President Obama gave his first presidential interview to Al-Arabiya TV outlining, in broadest terms, the administration’s goal to revamp relations with the Middle East.  He told Hisham Melhem: “We are ready to enter initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.”

One mutual interest in the region: a stabilized Afghanistan.  We spoke with our favorite Afghanistan expert, and Council on Foreign Relations connection, Elizabeth Rubin.  She explained how we are not going to fix Afghanistan without the help of a former ally in the region.  So we’ll have to fix that relationship before they will help us.  And they are not going to make it easy.

It’s official.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified before the Senate Armed Services Comittee that, as per the new administration’s plan, 2 more brigades will be sent to Afghanistan by the end of this spring, with a third to join them by the end of summer.

Our favorite Afghanistan expert, Council On Foreign Relations’s Elizabeth Rubin, talked with Film at 11  about the proxy war that these soldiers are going to be joining in on.

More from our interview with Elizabeth Rubin, our favorite Afghanistan expert from the Council on Foreign Relations.

In this excerpt, she breaks down who The Taliban are, who they were when we first started fighting them, and who they are turning into, and who they are not.

The White House website is spelling out the new administration’s agenda on a dedicated page.  The only country referred to by name on the list of new policies is Iraq.  Where’s Afghanistan?  Throughout the campaign promises to end the war in Iraq went hand in hand with refocusing on Afghanistan.  Afghanistan policy appears at the top the Foreign Policy page as “Afghanistan and Pakistan” with the pledge to commit more troops to stabilizing Afghanistan.

Elizabeth Rubin from the Council on Foreign Relations spoke with Film at 11 during the campaign and gave her assessment of the original military commitment to Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban and how that all worked out.

The new administration says they are going to put the US military focus on Afghanistan and the War on Terror there.  We invited Elizabeth Rubin from the Council on Foreign Relations to stop by Film at 11 and give us her expert take on the ground truth in Afghanistan and what the last eight years have added up to.

Here’s the first of a few extended excerpts from the interview we shot for Common Sense (you remember Common Sense, don’t you?. . . of course!)

First up . . . the Afghan National Army.   Ms. Rubin explains why we couldn’t build an army out of a national population that was able to hold off the Soviet Army for 10 years.

Some of you have noticed that we…ahem…have taken a break. Does this mean we cracked under the pressure of a new enterprise? Exhaustion? Too many bottles of champagne to celebrate the final episode of Season 1 of “Common Sense”?

Producer Ed Head and Director of Photography Nelson Villarreal

We ain’t so young anymore–some of us needed the beauty sleep. But mostly the merry elves of Film@11 have been busy with a whole new slate of exciting programming. We’ll be trickling it out in the next few weeks, with plenty of notice when we go live once again.