareed Zakaria quoted an expert on the region as saying: "Afghans have played no significant ...