Center for a New American Security

Bill Murphy, Jr. profiles the first West Point class that graduated and went directly on to serving as officers in the Iraq War.  Commentary is provided by Gen. Peter Chiarelli (vice chief of staff US Army), Lt. Col. John Nagl (Iraq War veteran & West Point Class '88), Capt. Jason Fritz (Iraq War veteran & West Point class of 2002).

“THE lion of the people will turn on you,” warned Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister, as we sipped green tea at his home in Kabul a few weeks ago. He noted that while Americans had been shocked by a series of spectacular insurgent attacks over the summer, the United States-led coalition faced a far greater danger than the resurgent Taliban: growing despair among average Afghans that their government is fundamentally illegitimate.

We looked down into Pakistan in August from the Afghan border outpost of Torkham, high in the legendary Khyber Pass. Invaders have carved violent paths across this border in both directions since the time of Alexander the Great. Today, an invasion by proxy from Pakistan continues that bloody tradition.

 

This year alone, pirates have attacked 61 ships in the region. They have held 14 oil tankers, cargo vessels, and other ships with a total of over 300 crew members, and have demanded ransoms of over $1 million per ship.

September 2008- Monsoon clouds crushed the dark, seaweed-green landscape of eastern Burma. Steep hillsides glistened with teak trees, coconut palms, black and ocher mud from the heavy rains, and tall, chaotic grasses. As night came, the buzz saw of cicadas and the pestering croaks of geckos rose through the downpour. Guided by an ethnic Karen rebel with a torchlight attached by bare copper wires to an ancient six-volt battery slung around his neck, I stumbled across three bamboo planks over a fast-moving stream from Thailand into Burma.

Russian troops have established control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two separatist regions of Georgia

The Russian military, having now secured complete control over the autonomous territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, appears increasingly engaged in an assault on Georgia proper. Distinguished commentators and Western governments alike have demanded action and called for transatlantic unity in the face of the Russian assault.

July 1, 2008- Rises in food prices and global population, especially among the middle classes in India and China, have brought renewed respect to the philosopher of demographic catastrophe, Thomas Robert Malthus.

All the debate about Colombian free trade has obscured something important: Colombia is far safer now than it was five years ago. In fact, if Iraq were reclaiming terrorist-controlled areas as effectively as Colombia is, even the most die-hard opponents of the Iraq War would admit error. Colombia is, after Iraq and Afghanistan, our third-biggest nation-building project, and it is by far our most successful.

OUR Marine platoon stayed up late to listen on a hand-cranked shortwave radio as Colin Powell testified before the United Nations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It was February 2003, and we were camped in the northern Kuwaiti desert, awaiting orders to invade Iraq.