Afghanistan
Nir Rosen, major war monger
After critiquing Nir Rosen’s shoddy excuse-making for terrorism in January 2009, I paid only slight attention to his work. But on the occasions when I stumbled onto his Twitter feed, I actually had to stop and wonder whether someone had hacked his account. The opinions were so extreme, so loutish, so flagrantly unprofessional, so obviously unbecoming of a Fellow at
“The real war dead”
Anjem Choudary, a UK-based Islamist agitator, is spearheading a protest march at Wootton Bassett, “where townspeople have lined the sidewalks since April 2007 to mourn the passing cortèges of British military casualties….” This counter-mourning demonstration will be, in Choudary’s words, …”not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military, but rather the real war dead who have been shunned
Afghan reality checks
From reading Robert Greenwald’s antiwar website Rethink Afghanistan, or the work of pacifist Derrick Crowe, one of RA’s house bloggers, you would think that Obama’s plan is to reenact the My Lai massacre on a regular basis and maybe drink the blood of the victims in ritualistic triumph. Crowe writes: I held my nose and voted for President Obama last
About that Parenti piece
Yeah, this Parenti piece, because it needs to be said. Parenti writes: The real purpose of these 300,000 [sic] soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next US presidential election. […] There is nothing else to Obama’s Afghan strategy. Actually, there is nothing else to Parenti’s analysis of Obama’s Afghan strategy. And the careless error
My thoughts exactly
Well, not exactly, but close. Yesterday, from Andrew Sullivan: I think this strategy is doomed. But then I think any strategy that does not pledge to colonize Afghanistan, pour trillions of dollars into it and stay for a century is doomed. So why do I end up this morning feeling rather similar to my colleague, Jim Fallows, who simply sighs:
The slander begins
[Cross-posted at Harry’s Place. See Gene’s earlier post on Malalai Joya.] Malalai Joya at Comment Is Free makes valid points about corruption under Karzai but then writes: Like many around the world, I am wondering what kind of “peace” prize can be awarded to a leader who continues the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and starts a new war in
The speech
I have a lot to do today besides read seven million reactions to Obama’s speech, but I’ll wade back into the water soon. For now, I think this is the most principled military decision we could reasonably expect from an American president in these circumstances. It was not “the easier option,” as Bob Herbert opined yesterday. A majority of Americans
Michael Moore, demagogue
If I were President Obama, and I read an open letter from Michael Moore telling me how to honor the memories of my dead mother and dead grandmother, I’d be pretty offended. As I’ve said, I’m deeply ambivalent about a ramped-up Afghanistan deployment. So is nearly every serious commentator on the issue. Moore is far from serious. He describes Afghanistan