In the News
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March 30, 2009 — March 30, 2009 - CNAS President John Nagl speaks with Fox News about President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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March 27, 2009 — March 27, 2009 - CNAS President John Nagl comments on President Obama's plan to break up the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division into teams that will train the Afghan army. "The change couldn't be more dramatic," Nagl says. "The 82nd Airborne Division is the nation's shock force."
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March 27, 2009 — March 27, 2009 - NPR profiles Michele Flournoy, CNAS' co-founder and now the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Listen to the fill profile here.
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March 26, 2009 — March 26, 2009 - Seth Rosen, a CNAS researcher, argues in World Politics Review that the Obama administration should implement an Afghanistan strategy that prioritizes winning the support of the populace and bolstering the legitimacy of the Afghan government. "Once Afghan security forces are capable of isolating and eliminating insurgents, and once Afghan institutions are strong enough to provide essential services and governance, U.S. troops and civilians can begin to draw down," Rosen writes.
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March 26, 2009 — March 26, 2009 - President Obama's plan to send 17,000 troops to Afghanistan is meeting opposition on his left and skepticism from some allies. What can the president reasonably hope to achieve in Afghanistan? What alternative policy options could he consider? We talk about all the elements of the Obama strategy in Afghanistan and whether nation-building is still possible. How has the military mission there changed in the last seven years? Whose hearts and minds can we win in Afghanistan? Does history show that foreign military power can never control Afghanistan?
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March 25, 2009 — March 25, 2009 - CNAS Senior Fellow David Kilcullen talks to NPR about the Obama administration's review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. "We need to get into the business of making people feel safe and making them feel willing to participate in a political process that doesn't involve violence," Kilcullen says.
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March 25, 2009 — BAGHDAD — In Maj. Thomas Jarrett's stress management class surrounded by concrete blast walls, American troops are urged not to accept post-traumatic stress disorder as an inevitable consequence of war.
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March 24, 2009 — March 26, 2009 - KANDAHAR—Afghanistan is about to spike in the news this summer, as 17,000 more marines and soldiers arrive from the United States and pour into the southern Kandahar region. They will advance down roads and river valleys where American troops have never ventured in eight years of war here, and deliberately stir up a hornet’s nest of Taliban strongholds in Mullah Omar’s backyard. This incursion will lead to fighting and attendant casualties perhaps on a scale that Americans have not seen since the early days of the surge in Iraq.
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March 24, 2009 — WASHINGTON, March 24, 2009 - The Army can mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder by training solders to be more mentally resilient before combat, an Army doctor said yesterday.
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March 23, 2009 — WASHINGTON - The Army's process for determining a soldier's fitness for combat is so confusing that it increases the chance of sending ailing troops to war, an Army inspector general's report obtained by USA TODAY says.There are at least 15 "inadequate, unsynchronized or conflicting" policies governing fitness, which "increases the likelihood that soldiers who do not meet medical deployability requirements may be deployed in violation of one or more policies," the report concludes.
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