John McCain and Lindsey Graham Afghanistan

President Trump and his administration must treat Afghanistan with the same urgency as the fight against the Islamic State, or this stalemate risks sliding into strategic failure. . . . Instead of trying to win, we have settled for just trying not to lose.

The Washington Post, March 13, calling for more soldiers to be sent to Afghanistan.

H.D.S. GREENWAY Vietnam

The briefings bore less and less resemblance to what my colleagues and I were seeing in the field, the burned out villages, the civilians caught in cross fires, the napalm strikes, and how impossible it was going to be to win the proverbial “hearts and minds’’ with the blundering, damaging colossus of military action, always the bluntest of tools.

The New York Times, March 15, on dissonance between US leaders and the war in Vietnam.

S. NATHAN PARK South Korea

It is the culmination of a multi-year movement led by South Korea’s liberal democracy— the opposition, the courts, the media, and the civil society—to achieve, pursuant to the rule of law, an orderly and peaceful removal of an illiberal and anti-democratic president.

The Atlantic, March 14, on the impeachment and removal of President Park Geun-hye.

George Monbiot

Brexit

In admonishing Scotland for seeking to protect itself from this chaos, the government applies a simple rule: whatever you say about Britain’s relationship with Europe, say the opposite about Scotland’s relationship with Britain.

The Guardian, March 15, on a potential second Scottish referendum on leaving the UK.