Italian journalist Olivia Poli joined John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, for a stroll through New York City’s Washington Square Park, where they had an unusually candid conversation about the so-called drawdown of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

MacArthur is an undaunted critic of the Obama administration. When Poli asked about official assurances of progress in Afghanistan being reported in the press, MacArthur said plainly: “Petraeus is lying. … He is a deceiver, and that’s what they do. This is what’s been going on in the American military and the national security establishment since the ’60s.”

His criticism and other writing appears regularly here. — ARK

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