2010 Essays

The Afghanistan War - Nine Years Later and No End in Sight

Mitchell, Lincoln A.

It has now been about five months since President Obama announced his strategy of increasing troops in Afghanistan and a vague commitment to withdrawing most U.S. troops beginning in mid-2011. The administration began back pedaling from that pledge almost immediately after Obama made it. With the deadline for withdrawing troops only slightly more than a year away, that goal seems more remote today than it did a year ago. In recent months, the war, which is now in its ninth year, has begun to feel like a permanent part of the political landscape.