It seems that in the weeks since Gen. McChrystal’s report was leaked, that the Afghanistan discussion has been limited by a false binary: Is it better to send more troops to protect civilians or is it better to draw down troops and increase air strikes on Al Qaeda targets? Since the success of a greater troop commitment ultimately relies on the legitimacy of the Afghan government, a third and probably far better option is to first establish how legitimate that government can possibly be.[...]

It appears that, as a writer for the interwebs, it is incumbent upon me to comment on President Obama’s Nobel Prize. Everyone, it seems, is ambivalent about his receiving the prize, not least Obama himself. [...]

U.S. policy in Afghanistan increasingly reminds me of the episode of The Twilight Zone in which a little girl inadvertently slips though her bedroom wall and into a dimension not unlike an M.C. Escher drawing.