Aryn Baker writes in Time:
The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country’s largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and India’s Hindu population, which hovers around 80%, are [...]
Archive for November, 2008
Indian Terrorism: Homegrown, By Pakistan
Posted in India, Militancy, Pakistan, Terrorism on November 28, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Iraqi Parliament Approves SOFA — Now What?
Posted in Iraq, SOFA on November 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
SOFA becomes reality, and here’s Reidar Visser’s take on the “Withdrawal Treaty”:
[...} George W. Bush never managed to use leverage in the negotiations with the Iraqi government over bilateral relations. Instead, during the course of one year, his administration essentially performed an unconditional reversal of its Iraq policy, silently moving from its [...]
Mumbai: Is India Within Its Rights to Attack Pakistan?
Posted in India, Terrorism on November 27, 2008 | 5 Comments »
As the tragedy unfolds in Mumbai, I find myself wondering why no one is bringing up this fact:
This is by all definitions a foreign attack on Indian soil. India is not a Muslim country, and its own Muslim minority, apart from Kashmiris, by and large does not have a beef with the central government. There [...]
Iraq War Was Worth It — Or Maybe It’s All a Joke
Posted in Iraq on November 26, 2008 | 2 Comments »
If you haven’t yet read University of Chicago Law Professor Eric Posner’s blog post on the pros and cons (mostly pros) of the Iraq war, you definitely should. Presumably playing the devil’s advocate, Posner looks at a number of indicators like mortality, political freedom and cell phone subscriptions (!) and concludes that there may be [...]
John Brennan: From Man to Boogeyman, Pt. 2
Posted in Human rights, Terrorism on November 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So he withdraws:
John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who many believed would be the spy agency’s next director, on Tuesday withdrew his name from consideration for a top job in the Obama administration amid concerns he was intimately linked to controversial C.I.A. programs authorized by President Bush.
The reason? Better believe it:
The opposition to Mr. Brennan [...]
Will Iraq Explode Before or After U.S. Leaves?
Posted in Iraq on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My clunky metaphor of the U.S. standing in Iraq at a dam with its finger in an expanding hole seems to be apt as ever:
Kurdish officials this fall took delivery of three planeloads of small arms and ammunition imported from Bulgaria, three U.S. military officials said, an acquisition that occurred outside the weapons procurement procedures [...]
Reuters: Pakistan Now on Par with Iraq, Afghanistan
Posted in Pakistan on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Oh man, things are really going downhill in Pakistan. Reuters has just launched a new feature, “Security developments in Pakistan”, similar to the roundups it has so far offered only from — you guessed it — Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s the one from this morning:
BAJAUR – The army fired artillery at militant positions overnight and [...]
Afghanistan: Who’s in Charge of the War?
Posted in Afghanistan on November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
If you have the stamina to slog through a bog of military acronyms, I highly recommend Canadian Colonel Ian Hope’s excellent new paper on unity of command in Afghanistan, published by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Instititute. It’s a tough read but it’s important:
While SACEUR’s soldiers fight in Afghanistan, CINCCENT retains control of [...]
Rumsfeld: ‘Years of Struggle’ Created Conditions for Surge
Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq on November 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Whoa, talk about reframing a narrative. In a rare op-ed piece for The New York Times, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld argues that the surge of additional combat brigades into Iraq was not a last-ditch attempt to execute a course correction in a disastrously mishandled war but that, in fact, “by early 2007, several [...]
John Brennan: From Man to Boogeyman
Posted in Human rights, Terrorism on November 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
John Brennan, who was Bill Clinton’s daily intelligence briefer and George Tenet’s XO, and who ran the National Counterterrorism Center for its first two years, has lately become something of a pet villain for Obama supporters. Judging by the blogospheric reaction to the news of his possible nomination as the head of CIA, you’d think [...]
