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

Under Attack

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Michael M. Phillips - May. 13 (Dramatization) - When a suicide bomber struck a convoy in Afghanistan, a routine Marine patrol turned into a harrowing firefight. Michael M. Phillips with an eyewitness account of bravery and tragedy in the confusion of war. When the suicide bomber exploded, the world skidded to a stop. The Afghan police pickup truck, 30 yards directly behind us, disappeared in a geyser of thick gray-brown smoke. The only visible object was its hood flying through the air, a black silhouette against the murk, followed by the sound of broken glass falling. Then the smoke thinned, like the curtain rising on a stage, revealing the chaos the bomber had set loose. The pickup truck wasn't where it was supposed to be. The blast had hoisted it into the air and dropped it onto the median strip. There was a moment's hesitation among the troops next to me in the lead pickup. A lone motorcyclist emerged from the cloud, inexplicably upright and seemingly uninjured.

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Op-Ed Columnist: There Be Dragons

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Tom Friedman, NY Times - Feb. 29 (Opinion) - Throughout the Arab Middle East, the prospects for stable transitions to democracy anytime soon are dimming.

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The Forgotten Wages of War

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By John Tirman - Jan. 03 (Opinion) - Ignoring the civilians killed in America’s wars is both a moral and a strategic failing.

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U.N. Report Finds Routine Abuse of Afghan Detainees

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:41:09 -0700

New York Times - Oct. 10 -

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The Dead, the Dollars, the Drones: 9/11 Era by the Numbers

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Lena Groeger - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - Ever since the Twin Towers fell, the United States has been at war. The costs of that decade of conflict have been unimaginably high: trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The numbers are almost too big to grasp

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United Nations: Weak leaders wanted

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Aug. 15 (Editorial) - To save his legacy Ban Ki-moon must refresh his top team with people who understand the UN's founding principles

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Obama’s communications gap

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David Ignatius - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - A prominent Bush administration official was talking privately about Barack Obama last week: He’s probably going to win in 2012, this Republican said. He deserves credit for “going big” in the budget talks and capturing the center of the debate. But why isn’t he projecting his goals and philosophy more clearly to the country? Why does he so often seem to react rather than lead?

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America's 'detainee 001' – the persecution of John Walker Lindh

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Frank Lindh - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - In 1998, aged 17, my son John Walker Lindh travelled to Yemen to study Islam and learn Arabic. In April 2001 he went to Afghanistan. Then 9/11 happened. He was captured by US troops, tortured, and jailed for 20 years, an innocent victim of America's 'war on terror' John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour. Labelled by the American government as "Detainee 001" in the "war on terror", John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11. John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of ...

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Positive Disruption

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - Even in the men’s room at Google’s sprawling New York offices there’s no respite from the cascade of new ideas feeding the behemoth. Rather than gaze into space, I found before my eyes messages about “signal widgets” and the implication of hav

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Is It "Justice"?

Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Thomas Nachbar - May. 09 (Opinion) - violence can be a form of justice, and justice occasionally requires acts of violence, butr, despite their occasionally close relationship, justice and violence should never be confused...

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Bin Laden's death: 'Why kill the goose?'

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

The Guardian - By Tariq Ali - May. 05 (Opinion) - A meeting with one such person in 2006, which I recounted in my last book on Pakistan, confirmed that Bin Laden was in the country and being kept safe. The person concerned told me the Americans only wanted Bin Laden dead, but that it was in Pakistan's interest to keep him alive. In his words: "Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?" – a reference to the billions in aid and weaponry being supplied to the army.

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After Osama Bin Laden ...

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

New York Times - By Nicholas Kristof - May. 02 (Opinion) - President Obama has just announced that the United States killed Osama bin Laden today in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and recovered his body. It has been nine years and seven months since Osama orchestrated 9/11, but an American team finally killed him. His body is in American hands. This is revenge, but it’s also deterrence and also means that bin Laden won’t kill any more Americans. This is the single most important success the United States has had in its war against Al Qaeda. So what does this mean? First, it is good for the United States reputation, power and influence that we finally got bin Laden. Bin Laden’s ability to escape from the U.S., and his apparent impunity, fed an image in some Islamist quarters of America as a paper tiger — and that encouraged extremists. Bin Laden himself once said that people bet on the strong horse, the horse that will win, and the killing underscores that it’s the United States that is the horse to bet on. Moreover, this sends a message that you mess with America at your peril, and that there will be consequences for a terror attack on the United States. That said, killing bin Laden does not end Al Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian No. 2, has long played a crucial role as Al Qaeda’s COO. And Al Qaeda is more of a loose network than a tightly structured organization, and that has become even more true in recent years. AQIM, the version of Al Qaeda in North Africa, is a real threat in countries like Mali and Mauritania, and killing bin Laden will probably have negligible consequences there. The AQIM terrorists may admire Osama and be inspired by him, but they also are believed to be largely independent of him. And Anwar al-Awlaki, the Qaeda-linked terrorist in Yemen, likewise won’t be deterred by bin Laden’s killing — Awlaki’s ability to engage in terrorism will be affected more by the upheavals now taking place in Yemen and whether that country has a strong and legitimate government that takes counter-terrorism seriously. It’s also true that bin Laden’s killing might have mattered more in 2002 or 2003. At that time in countries like Pakistan, many ordinary people had a very high regard for bin Laden and doubted that he was centrally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Over time that view has changed: popular opinion has moved more against him, and you no longer see Osama t-shirts for sale in the markets. Some people still feel a bit of respect for his ability to outwit the United States, or they are so anti-American that they embrace anybody we don’t like, but bin Laden has been marginalized over time. Osama’s declining image also means that he won’t be a martyr in many circles (although if Americans appear too celebratory and triumphant, dancing on his grave, that may create a sympathetic backlash for Osama). Many ordinary Pakistanis, Yemenis and Afghans will simply shrug and move on. His death won’t inspire people, the way it might have in 2002. And Al Qaeda is already going through a difficult time because it has been sidelined by the Arab Spring protests; on top of that, losing its top leader will be a major blow. It will be fascinating to see what the Pakistani reaction is to a U.S. military operation on their soil. It seemed to me that President Obama was going out of his way to sound deferential to Pakistan — and to emphasize that Osama was an enemy of Pakistan as well as of America — precisely because he was concerned that Pakistanis might react with outrage at an American military operation.

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Hetherington, Hondros, and the risks journalists take

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Dan Murphy - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - Tim Hetherington, a photojournalist and director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo, and Chris Hondros, an award-winning photographer, were killed in a mortar strike yesterday in the besieged Libyan city of Misurata.

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Africa: Vast Majority of Stillbirths Found in Developing Countries

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:43:00 -0700

AllAfrica - Apr. 15 - United Nations — According to a special series in the medical journal The Lancet presented in New York Wednesday at the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, over 2.6 million stillbirths occur worldwide annually, affecting mostly African and Asian women who lac

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Afghan girls' education backsliding as donors shift focus to withdrawal

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Annie Kelly - Feb. 24 - Report by 16 NGOs says Afghanistan's progress in education threatened by poverty, insecurity and a lack of investment A new report is warning that hard-won progress in girls' education in Afghanistan, heralded as one of few success stories of the last nine years, is increasingly under threat as international interest in reconstruction efforts ebbs away. The High Stakes report, released on Thursday by 16 aid agencies including Oxfam and Care International, says that the hard-won and expensive gains in girls' education are at risk of being destroyed as the international community turns away from development to focus on national security agendas and the timetable for troop withdrawal. Education has long been held up as a shining example of reconstruction in Afghanistan. Donors have ploughed approximately $1.9bn into rebuilding the Afghan education system since 2001. The Back to School campaign , launched in 2002 as a joint Afghan government/UN Initiative, was labelled an "inspiration" ...

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U.S.-Taliban Talks

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:50:57 -0800

New Yorker - By Steve Coll - Feb. 19 (Comment) - It is past time for the United States to shift some of its capacity for risk-taking in the war off the battlefield and into diplomacy aimed at reinforcing Afghan political unity, neutrality, civil rights, and social cohesion. The recent talks are nevertheless a constructive step. For too long, American political strategy in Afghanistan has been subordinate to military and intelligence operations. Thinking and learning through principled discussions with an enemy is an opportunity, not a trap.

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At CIA, mistakes by officers are often overlooked

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

Washington Post - By Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo - Feb. 09 - At CIA, mistakes by officers are often overlooked

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Wallflowers at the Revolution

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Feb. 06 (Opinion) - The consequence of a decade’s worth of indiscriminate demonization of Arabs in America — and of the low quotient of comprehensive adult news coverage that might have helped counter it — is the steady rise in Islamophobia.

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Is Mexico at war? Conflict prompts linguistic debate

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

McClatchy - Feb. 04 - MEXICO CITY — Over a 48-hour period this week, gangsters tossed grenades, torched buses, set up roadblocks and strafed police units in Mexico's second and third largest cities.

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Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Slavoj Žižek - Feb. 01 (Opinion) - The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism.

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Ike was right all along: The danger of the military-industrial complex

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Rupert Cornwell - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - If you doubt, half a century on, that Dwight Eisenhower had it right, then consider the advertisements on WTOP, the Washington region's all-news radio station. Every big metro area in the US has one, where car dealerships tout their bargains, and fast food chains promote a new special offer.

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Thank God It's Over: The Top 25 Moments of 2010

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - Dec. 28 (Editorial) - With earthquakes in Haiti and western China, floods in Pakistan, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, and wildfires in Russia, the Earth was intent on releasing a lot of pent-up anger in 2010. Tremors and eruptions -- along with the more basic elements of fire and water -- seemed to shape the past year's events even more than traditional foreign policy actors. Meanwhile, Europe struggled to regain its economic footing, China continued to rapidly grow its GDP, Middle East peace talks crumbled, and world leaders misbehaved (we're looking at you, Vladmir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi). But there were bright spots, too: A group of Chilean miners escaped after enduring two months trapped underground and long-suffering Burmese democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi was released after spending nearly two decades in detention and under house arrest. Here are a few glimpses of 2010's international high- and lowlights.

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5 Ways to Win the War in Afghanistan

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Andrew Exum - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - Although the United States and its allies have scored important tactical gains over the past 12 months -- decimating insurgent networks and securing once-violent districts in southern Afghanistan -- they have no clear plan to either defeat insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan or address the corruption and predatory behavior of Afghanistan's political class, which threatens to undermine U.S. and allied military successes.

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US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Simon Jenkins - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks' revelations Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in tomorrow's Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms. Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be "world policeman" – an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables – that interest is global.

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Text of President Obama's news conference Saturday

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Nov. 21 -

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