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

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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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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Time for Dems to slam the GOP hypocrites

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Gene Lyons - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - Obama's GOP antagonists offer empty rhetoric even they don't believe. But does he have the heart to call them out?

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How Bush Botched the Afghan War

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - Jul. 27 - The leaked history of the Afghan War conveys an unspoken narrative of how President Bush bungled the conflict, says Robert Parry. July 26, 2010

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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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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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Bombings in Swat, Punjab likely to backfire on Taliban

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - The run-up to the Ides of March in Pakistan has been characterized by numerous horrific bombings, credit for which has been claimed by the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. After a string of five bombings in Lahore on Friday, on Saturday morning, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a checkpoint station outside the city of Mingora in Swat, killing 10 persons , including two members of the security forces. Last summer, the Pakistani military expelled the Pakistani Taliban from Swat, before moving on to attack their bases and safe houses (or safe caves) in South Waziristan. On Friday, bombing attacks on a military cantonment and on Iqbal Town and Samnabad in Lahore left 50-60 persons dead and 120 wounded. Some of ...

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Marines Meet Roadside Bombs, Sniping in Marjah; 12 Civilians Killed in Rocket Attack

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - In the pincer move of British, US/ NATO and Afghan forces on Marjah in poppy-rich Helmand Province, the Taliban have behaved differently in each area. In the north, as the British approached Nad Ali, the Taliban faded away and there was very light resistance. Afghan authorities charged that 35 Pakistani Taliban were fighting alongside Afghan extremists in Nad Ali.

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Altering Afghanistan's Balance of Power

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Bernard Gwertzman - Feb. 15 (Interview) - Marines along with foreign and Afghan forces began a major offensive in the city of Marja in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province on Saturday, with the goal of regaining control from the Taliban and establishing a government there. CFR national security expert Max Boot, who was in the province in October as the offensive was being planned, says success in Marja will mean being able to extend the area of control in “a kind of spreading ink stain, which is a classic aim of counterinsurgency warfare.” He also says Colombia’s success in controlling its drug trade suggests it’s possible to sharply reduce opium production in Helmand Province.

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Could the Pakistani Government Fall over Karachi Violence? What would it Mean for Obama's War on al-Qaeda?

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - The ongoing political turmoil in a major Pakistani city to which few Americans pay much attention could nevertheless prove pivotal to the Obama administration's AfPak project.

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Sign of the Times

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

naveenaqvi.com - By Naveen Naqvi - Dec. 14 (Opinion) - Even though the phrase is repeated ad nauseum, Pakistanis seem to be more annoyed than usual on hearing US leaders urge Pakistan to ‘do more’. The Daily Times on Sunday has United States President Barack Obama saying to CBS News that ‘Pakistan must help US against Qaeda.’ On Sunday, the head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus reiterated the line with a slightly altered angle: ‘Pakistan must pressurise Afghan Taliban.’ Judging by the signs, the much awaited announcement of the AfPak strategy does not appear to be limited to the troop surge in Afghanistan.

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Obama's Surge: The Real Reason

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jamal Dajani - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - Every year on the anniversary of September 11, the same question pops up: where is Osama bin Laden? And for the eight years pundits, who hardly speak a word of Pashto, Dari, Urdu or any other language spoken in the region, play the guessing game of placing him somewhere along the Pakistani-Afghan border.

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20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Will Another Superpower Meet Its End in Afghanistan?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Loretta Napoleoni - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - Remarkably, the central Asian country of Afghanistan seems once again to be shaping our future. It is paradoxical that the graveyard of one superpower should become a battlefield for the other.

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Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 01 (Editorial) - The White Man's Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning (October 29) at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.???? The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly "inside the box" - so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world: It is not wise for the Christian white To hustle the Asian brown; For the Christian riles And the Asian smiles And weareth the Christian down. At the end of the fight Lies a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East. With a few notable exceptions, the RAND event offered conventional wisdom to a fare-thee-well.

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The Washington Post Creates Its Own Facts to Support Afghan Nation-Building

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Melvin A. Goodman - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - The Washington Post is creating its own facts in order to support its argument for US nation-building in Afghanistan. In its lead editorial on Saturday, the Post asserted that the United States is capable of building a strong government in Afghanistan at the national and local levels. The Post claimed that Afghanistan had had a "working national government through most of the 1970s and 1980s." This is simply not so.read more

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Senior al Qaeda leader thought killed in Somalia

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

NewsTrust Yahoo Pipes Feed - By Bill Roggio - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Robow (left) and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (faced covered) from Shabaab?s latest videotape. Image by Nick Grace. A senior al Qaeda operative behind the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania is thought to have been killed during a raid by covert forces in southern Somalia. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and another person are thought to have been killed in the southern town of Barawe during a raid by what is thought to be French commandos. Nabhan’s death has not been confirmed, however. Witnesses said foreign troops swept into the town on helicopters, killed Nabhan and another terrorist, and captured two others after wounding them, Mareeg reported . Some of the commandos were thought to have had ...

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Is Afghanistan Worth It?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Obsidian Wings - By Publius - Sep. 02 (Comment) - What exactly is the evidence that the Taliban would provide a safe haven? Unless such evidence exists, I don't see any national security interest whatsoever in Afghanistan, with or without the Taliban.

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Taliban collapsing in Pakistan?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Hot Air - By Ed Morrissey - Aug. 25 (Comment) - The death of Baitullah Mehsud appears to have done even more damage to the Taliban terrorist network in Pakistan than first thought. Without their charismatic leader to unite them, the Taliban has begun to splinter across ideological and tribal lines,

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Afghan women’s futures must not be overlooked

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - By Masha Hamilton - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - A woman at a polling centre in Kandahar City. Afghanistan is heading to the polls for national elections -- but out of 41 presidential candidates, only two are women. Progress has been slow since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Perhaps to appease conservatives ahead of the election, President Hamid Karzai recently enacted a [...]

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Can We Succeed in Afghanistan?

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Jewish World Review - By Mona Charen - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That's what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart's "The Places in Between," an account of the Scotsman's 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That's right, he walked.

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One third of Afghans at risk of hunger, malnutrition

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - By Shannon Scribner - Aug. 19 (Interview) - The Afghan people are often caught in the crossfire of the war between the Taliban and western troops. There are currently 250,000 internally displaced people due to the conflict. Adding to the violence, Afghanis find now find themselves in a battle with hunger. A new report from the humanitarian organization Oxfam says that one third of the population is now at risk from hunger and malnutrition.

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Obama Defends Afghanistan War; Campaigning Wraps up with Karzai calling on Warlords

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama on Monday. Ironically, as Obama spoke. Others have pointed out that Bush?s handlers would never have allowed any such thing. Hell, they unconstitutionally designated ?protest zones.? Anyway, about Afghanistan 1. Obama reiterated his pledge to get the US out of Iraq: "And we will remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. And for America, the Iraq war will end." 2. He has a new strategy in Afghanistan, announced last March. He makes three points about it: 1. "This strategy recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan" . . . and 2. "This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war—that we also need diplomacy and development ...

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Afghanistan's pre-election violence

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

theweek.com - By Not Cited - Aug. 18 (Review) - What happened The Taliban launched a wave of violent attacks in Kabul two days ahead of Afghanistan's national elections. Insurgents have vowed to disrupt the voting.

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Taliban threats loom over Afghanistan’s upcoming election

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - By Martin Savage, Alex Their - Aug. 17 (Interview) - On Thursday, Afghanistan will have its second ever democratic presidential election but the legitimacy is being threatened by an outside challenger: The Taliban. For weeks the Taliban has been making threats of violence to any Afghan that goes to the polls on August 20. Due to these threats, some 1,200 polling stations – of the country’s 7,000 – have been closed or moved for security reasons. Outside analysts believe that if disruptions continue, the legitimacy of the vote could be spoiled.

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The Afghan Elections

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

csis.org - By Karin von Hippel, Alyssa Bernstein - Aug. 13 (Interview) - No matter who wins the August 20 elections, the results will be considered a positive step for Afghanistan if they are perceived as mostly free and fair (most analysts expect some fraud and security problems). Alternatively, if vote buying and corruption alter the results in a significant manner, or security concerns prevent large numbers of people from voting, violent protests could occur and the consequences could be harsh not only for Afghanistan’s democratic potential, but for the war against the Taliban.

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