Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen. In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. …
Continue reading “Hold Onto Your Underwear”
The Bosnian "Threat" to Empire Bosnia was in the headlines again this week. On Monday, police from both the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation raided a Wahhabi village in the north of the country. And on Tuesday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair spoke of Bosnia as one of the "principal challenges to …
Continue reading “Spies, Lies, and Fear”
The Christmas Day bombing attempt by Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab quickly became a another tiresome political issue in the United States, yet another opportunity for the Republicans to bash the President. Why, they ask, is he being charged in a court of law, instead of being locked up in a secret prison and treated like an …
Continue reading “Who Was That Well-Dressed Man?”
Leaving the world alone would nix terror, says Philip Giraldi
Parts I and II discussed how our counterinsurgency doctrine’s requirements for a reliable host-nation government, a reliable host-nation security force, and reliable intelligence are impossible to achieve in our present wars. The third and final part of the series focuses on the futility of counterinsurgency itself as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. Our counterinsurgency …
Continue reading “The COIN Myth, Part III”
President Barack Obama recently expressed a reluctance to send U.S. forces to Yemen and Somalia, two "failed states" where al-Qaeda is active. Obama seemed to realize that such a U.S. military presence might make the terrorism problem worse. If he understands this effect in these two nations, why doesn’t the same principle apply to the …
Continue reading “Politics Gets in the Way of Obama’s Perceptiveness”
As intelligence agencies rush to connect more dots on a page so crowded with dots that they already almost touch, Americans need to focus on the real problem, our foreign policies. We have made ourselves the enemy of over a billion people, nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Aside from President Obama’s Bush-sounding, bombastic …
Continue reading “Too Many Dots, Too Many Enemies”
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – "We aren’t going to be browbeaten by acts of cowardice and [will] continue exposing Taliban and [other] militants," said an angry Shamim Shahid, president of the Peshawar Press Club (PPC). The spate of media killings in Pakistan in the year just past – and the likelihood that it could continue unabated this …
Continue reading “Pakistan: Vestiges of War, Hopes for Peace”
Thank God for Helen Thomas, the only person to show any courage at the White House press briefing after President Barack Obama gave a flaccid account of the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day. After Obama briefly addressed L’Affaire Abdulmutallab and wrote "must do better" on the report cards of the …
Continue reading “Helen Asks Why”
What I call the Weird Factor, for lack of a better name, seems to have become a permanent feature of our post-9/11 world, a dark and sinister leitmotif that plays in the background. On 9/11, of course, the Factor was on full display as a whole string of unusual events and unexplained phenomena were visited …
Continue reading “The Weird Factor” 
