Osama Bin Javaid: The current Western involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan is only embedding deeper extremism. Let real democracy develop, as opposed to Karzai’s version, allow the Taliban to run and win elections. Empowering and educating the Afghan masses are the only ways out of NATO’s disarray.
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Thomas Rausch: President Obama’s West Point speech heralds the next transatlantic rift. The American president is in a tight spot: he needs his transatlantic allies to support this new strategic endeavor. All the while, the German government must decide if it will go along with the plan or develop its own way forward to do right by Afghanistan.
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Greg Randolph Lawson: Obama needs to maintain military flexibility by repositioning its “Af-Pak” policy. The US can encourage lasting stability in the region, and indeed protect its own strategic sustainability, by rethinking its nation building efforts and allowing regional actors to grow into a more effective anti-Taliban force.
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Marc Saxer: Democracy assistance must seek to strengthen confidence in the ability to perform of the democratic model and step up its efforts to highlight, by discursive means, the long-term benefits of the democratic model.
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Editorial Team: The Bundeswehr pursues insurgents in Northern Afghanistan with heavy firepower. Members of atlantic-community.org, will this more assertive approach lead to more stability in Afghanistan? Has a “psychological threshold” been crossed in Germany?
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James Cricks: We are indebted to Christopher Catherwood for doing the homework about Iraq and the West that current policymakers should be considering.
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Osama Bin Laden called Iraq the “central front” in his fight against the US - he was right. ++ Obama/Biden only focus on the past; they still think invading Iraq was a mistake, a distraction from Afghanistan. ++ Their obsession misses the point: “The essence of being a good commander in chief is appreciating the connections among these theaters.” ++ FDR fought the Nazi’s before assailing Japan,
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Dr. Jackson Janes has been engaged in German-American and European affairs for more than three decades. He is the executive director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
Before joining the AICGS, he served as a director of the German-American Institute in Tübingen and as a director of program development at the
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