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The initial goal of invading Afghanistan in the immediate weeks after 9/11 could not have been more clear: Get Osama bin Laden and oust the Taliban regime that gave his fanatical pack of beards safe haven to plan and practice the deadly attacks.It was the first and so far only time NATO allies invoked the Article 5 mutual defense pact. That familiar mission creep, however, seeped in and with the best of naive intentions, the foreigners stuck around to attempt nation-building to protect the power vacuum they created.It’s had some good days (a new Constitution now gives equal rights...

On Monday, President Donald Trump laid out his strategy for the war in Afghanistan going into 2018 and beyond. While reaction to the strategy was somewhat mixed, there was one thing that stuck out: Wait, didn't former President Barack Obama say that we'd be done with this by now?  Why yes, yes he did. Let's take a trip in the way-back machine and look at some now-regrettable tweets, dug up by Fox's Stephen Miller:  FACT: Unlike President Obama, Romney has no plan to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 9, 2012 As...

On Monday, President Donald Trump laid out his strategy for the war in Afghanistan going into 2018 and beyond. While reaction to the strategy was somewhat mixed, there was one thing that stuck out: Wait, didn't former President Barack Obama say that we'd be done with this by now?  Why yes, yes he did. Let's take a trip in the way-back machine and look at some now-regrettable tweets, dug up by Fox's Stephen Miller:  FACT: Unlike President Obama, Romney has no plan to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 9, 2012 As...

The Trump administration is considering the ramifications of paring back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan as part of its ongoing strategy review in America’s longest war, The Wall Street Journal reports. Trump’s national security cabinet is bitterly divided on the future U.S. role in Afghanistan. Senior national security officials like Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster are reportedly pushing Trump to allow a surge of approximately 4,000 troops into Afghanistan, while White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has lobbied against the effort. “It doesn’t work unless we are there for a long time, and if...

In 2068, some 50 years from now, will American soldiers still be dying in Afghanistan? “The problem is,” argues Leon Panetta, the former Defense Secretary and CIA Director under President Obama, “you cannot allow Afghanistan to fail and become a safe haven for al-Qaida and for terrorism more broadly to attack our country.” In addition to sending more American soldiers and more U.S. greenbacks to the Afghan government in “the short term,” Panetta recently suggested to Yahoo News that the U.S. will “probably have a long-term presence similar to our presence in South Korea.” The Korean War began in 1950...

Our involvement in Afghanistan is untenable because the country is untenable. No matter what is done, Afghanistan will fail because of its galloping population growth. When the U.S. became involved in 2001, the country had a population of 20.5 million. Now it is 34.4 million, up nearly 70 percent. In the intervening 16 years, the U.S. spent about one trillion dollars and 2,000 lives in stabilizing Afghanistan. All the stability and free food provided just created a perfect breeding environment for the natives. The population growth rate has settled at 3.0 percent per annum. At that rate, in another 16...

The U.S. has removed all remaining personnel from Yemen as Shiite rebels controlling the country’s capital called for others to join its battle against government forces. The State Department said in a statement it is removing personnel due to the “deteriorating security situation” in the country. The State Department also said it will continue to engage the Yemeni people and international community to support the country’s political transition. […] The U.N. Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen as well. The closed-door meeting is expected to take place Sunday. …

President Barack Obama is promising U.S. forces in Afghanistan that America’s longest war will come to a close at the end of the year. The president made a surprise visit Sunday to Bagram Air Field to celebrate the Memorial Day holiday weekend with troops. He says the war is at a pivotal moment, with Afghan forces taking over primary responsibility for the security of their country. …

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night that he will end the war in Afghanistan by the end of next year, and that after that he will keep tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan to fight a war in Afghanistan. “And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” said Obama. For the period after 2014, he said, “We are negotiating an agreement with the Afghan government that focuses on two missions: training and equipping Afghan forces so that the country does not again...

The Obama administration is considering the possibility of removing all U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission officially finishes at the end of 2014, White House officials said Tuesday. The comments by Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser, come as the Pentagon and White House mull over the number of troops that could be left in Afghanistan after 2014 to fight insurgents and train Afghan security forces. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama are scheduled to meet on Friday in Washington. Rhodes said the administration is considering a range of options, with one scenario...

Watch out! There is a cosmic force at work. One by one, people caught up in the Benghazi Triangle are disappearing. First it was AFRICOM commander General Carter F. Ham who was given early retirement. Ham’s sphere of military authority extended to Benghazi. Then Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, who commanded the aircraft carrier attack task group in the Mediterranean near Benghazi, was recalled to Bremerton pending a Navy Inspector General investigation. And now another coincidental “resignation” in the chain of command working the Benghazi overwatch is either pointing to a cosmic force at work, or gasp! a cover up....

Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party of the 1940s was nothing but a tool the Communist Party USA – and by extension, the Soviet Union. Today’s Democratic Party is also heavily infiltrated by the now pro Chinese Communist Party USA and their almost as equally extreme comrades from Democratic Socialists of America. Here’s an interesting picture from the 1940s. Henry Wallace chatting with Chicago journalist and Progressive Party supporter Vernon Jarrett. It turns out that around this time Vernon Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy – the youth wing of the Communist Party. Chicago communist...

President Obama's "surge" of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan announced in late 2009 was meant to be temporary, and Wednesday night the president is expected to announce that they will return home by around the time voters head to the polls to determine whether he gets another term. In prime-time speech to the nation, Obama is expected to say about 5,000 troops will begin coming home this summer with an additional 5,000 troops by the end of this year, sources told CBS News. And about 20,000 more troops are expected to return to the United States by the end of 2012,...

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, would endorse a presidential announcement that the 30,000 troops committed as part of a 2009 surge to the country would be back home by end of 2012, military and administration officials tell National Journal. Formally, Petraeus wants to withdraw one brigade combat team of about 5,000 troops by the end of the year, and another 5,000 by the spring of next year. But mindful that the political environment in the U.S. and in Congress has turned sharply against the war, Petraeus is aware that the extra brigades he inherited cannot...

If I recall correctly, we went into Libya – or, at any rate, over Libya – to stop the brutal Gadhafi dictatorship killing the Libyan people. And, thanks to our efforts, a whole new mass movement of freedom-loving democrats now has the opportunity to kill the Libyan people. As the Los Angeles Times reported from Benghazi, gangs of young gunmen are roaming the city "rousting Libyan blacks and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa from their homes and holding them for interrogation as suspected mercenaries or government spies." According to the New York Times, "Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned...

The Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, has appeared at a site in Tripoli that was recently attacked by the Western coalition and told his followers: "We will be victorious in the end." In a brief speech at the Bab al-Aziziya compound, targeted on Sunday, he said "all Islamic armies" should join him. Forces loyal to Col Gaddafi are engaged in fierce fighting with rebels. -snip- Col Gaddafi made a speech that lasted about three minutes and was carried on state television. He said there was a "new crusader battle launched by crusader countries on Islam". "Long live Islam everywhere. All...

Barack Obama is scheduled to speak about whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal will keep his position as Afghan commander at 1:30 P.M. EDT.Obama will be speaking from the Rose Garden.There have been no leaks as to his decision.CNN reports McChrystal is meeting with his staff. No word from them as to whether even McChrystal knows.

(Sooner or later the pressure to lend out excess bank reserves will be unstoppable...) Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has explained his exit strategy to prevent future inflation. The Fed recently began to pay interest to banks on the reserves they hold in their vaults. Using this new tool, it claims the ability to get banks to keep the money instead of lending it out, thus containing the money supply and inflation. I don't believe this will work, and no one else should.The exit strategy is incomplete. Proponents are guilty of practicing economics without prices. They never say what the...

Politicians and Western army chiefs mapped out the contours of an Afghanistan exit strategy on Monday, with three generals holding out the possibility of an eventual peace deal with the Taliban. British army chief General Sir David Richards told Reuters negotiations with the Taliban could be considered but must be done from a position of strength. "So it's a matter of timing, not the principle." He spoke ahead of a conference in London expected to agree a framework for the Afghan government to begin taking charge of security in line with a 2011 timetable set by President Barack Obama to...

A traveler asks a farmer how to get to a particular village. The farmer replies, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here." Barack Obama, who asked to be president, nevertheless deserves sympathy for having to start where America is in Afghanistan. But after 11 months of graceless disparagements of the 43rd president, the 44th acts as though he is the first president whose predecessor bequeathed a problematic world. And Obama's new Afghanistan policy strikingly resembles his predecessor's plan for Iraq, which was: As Iraq's security forces stand up, US forces will stand down.