Over on Ms. Magazine‘s blog, Rafia Zakaria takes issue with my response to TIME Magazine’s pro-war, propaganda cover art. Zakaria and I agree on the critical importance of getting women into real decision-making positions in the reconciliation and reintegration processes. However, Zakaria falls right into the bad frame pushed by TIME’s cover art, and in [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Brave New Foundation’
A Response to Rafia Zakaria’s Response to My Response to TIME Magazine
Posted: August 5, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, Left, Ms. Magazine, political equality, Rafia Zakaria, Rethink Afghanistan, women, women's rights
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Afghanistan Rights Monitor SLAMS Washington Spin About “Progress” in Afghanistan
Posted: July 13, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan Rights Monitor, ARM, Brave New Foundation, insurgency, insurgents, International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Obama, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban
The Afghanistan Rights Monitor’s (ARM) mid-year report on Civilian Casualties of Conflict (.pdf) blasts the happy-talk coming out of the Obama Administration about the deteriorating security situation and its effect on civilians: Despite the high-profile spin in Washington and Kabul about progress made in Afghanistan, the Afghan people have only witnessed and suffered an intensifying [...]
Hope
Posted: July 10, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Austin, Brave New Foundation, Central market, COIN, counterinsurgency, insurgency, Meetup, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban, Vietnam
This evening, I spent a couple of hours at Central Market in downtown Austin, Texas, with 7 other people in one of the first Meetups to Rethink the Afghanistan War. I’ve been involved in a serious way in the struggle to end the war for a little more than two years. This was the most [...]
Love the Afghanistan War in Public at Your Peril
Posted: June 27, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, COIN, Congress, counterinsurgency, Newsweek, polling, Rethink Afghanistan
One of the gems buried in Michael Hastings’ now ubiquitous Rolling Stone article is a senior adviser to General McChrystal thanking his lucky stars for public ignorance of the state of the war: Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn’t begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things [...]
General Petraeus, Concern Troll
Posted: June 18, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, ISAF, Jim Jones, Levin, NATO, Obama, Petraeus, Rethink Afghanistan, Robert Gates, Taliban, war in Afghanistan
Watch "Don’t Let General Petraeus Move the Goalposts on Afghanistan" in HD on Facebook. Concern troll. In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns”. The idea behind this is that your [...]
Afghanistan Where A Thousand Corpses Lie
Posted: May 18, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: 1000 Deaths, Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, casualties, McChrystal, Obama, Rethink Afghanistan, Tillman, war in Afghanistan, white house
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the Battle-God, great, and his Kingdom – A field where a thousand corpses lie. –Stephen Crane, Do not weep, maiden for war is kind. According to The [...]
Plagiarism and Afghanistan
Posted: May 4, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, civilian deaths, COIN, counterinsurgency, Defense Department, failure, Kandahar, Marjah, McChrystal, Michael Flynn, Michael McMahon, Pentagon, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, Rethink Afghanistan, Russ Carnahan, war in Afghanistan
Last week, the military published an ironically titled “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” that wrapped blunt admissions of strategic collapse in typical Pentagon happy talk. Short version: Violence is up 87 percent (p. 39), the insurgency has population sympathy/support in 92 of 121 key regions, and local support for International Security [...]
Kandahar Bursts Gen. McChrystal’s Counterinsurgency Bubble
Posted: April 14, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, counterinsurgency, insurgency, Kandahar, Karzai, Major General Nick Carter, McChrystal, military, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban, war in Afghanistan, war on terror, war on terrorism
Cross-posted from Rethink Afghanistan. In case you hadn’t heard, the next stop in General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan is Kandahar, the ideological heart of the Taliban. Using the spadework done in advance of the Marjah operation as a template, McChrystal says the plan is to: "…do the political groundwork, so that when it’s time to do [...]
Special Ops Killing Civilians in Afghanistan: A Pattern of Brutality, Denial, Outrage and Violence
Posted: April 12, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, civilian casualties, civilian deaths, civilian killings, Gardez, night raids, Paktia, Paktiya, Rethink Afghanistan, special forces, special operations, special operations forces, special ops
Here’s my latest video created for Rethink Afghanistan. You can find the accompanying blog post here.
