Is the New Media ready to step up to the plate?
But just as my 2006 pieces on Afghanistan explicitly warned that chaos was descending upon the land, I write it here clearly again: during 2009, we likely will see more fighting in Afghanistan than we have experienced to date. Come spring and summer, friendly casualties from all sides will likely be at an all-time high. There is no end in sight. I would not doubt that, given time and barring some extreme unforeseen changes in the situation, the Afghanistan-Pakistan war might well devolve into something far worse than we ever saw in Iraq.
If America elects a president who does not understand the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could fumble the hard-won progress in Iraq and lose the war in Afghanistan. In fact, many Americans think that we could lose America as we know it.