Spencer Ackerman

Leaving aside the tenor of their working relationship, the basic point is correct: by putting Gen. David Petraeus in charge, President Obama sided with Petraeus’s interpretation of July 2011 for the mission in Afghanistan.

Ever since the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the U.S.-Russia New START nuclear-reductions accord this afternoon, I’ve received statements from President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretaries Gates and Clinton and Senator Kerry. All of them are cheering the vote, in order to get the press to write about the Big Victory they recorded today. And indeed: it’s a step forward for a treaty that any sensible person would have to conclude deserves ratification.

The trouble is that none of these statements actually explain, hint at or otherwise indicate how to get 67 votes in the Senate for the treaty.

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 find that burden cleansing to the American spirit — is not supposed to be an indication of a war’s merits. A war without end used to be the height of a country’s madness.

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.

The Iraqi defense minister wants a return on his investment. As Abdul Qader Obeidi tells the Los Angeles Times‘ Liz Sly, Iraq’s purchases of American weapons platforms compel an advisory presence beyond 2011, SOFA or no SOFA.

A couple days ago I was on the phone with my friend and occasional Afghanistan sparring partner, Michael Cohen, and the subject of corruption came up. Michael pointed me to a really pungent quote I had missed, from an anonymous Obama official in a Times story: “Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep.” It’s easy to see why: what in the world does Afghan government corruption have to do with disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda? Indeed, Anthony Cordesman has a really thought-provoking CSIS paper pointing out that one of the most structurally corrupting influences in Afghanistan is the presence of massive amounts of foreign (read: U.S.) cash that vastly exceed the country’s absorbtive capacity.

Leave it to Josh Foust to tease out the implications of some of my reporting better than I did. Not only is ISAF re-highlighting its (apparently) civilian-casualty-free airstrikes, but it’s also letting the public know more about special-forces activity than it (I gather) ever has. Last month, Gen. Petraeus shared with me some rather detailed information about 90 days in the life of Special Operations Forces, including how many insurgents and insurgent leaders they had killed and captured. The AP’s rock-star war correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, takes a look at the data and assesses that Petraeus is releasing the material in order to convince people the war is going well.

There’s a lot of tendentious material in this Washington Post piece about the alleged post-combat phase of the Iraq war. But Paul Rieckhoff asks a central question: “If the war is ‘over,’ what happens if a Black Hawk goes down next week, God forbid?” asked Paul Rieckhoff, a veterans advocate. While combat troops have departed, [...]

Freedom has been a national security asset — one that we are damaging out of fear.

To be clear: We should never do something or not do something based solely on the degree of enthusiasm exhibited by the bin Ladenist conspiracy theorists. And those who object to Cordoba House based on are to be pitied and reasoned with in the spirit of comity and brotherhood, even if they won’t extend those sentiments to their fellow Americans.