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.
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.
WASHINGTON - The expanding US drone war against Al-Qaeda may be disrupting the terror network's operations but the lethal bombing raids carry risks for Washington and its ally Pakistan.
The head of the CIA has defended the attacks in Pakistan by unmanned aircraft as "the only game in town" when it comes to targeting Al-Qaeda and its allies. US officials credit the bombing raids with knocking off key figures in the terror network.
Yet an unknown number of civilians have died in the bombing war, possibly as many as 700, according to the Pakistani press.
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.
Lord Bingham, who retired last year as a senior law lord, said the aircraft could follow other weapons considered "so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance" in being consigned to the history books.
He likened drones, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Gaza, to cluster bombs and landmines.
Lord Bingham made the comments to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in an interview which addressed the issue of the state being bound by the rule of law.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Major Western countries, after applauding Pakistan's military crackdown on Islamic extremists in the Swat valley in the country's northwest, haven't pledged the money needed to resettle the population now that the fighting is mostly over, and humanitarian organizations fear that 2 million people will be sent back home before it's safe to go.
Unless the United States and other allies provide the required money to reconstruct Swat, Pakistan risks losing the "hearts and minds" of those who had to flee the operation that fought the Islamic extremists who'd overrun
Damn those ungrateful Pakistanis. After U.S. drone attacks killed more than
600 of their people since 2006—most of them civilians—it seems they
think they have some right to say they don’t want the U.S.
WASHINGTON - Newly released research from experts and refugee advocates paints a clearer and perhaps surprising picture of the plight of Pakistan's rapidly growing population of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The information comes as the U.S. is investing more money in Pakistan, and many hope that the new information will influence how that aid is used.
The current IDP crisis was spurred by last year's takeover by the Taliban of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province, as many of its residents fled its strict Islamist rule.
"Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the
American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely,"
the Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote in 2001, in "The Algebra of Infinite Justice."
Roy took a lot of grief for that piece from American public opinion,
hijacked at the time by a blind desire for violent revenge (and the
silencing of dissenters) that would prove to be far worse than 9/11's
mass murders.
Three days after his inauguration, on January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama ordered
US predator drones to attack sites inside of Pakistan, reportedly
killing 15 people. It was the first documented attack ordered by the
new US Commander in Chief inside of Pakistan. Since that first
Obama-authorized attack, the US has regularly bombed Pakistan, killing scores of civilians.
