In The Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan
By Seth G. Jones
(W.W. Norton, 414 pp., $27.95)

I.

With the war in Afghanistan hanging in the balance, it is useful, if a little sad, to recall just how complete the American-led victory was in the autumn of 2001. By December, the Taliban had vanished from Kabul, Kandahar, and much of the countryside. Afghans celebrated by flinging their turbans and dancing in the streets. They dug up TV sets, wrapped in plastic, from hiding places in their gardens. In Mullah Omar’s hometown of Sangesar, the locals broke into his madrassa and tore out the door frames for firewood. Among ordinary Afghans, there was a genuine sense of deliverance. The world, which had abandoned them more than a decade before, was coming back. 

In the shadow of the intelligence failure that culminated with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab lighting an explosive aboard a Detroit-bound flight, the titular head of the U.S. intelligence community was busy fighting another war. For months, in fact, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence (DNI), had been waging an epic bureaucratic offensive. His job had been created in the wake of September 11 to foster cooperation and accountability among the 16 agencies sifting through the mounds of inbound data about threats to U.S. interests.

BIGGEST TACTICAL BLUNDER: Pushing the Israeli-Arab peace process too hard. Obama took office looking for bold strokes at a time when peace seemed as far away as ever: Israel had just finished its punishing military campaign in Gaza last winter, and the Arab world was inflamed, and deeply uninterested in making offerings to Israel. Obama's squeeze on Israeli settlements, meanwhile, managed to a) tick off a backlash in Israel that enabled the Netanyahu government to stand its ground, without b) shaking loose meaningful Arab support.

It’s official: Barack Obama will attend the Copenhagen climate conference on December 18, the final day of scheduled negotiations. Originally slated only for a brief stopover at the start of the conference, en route to accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Obama’s change in schedule is making enviros hopeful. Politico called it “a strong signal that U.S.

Ben Smith notes that national security advisor Jim Jones, speaking at the J Street conference last week, called the Middle East conflict "the epicenter" of U.S. foreign policy problems around the world.

Jim Jones's stern words for General McChrystal on the Sunday shows have gotten plenty of attention, but less noticed were Jones's comments about John McCain, who'd accused Jones of not "want[ing] to alienate the left base of the Democrat Party” on Afghanistan:

In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House.