America's Latest Mistake in Afghanistan
Evelyn N. Farkas, Senior Fellow at the American Security Project, participated in NATO’s Transatlantic Opinion Leaders’ delegation to Afghanistan last week and was an International Republican Institute election monitor in Afghanistan last month. She was executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism and is the author of Fractured States and US Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia and Bosnia in the 1990s.
Lethargy pervades the U.S. effort in Afghanistan at a time when urgent changes are needed. Evelyn Farkas, a member of last week's election-monitoring delegation, explains what it will take to turn around the country.
Why Afghanistan Is No Iraq
Michael O'Hanlon specializes in national security policy at the Brookings Institution. He is senior author of the Iraq Index. As a defense budget analyst, he advised members of Congress on military spending.
Sure, there are parallels, says the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon, but Afghanistan's history of war makes the Afghan people realistic in their expectations about the future-and grateful for even modest progress.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
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Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Jeffrey Koterba is an acclaimed syndicated political cartoonist. Since joining the Omaha World-Herald in 1989, he has been a finalist for Editorial Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society and has placed second in the National Headliner Awards. His work is distributed through King Features Syndicate to 400 newspapers nationwide, and has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post, among others.
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