Petraeus is Obama’s political insurance policy. Absolutely no one on the right will criticize the war while Petraeus is running it. The right’s only line of criticism on the war is that July 2011 is an ill-conceived deadline. But Petraeus backs the July 2011 “inflection point” on the condition that troop withdrawals after the date occur very slowly, and by picking Petraeus, Obama signaled his assent to that interpretation of his date. Still, Petraeus will testify on Tuesday, as he did last week, that he supports the date.

In suggesting in his press conference with President Karzai that he will not negotiate with the Taliban until the U.S. military has demonstrated “effectiveness in breaking their momentum”, President Obama seemed to be embracing the shibboleth that you don’t negotiate with an adversary until you can do so from a “position of strength”. But when your strength is built on sand, as it is in Afghanistan, the notion that you must “negotiate from strength” is the worst kind of bunkum.

In a press release issued on Easter, the U.S. and allied forces under General McChrystal’s command, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), admitted they killed three innocent Afghan women, two of whom were pregnant.

The command structure for US prisons and special operations in Afghanistan appears to be another shell game being played to hide responsibility for secret prisons and night raids there.

In the US strategy review that President Obama conducted, how much of this history of Afghanistan was considered?

So I’m initiating a weekend feature on the site – I’m trying to shake it up! – taking a look at a single issue from a variety of angles, making connections based on the available reporting from the week. Today I’ll be looking at Afghanistan, and the changing politics around the potential for escalating troop numbers.

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has a long and brutal history of prisoner abuse. He now realizes that detention centers in Afghanistan are hotbeds of terrorist recruitment, but misses the obvious point that the primary cause for this recruitment is the torture he endorses.