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Once More Into The Breach! Karzai Gov’t Tries To Split Taliban From Al Qaeda
In non-shoe-throwing news, Anand Gopal of the Christian Science Monitor does some great reporting about something called the Afghan Social Outreach Program, which is the Karzai government’s attempt at fracturing the insurgency and cleaving the “small-T” Taliban away from Al Qaeda. This would complement the top-down talks between Karzai and the Taliban:
Taliban Learns From Al Qaeda’s Mistakes
Noah Shachtman at Danger Room notices an ominous development. The Taliban appear to be relaxing their most severe doctrinal demands in order to increase their cohesive capability among the Afghan insurgency. Noah remarks:
In Iraq, we saw that Sunni jihadists’ extremism eventually repelled average people in Anbar province — and pushed them into American arms. The [...]
Governors Have Eyes Only for Obama II
Following up on Matt’s nice post about the states tapping Obama for help with enormous budget shortfalls…
Few are saying it out loud, but the issue has a ring of class distinction surrounding it. That is, the White House has been quick to secure hundreds of billions of dollars for white-collar workers on Wall Street, but [...]
CFR’s Biddle, Markey: Not So Hot on Karzai-Taliban Talks
Interesting phone chat today with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steve Biddle and Dan Markey, both of whom recently visited Afghanistan and shared some thoughts on the war. Neither is really hot on the prospects for what’s increasingly being called “reconciliation” between the Karzai government and the Taliban. This is the case even if we’re [...]
McCain Urges Surge to Fix What Ails U.S.
The GOP nominee would send troops to Wall Street, to national forests to protect oil drilling and to Chicago to guard against Obama’s terrorist cronies.
Military Embraces Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
The U.S. military is using economy of force and intimate knowledge of the local population to combat the insurgency in Afghanistan.
Letterman’s Cronkite Turn
Forty years ago, in September 1968, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive — which changed mainstream America’s view of the Vietnam War. In living rooms across the nation, Americans saw a gruesome display of how powerless the United States forces looked as they struggled to gain control over a millitary conflict they would not [...]
Palin’s Domestic Chores Bar Media Chinwags
Duty calls on the home front, and the Governoress simply can’t be bothered with trifles from the press.
Cross-Border Attacks On The Increase in Afghanipakistan
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Usually when you hear about cross-border attacks here, they are perpetrated by the Taliban. Not so much in recent weeks — this time it’s the U.S. dipping its toes into Pakistan, which Sen. John McCain has said Sen. Barack Obama is naive for proposing.
Last week, the U.S. allegedly went after [...]
Watchdog, Historians Declare Preemptive War on Cheney
As The Washington Post previewed this morning, Citizens for Responsibility for Ethics, a watchdog group, along with two historians and three historical organizations, filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court this afternoon against the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and Allen Weinstein, head of the National Archives.
The lawsuit doesn’t concern anything Cheney has actually [...]
