At this critical moment, the U.S. can no longer stand on the sidelines. Now is the time when the U.S. must seriously reconsider its loud silence, and confront the tension that has plagued its policy abroad for decades.

A Conversation Between Ahmed Rashid and Steve Coll

The problem with the firmly partisan prism of the media through which most of American politics is dissected is that we lose the many nuances of our political realities. Complexities become distorted and disfigured as they are forcefully shoved into the binary classifications of party politics. Perhaps the most extreme example is the way foreign policy has almost disappeared in today’s political consciousness, not in the least because the Obama administration’s policies defy easy political branding. However, despite the media’s predisposition to ignore what happens outside of Wall Street and Main Street this election season, President Obama’s first term has been rather eventful on the foreign policy front.