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By Steven Naifeh (Author), Gregory White Smith (Author)
$13
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U.S. Department of Defense
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Listen to this: John Sheehan, a retired U.S. Marine officer and former NATO supreme commander during the war in Bosnia, has finally found a scapegoat for the estimated 8,000-plus Muslims who died in 1995’s Srebrenica massacre: homosexual Dutch soldiers.
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By William Pfaff — The U.S. devotes large sums of money to subsidizing the participation in Afghanistan of small NATO countries and publicizing the affair as a true coalition operation, but NATO-nation political and public support for the war is faint and grudging because few believe the mission is realistic.
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youtube.com
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America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, took to the Afghan airwaves Tuesday to apologize for the deaths of 27 civilians in an airstrike led by U.S. forces last week, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
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Flickr / Tommy Donovan
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Alexander Haig was chief of staff to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, NATO’s supreme military commander and a longtime Republican hawk. He died Saturday in Baltimore at 85 from complications from an infection.
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The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has announced that a stray rocket used during an offensive against Taliban insurgents has killed 12 civilians. The commander has apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the incident.
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Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai has tepidly announced he is pondering introducing conscription in order to build a domestic army and police force capable of taking over security operations from NATO troops in his war-torn country.
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nytimes.com
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In an announcement more apt for a dinner party than a defense memorandum, Romania has agreed to host a new U.S. missile shield in its territory aimed at protecting Western interests from the “emerging threat” of Iranian ballistic missiles.
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While “serious,” the situation in Afghanistan is no longer “deteriorating.” So says Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in the country, pointing to progress in the military effort there.
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Flickr / UK in Afghanistan
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According to NATO’s newly appointed chief civilian representative, 2010 in Afghanistan will see more violence and casualties, but will also mark a turning point in the fight against the Taliban.
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Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office released a statement in which he said he “strongly condemns” a military operation involving “international forces”—one in a series that reportedly occurred over the weekend—in which at least eight Afghan schoolchildren were said to be among the civilian casualties.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Marie Brown
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Perhaps inspired by reports that President Obama plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Gordon Brown said Monday that Great Britain would deploy an additional 500 soldiers to the region. (continued)
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U.S. Army / Spc. Tia P. Sokimson
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By William Pfaff — European allies have tired of America’s cries of “wolf! wolf!” in Iraq (yesterday), Afghanistan (today), and (I fear) Pakistan or Somalia or Kashmir tomorrow.
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By William Pfaff — Other than the United States, Turkey has probably been the most important of Israel’s allies, but now it is getting the “freedom fries” treatment.
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AP / K.M.Chaudary
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After recent militant attacks in Pakistan that killed about 150, the Pentagon is pushing forward with plans to send about $200 million in military aid—in the form of equipment and “services,” according to Reuters.
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AP / Brennan Linsley
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The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years. To mark the anniversary, the Afghan Taliban asserted themselves via an Internet statement Wednesday, claiming they had—and have—no intention of attacking other countries, but they will continue to fight against Western colonizers as long as they occupy the country.
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milwoman.com
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International efforts to expand Afghanistan’s security forces are being undermined by “spiraling increases” in violent deaths among the nation’s police officers as the eighth anniversary of the U.S. war approaches.
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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President Barack Obama is under major pressure to sort out the future U.S. commitment and plan of action in Afghanistan, and thus his work was cut out for him during his huddle Tuesday with NATO leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
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Flickr / U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Marcus J. Quarterman
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The Obama administration is reconsidering its Afghanistan strategy in light of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s startling “mission failure” warning. It’s unclear whether the White House will go along with McChrystal’s call for up to 40,000 more troops—but the general is apparently going to go ahead with his request over the next few days.
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AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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Let’s see how the cable news channels cover this one: A “secret report” by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that Iran has “sufficient information” to make a nuclear weapon and has “probably tested” a key component, but the agency admits it has no hard evidence of a warhead program in Iran.
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AP / Musadeq Sadeq
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A European Union election watchdog group has determined that as many as a third of the votes cast in the recent presidential election in Afghanistan might be fraudulent, which translates to as many as 1.1 million bogus votes—making Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s re-election seem suspect just as the tally tilted in his favor.
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guardian.co.uk / Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
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Last Friday, a NATO airstrike on two hijacked fuel trucks killed at least 90 people in Afghanistan. The Guardian, determined not to let the story pass into the ether of forgotten wartime reporting, managed to interview the families of some of the strike’s victims in a moving exposé of the incredible pain of war.
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guardian.co.uk
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The war in Afghanistan should weigh heavy on the public’s mind, given the recent increase in troop levels and grumblings from high military officials about the manner in which the war is being fought. Now there’s news that a NATO airstrike has killed 90 people, 40 of them believed to be civilians, in the northern part of the country.
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White House / Pete Souza
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General Stanley McChrystal, the top-ranking U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, on Monday issued his highly anticipated report about the status of the conflict on that troubled front, and his assessment of the situation doesn’t fully help President Obama’s cause in ramping up America’s Afghan war effort since he took office.
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U.S. Army / Sgt. Zach Otto
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After an initial bulk-up in the number of troops in Afghanistan earlier this year, the commander of NATO forces in that country is preparing to ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of the ongoing war against the perpetually resurgent Taliban.
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AP / Kevin Frayer
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Tensions continue to build before Thursday’s presidential election in Afghanistan. After a spate of violence in the capital city of Kabul on Tuesday, including a suicide car bombing that killed at least eight people and wounded 53, the government banned local news outlets from reporting any similar incidents on election day.
Posted on Aug 18, 2009
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USMC / Lance Cpl. James Purschwitz
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After eight years of getting nowhere in Afghanistan, U.S. and British forces have decided to open negotiations with “second-tier” Taliban leaders. Those would be local bigwigs, as opposed to Mullah Omar and friends.
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By William Pfaff — The basic question is whether the United States wishes to treat Russia as a permanent enemy, even if it is not. The result of treating states as enemies is that sooner or later they become them.
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army.mil
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By William Pfaff — An account from the Taliban side of the Afghanistan war, which was published in The New York Times on May 5, provides devastating evidence of the failure that almost certainly will eventually overtake the United States and NATO.
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By William Pfaff — If Obama had wanted to give the NATO allies prudent advice about how to avoid terrorist attacks, he should have told them to have nothing to do with the American war on terror, even if it is now under Obama management.
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President Barack Obama draws upon the traditions and meanings behind “two very different holidays”—Passover and Easter—as his jumping-off point for his weekly address about the state of the country and the world ... and about his time rubbing elbows with other world leaders during the past week.
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President Obama’s NATO allies may have responded favorably to his call to ramp up the war effort in Afghanistan, but anti-war demonstrators near the French-German border made their opinions known with protests following the photo ops in Strasbourg, France, on Saturday.
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By Marie Cocco — Afghanistan’s women are no longer in vogue. President Karzai has just signed a law that forces them to obey their husbands’ sexual demands and in general again consigns them to lives of brutal repression.
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By William Pfaff — NATO today, approaching its 60th birthday, faces the prospect of sending home all of its units not willing to fight in Afghanistan under the American flag. They will go home to “defend” Europe. From whom?
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foreignpolicy.com
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A hawkish speech by President Dmitry Medvedev may signal a massive overhaul and escalation of the Russian military. Fears of a growing threat posed by NATO have pushed Russian officials to plan a modernization of the country’s conventional and nuclear forces by 2011.
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By William Pfaff — France’s president has lived up to the stereotype that his people, fond as they are of home vacationing and generally convinced of their own superiority, not infrequently fail to know what they are talking about when dealing with foreign countries.
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AP pool photo / Aleksey Nikolskyi
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By Scott Ritter — The president must be getting bad advice. Why else would he offer not to build a missile defense system he doesn’t want in exchange for Russia’s help with an Iranian nuclear weapons program that doesn’t exist?
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AP photo / Virginia Mayo
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Vice President Joe Biden held forth at a NATO meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, reinforcing President Barack Obama’s message from last weekend about a slight shift in foreign policy with regard to Afghanistan and urging NATO to be vigilant about the threat of attacks from extremist groups harbored by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte
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By Chris Hedges — Combat troops are to be pulled out of Iraq by August 2010, President Obama said, but some 50,000 occupation troops will remain behind. Someone should let the Iraqis know the distinction.
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USAF / Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon
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By William Pfaff — I have often asked for an explanation of why the United States should be at war with the Taliban. Of the several reasons given, none is satisfactory, and all fail to grasp the fundamental truth that peace is better than war.
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By William Pfaff — Exactly what do we think we are doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Are we there to liberalize their forms of religious observance, or conduct a war over theology, or establish permanent NATO bases there, or are we searching for Osama bin Laden? It seems that we are doing all of these things at the same time. But why?
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AP pool photo / Alexei Druzhinin
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By Scott Ritter — Relations with Russia haven’t been this frosty since there was an East Berlin. President Obama may be distracted by other priorities, but getting reacquainted with Vladimir Putin and his nuclear arsenal should be at the top of the list.
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By William Pfaff — NATO has no coherent overall purpose and has not had one since the end of the Cold War. Any number of redefinitions and reorganizations have been proposed or tried and have proved unsatisfactory because no one can explain what it is that NATO really does or is for, other than to clean up behind the United States.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra)
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As Israel’s Security Cabinet prepared to vote Saturday on a possible cease-fire in Gaza, the Israeli army drew criticism for the killing of two boys who were taking cover at a United Nations school in northern Gaza, according to The New York Times.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Michael Bracken
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An American living in Kandahar writes in The Washington Post that the “corrupt gunslingers” the U.S. put in charge of Afghanistan are as much to blame for the resurgence of the Taliban as anyone. “Why,” after all, “would anyone defend officials who pillage them?”
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By William Pfaff — Why are the allies waging war against the largest of the native ethnic groups in Afghanistan? The NATO answer is that the allies didn’t set out to fight a war against the Pashtuns. It just happened that way.
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By Joe Conason — When the journalistic pack bites into a tasty cliché, they often refuse to let go, lazily chewing and regurgitating a phrase like “team of rivals” long after the flavor is gone.
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By Amy Goodman — President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. It is revealing that his choice for national security adviser is a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and Chevron, an oil giant.
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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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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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Multiple news outlets, from ABC to Fox, now confirm that Robert Gates will retain his post as secretary of defense for at least the first year of the Obama administration. The president-elect will roll out Gates and his other hawks during a national security team unveiling next week.
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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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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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