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Book Review by Rosa Brooks - “The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens” by Bernard E. Harcourt.

Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels seized the city of Afrin in northern Syria, Turkey’s president and military said Sunday, nearly two months after launching an offensive to oust Kurdish militants from the area.

"The intention behind such a strategy is easy to understand, but the logic is backward. The United States does have an incentive to challenge Moscow where it can, but it has a losing hand in Syria."

"Pakistan is doing the 'bare minimum' needed to address U.S. demands that it stop the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network from operating within its borders, a senior U.S. official has said."

“The catch, of course, is that the Army's tried to field all these things before -- and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.”

The Army’s 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade left for Afghanistan last week, the first deployment in a new train-advise-assist model that the service hopes to build on with larger organizational units, the Army staff’s director of force management said Friday.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday that he doesn’t want the months-long investigation into how four U.S. soldiers were killed last year in Niger held up, and he expects to soon receive a memorandum about it from the Pentagon’s top general.

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

“Army General John Nicholson strikes upbeat note on reconciliation even as some question whether U.S. is in a position to help negotiate a solution.”

The Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria say they are not in the country for the money or to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The United States already has the best infantry soldiers, Marines and special operators on the face of the Earth, but Defense Secretary James N. Mattis wants them to completely overmatch any potential foes.

"The United States is bolstering its efforts to help the Afghan government squash a rash of deadly high-profile attacks in its capital city through Special Operations raids, intelligence to map out residents and additional military advising."

The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State has been able to decimate the terror group's self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria but these gains could be easily undercut by continued instability, a U.S. intelligence official warned Tuesday.

With the announcement of President Donald Trump's firing of the United States' top diplomat, Rex Tillerson's tenure as secretary of state now enters the history books as one of the shortest ever for a new administration.

The U.S. military is ratcheting up its attack on Taliban funding streams in Afghanistan, where troops are using a strategy that paid dividends in the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the general in charge of U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and picked CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace him. Trump has also nominated Gina Haspel, the current deputy director at the Central Intelligence Agency, to replace Pompeo at the CIA.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan on Tuesday to meet senior U.S. and Afghan officials and discuss both the military campaign and “peeling off” some members of the Taliban to pursue a peace deal with the Afghan government.

A report published in November by the Institute for the Study of War flatly stated that Afghanistan is “a safe haven for terrorist plots against the U.S. homeland.” Afghan officials believe there are now an estimated 3,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is denouncing the Syrian government and Russia for the failure of a cease-fire in Syria that the U.N. Security Council demanded two weeks ago.

"Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has put a peace offer on the table, and analysts say the ball is now in the Taliban's court."

"Anger grows in majority community over poverty and official neglect; ‘No one has repaid us for our sacrifices.’"

"Expectations for an Afghan peace process grew last month with the Taliban’s release of a letter addressed to the American people offering to negotiate."

Continue on for a link to a great list of books, papers and memoirs compiled by Dave Maxwell at Task & Purpose.

"U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that more than 40,000 foreigners from at least 120 countries flocked to Iraq and Syria to join Islamic State."

"The U.S. is adding military advisers and combat aircraft as part of President Donald Trump's new Afghanistan war strategy, but Congress appears to be paying little attention."