KARACHI — As militant attacks in Pakistan continue unabated, there are increasing calls for the government to rethink its strategy — and look deep within. What is happening in Pakistan today is an "unprecedented" situation and the government’s "lack of planning and imagination left it with no alternative," said I.A. Rehman, director of the Human …
Continue reading “In Pakistan, Military vs Militancy Does Not Equal Peace”
There has always been in American foreign policy circles a virus called arrogance, caused by the hereditary assumption that Americans know better than others. Surprisingly, this does not always prove the case, but the condition seems highly resistant to treatment, even by experience. There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration …
Continue reading “Arrogant US Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People”
In waging its war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration faces a big problem, and his name is Hamid Karzai. This fashion plate, whose name has become synonymous with corruption, claims to be the president of Afghanistan, but this is a double fiction. In reality, he is, at most, the mayor of Kabul, never having managed …
Continue reading “Afghan Insurgents: Terrorists, or Tea Partiers?”
Amid growing speculation and partisan bickering over what President Barack Obama will do about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, an influential Democratic senator Monday warned against deploying tens of thousands more U.S. troops there. Just back from a diplomatic triumph in Kabul, Sen. John Kerry criticized a military proposal to send some 40,000 more U.S. …
Continue reading “Kerry Argues for Counterinsurgency Lite”
Kathy Kelly on the horrors of Swat
U.S. national security officials, concerned that President Barack Obama might be abandoning the strategy of full-fledged counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, are claiming new intelligence assessments suggesting that al-Qaeda would be allowed to return to Afghanistan in the event of a Taliban victory. But two former senior intelligence analysts who have long followed the issue of …
Continue reading “Pro-War Officials Play Up Taliban-al-Qaeda Ties”
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has become the point man for the long-war mafia, delivered his ultimatum to President Barack Obama on Friday, Oct. 9. As has been his practice over the past several weeks, McChrystal proxy-leaked details of his demands through the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other sources. The Journal says …
Continue reading “Long Wars and Peace Prizes”
The Washington Post yesterday made available an unclassified version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s long-awaited report on the war in Afghanistan. Politically, the report is bold, in that it acknowledges the enemy has the initiative and we have been fighting the war – for eight years – in counterproductive ways. But intellectually, both as analysis and …
Continue reading “Last Exit Before Quagmire”
In Washington, calls are increasing, especially among anxious Democrats, for the president to commit to training ever more Afghan troops and police rather than sending in more American troops. Huge numbers for imagined future Afghan army and police forces are now bandied about in Congress and the media – though no one stops to wonder …
Continue reading “Us or Them in Afghanistan?”
In support of the official U.S. assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against NATO forces to Iranian military assistance. But the Taliban commander’s claim …
Continue reading “Taliban’s Tank-Killing Bombs Came from US, Not Iran” 
