Kind of a busy week for me last week, so the Afghanistan Study Group’s report got back-burnered. But now Josh Foust has persuaded me that it’s not worth my while. This is an epic burn: In a very real way, the Afghanistan Study Group blames our problems on Afghanistan—the civil war, the al Qaeda safe [...]

Somewhere between 9/11 and now, we forgot that wars are not supposed to be generations-long struggles. They’re supposed to chart a clear-if-difficult path to a victory, measured in a safer and more just peace at a reasonable cost. Struggle — a burden actually borne by a much smaller proportion of the populace than those who [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 822-10 September 10, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. 1st Lt. Todd W. Weaver, 26, of Hampton, Va., died Sept. 9 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive [...]

In an open letter issued today, a former al-Qaeda affiliate advises bin Laden to abandon his “un-Islamic actions.” The only thing that could improve his letter is the appropriate Biggie soundtrack. And so. Countering al-Qaeda: We won’t stop. Because we can’t stop.

Lyrics of absolute fury from the greatest living national-security journalist. Read the whole thing.

Shit Robot – Wrong Galaxy by bnubs I never thought I would so dislike a project called Shit Robot.

Well, not literally today, but now Gorilla Biscuits are in your head, too. The greybeards of the foreign-policy community continue their push to get the Senate to ratify the nuclear arms-control accord with Russia in the Washington Post. I’m about to duck out for a few hours to report on a related subject, so I [...]

The CIA sent around this message from Director Leon Panetta in advance of the 9/11 commemoration tomorrow. While he doesn’t come out and tell his non-Muslim countrymen to back away from the surge in suspicion of their Muslim neighbors, the message still comes through. For instance: The diversity of talent that we send into the [...]

Speaking of the non-existent/invented-by-me-in-a-moment-of-cheekiness campaign to return Jack Goldsmith to the Office of Legal Counsel, check out Goldsmith’s detentions-dilemma op-ed in the Washington Post. Befitting this blighted world, Goldsmith endeavors to find some pragmatic ways out of the terrorism detentions stalemate. Among his basic tradeoffs: keep Guantanamo open and lose the military commissions. If the [...]

I’d like to welcome my good friend Eli Lake to the liberal blogosphere. He’s got an excellent piece out today tracing all the ways — state secrets, Guantanamo, Patriot, surveillance, etc. — that the Obama administration has opted to embrace the expansive wartime authorities that the Bush administration claimed, rather than abrogate them. If you’re [...]