The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

8 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Engagement BY SHAWN DORMAN A Shawn Dorman is the editor of e Foreign Service Journal. understanding of the ground realities and issues at play. e articles o er three di erent takes on the state of Afghanistan and its relationship with the U.S., with varying degrees of pessimism and hope. While each author comes to the topic from a di erent vantage point by a di erent path, each comes to the same conclu- sion—that the U.S. must remain engaged with Afghanistan. First is the “glass half empty” narra- tive from Ed McWilliams, retired FSO and former special envoy to Afghanistan from 1988 to 1989, with “Will History Repeat Itself?” He o ers a look back to 1989 and a primer on the players then and now, and cautions that “it is critical that the United States not walk away, as it did in 1989.” Next, the glass is half full with David Sedney, who has years of U.S. govern- ment experience working on Afghani- stan and visited that country as recently as October. In “Five ings We Can Still Get Right,” he points to serious challenges for Afghanistan, while also highlighting signs of progress. We’ll call him the cautious optimist. Acknowledg- ing the mixed record of U.S. involvement there, he lays out recommendations for the right way for the U.S. to engage going forward. And nally, in “What U.S. Policymak- ers Should Know About Afghanistan Today,” Scott Smith of the U.S. Institute of Peace shows us that we might need to look at another glass altogether. He describes Afghanistan today not through a U.S. lens but through the lens of Afghan cultural tradition and transition. is month’s book reviews look at two important books on Afghanistan , e Wrong Enemy by Carlotta Gall and e Wars of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen. We would like to o er special thanks to photographer Casey Garret Johnson— a senior program o cer for USIP who has lived and worked in Afghanistan since 2008—for sharing his spectacular photos, which illustrate this month’s focus section. In his President’s Views column this month, “ e Departed,” Bob Silverman invites readers to join AFSA in support- ing the Mustafa Akarsu Local Guard Force Support Act that, if passed, will help the families of locally employed Diplomatic Security colleagues killed in the line of duty. Continuing on our theme of engage- ment is the o cial call for nominations for the 2015-2017 Governing Board in AFSA News. AFSA invites members to consider running for o ce or nominat- ing someone else who is ready to take an active role in working for the Foreign Service through AFSA. is month’s Speaking Out is a pitch for another type of engagement, the vir- tual kind. In “Twitter Is a Cocktail Party, Not a Press Conference (or, Social Media for Reporting O cers),” Wren Elhai makes a strong and bold case for why Twitter can and should help reporting o cers do their jobs. Tweet or email us your thoughts on this month’s issue, or take quill to paper. Your choice, but we hope you’ll join the dialog. n fghanistan is at a turning point, again. is month signals the o cial end of coalition combat missions there and the continuation of the draw- down of U.S. forces. A new government is in place following a contentious and contested, but ultimately successful, transfer of the presidency from Hamid Karzai to Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. What does this new leadership landscape, including some not so new faces, mean for the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship? What does a diminishing role for the U.S. military mean for U.S. diplomacy? Can Afghanistan succeed? is month we feature various views on the way forward for Afghanistan and, in particular, the proper role for the United States there. In September, we brought you a look at what it’s like to serve at Embassy Kabul from FSO Bill Bent, and in October, an article o n U.S. work with Afghan women by FSO Sandya Das, “Learning from Women’s Successes in Afghanistan.” We reached out to a number of experts inside and outside government to bring a variety of perspectives to this issue, with the aim of answering the question, “What should we know about Afghanistan today?” What we got back was not entirely expected, and might well be of interest to those inside the U.S. government, as well as those outside, who are looking for better