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By Mark Heisler
$23.96
E.J. Dionne
$18.95
$18
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U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell
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By William Pfaff — As a former serviceman, I have been long bemused by the proliferation of ribbons and other decorations on the chests of today’s high-ranking army officers, now mired in scandal.
Posted on Nov 13, 2012
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By William Pfaff — I heard a brilliant young Harvard scholar, influential in the Obama administration, explain that the future of successful American action in Central Asia lies in a “surge” of civilian political and developmental action to rescue the people of the region from their present backwardness.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Larry E. Reid Jr.
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By Bill Boyarsky — Barack Obama’s plan for a limited withdrawal from Afghanistan means tens of thousands of American troops will remain there, many of them fighting, for several years to come.
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White House / Pete Souza
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The word surge implies a certain brevity, but according to Barack Obama’s withdrawal plans, announced Wednesday, it will end up taking two and a half years from the day the president ordered his Afghanistan surge to bring home those extra 33,000 U.S. troops sent to that country. U.S. involvement in the war ... (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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Set your TiVos: The White House announced Monday that the president will deliver an Afghanistan speech Wednesday. Obama’s advisers have been debating how many of the more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to bring home, with the military’s top brass pushing to keep most there indefinitely.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Back in 2009, President Obama was presented with two options for the war in Afghanistan: a troop surge favored by the military and a leaner counterterrorism strategy promoted by Vice President Joe Biden. He went with the surge, sending an additional 30,000 troops to fight in a war without purpose. (more)
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez
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A White House review of the mess in Afghanistan will reportedly declare that some modest progress has been made toward the administration’s goals (vague and illogical though they may be), despite widespread skepticism and the most allied casualties since the start of the war in 2001.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Scott Ritter — The president and the American people will all too soon come to recognize that the quagmire in Iraq is far from over. In fact, one might say it has only just begun.
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U.S. Army / Sgt. Derec Pierson
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By William Pfaff — “Transformation” is the new military buzzword, meaning reorienting the military institution for “the complex insurgencies” that “planners say will dominate the 21st century.” Robert Gates, the U.S. secretary of defense, was quoted as saying that Afghanistan provides the “laboratory” for this change.
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No doubt Gen. David Petraeus had a certain Rolling Stone interview in mind when he conducted a lengthy interview, which aired Sunday, with “Meet the Press” anchor David Gregory about his hopes, fears and prognosis about the war in Afghanistan.
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U.S. Army / Ted Green
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By William Pfaff — The Afghanistan situation is worth analysis at two levels, that of the war itself and the domestic political effect of Obama’s misguided decision to replace “Bush’s war” in Iraq with his own in Afghanistan.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Department of State
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced Monday that two major al-Qaida figures in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, were killed by American and Iraqi forces Sunday morning.
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AP / Karim Kadim
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A string of at least seven bombings in Baghdad on Tuesday killed 50 people, the latest in a series of attacks that have claimed about 120 lives in the Iraqi capital over the last five days, sparking concern that the level of violence and sectarian unrest will rival the bloody months before the surge of 2007.
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AP / Ahmad Masood, pool
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Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has some sobering news for supporters of the U.S.-led intervention in his country: Even after eight years of war, it could be another decade before the Afghan military is able to take over security duties from the coalition, and even longer to wean it from its dependence on foreign aid.
Posted on Jan 28, 2010
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Staff Sgt. Cohen A. Young, U.S. Air Force
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By William Pfaff — The people who are running the war in Afghanistan are contemplating an air attack on one of Pakistan’s principal cities, the capital of its largest province, for reasons that defy logic.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — The president believes his Afghanistan surge will most likely create the conditions to bring the greatest number of U.S. troops home at the earliest possible date, a senior official said.
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U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Scott Reed
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By Scott Ritter — Key to Barack Obama’s surge is his expansion of targeted assassinations taking place under the guise of unmanned aerial drones operating in the Af-Pak region.
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AP / Bjorn Sigurdson
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President Barack Obama struggled to balance “man of peace” with “man of war” in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he demanded we uphold moral standards in “necessary” war and insisted that war could bring peace.
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This may sound more like a press release from Captain Obvious than incisive strategic commentary from one of our nation’s top military leaders, but lest it be overlooked, Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommends that the U.S. capture Osama Bin Laden and push back on the Taliban as two crucial action items on America’s to-do list for Afghanistan.
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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Something just doesn’t add up about the stated logic of sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, says Jamal Dajani, who has a theory about the president’s real reason for escalating the war.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Otero
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By Eugene Robinson — Even if the surge works, why wouldn’t al-Qaida—or some like-minded group—simply set up shop in Somalia? Or in Yemen, another failing state?
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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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By Eugene Robinson — It is wrong to sacrifice troops without military goals that are clear, achievable and worthwhile. And what goals in Afghanistan remotely satisfy those criteria?
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U.S. Marine Corps / Cpl. Daniel Martin Moman
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Karl W. Eikenberry, a former top-ranking general who once commanded allied forces in Afghanistan and now leads America’s diplomatic mission in Kabul, has reportedly urged President Obama to delay any escalation of the war until Hamid Karzai ... (continued)
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AP / David Guttenfelder
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By Scott Ritter — President Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but if he allows himself to be bullied into supporting Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s foray into Afghanistan, he will reveal himself as the worst kind of warmonger.
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listown.com
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The White House says it will delay a decision on sending more soldiers to Afghanistan until the U.S. can assess the new government, whose legitimacy has been in question since the August presidential election was marred by allegations of fraud.
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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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USMC / Cpl. Kristofer Atkinson
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By Patrick Cockburn — Don’t let the bombings fool you: The American military withdrawal stabilizes Iraq to a degree never admitted by protagonists of the original invasion.
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USAF / Senior Airman Sheila deVera
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Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, may ask for more troops, but whether he’ll get any is in doubt. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already moved to expand the Army, but getting troops the downtime they need between deployments will limit how many can be sent to the escalating war in South Asia.
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msnbc.com
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U.S. government officials are conducting a new kind of “surge.” The DEA has started dispatching agents to Afghanistan to target opium trafficking networks that are believed to be funding the Taliban insurgency, a change from the Bush-era policy of poppy crop destruction.
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Sarah Furrer
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The Awakening movement isn’t very happy these days. The U.S. has been paying Sunni militants to turn their guns from American soldiers to al-Qaida foreign fighters, a program that has been celebrated for reducing violence in Iraq and is now falling apart. In the words of one Sunni leader who spoke to NPR, “The Americans completely abandoned us.”
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DoD / Sgt. Zach Otto, U.S. Army
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President Obama’s desire to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a sore spot for the progressives and anti-war folk who helped elect him, took a major step forward Tuesday when the White House announced plans to raise troop levels in Afghanistan by 50 percent over the next few months.
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By Ellen Goodman — The 43rd president is going home with less remorse and fewer regrets than my grandchildren express for spilling their cereal.
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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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Flickr/Jim Gordon
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A key overlooked fact about the much-ballyhooed “surge is working” argument in Iraq is that the U.S. military actually paid some former insurgents $10 a day to help American troops keep the peace in parts of the country. But what happens when that setup changes in volatile regions like Anbar?
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http://www.mnci.centcom.mil/leaders/index.htm
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On Tuesday, Gen. David Petraeus handed over the duties of commander of multinational forces in Iraq to his second-in-command, Gen. Raymond Odierno, who worked with Petraeus on implementing the U.S. troop surge over recent months. To mark the occasion, Petraeus, other American officials and Iraqi brass joined Odierno for a ceremony in a Baghdad-area palace formerly owned by Saddam Hussein.
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chinadaily.net
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Last week’s air attack in Pakistan by American Special Ops forces represented the first of a three-part strategy by the Bush administration to ramp up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaida players during the last weeks before the November elections, according to government sources contacted for this report by NPR.
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This short documentary by the Guardian’s Sean Smith shows an altogether different side of the surge than the one presented by George Bush, John McCain and the mainstream media.
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Keith Olbermann began the second part of his interview with Barack Obama with a tale of two conservatives: “One guy who makes about $40,000 a year said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ Another guy makes about a million dollars a year, said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ ”
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White House / Eric Draper
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Here’s one way to tell the difference between a war and an occupation: In response to the “success” of the surge and the undefined “victory” that lies just around the corner in Iraq, the president on Tuesday will pledge to maybe reduce troop levels by about 5 percent six months from now after he’s left office. How can John McCain win this argument with Barack Obama?
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The first installment of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s interview with Bill O’Reilly aired Thursday, during which the Fox News host drove a hard line about Iran’s nuclear program and the success of the “surge” in Iraq. “Why can’t you just say, ‘I was right in the beginning and I was wrong about the surge?’ ” asked O’Reilly.
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Americans seem to have bought into the idea that the “surge” is working, but this Baghdad journalist returned home to a city of walls and bloodshed.
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arcent.army.mil
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Despite criticisms of the efficacy of the “surge” in Iraq, a U.S. commander in Afghanistan has dared to say that a planned “surge” in Afghanistan would in fact not help U.S. interests in the country. The commander did make sure not to completely deweaponize the Bush administration’s rhetoric, suggesting instead that a different type of surge is needed.
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By Marie Cocco — There is nothing like the blast of a Baghdad bomb and the wail of sirens to drown out John McCain’s bitter campaign sound bites or the patter of Barack Obama’s “premature victory lap.”
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