via Lobe Log
Foreign Policy’s Stephen Walt highlights a chart by Belfer Center fellow Matt Waldman showing that as the US-led 2009 “Surge” in Afghanistan proceeded, US casualties increased. The pace in 2012 is also roughly similar to the toll from the previous two years:
Equally important, the final column (based on figures [...]
via IPS News
Paula Broadwell, whose affair with Gen. David Petraeus brought his career to a sudden end last week, had sought to help defend his decision in 2010 to allow village destruction in Afghanistan that not only violated his own previous guidance but the international laws of war.
But her efforts had [...]
How the U.S. and Pakistan Became the Dysfunctional Nuclear Family of International Relations
By Dilip Hiro
via Tom Dispatch
The United States and Pakistan are by now a classic example of a dysfunctional nuclear family (with an emphasis on “nuclear”). While the two governments and their peoples become more suspicious and resentful of [...]
Joe McCarthy Would Understand
via Tom Dispatch
First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.” Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted “International Burn-a-Koran Day.” Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet [...]
Kayhan Barzegar, the Director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University, explains how incorporating regional issues into the expected talks between Iran and the P5+1 can increase the chances for positive results:
But the reality is that successful and sustained talks should consider both above-mentioned dimensions, giving both negotiating parties [...]
Mitt Romney’s eagerly awaited foreign policy speech at the Citadel was welcomed by neoconservative hawks who supported the George W. Bush administration’s adventurist foreign policy. But Romney’s speech stood out in that it was full of dire predictions for the future — indeed some were downright apocalyptic — while offering few if [...]
News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for Sept. 29-Oct. 3
Los Angeles Times: Middle East analyst Trita Parsi warns us about the dangers of current U.S. policy towards Iran while explaining how an “accidental clash” in the Persian Gulf could take place in the meantime. According to Parsi, a desperate, weakened Iran [...]
By Gareth Porter
In the commentary on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the news and infotainment media have predictably framed the discussion by the question of how successful the CIA and the military have been in destroying al Qaeda. Absent from the torrent of opinion and analysis was any mention of how the U.S. [...]
By Reza Sanati
Just as the fall of Kabul and Baghdad ignited a spate of jubilation and self-vindication from proponents of intervention in those countries, the fall of Tripoli has reincarnated this pattern, both from humanitarian interventionists and their U.S.-interest minded counterparts. And now that the Qaddafi regime has completely eroded, even skeptics [...]
Last week 2 U.S. media outlets aired the unsubstantiated claim that Iran was responsible for downing a helicopter in Afghanistan which killed 30 U.S. military personnel. This type of baseless fear-mongering is nothing new. Right-wing pundits and media commentators have been making similar statements for years.
But what is the real nature of [...]
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