Afghanistan Opinion: Let's Be Clear --- "The Surge" Was A Failure of US Strategy and Policy (Cohen)

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's newly-released book, Little America: The War Within The War for Afghanistan (see extract in separate EA feature) has prompted soul-searching amongst US analysts about what went wrong, more than a decade after the situation was supposedly resolved with the ousting of the Taliban.

Michael Cohen's comment for The Progressive Realist resonates, in part because it returns to the key period in 2009 --- covered extensively by EA at the time --- when the US military bounced President Obama into an expanded intervention. Ostensibly, this was for development and political resolution as well as the vanquishing of the Taliban; in practice, the development and political resolution never followed the additional boots on the ground.

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Afghanistan: The Real Lesson of the Taliban Imposter (Cohen)

Yesterday's revelation in the New York Times that one of the Taliban officials with whom the Afghan government was meeting in peace talks with was actually an impostor is the proverbial hanging curve ball of Afghan-related snark.

Sure I could write a post about how this goes to show that the US and NATO --- even after 9 years of war --- have little understanding of the enemy with whom it's fighting. Even more directly, I could write a post about how this goes to show that the Petraeus/ISAF supposition that kinetic action was bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table was bunk.

But this story is yet one more reason to conclude that the time has come for the United States to trim its sails in Afghanistan, more toward military de-escalation and lay the groundwork for a long-term political settlement.

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