Before giving Moscow State University a statue of the humanist poet Walt Whitman yesterday, Hillary Clinton should have started by disowning the ideas of his nefarious namesake, Walt Whitman Rostow. Squandering all the promise associated with the cuddly Tolstoy look-alike after which his Socialist Russian-immigrant parents had named him, Rostow spent his life promoting the […]
This afternoon I watched the half hour preview of PBS Frontline’s ‘Obama’s War’ and it was riveting. The small portion shown focuses on a group of Marines attempting to protect a village of civilians in Helmand Province. Their amazing efforts are awe inspiring to me. My only problem with PBS’s job is the name. The […]
Here layeth a great group of Afghan-related works that you should check out: Scott Shane of the New York Times does a quick, yet informative profile of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Unfortunately, he’s as influential as ever. Staying with the New York Times, Jame Traub has one of the better pieces analyzing Afghanistan’s future and […]
Just making sure we’re all up-to-date on the latest ‘President Obama Afghan Decision 09’ process. Yesterday, the President met with a large bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators with the major news coming out that he will not implement a major evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan nor fall back on orchestrating a strictly anti-Al […]
Peter W. Galbraith, who was fired last week from his position with the UN as deputy special representative in Afghanistan, has come out swinging with a hard hitting piece in the Washington Post deriding the United Nation’s work in securing a free and fair Afghan Presidential Election. Galbraith, who was basically fired by UN special […]
Coming back from the brink of death after a car bomb that put him in a coma, the Ingush president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov today dismissed his republic’s entire government. Was it because he felt the leadership was not doing enough to stem the Islamist insurgency widely accused of destabilising this tiny territory and having tried to […]
The Obama Administration is undertaking an intense, high-profile deliberation over what to do next in Afghanistan. Accounts of this week’s White House meetings indicate a lively, open debate, punctuated by General Stanley McChrystal’s calls for increased troop levels, answered by skeptical questioning from Vice President Biden. Some of this debate is being carried out in […]
“War in South Ossetia: Georgia started it” Thus did today’s editorial in Britain’s Guardian say what almost the entire US media elite refused to do last summer. It referred to the comprehensive EU investigation that found the war to have been started by Georgia and not Russia, but could just as easily have been quoting […]
As the Obama administration deliberates on what strategy and how many resources to commit or implement in Afghanistan, there has been growing comparisons between Obama’s dilemma and Bush’s prior to the Iraqi surge. Though the comparison has several important leaks, there is much to discern in both President’s leadership styles and decision making methods. The […]
It appears that journalist Bob Woodward has the scoop again on the Obama administration’s next moves in Afghanistan. Well, I guess that’s not really accurate, as Woodward really has just broken the story of the Obama administration’s ‘plans’ for how they are going to decide their next moves in the war in Afghanistan. All of […]
The US, boxed in by a trigger happy Israel, is frustrated about Russia’s refusal to support Iran sanctions. But let’s put Obama’s European missile defence gambit in perspective. “If Russia is to give up Iran, the United States and the West have to offer something much bigger to Moscow than the scrapping of the missile […]
It’s Out. The Cat and Gen. McChrystal’s Afghan Strategy and Resource Recommendations to President Obama. While I safely got my cat Chuck back into the house, the Obama administration cannot put McChrystal’s report, which calls for thousands of more troops or the US mission in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure”, back in its envelope. […]
In an inspired move hailed as “arguably the most concrete shift in foreign policy from that of the Bush administration, Obama might have just about made up for his disastrous appointment of Michael McFaul as his Russia advisor by scrapping plans for a European missile shield. Even the Daily Telegraph, while deriding the US President […]
Vladimir Putin has a history of truly bizarre spontaneous gestures, such as kissing a terrified boy on his stomach or stealing Superbowl rings from visiting dignitaries. So what was so odd about him giving a passing factory worker his $10000 Swiss watch as a memento yesterday? For a start, writes Luke Harding, “Putin’s penchant for […]
A few items of note to discuss: Just as I was applauding the seemingly positive news of the fact that Spain was planning to commit a few hundred more troops to the NATO effort in Afghanistan, President Stephen Harper of Canada’s spokesman Dimitri Soudas reiterated in a briefing Monday that Canada will withdraw its troops […]