Articles

AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States’ prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989.

CNN National Security Analyst

CNN National Security Analyst

Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation; research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security; CNN’s national security analyst; adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/outlook/interactives/afpak/afpak.pdf

Ken Ballen, Terror Free Tomorrow Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Expert Controversy over the Bush Administration’s policy to detain “enemy combatants” at the military’s Guantanamo Bay prison has raged since the facility first opened in 2002. The controversy has been fueled primarily by the lack of legal protections afforded the detainees and allegations of their […]

updated 3:09 p.m. EST, Wed January 21, 2009 Commentary: How to get out of Iraq carefully STORY HIGHLIGHTS Peter Bergen: Obama needs to take steps to make sure Iraq stays stable As U.S. withdraws troops, it needs to jumpstart the economy, Bergen says He says U.S. should restrain the Kurds and Israelis from destabilizing moves […]

The new 22-minute tape posted Wednesday on a radical Islamist Web site is the first one from Osama bin Laden in nine months. On it, the al Qaeda leader urges Muslims to wage jihad against Israel because of its offensive in Gaz

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In the war against al Qaeda and its allies, Barack Obama should adopt five key principles when he takes office.

First, the United States must lower the temperature in the Muslim world to help win back the “swing voters” in the Islamic world who turned against America and provide passive support to al Qaeda.

and his foreign policy advisers and speechwriters are wrestling with one of the most important speeches of his presidency, his inaugural address. One of their toughest conceptual challenges is how to describe and recast what the Bush administration has consistently termed the “war on terror.” The dean of military strategists, Carl von Clausewitz, explains the importance of this decision-making in his treatise “On War”: “The first, the supreme, the most decisive act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into something that is alien to its nature.”