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U.S. and Afghan officials reportedly have reached a tentative agreement on a critical security pact -- which would include President Obama writing a letter to the Afghan people acknowledging mistakes during the "war on terror." According to Reuters, an Afghan spokesman said Tuesday that Obama agreed to write the letter, to be presented with the draft security pact at a meeting of tribal elders later this week. The New York Times, citing a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, reported that Secretary of State John Kerry proposed the letter in a conversation with Karzai. Karzai asked that Obama sign it,...

Despite statements by Vice President Joe Biden, the State Department is about to begin formal negotiations over the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, a top State Department official said Tuesday. Last week, U.S. and Afghan negotiators met in Kabul to talk about the Bilateral Security Agreement that will govern the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, when President Barack Obama said the combat mission in Afghanistan will end and the U.S. will complete the transition of the entire country to Afghan government control.

A senior U.S. Army soldier was killed along with a couple of majors by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, and three special forces soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan commander who had won their trust and invited them to dinner. The suicide bomber struck Wednesday as a group of U.S. military and civilian officials from the 4th brigade, 4th Infantry Division were in Sarkowi in Kunar Province, which is located in eastern Afghanistan. The suicide attacker detonated an explosive vest near the group. Killed in the attack were Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, 45, of Laramie, Wyo., the...

The U.S. war in Iraq has just been given an unexpected seal of approval. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in what he billed as his “last major policy speech in Washington,” has owned up to the gains in Iraq, to the surprise that Iraq has emerged as “the most advanced Arab democracy in the region.” It was messy, this Iraqi democratic experience, but Iraqis “weren’t in the streets shooting each other, the government wasn’t in the streets shooting its people,” Gates observed. The Americans and the Iraqis had not labored in vain; the upheaval of the Arab Spring has only underlined...