By Ankit Panda
Assorted defense and security links to top off the week:
America’s longest and forgotten war returns. General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, described the current U.S. predicament there as a “stalemate” during an eagerly anticipated hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. The Obama administration has left the Trump administration with a decelerated drawdown schedule, with 8,400 troops remaining in the country (in addition to a similar number of U.S. contractors) as the Taliban makes territorial gains and the Islamic State remains steady.
Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, hinted on Thursday that Trump would defer to Nicholson’s judgement on Afghanistan. The general suggested he’d like a troop increase to support the U.S. mission there. Any troop increase at this point would be a marked departure in the U.S. approach since the end of combat operations in Afghanistan in December 2014. (Bonus: The U.S. Army put out a great blow-by-blow read on the battle of Boz Qandahari in Kunduz province last autumn. Read that here.)
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