Archive for June, 2010
U.S. Dilemma: Fighting Corruption Strengthens Mujahideen/Taliban
Danger Room | By Noah Shachtman | 13 June 2010 New U.S. Intel Push Risks Taliban ‘Propaganda Bonanza’ Even before they got to Kabul, the current crop of American military commanders worried that their biggest obstacle could turn out to be Afghanistan’s endemic corruption, not its insurgents. So, in some ways, it’s not all that [...]
Afghanistan: Counting the Ways We Were Wrong
CNAS | By Andrew Exum | 16 June 2010 Afghanistan: Graveyard of Assumptions? (Updated) These past few weeks have brought a fresh torrent of bad news from Afghanistan: a governor in a key district assassinated, U.S. and allied operations in flux, Afghan leadership in question. Policy-makers in Washington and allied capitols are [...]
From Vietnam to Afghanistan: Not winning hearts and minds
Washington Post | By Henry Allen | 18 June 2010 We were putting up the tents when Pakistani police pulled up and told us we might get killed if we camped there. Four guys in a British lump of a car, they'd driven out from Peshawar to warn us. No "fees" or "permits" were demanded, though doubtless they worried about the political [...]
Afghanistan’s Minerals of Mass Wealth (MMWs)
Reuters (India) | By Sue Pleming | 18 June 2010 Afghan mineral gloss seeks to shift war narrative (Reuters) - U.S. defence officials this week breathlessly touted Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth as a rare good news story in what may be an attempt to reverse pessimism over the war and its outcome. If the timing of the story is aimed at [...]
Stratfor on the Russian Dilemma
Stratfor | By Peter Zeihan | 15 June 2010 The Kyrgyzstan Crisis and the Russian Dilemma STRATFOR often discusses how Russia is on a bit of a roll. The U.S. distraction in the Middle East has offered Russia a golden opportunity to re-establish its spheres of influence in the region, steadily expanding the Russian zone of control into a shape [...]
Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination
Ha'aretz | By Henry Siegman | 11 June 2010 If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us? Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel [...]
Obama’s Choice: Withdraw or Reinforce Failure?
Los Angeles Times | By Doyle McManus | 17 June 2010 Obama's mixed Afghanistan messages Choices are stark: Stick to the timetable and drawdown, or stick it out until the job is done. And so far, he has signaled intent to do both. The news from Afghanistan has been bad lately. The military campaign to win control of Kandahar, the [...]
The New American Imperialism
Naked Punch | 9 June 2010 By NOAM CHOMSKY Interviewed by David Barsamian MIT, Cambridge, MA 2 April 2010 One of the themes that Howard Zinn tried to address during his long career was the lack of historical memory. The facts of history are scrupulously ignored and/or distorted. I was wondering if you could comment on imperialism then and [...]
By Marjah Failure, McChrystal Pushes Karzai into Taleban’s Arms
New York Times | By Dexter Filkins | 11 June 2010 Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban “Mr. Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out .” “Last winter, Mr. Karzai accused NATO in a speech of ferrying Taliban fighters around northern Afghanistan in helicopters. Earlier this year, [...]
CNAS Panel: Advice on “Af/Pak” to the Next U.S. President
CNAS | 10 June 2010 CNAS Fourth Annual Conference Shaping the Agenda: American National Security in the 21st Century BEYOND AFGHANISTAN: AMERICA'S ENDURING INTERESTS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA Beyond Afghanistan & Keynote Address by Michèle Flournoy 00:00:00 Panel Discussion 00:57:20 Questions & Answers 01:11:30 [...]
