Rory Stewart:

We invested $100 billion a year, deployed 130,000 international troops, and funded hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arab militiamen. And the problem has returned, six years later, larger and nastier.

Mark Danner:

Though we have become accustomed to President Obama telling us, as he most recently did in the State of the Union address, that "America must move off a permanent war footing," these words have come to sound, in their repetition, less like the orders of a commander in chief than the pleas of one lonely man hoping to persuade. What are these words, after all, next to the iron realities of the post–September 11 world?

Chris, about Mike:

He doesn't wear a suit. He's out there with our partners across the desert, fighting a war that no one will ever know about if we win. How do you sell that to the American people?

Azan Ahmed:

The Taliban are back, but the cavalry will not be coming.