"Afghanistan: protecting the people is the mission"

Excerpts from Conference of Defence Association's media round-up:

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Afghanistan
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Stratfor has an informative podcast on the recent presidential election in Afghanistan.
http://www.stratfor.com/podcast/20090826_bombs_and_ballot_box_afghanistan

Frederick Kagan for the Weekly Standard criticizes the comparison between the Soviet and current international troops’ presence in Afghanistan.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/854qadbb.asp

The Council on Foreign Relations provides an interactive timeline of the war in Afghanistan since 2001.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/20018/

The Guardian has published a series of diary entries of a British soldier who served in Helmand province in July.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/23/afghanistan-soldier-diary-helmand-ta...

Rory Stewart, in a radio interview and in an article in the London Review of Books, critiques current Western Afghan strategy.
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/08/rory-stewart-the-impossible-afghan-mission
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n13/stew01_.html

Dexter Filkins for the New York Times Magazine writes on the education of girls in Kandahar province.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23school-t.html

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Recommended reading

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has released the August edition of the CTC Sentinel, which covers topics such as counter-insurgency in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq, and homegrown terror in the United States.
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-Vol2Iss8.pdf

Robert Kagan in the Washington Post criticizes the “neat distinction” between wars of “choice” and “necessity” used by the Obama administration [more at Update thoughts here].
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR20090821029...

Damian Brooks for The Torch blog criticizes the propagation of Taliban viewpoints in the international media [emphasis added].
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/08/real-propaganda.html...

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COMISAF COIN GUIDANCE