In this photo taken Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009, new Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, left, sits with his comrade Waliur Rehman during a meeting with media in Sararogha in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan along the Afghanistan border. (AP)

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Full boil in Afghanistan today. Helicopters down. Fourteen Americans dead. Anti-American protest in the streets of Kabul.

The Taliban crowing. But what is the Taliban? Is it a patched-together crew of outback opportunists that might be bought off, brought in, worked with to defuse Afghanistan and let the U.S. and NATO ramp down?

Is it a stone-cold ally of Al Qaeda committed to global war with the United States that must defeated?

Is it something else? The answer is central to America’s decision on troop levels for Afghanistan.

This hour, On Point: We’re looking again at the Taliban.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Peter Bergen, longtime journalist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he co-directs the Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative. He’s author of “The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader,” and editor of the Af-Pak Channel, at ForeignPolicy.com.  Read Peter’s piece on the Taliban-al-Qaeda merger in The New Republic.

Michael Semple, regional specialist on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and currently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. He’s worked in the Af-Pak region for more than 20 years, most recently as the deputy head of the EU Mission to Afghanistan.  His new book is “Reconciliation in Afghanistan.”  Read Michael’s piece on “Flipping the Taliban” in Foreign Affairs.

Read journalist David Rohde’s account of being held hostage by the Taliban for 7 months,  in the New York Times.

U.S. soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division patrol in the outskirts of Bagram north of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday, March 8, 2009. President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American forces already in the country. (AP)

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He took charge as commander-in-chief on January 20. But as of last Friday, Afghanistan is well and truly President Obama’s war. With Pakistan sewn right in.

The new president is sending 4,000 military trainers to Afghanistan, on top of the 17,000 additional combat troops headed there. With the 38,000 U.S. troops already in the country, that will be the highest number since the war began. Plus new billions for Pakistan.

All to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Queda,” he says. Will it work? The pressure is on.

This hour, On Point: Weighing the Obama plan for Afghanistan.

You can join the conversation. Are you with the president on this war? On the “Af-Pak” challenge? Do we have a choice?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Kabul is Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Afghanistan bureau chief for National Public Radio.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., is Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the CATO Institute and author of the new book “The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free” and 2004’s “Exiting Iraq: How the U.S. Must End the Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda.”

And from Gig Harbor, Washington, is Thomas Donnelly, defense and security policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institut and author, with Frederick Kagan, of “Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power.” He was policy group director and staff member for the House Armed Services Committee and was deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century from 1999 to 2002.

Army Military Police escort a detainee to his cell in Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002. (AP)

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It was seven years ago this month that the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay.

The images are seared in the mind of the world, from the earliest days of George W. Bush’s war on terror. Hooded prisoners, black goggles, orange jump suits, in chains, in chain-link cages at Guantanamo.

The White House called them the “worst of the worst.” And some were. But most, apparently, were not. Hundreds have been released. Human rights and torture accusations swirled.

Today, word is coming from Barack Obama’s administration that the detention camp at Guantanamo — “Gitmo” — will be closed, shut down, along with a shadowy global network of CIA secret prisons. Also to be ended: the interrogation methods that brought charges of torture.

Gitmo became a symbol of American rage. Closing it is complicated. This hour, On Point: Shutting down Guantanamo.

You can join the conversation. Is this a weight off your shoulders? A step toward getting right with the world? With the law? Is it a danger? A worry? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Charlottesville, Virginia, we’re joined by Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal analyst for Slate.

And from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, we’re joined by Carol Rosenberg, reporter for the Miami Herald covering Guantanamo and Camp X-Ray. She reports today on Obama’s move to close Guantanamo.

From Washington, we’re joined by Major David Frakt, Air Force Reserves judge advocate and defense counsel in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions. He is representing Guantanamo detainees Mohamed Jawad and Ali al Bahlul. He is also Director of the Criminal Law Practice Center and professor of law at Western State University.

Joining us from New York is Matthew Waxman, professor of law at Columbia University. He held several positions in the Bush administration, including deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, special assistant to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, director for contingency planning & international justice at the National Security Council, and principal deputy director of policy planning at the State Department.

Victor Juma, who lost his father, stands in front of an artist's impression of the events of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing at the memorial for the victims in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 7, 2008.

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It’s 9/11 again. Seven years now. Years of war, bloodshed, torture, military sacrifice, and deepening concern in the United States about the country’s fundamental economic and security standing — about the country’s future.

Al Qaeda set out to attack, entangle, bleed, and weaken the United States. Seven years on, we have not been hit again. Or have we? In the pocketbook, in military readiness, in global standing?

The United States is certainly entangled, bled, and — on many fronts — weakened. And Al Qaeda’s still out there.

This hour, On Point: American security, American strategy, seven years after 9/11.

Are we better off today than we were seven years ago? Even without another attack on American soil, has Bin Laden won? What should the U.S. do now to secure its homeland and its place in the world? Does John McCain have the answer? Does Barack Obama? Do you? Join the conversation and tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Berlin is Craig Whitlock, a staff writer for The Washington Post. He’s been covering the U.S. campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. His front-page article in yesterday’s Post reported that U.S. and Pakistani officials are shifting tactics in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Joining us from Vancouver is Bruce Hoffman. He’s a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a world-renowned expert on terrorism and insurgency. A revised and updated version of his acclaimed 1998 book, “Inside Terrorism,” was published in 2006.

And joining us in our studio is Stephen Van Evera. He’s a professor of political science at MIT and an expert on foreign policy and security. His recent article, “A Farewell to Geopolitics,” appears in the new volume “To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine.”

The big news in Western media out of Al Qaeda country lately is that Al Qaeda is in trouble. That the spearhead of global terrorism is being rejected by mainstream Muslims sick of death and destruction, even rejected by onetime theorists of jihad.

New Yorker magazine reporter Lawrence Wright has gone deep on what he calls “the rebellion within,” and he joins me today. Also with us, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who voices skepticism on Al Qaeda’s reported setbacks from the frontlines in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This hour, On Point: Testing Al Qaeda’s “rebellion within.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lawrence Wright, staff writer for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ (2006). His latest article for The New Yorker, “The Rebellion Within,” appears in the June 2 issue.

Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and bestselling author, he writes for London’s Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. His new book is “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”