Tagged: Afghanistan

We look into a Tumblr  account that lends perspective to the drone war by using Google Earth. Joining us is blogger and artist James Bridle, creator of Dronestragram.

We hear the words honor, duty and sacrifice a lot around Veteran’s Day – and rightly so. What we rarely hear about are the individual, human stories that lead men and women to pick up the mantle of those powerful words and to fight in America’s name. “Where Soldiers Come From” follows a pack of close friends from Michigan’s icy Upper Peninsula as they transform from small town teenagers to National Guardsmen fighting in Afghanistan.

Check out the trailer for Where Soldiers Come From:

When we call dogs ‘man’s best friend’, we’re typically referring to their value as companions and protectors - but canines have a long history of helping people with affairs far more solemn that playing fetch.  For centuries, dogs have played a pivotal role in aiding the disabled, in hunting, for search and rescue operations, and for their service in police and military applications.  After a long hiatus, U.S. bomb-sniffing dogs were re-introduced to the battlefield in 2007.  There are now some six-hundred military dogs deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An inside look at the war in Afghanistan. Recently, an increasing number of American troops have died at the hands of their Afghan counterparts, raising questions about American efforts there. But these incidents don’t come as a surprise to award-winning Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who spent two years covering the war in Afghanistan. He's written a book on the conflict -- Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan.

This week, NATO Cabinet ministers, including U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, will try to tackle the problem of Afghan security. The basic plan for bringing American troops home from Afghanistan is to let Afghan security forces fight for their own country. But there's a hitch — finding a way to pay for the Afghan army.

Granite Stater, noted international attorney and independent advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Finance, Phillip Walker, gives his forecast for the political and economic future of Afghanistan. Despite the violence, he says civil institutions are beginning to take hold and the economy is growing rapidly. But, he warns, foreign aid must continue to flow into Afghanistan after NATO withdrawal for this progress to continue.

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