Free Republic

It's past time the United States did some soul-searching and accept responsibility for exacerbating an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. This will require a rethink of Washington's current handling of Afghanistan and indeed its entire view of the region. Steve Coll recently made a cogent argument in the New York Times that the U.S. should seriously engage with China and other regional powers. However, this is impossible so long as Washington remains convinced that Pakistan alone is the primary impediment to peace rather than its own mistakes... Both Islamabad and Washington compete to wear the cloak of victimhood. Pakistan remains in...

FOR the decade since its founding by the neoconservative thinker Irving Kristol, The National Interest has been a central forum for the most influential conservative foreign policy thinkers of all stripes to hash out their differences. It launched ideas that entered the public policy vernacular, like "the end of history," "the West and the rest," and "geo-economics," and for the last six months it has played host to a closely watched intramural conservative debate over the wisdom of the war in Iraq. Now, however, a philosophical disagreement within its editorial board has put its future in turmoil. On Friday, 10...