Under the cover of night late on Saturday, Barack Obama boarded Air Force One with country music singer Brad Paisley for a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan. This is Mr. Obama's first trip since 2012, when he signed an agreement to end the Afghanistan War.

If you want to know what's happening in Afghanistan, read Matthieu Aikins. If you want to know what torturous executing enforcer the U.S. military is working with to keep the peace in Afghanistan, follow Matthieu Aikins on Twitter.

At least 350 people were killed in a landslide in northeastern Afghanistan, according to the UN. As many as 2,000 people remain missing.

Great news: Taliban captors appear willing to return Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to the U.S. after nearly five years in captivity in Afghanistan. Bad news: Neither the Taliban nor the Pentagon seem sure who in the U.S. government Bergdahl's captors should be dealing with.

A security guard at a hospital in Kabul opened fire Thursday morning, killing three American doctors—including a father and son—and wounding a U.S. nurse.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army (retired), had a really tough time after he was pushed out of the workforce. Would you like to hear about it? He would like to tell you about it. Welcome to LinkedIn's Career Curveball® confessionals!

Michael Hastings' book on the Afghanistan war, The Operators, is set to be made into a movie, and Brad Pitt is reportedly being tapped to play Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Bud Light Lime-swilling war architect who lost his job thanks to Hastings' unflattering profile.

A large turnout for the Afghan presidential election has led officials to extend the voting period on Saturday by an hour. The turnout comes despite Taliban threats against all participants involved in the election and militants carrying out fatal attacks on polling centers in recent days.

An Afghan girl helps her brother down from a security barrier in the eastern Afghan city of Khost. Anja Niedringhaus, the Associated Press photographer who took this picture, was killed by an Afghan police officer on Friday. Kathy Gannon, an AP reporter, was shot twice in the same attack and is stable condition.

A British sniper in Afghanistan reportedly fired one bullet at a jihadi from 930 yards and blew up his bomb vest, killing him and his five jihadi buddies. Then the sniper went to college, choked out a lib professor, beat Obummer in the Super Bowl, and married a beautiful blonde virgin.

Oh, Rummy, Rummy, Rummy. You're senile, you're white, you're conservative and entitled, so it sort of makes sense. But you don't just say these things out loud, old man.

Someone in Kabul hasn't watched Rambo III, obvs.

[Afghan men attend the burial of Afghanistan's influential Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim during his funeral procession in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. Fahim, a leading commander in the alliance that fought the Taliban who was later accused with other warlords of targeting civilian areas during the country's civil war, died on Sunday. Image via Massoud Hossaini/AP.]

So yeah, maybe we'll be out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Considering all the damage that's been done in Afghanistan, to Afghans and to Americans, one dog may not mean all that much in the big scheme of things. But Jesus, a dog. Jesus. He just wants to please somebody.

It was always the good war. Not like that weird Iraq distraction. "The right war was Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan," John Kerry said in 2004. "We cannot lose Afghanistan," Barack Obama said in 2008. Well, we lost it, America. Because we suck much more than we're willing to admit to ourselves.

This is an MRAP, a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle. It didn't exist until well into the Iraq War, when we went to war with the Army we had, and that Army's Humvees didn't survive very well. We bought a lot of MRAPs. The Iraq War is over. Now, how many of these MRAPs can we put your police down for?

Tom Cruise stirred up major controversy earlier this week when court documents obtained by several websites appeared to suggest Cruise felt his job as an actor was comparable to "fighting in Afghanistan."

We know what's wrong with Veteran's Day. We know this country is crawling with jobless, homeless veterans of America's constant occupations and invasions. We know there aren't enough jobs for these people already burdened with so much, and no labor market demand for the "skill set" of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and existential dread. And yet they went out there and committed whatever insanity they were commanded to commit, in the name of America, even if it never mattered to 99% of Americans one way or the other. Instead of the usual Veteran's Day garbage of saying "uhh ... sorry" to those who suffered for empire, how about giving the veterans the only thing that can hold them together: a mission.

Two men riding a bicycle shot and killed Mohammad Amanullah, head of the Independent Election Commission in Kunduz, Afghanistan on Wednesday. Following the incident, Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Taliban, sent out this tweet: