Why Are We In Afghanistan?
Afghanistan Mission Essential, Translators Expendable
Basir "Steve" Ahmed was returning from a bomb-clearing mission in Khogyani district in northeastern Afghanistan when a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-filled vehicle nearby. The blast flipped the military armored truck Ahmed was riding in three or four...
Political Solution in Afghanistan Possible,
but Not by Going Down Current Path
It would be a great service to the American nation if Barack Obama would tell us what he himself thinks the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are about. To capture Osama bin Laden? There have been eight years in which to capture bin Laden and it's not been done yet,...
The Man With the Plan for Bananastan
The Bananastans, the banana republic-style tar pits in Central Asia that we've stumbled into, have rapidly become a bigger cluster bomb than Iraq ever was. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the "measure of effectiveness" in...
Obama Seeks to Block Release of Abuse Photos
The United States Supreme Court will hear the U.S. government's appeal on a lower-court ruling requiring the release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners held in overseas facilities. The government is appealing a 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the...
No Color-Coded Revolution for Afghanistan
The March 14, 2005, cover of Newsweek was nothing short of a gift to the Bush administration: an attractive, youthful girl ripped straight from a Noxzema commercial astride the shoulders of a dashing young man, arms thrown open in a joyous invocation of freedom. The...
Lost in Military Limbo
[Note for TomDispatch readers: In Chalmers Johnson's recent piece, "Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire," the mission of the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) was mischaracterized. It has now been corrected at the piece.] It's not exactly a secret that the...
Obamageddon
An American president is launching the most ambitious, the most expensive, and certainly the most dangerous military campaign since the Vietnam War – and the antiwar movement, such as it is, is missing in action. After a long and bloody campaign in Iraq and the...
The Silence of the Sheep
In early July, U.S. Army Col. Timothy Reese committed truth. According to a story by Michael Gordon in the New York Times (reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where I saw it), Col. Reese wrote "an unusually blunt memo [concluding] that Iraqi forces suffer...
