The term "global war on terror" has
long since been dropped from the United States's official vocabulary.
The
phrase that came to be proposed as a replacement even when George W
Bush was
still in office, the "long war", has similarly fallen by the wayside,
to be succeeded in March 2009 by a less overtly combative Pentagon formulation:
"overseas contingency operation".
ISLAMABAD - Despite serious reservations, Pakistan's military at the weekend began an all-out offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
The deployment of about 30,000 troops in South Waziristan, backed by the air force, shifts the main theater of the South Asian battlefield from Afghanistan to Pakistan.
As the Obama administration dithers over what to do for the best in Afghanistan, neighbouring Pakistan is paying an increasingly heavy price. Like a spate of previous Taliban attacks in recent days, today's
mayhem in Lahore underscored fears that the principal consequence of Washington's Afghan paralysis, albeit unintended, is the further destabilisation of the Pakistani state.
Pakistanis might be forgiven for wondering whether, with friends like these in Washington, who needs enemies?
It's early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. Should he escalate in Vietnam? Should he say "yes" to the request from U.S. commanders for more troops? Or should he change strategy, downsize the American commitment, even withdraw completely, a decision that would help him focus on his top domestic priority, "The Great Society" he hopes to build?
We all know what happened.
The escalation of war in Afghanistan may be only a stalking horse for an even larger war in Pakistan as the United States seeks to secure the nukes there that might fall into the hands of terrorists. These newly proposed wars are only the Obama phase of what is likely to be an endless 21st-century crusade called "the war on terrorism."
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Steps by the United States to vastly expand its aid to Pakistan, as well as the footprint of its embassy and private security contractors here, are aggravating an already volatile anti-American mood as Washington pushes for greater action by the government against the Taliban.
ISLAMABAD – Two Pakistani women and
an Iraqi national were killed Monday when a suicide bomber struck
inside a heavily fortified UN office in the heart of the Pakistani
capital Islamabad, police officials said.
The explosion inside
the offices of the World Food Programme (WFP) comes after Taliban
rebels vowed to avenge the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud,
killed in a US missile strike in August.
America's convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer's top political show - the "free expression of the people" in the Afghanistan election - reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream - as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one's saying a word about the pipe that's delivering the opium dream.
What, what, what,
What's the news from Swat?
Sad news,
Bad news,
Comes by the cable led
Through the Indian Ocean's bed,
Through the Persian Gulf,
the Red
Sea and the Med-
Iterranean -- he 's dead;
The Ahkoond is dead!
-- George Thomas Lanigan
I had a flashback recently when I read a Washington Post news story
about how the U.S. commander in Afghanistan thinks he may need many
thousands more troops to win the war.
Shades of Vietnam. Do we ever learn?
It brought back memories of the late Gen. William C. Westmoreland,
the U.S. commander in Southeast Asia, who kept escalating the troop
numbers after the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam. His strategy produced
a debacle for us.
Fast forward to Afghanistan, 2009.
