Leading commentators examine the Afghan debacle and itsparallels with previous British and Soviet occupations.

Nick Turse is an award-winning journalist, historian, essayist, and the associate editor of the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday and has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, In These Times and the Village Voice.
Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics - including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome - as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of international relations and history at Boston University.
Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website Tomdispatch.com, a project of The Nation Institute, where he is a Fellow. He is the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in New York City.
Chalmers Johnson was President of the Japan Policy Research Institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He was the author of numerous books, including Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Japan: Who Governs?