NewsTrust - Afghanistan - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Active-Duty Army Whistleblower Lt. Col. Daniel Davis: U.S. Deceiving Public on Afghan War

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 11 (Interview) - In an extended interview, we speak with Lt. Col. Danny Davis, the most prominent active duty serviceperson to question the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In his damning report following his return from his second year-long deployment in Afghanistan, Davis draws on about 250 interviews with U.S. soldiers as well as Afghans across the country to conclude: "Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable." Davis asks how many more must die in support of a mission that's not succeeding. "When you're given a mission that cannot succeed militarily, then what is the purpose of the mission?" [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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"Mind Zone": New Film Tracks Therapists Guiding Soldiers Through Traumas of Afghan War

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Mar. 16 (Review) - Haaken’s forthcoming documentary, "Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines," shows the ethical dilemmas faced by therapists in Afghanistan who guide soldiers through the trauma of war. "The military has relied quite extensively on therapists to kind of help hold people together psychologically in war zones,"

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Paul Rieckhoff: A Message to All Candidates: Our Troops Aren't Props

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Paul Rieckhoff - Jan. 10 - Our troops are many things to many people. Heroes, parents, diplomats, victims, villains, victors. But as the GOP Primary races roll through New Hampshire this...

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Afghanistan: “The War is Unwinnable: It is a Stalemate. There is No Victory”

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Jonathan Steele - Nov. 01 (Interview) - The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, now entering its eleventh year, shows no sign of ending. On Saturday, 12 U.S. soldiers died in a suicide bombing in Kabul. It was deadliest single ground attack against NATO forces in the decade of war. To discuss Afghanistan, we speak with Jonathan Steele, a longtime correspondent for the The Guardian newspaper and author of the new book, "Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground.” “The [U.S. military strategy] doesn't work because you create new resistance by being there. So resistance comes 'cause you're there. You're not there because of the resistance. The occupying force itself creates the resistance,” Steele said. “And so the crucial thing now is to recognize now is that the war is unwinnable: It is a stalemate. There is no victory." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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The costs of war | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

thebulletin.org - By Hugh Gusterson - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - Sobering reflections of the 10 years since 9/11 at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Here's a quote: "Military responses to problems have a way of creating all sorts of new problems. The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy offers an opportunity to reflect on the costs and benefits of the wars the United States initiated against Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks. A comprehensive new study, "Costs of War," sponsored by Brown University (and with which I have been affiliated) suggests that the costs have been wildly out of proportion to the benefits." A very thoughtful piece, regardless of your view of the wars

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Exclusive: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks & Philosopher Slavoj Žižek In Conversation With Amy Goodman

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Julian Assange, Slavoj Zizek - Jul. 05 (Interview) - They discuss the impact of WikiLeaks on world politics, the release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and Cablegate — the largest trove of classified U.S. government records in history. “From being inside the center of the storm, I have learned not just about the structure of government, not just about how power flows in many governments around the world that we’ve dealt with, but rather how history is shaped and distorted by the media,” Assange said.

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Think Talks with the Group That Hacked A Fox News Twitter Account

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Think SB - By Adam Peck - Jul. 04 (Interview) - Perhaps deciding on a different strategy, The Script Kiddies have scrubbed all past mentions of their hack of the Fox News Politics Twitter account and replaced them with alarming and, most importantly, fake accounts of President Obama’s death. The updates have jarred quite a few readers–us included–who saw the news coming from what they believed to be an authentic Fox News source.

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The Lie Behind the Afghan War

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - A recurring refrain about the Afghan War is that the United States must stay for the long haul now to avoid repeating the “mistake” made in 1989 when Soviet forces left and Americans supposedly disappeared, too. But this conventional wisdom, spread by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, is a lie

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Pakistan Tips off Militants AGAIN

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Moderate Voice - By Joe Gandelman - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - It’s pretty clear that the word “ally” will need to be redefined if it is applied to Pakistan. The AP reports that Pakistan has tipped off militants again: U.S. officials say Pakistan has apparently tipped off militants at two more bomb-building factories in its tribal areas, giving the terror suspects time to flee, after U.S. [...]

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Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 Strategy Explained

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Gareth Porter - Jun. 10 (Opinion) - Before his murder last month, Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad detailed how al-Qaeda leaders used the 9/11 attacks to induce “cowboy” President George W. Bush to blunder foolishly into the invasions of two Muslim countries, thus advancing an al-Qaeda strategy to discredit the region’s U.S.-connected leaders

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Seymour Hersh on the Arab Spring, "Disaster" U.S. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Looming Crisis in Iraq

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Seymour Hersh, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh assesses the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa amidst ongoing U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Despite touted gains and an upcoming U.S. military withdrawal deadline in Iraq, Hersh says: "Whatever you're hearing, Iraq is going bad ... It's sectarian war, and the big question will be whether we pull out or not." On the uprisings, Hersh says Saudi Arabia—fearing an overthrow of the regional order—is driving the embattled regimes' attempts to crush the protests.

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Sunday's Disqualifiers

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

American Spectator - By Ross Kaminsky - May. 16 (Opinion) - Within days of their officially entering the presidential fray, two Republican Oval Office aspirants may have torpedoed what little chance they might have had with disastrous answers on Sunday morning television.

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My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death

Sat, 07 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Noam Chomsky - May. 07 (Opinion) - 'We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

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The Curious Bush/Bin Laden Symbiosis

Sat, 07 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - May. 07 (Opinion) - while criticism has fallen on Pakistani authorities for being either complicit or incompetent, almost no attention has focused on the curious symbiotic relationship that has existed since 9/11 between Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush – and even longer between the bin Laden family and the Bush family.

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End the War Without End

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By David Swanson - May. 05 (Speech) - I'm going to give this speech tonight to a crowd of drunk young people.

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Is Now Not the Time to Start Leaving Afghanistan?

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Larry Kudlow - May. 05 (Opinion) - With the killing of Osama, is the Afghan mission complete? The original post-9/11 goal was to kill bin Laden and wipe out al-Qaida. Now that we've killed bin Laden and dismantled so much of al-Qaida, do we really need to trudge through an even longer war in Afghanistan?

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10 Years Too Long: Rep. Barbara Lee Renews Calls for End to Afghan War After Killing of Osama bin Laden

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 03 (Opinion) - In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the 2001 resolution authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan. Today she is a leading advocate for the immediate withdrawal of troops and for repealing the authorization that grants a president the authority to use force without a formal declaration of war issued by Congress. “While the head of al-Qaeda is no longer around, we have to really address the root causes of terrorism and understand that we have to refocus our resources and our strategy in a way that begins to get us out of Afghanistan,” Lee says. We also speak to filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his Rethink Afghanistan campaign and journalist Anand Gopal, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Ex-State Department Official Matthew Hoh: With Killing of Bin Laden, Why Are 50,000 U.S. Troops Still in Afghanistan?

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 02 (Interview) - fter two tours of duty in Iraq and serving in the State Department in Washington, D.C., Matthew Hoh became the United States’ senior civilian representative and political adviser in Afghanistan. He resigned five months into his contract, making him the highest-ranking U.S. government official to publicly quit over the war in Afghanistan. He joins us from Washington, D.C., to discuss whether the death of Osama bin Laden means the end of that war. “Everybody should be asking themselves today in the United States, if Osama Bin Laden was hiding in an upscale villa an hour or two drive north, northeast of Islamabad, then why did we put 50,000 troops in Afghanistan over the last two years?”

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Ex-Defense Intelligence Analyst Joshua Foust: Death of Bin Laden Will Not Have Enormous Impact on Operations of Al Qaeda Affiliates Worldwide

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 02 (Interview) - n addition to Afghanistan, the United States is fighting al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. We discuss the impact of Osama bin Laden’s death on al-Qaeda across the globe with Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security Project and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. "From an operational standpoint, Osama bin Laden doesn’t maintain very tight operational control over the different al-Qaeda franchises that are out there, including in Yemen, including in Somalia, and other places as well. So, this is mostly a symbolic victory," says Foust.

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Finishing a Job: Obama Gets Osama

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - May. 02 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama touched off American celebrations with his Sunday night announcement that U.S. forces finally had killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but that long frustrating hunt might not have been necessary if George W. Bush had rejected neoconservative advice to pivot prematurely from Afghanistan to Iraq in late 2001.

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A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - It's rare for American media outlets to list all of our "wars" this way, including the covert ones (and that list does not even include the newest one, in Libya, where drone attacks are playing an increasingly prominent role as well). But Barack Obama does indeed preside over numerous American wars in the Muslim world, including some that he started (Libya and Yemen) and others which he's escalated (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Because our wars are so often fought covertly, the CIA has simply become yet another arm of America's imperial war-fighting machine, thus making it the perfect fit for Bush and Obama's most cherished war-fighting General to lead (Petraeus will officially retire from the military to take the position, though that obviously does not change who he is, how he thinks, and what his loyalties are).

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Crossing Zero: How and Why the Media Misses the AfPak Story

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By ROry O'Connor - Apr. 14 (Interview) - When it comes to Pakistan, American journalists are helping to sustain a false and deceptive narrative and that’s a real problem. As an example, on the left, Rachel Maddow ought to be challenging the narrative. Instead she looks to Dan Rather and Zbigniew Brzezinski who initiated the crisis. Why?

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Yes, this is a humanitarian war – that is what makes it so deadly

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

spiked-online.com - By Brendan O'Neill - Mar. 31 (Editorial) - They’re back. Having spent the past 10 years pretending to be anti-war – describing the attack on Iraq as ‘criminal’ and the war in Afghanistan as ‘a trifle ill-judged’ – the liberal and left-wing set that originally invented the idea of ‘humanitarian warfare’ in the 1990s are once more at the forefront of public debate. They’ve cast off the anti-imperialist garb that they temporarily donned to make their disappointment with Blair and their snobbish disdain for Bush appear principled, to reveal that, underneath, there lurk the same old laptop bombardiers keen to visit their moralistic fury upon some wayward nation. This time they have Libya in their sights.

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Gates, Karzai Discuss Civilian Casualties, Drawdown

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

globalsecurity.org - By Karen Parrish - Mar. 09 () - Civilian casualties and the impending drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan highlighted a discussion here today between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

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Michael Hastings: Army Deploys Psychological Operations on U.S. Senators in Afghanistan

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman; Michael Hastings - Mar. 04 (Interview) - Federal law prohibits the military from using propaganda and psychological tactics on U.S. citizens, but that is exactly what may have happened in Afghanistan according to reporter Michael Hastings, who joins us to speak about his recent expose for _Rolling Stone_ magazine is called, "Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-ops on U.S. senators." In the article, Hastings writes that Lt. General William Caldwell, the commander of NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, illegally employed psychological operations to manipulate visiting U.S. senators into providing more troops and funding for the war effort. “It show how far-off the rails the entire operation has gone,” Hasting says. “The most important battlefield isn’t in Afghanistan, it is in Washington.”

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