Americans: "Congenitally Unreliable" Allies?

The significance of Obama's surrender speech is starting to sink in. Brett Stephens notices: It emboldens the Taliban. It increases the risk to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It strengthens already potent anti-American forces in Pakistan and weakens the hand of moderates. It strengthens the hand of Iran. It further weakens NATO. It gives Hamid Karzai opportunity and motive to reinvent himself as an anti-American leader. It accelerates Afghanistan's barely suppressed, and invariably violent, centrifugal forces. "Finally, it signals that the United States, like Britain before it, is a waning power."

Let them eat sand: The U.N. World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country's 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.

Peter Feaver: "The 'war of necessity, war of choice' storyline is dead, but it will be revived again and again because the framework, while a poor guide to strategy, is a useful rhetorical device. It neatly simplifies tough national security decisions into bumper-sticker labels. It allows a politician (or pundit) to praise wars he supports and criticize wars he does not support and make it sound like he is doing so for strategic reasons that go beyond 'this is a war I support and that is a war I do not support.' In the meantime, however, the Obama team is not likely to talk about Afghanistan as a war of necessity. If the last three years are any guide, they might not talk much about Afghanistan at all."