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By Herman Melville
By Mahmoud Darwish
$20.44
$13
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — I do so want to believe that Barack Obama is on the right track. His brain is big, his style fresh, his pronouncements both logical and compelling, and it does feel good to have a president-elect elicit universal respect rather than make the world cringe.
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By William Pfaff — What is the message of a terrorist attack that fails to deliver a message? Threats and warnings are being exchanged by India and Pakistan over the attack on Mumbai, carried out by presumed Muslim extremists. But acting to what purpose, and under whose instructions?
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Fresh off his official introduction as the current and future secretary of defense, Robert Gates took questions at the Pentagon on Monday about his party affiliation, President-elect Barack Obama and his outlook on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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By Eugene Robinson — Terrorism (for the umpteenth time) is a tactic, not an enemy. One of the most urgent tasks for President-elect Barack Obama’s “team of rivals” is coming up with a coherent intellectual framework—and a winning battle plan—for George W. Bush’s globe-spanning “war on terror.”
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AP file photo
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By Chris Hedges — The world is far more complex than our childish vision of good and evil. We as a nation and a culture have no monopoly on virtue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when viewed from the receiving end, are state-sponsored acts of terrorism.
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AP photo / Rahmat Gul
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By Robert Fisk — The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes. Kandahar is in Taliban hands—all but a square mile at the centre of the city—and the first Taliban checkpoints are scarcely 15 miles from Kabul.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Still-President Bush has discussed his legacy with his sister Dorothy Bush Koch as part of a national oral-history project, suggesting the future should remember him for his “liberation” of 50 million people and reluctance to ”sell his soul ... to accommodate the political process”—likely referring to that which is outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
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USAF / Staff Sgt. Samuel Rogers
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for America’s foreign policy crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
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independent.co.uk
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By Robert Fisk — Incredibly, as Afghanistan sinks back into the anarchy which became its natural state these past 29 years, Afghan film-makers are producing movies of international quality, turning out pictures which prove—even amid war—that a country’s tragedy can be imaginatively recreated for its people.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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In yet another decision that chips away at the Bush administration’s withering theory of executive dominance, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the evidence presented against five Algerians—who have been in U.S. custody since 2001—was insufficient, freeing the detainees from the bowels of the prison at Guantanamo.
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By Joe Conason — If the prospect of appointing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state irritates the Obama base, what will they make of keeping the man who has executed President Bush’s policies at the Pentagon?
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By William Pfaff — The cynical view of national sovereignty holds that it belongs only to those who can defend it. This was said recently at the Pentagon concerning American manned and unmanned attacks inside Pakistan.
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By William Pfaff — The Americans who voted for Barack Obama as president were promised change they could count on, but it rather looks as if they may actually be asked to make do with a mildly refurbished Clinton administration, with many of the same officials and nearly all of the same policies.
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AP photo
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By Eugene Robinson — We will look back on the Bush years and find it incredible, and disgraceful, that individuals were “purchased” from tribal warlords, tortured at Abu Ghraib, abducted to secret CIA prisons, whisked to Guantanamo and held for years without charges.
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AP photo / Morry Gash
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By Chris Hedges — War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate.
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AP photo / Rafiq Maqbool
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By Robert Fisk — Back in Afghanistan, the mind turns to the small matter of savagery. Not the routine cruelty of war, but the deliberate inhumanity with which we behave.
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama has said that he is not against war, only against stupid wars. One might then reasonably ask if the present war in Afghanistan is not a stupid war?
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By Marie Cocco — It was nothing Bush did—no decision he made, no policy he pursued, no faith that he placed in ideological dogma—that he finds regrettable. Bush told a cable network, “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said” over the course of eight tumultuous years.
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AP photo / Allauddin Khan
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The legacy of George Bush’s two “wars of liberation” may already be judged as foreign policy blunders, but the real costs of war remain even after the truism of failed empire. In Afghanistan, acid attacks on at least 15 female students mark a worrisome trend in women’s rights there. And in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on a patrol of U.S. troops, killing two.
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AP photo / Jose Luis Magana
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By Chris Hedges — Tomorrow I will go to a polling station in Princeton, N.J., and vote for Ralph Nader. I know the tired arguments against a Nader vote. But there is little disagreement among liberals and progressives about the Nader and Obama campaign issues. Nader would win among us in a landslide if this was based on issues.
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By William Pfaff — Governments, like corporations and modern organizations of all kinds, make much of systematically teaching “lessons learned” to those newly arrived to responsibilities, yet they seem infrequently to succeed.
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By William Pfaff — The real issues of the American presidential election are the future of the economy and the future of American foreign policy. The one seems already settled. The second seems to unite John McCain and Barack Obama in support of a program doomed to fail.
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Collage: AP photo / Chip Somodevilla, pool / Wikimedia Commons
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James G. Blight and janet M. Lang —
The leading issue in the current face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain is the economy. Once elected and inaugurated, however, a U.S. president’s politics become global literally overnight.
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If you haven’t seen Charles Ferguson’s buzzed-about 2007 documentary, “No End in Sight,” and you wanted to, you’re in luck: You can now watch the film on YouTube in its entirety. Thanks, Mr. Ferguson!
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syracuse.com
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Want proof that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has brought the democracy it promised? You won’t find it in this case. An appeals court resentenced Parwez Kambakhsh, a student arrested for distributing an article on women’s rights, to a mere 20 years in prison, overturning the controversial death sentence he was given last year.
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By William Pfaff — It did not take the clash between Russia and Georgia to reveal that relations between Russia and the West have taken a bad turn. They have been deteriorating since the mid-1990s, when the decision was taken to expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact states.
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The former secretary of state and Joint Chiefs chairman revealed on Sunday whom he is voting for and why. Powell explained that it was not easy to disappoint his friend, John McCain, but that Barack Obama is the “transformational figure” America needs at this moment.
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A devastating and growing problem is explored in Michael Paul Mason’s riveting new book, “Head Cases.”
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U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Scott
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By William Pfaff — The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy statement says nothing directly about American national defense. It is a strategy for intervening in other countries, and preventing others from blocking or resisting American interventions.
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Christopher Hitchens has reached an endorsement by process of elimination. John McCain, he writes, isn’t up to the job, while “the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience.”
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AP photo / Fraidoon Pooyaa
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By Robert Fisk — When U.S. troops massacre Iraqi civilians in Haditha because their buddy has been murdered, what is the difference between their revenge and that of Saddam?
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By William Pfaff — The issues that have fueled Russian-American tensions in Europe in recent months, and European tensions with both Russia and the United States, have suggested a willingness on all sides to reignite tensions that on the face of it serve no one’s real interests. Recent developments could change all that.
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AP photo / Jim Bourg, pool
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By Scott Ritter — Ralph Nader is right: The two-party system is failing America. There isn’t time between now and Election Day to create a viable third-party candidate, and so the sad reality is one of two deeply flawed men, the byproduct of a deeply flawed political system, will serve as president for the next four or eight years.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Bill Boyarsky — As was the case in the first presidential debate, Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday night’s confrontation with John McCain in Nashville, Tenn., in command of the situation. The Democratic nominee looked calm, confident and presidential as he won their second contest.
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By William Pfaff — There are only two real issues left in the foreign policy debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Yet neither the Iraq nor the Afghanistan issue is within the power of any American president to resolve.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to try their best to make us talk about anything but the big issues facing our country, because most Americans think Barack Obama’s solutions are better.
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DoD / Michael L. Casteel
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Victory in Afghanistan? That’s “neither feasible nor supportable,” according to the outgoing commander of British forces there, who tells The Times of London that the Taliban “seems relatively impervious to losses.” The Afghan government must instead reach some political settlement with more moderate insurgents, concluded Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith.
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By William Pfaff — Less apparent to most people than the economic crisis, but just as real, are the signs of an impending crash of an American military system in which, since the end of the Cold War, Pentagon dysfunction has metastasized so uncontrollably as to scandalize the men who have overseen it.
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By Robert Fisk — By grotesque mischance, $700 billion—the cost of George Bush’s Wall Street rescue plan—is about the same figure the president has squandered on his preposterous war in Iraq, the war we have now apparently “won” thanks to the “surge.”
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boston.com
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According to Gen. David Petraeus, Pakistan could be heading for a crisis that would shake the already volatile nation to its foundations if its leaders, including newly installed President Asif Ali Zardari, do not find a way to deal with the growing issue of militant violence.
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army.mil
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There are at least three differing accounts of exactly what happened on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border Thursday, but most agree that American and Pakistani forces shot at each other. Cross-border raids by U.S. forces into Pakistan’s territory have inflamed relations between the two countries.
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Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
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usip.org
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It seems that “personal regret” is deemed sufficient to exculpate the U.S military after the deaths of civilians in U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates offered his hollow apologies and promised more accurate targeting in future attacks.
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guardian.co.uk
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A secret executive order signed by President Bush grants U.S. military forces “carte blanche” to launch counterterrorist operations inside Pakistan. An attack last week under the auspices of the unprecedented July order is raising concerns: Pakistani officials declared the operation illegal, and international analysts fear an escalating conflict could start a regionwide war.
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On the seventh anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report takes stock and asks some key questions: Has President Bush’s “war on terror” made any progress? Has al-Qaida diminished or grown in strength?
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By William Pfaff — The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.
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AP photo / Anjum Naveed
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Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, assumed the presidency of Pakistan on Tuesday, concluding a transfer of power that began with the resignation of former President Pervez Musharraf just two weeks ago. Zardari’s presidency is likely to be one of conflict, as an ongoing Taliban resurgence and a 26 percent approval rating already riddle his first days in office.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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Barack Obama on Tuesday stepped up his criticism of the outgoing president and the Republican who hopes to succeed him, slamming President Bush for focusing too heavily on Iraq and missing the “central front in the war on terror”—Pakistan and Afghanistan. John McCain, Obama said, would follow Bush’s lead, to America’s detriment.
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AP photo / Fraidoon Pooyaa
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Cell-phone footage shot by a doctor in a makeshift morgue in Azizabad, Afghanistan, showing rows of dead Afghan civilians, including several children, has led to a renewed inquiry into an American-led airstrike that occurred on Aug. 22. American officials had previously insisted that only seven civilians had been killed in the attack, but they’re now having to face the possibility that the actual figure could be as high as 90.
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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