Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials -- October 7, 2009

U.S. Army soldiers board a CH-47 Chinook helicopter for extraction during Operation Champion Spear outside the village of Marsac in Paktia province, Afghanistan, Sept. 7, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Christopher Nicholas

How War Will End in Afghanistan: Even if Conflict Does Not -- Foreign Policy

If war has not addressed threats in Afghanistan, then the United States needs to address threats without war.

Here's the problem. How do you deal with an untrustworthy dictatorship threatening U.S. national interests?

The 20th-century solution was security through total victory: destroy the enemy's military and replace the dictator with democracy. When the defeat of Germany in World War I failed to prevent World War II, American leadership learned that lasting peace required both military victory and political transformation. As U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's aide Breckinridge Long put it in 1942, "We are fighting this war because we did not have an unconditional surrender at the end of the last one." The failure of 1919 -- embodied in the looming White House portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, an architect of the Treaty of Versailles -- shadowed FDR. This time, Roosevelt declared, allied forces "must not allow the seeds of the evils we shall have crushed to germinate and reproduce themselves in the future."

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COMMENTARIES, OPINIONS, AND EDITORIALS

Bury the Vietnam Analogy -- Peter Beinart, Daily Beast

David Wood's Afghanistan Journal -- Small Wars Journal

Obama and the General -- Wall Street Journal editorial

Afghanistan's Changing Battleground -- Austin Bay, Real Clear World

Iran Isn’t Stalinist Russia -- Michael J. Totten, Commentary Magazine

The essence of diplomatic engagement with Iran -- Ray Takeyh, Boston.com

No more grave errors: Justice Dept. can't let terrorists escape death penalty -- New York Daily News editorial

Quote of the Day: Obama on al Qaeda -- Michael Crowley, The New Republic

Russia's War on Words -- K. Anthony Appiah, Washington Post opinion.

Taiwan and China - Philip Bowring, Int'l Herald Tribune

China and North Korea: Putting a squeeze on -- The Economist

Obama Bows Again ... to China -- Washington Times

China Has a Massive Dollar Problem -- Kenneth Rogoff, RealClearWorld

No Peace in Swat Valley -- Anna Husarska, Los Angeles Times