War is war and murder is murder. The law draws the distinction. The American armed drone is a weapons system of war, not of policemen. And even if it were a police weapon, the United States does not have a commission to police the world of its radicals, jihadists, and religious fanatics, although for too many years it has acted as if it did.

'Argo' & 'Zero Dark Thirty'

Little America is the best single book now available on a crucial phase of the American war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Iraq remain awkward and troubling topics for both political parties.

Two new photography exhibits, running concurrently at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., through May 20, approach war in starkly different ways. These differences correspond to important differences in the experiences of soldiers a century and a half apart.

It was not supposed to end this way. Although President Barack Obama deserves credit for bringing an end to the war in Iraq that he inherited, if he had had his wishes, thousands of U.S. troops would nevertheless have remained stationed in Iraq indefinitely.

The Afghan government's order a week ago to the U.S. to close its prison at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where it holds unidentified prisoners, came as a shock to Washington, although President Karzai has before asked the U.S. to cease operations because of what he considered infringements upon Afghan sovereignty.

Should the president of the United States be able to authorize the assassination of a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world without telling the public why—or even acknowledging that he has done so? The question is not theoretical. On September 30 a missile fired from an unmanned drone aircraft operated by the CIA killed two American citizens in Yemen.

The plight of Afghan women

Thinking clearly about a slogan & a slur

President Barack Obama finds himself almost alone in his effort to define a broad new middle ground in international affairs. It's not that the center isn't holding. It's that most politicians don't seem to want to go near it.

What's our end game in Afghanistan?

It's not yet time to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Are we fooling ourselves in Afghanistan?

Did the president make a convincing case for the Afghan surge? Given the impossibility of an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, he made a plausible, if not always consistent or convincing, case for his plan. The United States will get in deeper—if more selectively—in order to get out more quickly. That is the pledge Obama has now made to the American people, and he should be held to it.

President Obama must do a better job of explaining our mission in Afghanistan.

What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention?

The Taliban vs. Bollywood