If you’re at all interested in the war in Afghanistan, today’s New York Times is chock-full of must-reads. In addition to the blockbuster lead story reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai—the brother of President Hamid Karzai and a suspected player in the drug trade—has been receiving payments from the CIA for much of the past decade, the paper has a front-page article outlining what may be the Obama administration’s new strategy for prosecuting the war. (It’s a split-the-baby approach: “McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country.”)
The op-ed page, meanwhile, features a blistering commentary by Peter Galbraith, the UN official who was fired after he criticized the organization’s feckless response to electoral fraud, and who worries that the upcoming run-off will be similarly compromised. And, perhaps most surprisingly, Tom Friedman—the man for whom Friedman units are named, and who has been publicly waffling about what we should do in Afghanistan for months—has decided it’s time for the U.S. to start getting out.
Greg Marx is an associate editor at CJR. Follow him on Twitter @gregamarx.