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Justice and the enemy
The Shelf On November 13, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would be tried in federal court alongside four...
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Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
The Shelf "If we lose, it's going to be because of the civilians." This pre-emptive attempt to define the epitaph of the Afghanistan war (made by a U.S. official at NATO) could almost be the one-line...
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Appraising al-Qaeda: The practitioner's perspective
The Shelf Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qaeda since 9/11 - Seth JonesThe Al Qaeda Factor: Plots Against the West - Mitchell D. Silber What is the nature of al-Qaeda? Is it an organization...
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The Valley's Edge
The Shelf Anyone seeking to understand Afghanistan in general, the flaws in the United States' effort there, or life on the ground as a political advisor in the midst of a counterinsurgency, should...
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The Outpost
The Shelf Jake Tapper, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (Little Brown and Company, New York 2012), 673pp. $29.99. On October 3, 2009, an assembled impromptu force of hundreds of Afghans...
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The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 - Where the Terror Began
The Shelf Conflict in Kashmir has been back in the news recently. In January, a series of attacks and counter-attacks by Indian and Pakistani soldiers were reportedly sparked by a grandmother who...
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The war before the war: Soviet precedent in Afghanistan
The Shelf Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) Roderic Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in...
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A war for no wise purpose
The Shelf A review of William Dalrymple's, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42. This is a book that we should have had ten years ago, and which will still be read in fifty years'...
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The ever-evolving al-Qaeda threat
The Shelf Since the brutal attack in Boston a few weeks ago, the word terrorism, without being preceded by the word "cyber," unfortunately returned to our lexicon. For those who have spent the better...
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Churchill's First War
The Shelf A review of Con Coughlin's Churchill's First War (London: MacMillan, 2013). To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. -- Winston Churchill This book, by the defence editor of the British...
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Soldiers and Spies
The Shelf It's instructive to linger over the scene-setting, thematic quotations that book authors choose to open their stories. It tells you something about where the tale is going. And where the...
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Fountainhead of Jihad
The Shelf On June 10th, 2013, 13 suicide bombers assaulted two high-profile targets in Afghanistan -- the airport in Kabul and the capital of Zabul province in the south. The Afghan Taliban claimed...
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Weaving Afghanistan's story
The Shelf Since 9/11, a considerable amount of ink has been spilled on descriptions of forward operating bases, Humvees, IEDs, and the pursuit of high-value targets in Afghanistan. As the U.S.-led...
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Counterinsurgency was never about Afghanistan
The Shelf Matt Zeller, Watches Without Time: An American Soldier in Afghanistan (Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2012).Ben Anderson, No Worse Enemy: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Struggle for...
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No Exit from Pakistan
The Shelf Dan Markey, No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Since President Obama took office in 2009, there have been...
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