President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday, ostensibly to sign a new agreement with the leader the US helped install in a country US armed forces have occupied for over ten years. The White House sought to frame the event as a “transition” point, with the US withdrawing and turning over security responsibilities to the Afghan armed forces, a mere six years or so after candidate Obama said he would turn America’s proper focus on Afghanistan, not Iraq. Now we know what that means.

The Administration and Afghanistan revealed Sunday that the United States and Afghanistan had reached a preliminary agreement for the continued presence of US forces in Afghanistan for another 10 years after the supposed withdrawal of “combat forces” in 2014 . The agreement was widely expected after the Administration and Karzai regime appeared to resolve earlier disagreements about who controls armed night-time raids on Afghan homes and who controls the imprisonment of detainees.

A record 60% of Americans want to remove troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible, while just 32% of the country think we should keep troops there until the situation has stabilized, according to a new Pew Research poll. This is a massive drop since last May when the poll found 48% wanted to remove troops and 47% thought we should keep them there.

A US soldier who served in Afghanistan released photos to the Los Angeles Times which show American troops posing with the mangled corpses of insurgents or suicide bombers. The photos are not the first to show soldiers posing with dead bodies, and these appear to have been taken two years ago.

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest.

After months of arguing over who should control the practice of American troops performing armed raids of the homes of Afghanistan’s citizens, the US Government and the Afghan government have apparently agreed on how such intrusions on peoples’ homes may continue.

In a sign of how well things are going in Afghanistan, NATO and US troops are designating guards for any time they come into contact with the Afghan security forces they’re supposed to be training.

As we continue to get bad news from Afghanistan the American people have turned sharply against the war in the past few months. A new poll shows nearly 70 percent the American people think we should no longer be fighting the conflict.

The International Crisis Group has a new report out showing that the so-called reconciliation talks with the Taliban are actually going nowhere, and that civil war could result from a US continuing to lead those talks. The think tank believes that responsibility should shifted to the United Nations.

Here’s a novel – and tasty! – approach to spreading cultural awareness of all the countries on America’s enemies list:

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The food is served out of a take-out-style storefront that rotates identities every six months to highlight another country.