More than ten years after 9/11, it’s still little appreciated how America and its allies have lost two wars comprehensively, Iraq and Afghanistan (though a friend today said to me that the former was a success, with any number of oil contracts going to North American firms). Here’s Gareth Porter in IPS with some fascinating…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
America is blind in Syria
The lead story in today’s New York Times is comical. Almost. What’s clear is how little Washington understands the Syrian revolution, who is fighting and why. Its intelligence is clearly suspect and hardline Islamists are being strengthened. America learns nothing from history.… Afghanistan in the 1980s, anybody? Most of the arms shipped at the behest of… Saudi…
This is what we’re leaving in Afghanistan; likely chaos
International Crisis Group doesn’t mince words in its latest report: Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organising a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that…
Speech in support of Wikileaks and against 11 years of war in Afghanistan
This month is the 11th anniversary of the Afghan war, a disastrous conflict that has achieved nothing more than destruction for Afghans and foreigners. Yesterday Sydney’s Stop the War Coalition held a rally to mark this anniversary as well as supporting Wikileaks and Julian Assange in their struggle to tell the truth about Afghanistan, via…
That is what global “help” looks like in Afghanistan
America and China talk about assisting the war-torn country but the reality is so very different. The result? A supposed need to bring in private companies to fix the mess:
Afghanistan remains a massively outsourced war
Most of the world media announced last week that America’s “surge” in Afghanistan was over. Not so fast. Here’s some numbers (via Mother Jones) that reveal the depth of Washington’s occupation in the country: Here a few more numbers to keep in mind as we approach the 2014 deadline for withdrawal of US combat forces:…
Just how many bases does America have in “liberated” Afghanistan?
That’s a question that seemingly nobody can answer. This is empire logic. Nick Turse investigates for TomDispatch: Afghanistan may turn out to be one of the great misbegotten “stimulus packages” of the modern era, a construction boom in the middle of nowhere with materials largely shipped in at enormous expense to no lasting purpose whatsoever.… …
“Justice” the American way
Remember this next time any US official talks about accountability in other nations (via the New York Times): Attorney General… Eric H. Holder Jr.… announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will…
Breivik both sane and deeply connected to now mainstream Islamophobic discourse
Last year I wrote a chapter on the far right and Israel in an ebook, On Utoya, on the massacre in Norway committed by Andres Breivik. With the verdict now in, one of the book’s co-editors, Tad Tietze, has written a piece in the Guardian that provides the necessary political context: There are many reasons…