As President Obama homes in on the Afghanistan decision, here are some articles you might want to read. I hope he has read them:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/11/peril-in-pakistan-fb-ali.html#more http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/one_tribe_at_a_time.pdfHT: Pat Lang http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/NYU's Center on Law and Security had a well-attended conference last Friday, "Counterinsurgency: America's Strategic Burden," which I hope to write about later this week. The bottom line: many well-informed experts are not optimistic about U.S. prospects in Afghanistan. More than one of them offered the view that Pakistan was a far greater danger, and in the long run a far more difficult problem than Afghanistan.UPDATE: Bill Moyers did a repris (Friday, November 20) of LBJ's Vietnam decision making. Moyers captured the muddle and troubled moral considertions by rebroadcasing Johnson's phone conversation with major players. Moyers was then one of his aides so we can assume that he knows whereof he has selected from taped phone conversations. Here in transcript form: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/transcript1.html There is a video link as well: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/watch.html