Dispatches From the Edge: Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?
One of the oddest—indeed, surreal—encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How does Washington avoid defeat like it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago? -more-