"In Afghanistan, the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. On Tuesday, at least eight people died after a bomb exploded in the southern provincial capital of Lashkar Gah amid a major US-led offensive in the area. Local authorities said all those killed in the attack were civilians. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government has condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy on Sunday that killed twenty-seven civilians, including four women and a child. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television to apologize for the attack. Last year was the deadliest of the war for civilians and foreign troops. And while there is no reliable count of the number of Afghans killed, the number of US soldiers killed in the war has reached 1,000....

..."The exit strategy has to start by ending the killing. There has to be a unilateral ceasefire that can set the stage hopefully for a reciprocal ceasefire from all the various parties that are at war here. It has to include—this isn’t a situation where we can simply say, “Oh, let’s pull out the troops, and then we’re done.” Pulling out the troops, ending the drone attacks, ending these attacks that so consistently are killing civilians, is only step one. It’s only step one. We need to reengage with Afghanistan in an entirely different way than has been made possible. We need to look at serious development assistance."...

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