Greetings,

I wanted to make sure that you saw Quincy Institute Non-resident Fellow Sam Moyn and Deputy Director of Policy and Research Stephen Wertheim’s op-ed on the front page of the Washington Post “Outlook” section this week. 

The analysis —”The Infinity War”— cites the release of the Afghanistan Papers earlier in the week, which revealed that U.S. policymakers doubted almost from the start that the now two-decade-long war could ever succeed, as yet another — albeit tragic — data point in the post-Cold War trajectory of  U.S. military engagement abroad.  

The authors go on to assess why, and by what means, war has become normal and peace has become the exception. Stephen then took the conversation a step further in a video, in which he discusses what can be done — what we at Quincy must work to do — to reverse this dangerous trend. 

In a week when the impeachment investigation otherwise dominated the news headlines in cycle after cycle, Moyn and Wertheim’s thoughtful piece made the Post’s list of most-read opinion pieces.

And they weren’t the only ones to break through. Quincy authors’ analyses dominated the news coverage of the Afghanistan Papers:

• “If Ukraine Is Impeachable, What’s Afghanistan?” by Andrew Bacevich, The Atlantic, December 10, 2019 
• “Where Is the Outrage Over the War in Afghanistan?”, by Jeet Heer, The Nation, December 13, 2019
• “Weekend”, BBC, December 14, 2019. Includes an interview with Quincy Research Associate, Adam Wunische, which begins at 32:00.
• “Veteran Responds To Washington Post's Afghanistan Papers: The War Has 'Largely Been A Failure'”, by Robin Young, WBUR-Boston, December 11, 2019. 
• “How America Thought Britain Bungled the Afghanistan War,” by Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times (UK), December 15, 2019.