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

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specificall

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Inside the Intervention

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Steven Metz - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Put simply, Obama’s Libya strategy is designed to avoid the most undesirable outcomes rather than optimize the chances of a desired outcome, to do something without “owning” the conflict, to maintain maximum flexibility as the situation evolves, and to do all of this in the face of powerful constraints. The question is whether this strategy can actually work.

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Obama’s Missionless War

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Mark Steyn - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - The “Arab Spring” turns out to be a bit more complicated than it looks on CNN, and a CIA that failed to see the bankruptcy of its own pension plan looming is unlikely to be a very useful guide to the various forces in play. For the Western powers to be bogged down in the least consequential Arab dictatorship’s low-grade civil war desultorily providing air support to incompetent al-Qaeda sympathizers may be an artful if expensive piece of misdirection.

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The Realist Prism: Libya Could Shift NATO Focus Southward

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

World Politics Review - By Nikolas Gvosdev - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Russia's 2010 military doctrine identified the continued expansion of NATO as a prime security threat to the country. But an Atlantic alliance that looks south instead of east would be a NATO that Russia could learn to live -- and even partner -- with. The effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi might have the unexpected consequence of allowing NATO to write a new chapter of its history not only with the Arab world, but also with Russia.

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Obama Libya Speech Fudges the Details

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Mar. 29 (Opinion) - The president’s Libya speech may have been a strong oration, but it fudged a few key elements, from why we responded to Gaddafi to whether we’re at war.

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In Libya, Inaction Was Not an Option

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Richard Cohen - Mar. 29 (Opinion) - The Libyan intervention established a precedent: There is such a thing as the international community and, as inchoate as it may be, it will insist on certain minimum standards even for dictators: Your people are not yours to kill.

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An Open Letter to the Left on Libya

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya.

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Just a Bad, Bad Idea

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Josh Marshall - Mar. 21 (Opinion) - At the end of last week I couldn't help tweeting that everything I was seeing in Libya was bringing out my inner foreign policy Realist. And everything I've seen this weekend has confirmed me in that view. Indeed, there are so many reasons this strikes me as a bad idea I really hardly know where to start. So let me focus on the three biggest problems I see.

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Trouble in Pakistan

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Kos - Oct. 08 (Opinion) -

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Why We Must Reduce Military Spending

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. Ron Paul - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

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Petraeus and the Myth of the Surge

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Jun. 23 (Comment) - As soon as the news was reported that Gen. David Petraeus is succeeding soon-to-be-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the media narrative was set in stone: the super-general who won the war in Iraq

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Democrats Challenge Pentagon On Afghanistan

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ap - Jun. 17 - WASHINGTON ? A schism deepened Wednesday between U.S. war leaders and Congress as lawmakers ? crucial Democrats among them ? challenged Pentagon assertions that progress...

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How Americans Are Propagandized About Afghanistan

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - Yet again, the Pentagon is forced to admit that their original claims about an attack were false.

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Military Restructures Afghanistan Police Contract

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:44:39 -0700

Washington Independent - Mar. 25 - An obscure Army contracting office with ties to the private security firm Blackwater has formally lost control of a lucrative contract to train Afghan police, the Pentagon and U.S. military officials in Afghanistan confirmed to TWI. That bureaucratic

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The Pentagon's Stringers

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:10:56 -0700

Mother Jones - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - But one of the companies established by Pelton and Jordan, International Safety Networks (ISN), offered to do more than just information gathering. It pitched services that merged reporting, intelligence, connection-peddling, and strategic

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Gates Replays His Cold War Message

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Melvin A. Goodman - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a provocative and even dangerous speech at the National Defense University (NDU) last week that revealed the Cold War thinking of a key holdover from the Bush administration.

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Missile Defense Could Be the Silver Bullet

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Dmitry Trenin - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - In the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “resetting” of U.S.-Russian relations became a reality only six weeks ago, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision to reconfigure U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Putin called Obama’s step “courageous,” which, coming from him, is perhaps the highest form of personal approbation

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Afghanistan: NATO's Graveyard?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By John Feffer - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressive and ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in this age of health-care crises and economic malaise, the transatlantic alliance is simply anxious about its future. Frankly, it should be.

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The Human Failure of the Afghanistan Mission

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:26:45 -0800

Registan.net - By Joshua Foust - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - A recurring theme in the situation in Afghanistan is the desperate manpower situation: there are so few troops to do the job that European countries like Germany had been criticized (by me, but also policy makers) for not allowing their troops enough leeway in joining combat operations. Indeed, NATO commanders have practically begged member countries to contribute more troops, especially the hard-fighting Canadians. Now comes the kicker: in the face of a well-documented surge by the Taliban from their Pakistani sanctuaries, our own troop 'surge' in Iraq is poised to siphon off critical U.S. military units from the critical battlegrounds in the east for 'strategic redeployment' to Iraq. What's worse, many member countries, who once saw the mission in Afghanistan as a critical and necessary response to the 9/11 attacks, have lost faith: Canada, for example, which has lost almost 45 soldiers to combat (a high percentage, given the size of their deployment), overwhelmingly wants its boys to return home. Many European countries, in various opinion polls, feel the same.

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