The orders have been given. All that’s left is to give the speech before a bunch of strapping young cadets and install the procurator Augusti. Thirty-six thousand more troopsThirty thousand more troops, $1 million a piece, per year. More IEDs in response. More bombs. More night searches. More economic damage. Hope. Change. We’ve seen planes [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Time to Stand Up
Posted: November 30, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Christianity, escalation, Flobots, Jesus, Litany of Resistance, nonviolence, Obama, terrorism
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An Interview with Matthew Hoh
Posted: November 21, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, al-Qaida, COIN, counterinsurgency, Karl Eikenberry, Matthew Hoh, Rethink Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, Taliban
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog. If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the U.S.’s predicament in Afghanistan, he’d tell you: The presence of our ground combat troops [...]
Overestimating Our Innocence in Afghanistan
Posted: November 20, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Center for American Progress, Christianity, just war criteria, Malalai Joya, Obama, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rethink Afghanistan, Tina Rife
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog. The Center for American Progress (CAP) published a piece on just war criteria and the war in Afghanistan (we’ll come back to this, don’t worry) that paraphrased [...]
Karzai Cartel: Uh, Sure, We’ll Clean Up Corruption!
Posted: November 20, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Conversations, Daniel Ellsberg, Karim Khalili, Karzai, Matthew Hoh, Mohammed Qasim Fahim, Rethink Afghanistan
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You know what’s funny? Hamid Karzai, Electioneer-in-Chief, stood between these two guys, Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili to declare [h/t and photo credit, Wired's Danger Room blog]: Those who spread corruption should be tried and prosecuted. Corruption is a very dangerous [...]
Matthew Hoh and Daniel Ellsberg Discuss the Need for a Drawdown in Afghanistan
Posted: November 19, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Conversations, Daniel Ellsberg, Matthew Hoh, Rethink Afghanistan
I’m convinced that when we look back on the key events on the road out of Afghanistan, we’ll mark Matthew Hoh’s resignation as one of the milestones. Hoh’s resignation letter is a devastating four-page indictment of the misguided U.S. policy in that country, and his experience in Anbar, Iraq gave his views heft in the [...]
Need Cover for Betraying the Democratic Base? Ask The Democratic Strategist!
Posted: November 18, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, James Vega, Rethink Afghanistan, Ruy Teixeira, Stan Greenberg, The Democratic Strategist, William Galston
James Vega–writing for The Democratic Strategist, co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira–just published a 2,600+ word memo arguing that “Obama’s final decision” to “approve a significant increase in the number of troops” would not be a “betrayal” of the Democratic base. You know, that Democratic base that overwhelmingly opposes sending more troops. [...]
In Bed with the Rapists in Afghanistan
Posted: November 16, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Christina Lamb, Guldubbin, Patrick Cockburn, Rethink Afghanistan, Rule of the Rapists, Specialist Alexis Hutchinson
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog. This past week’s news included the story of Specialist Alexis Hutchinson’s 11-month-old boy taken by the Army and given to Child Protective Services so she could be [...]
