The U.S. military has been America’s most trusted institution for decades. It has managed to remain above the partisan political fray that has consumed many once-trusted cornerstones of American public life, from the church to schools to the Supreme Court. Yet the military has also become

On Mar. 12, the United States and the Taliban finished their longest set of talks to date. After 16 days of negotiations, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad, tweeted that “peace requires agreement on four issues: counter-terrorism assurances, troop

All militaries craft narratives to help them understand and explain their wars. At their best, these stories can help divine important lessons learned, capturing hard-won battlefield wisdom. But at their worst, they can evolve into myths that distort reality and dodge accountability. In failing or

On Dec. 21, 2018, President Donald Trump surprised his own closest advisors by deciding to pull troops out of Syria and to reduce the 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan by half — a radical reversal of his August 2017 commitment to increase troops and to “never let up until [the terrorists] are

In September, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., gave a wide-ranging interview in which he discussed the DIA’s core mission. Ashley noted that the DIA is charged with producing foundational military intelligence for consumption by warfighters and