Imperial Illusions

On the morning of October 9, 2009, Barack Obama learned that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That afternoon, in an irony that would probably not have amused the prize committee, the president met with his military and foreign policy advisers to decide how to win the war in Afghanistan.

As early as 2007, then Senator Obama had declared that, in contrast to the unnecessary and terminally mismanaged war in Iraq, the Afghan war had...

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