Afghanistan Weekly Reader: Americans Strongly Favor Ending the War
A series of bombings that left least 43 dead made Tuesday the deadliest day for Afghan civilians this year. As security concerns continue, the US and allies work to address the growing trend of “green on blue” attacks. Meanwhile, according to recent polls by ABC/The Washington Post and the New York Times/CBS, two in three Americans believes the war has not been worth fighting, and close to 70% says the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan. The American public, strongly in favor of ending the war, is starting to question the presidential candidates’ silence on Afghanistan policy.
From ASG
8/14/12
Policymakers Ignoring Public Opinion on Afghanistan War
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
This year, every week of war in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $2 billion. War costs are going down, but not fast enough. Policymakers should take their cue from the public and work to end wasteful war spending.
ARTICLES
8/14/12
Leon Panetta: There’s a war going on
Politico by Stephanie Gaskell and Philip Ewing
Neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan mentioned the war in Afghanistan during their big running mate roll-out in Virginia Saturday. Barack Obama gives it only a brief mention in his own stump speeches.
Leon Panetta seems to have had enough.
OPINION
8/13/12
Have Obama and Romney Forgotten Afghanistan?
The New Yorker by Dexter Filkins
After eleven years, more than four-hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we’ve built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own – even when we’re there. What happens when we’re not? You can bet that, whoever the President is, he’ll be talking about it then.
8/14/12
Why isn’t anyone talking about Afghanistan?
Foreign Policy by Stephen M. Walt
Even those who continued to defend the effort usually had to admit that success was going to require a decade or more of additional commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars in additional aid. Yet our national security apparatus couldn’t reach the conclusion to withdraw without first escalating the war, and without wasting more soldiers’ lives and a few hundred billion more dollars.
8/16/12
How Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan – or America
The Huffington Post by Peter Van Buren
Why has the United States spent so much money and time so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad, while allowing its own infrastructure to crumble untended? Why do we even think of that as “policy”?
