ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region.
Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Over a decade ago a young
woman approached me on the California Senate floor with a petition
against the Taliban. Women are being repressed, tortured and killed by
religious fundamentalists, she said. I signed on. The Taliban seemed
like a Ku Klux Klan aimed at women. I was disgusted that the State
Department and oil companies would negotiate with them over pipelines,
with cursory regard for women's rights. I still feel that way.
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said U.S.-led forces must gain ground against insurgents in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid a public perception the war is unwinnable, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.
While noting that the Taliban militants would not be defeated within a year, Gates told the newspaper it was critical that the U.S. military and its allies show they were making progress in the Asian nation.
Al-Qaida could not care less what we do in
Afghanistan. We can bomb Afghan villages, hunt the Taliban in Helmand
province, build a 100,000-strong client Afghan army, stand by passively
as Afghan warlords execute hundreds, maybe thousands, of Taliban
prisoners, build huge, elaborate military bases and send drones to drop
bombs on Pakistan. It will make no difference. The war will not halt
the attacks of Islamic radicals. Terrorist and insurgent groups are
not conventional forces.
NAM Editor’s Note: Just two weeks into July, the month is already the
deadliest for NATO troops in Afghanistan. The high casualty count is at
least partially the result of Operation Khanjar, the largest U.S.
Marine Corps ground offensive in years. But NAM contributor Sonali
Kolhatkar writes that NATO's modus operandi are doomed to failure.
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 2009 -- I've come back to the Afghan capital again, after
an absence of two years, to find it ruined in a new way. Not by bombs
this time, but by security.
KABUL - The death toll for foreign troops in Afghanistan halfway through July equaled the highest for any month of the eight-year-old war, tallies showed on Wednesday, as a U.S. escalation has met unprecedented violence.
Authorities announced a U.S. soldier had been killed by a bomb and two Turks had died in a road accident, raising the toll of U.S. and allied foreign fatalities in the first half of July to 46, equal to full month highs set in August and June 2008.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that the Afghan security forces will have to be far larger than currently planned if President Obama's strategy for winning the war is to succeed, according to senior military officials.
Such an expansion would require spending billions more than the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years, and the likely deployment of thousands more U.S. troops as trainers and advisers, officials said.
The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now.
That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.
A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country.
But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's happening outside the United States.
It was a blast. I'm talking about my daughter's wedding. You don't
often see a child of yours quite that happy. I'm no party animal, but I
danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can't claim that, as I walked my
daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat
back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought
about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the "blast" isn't
metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst
of revelry die.
