Dive into the archives.
- Washington’s Record
My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being [...]
- Afghanistan, Eight Years On
Invading Afghanistan was a clear war crime, despite the tendency to term it the “good war” by so-called antiwar voices in the West. Instead of treating the 9/11 attacks as a unique crime and cooperating with the international community to arrest Bin-Laden and his acolytes, Bush launched his Global War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan [...]
- The Value of an Afghan Life
The two were immediately taken into custody and for four days whisked from hideout to hideout, in an effort to avoid detection. However, coalition forces were monitoring their cell-phone conversations and a helicopter-borne rescue operation was soon mounted by British commandos. The commandos stormed the hideout and Munadi, dressed in Afghan clothes, came out shouting [...]
- Obama’s War
The prosecutor of the international criminal court is collecting information on alleged war crimes committed by Nato and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (more…)
- This is “Change”
“Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again,” Obama said. “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”(more…)
- Obama Bombs
The missile attacks targeted a suspected Taliban camp and a religious school used by fighters in the rugged tribal border region of South Waziristan, said a local official from the region and a resident, who said at least 13 people were killed. (more…)
- Obama’s War
On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. (more…)
- American Lies
The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the “Taliban” were fraudulent. (more…)
- Paying for Targets
The implication of the system of purchasing targeting information for drone strikes is that there is “no guarantee” that the people being targeted are officials of al-Qaeda or allied organizations, he said. (more…)
- Obama’s Rhetorical “Change”
Now, when the irrefutable meets the unchallengeable, American spokespeople tend to own up to it. Yep, we killed them. Yep, they were women and kids. Nope, they had, as far as we know, nothing to do with terrorism. Yep, it was our fault and we’ll pony up for our mistake. This new tactic is a [...]
- Obama’s Bombs
U.S. Missile Kills 12 Militants in Pakistan, Officials Say
- Juan Cole on Obama’s Domino Theory
[Obama's] latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the “Taliban” is mostly [...]
- Obama’s Quagmire
Why, in fact, were such simple projects never implemented? The answer proved to be surprising, and it helps, in part, to explain the dismal fate of the Bush administration’s version of Afghan “reconstruction.” Virtually none of the $5.4 billion in taxpayer money that USAID has disbursed in this country since late 2001 has been invested [...]
- Obama Wants More
Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks in the North and South Waziristan Agencies. They condemned the killings and asked US President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons. . . They claimed [...]
- Carrying Bush’s Legacy
The airstrikes were authorised under a covert programme approved by Obama, according to a senior US official. It was a dramatic signal in the president’s first week of office that there will be no respite in the hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. (more…)
- Another Success for the Bush Doctrine
The West is indirectly funding the insurgency in Afghanistan thanks to a system of payoffs to Taleban commanders who charge protection money to allow convoys of military supplies to reach Nato bases in the south of the country. (more…)
- Tom Engelhardt: Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart
On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since [...]
- Alan Bock: No Matter Who Wins, Expect More Wars
If the presidential debate Friday night told us anything, it was that whichever of these candidates is elected, we can expect more wars, or at least more conflicts that put U.S. forces or citizens in danger for dubious reasons. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama came close to questioning the "bipartisan" consensus on U.S. foreign [...]
- Tariq Ali: Bush’s War Widens Dangerously
The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Sen. Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, tried [...]
- The Forgotten Abuse of John Walker Lindh
A letter recently appeared in the Washington Post that got me thinking about John Walker Lindh again. You remember him… The so-called “American Taliban” sentenced to 20 years in prison for “aiding the Taliban”. In reality, Lindh was more likely likely an unwitting victim of an emotionally fragile post-9/11 United States as well as a [...]
