Thursday marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S.’s military assault on Iraq. The occupation continues today, although President Obama recently stated his intent to withdraw our forces: Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end….And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘surge’
The Day After Tomorrow
Posted: March 17, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, anti-war, biden, Iraq, Lynn Woolsey, McCain, Obama, Rumsfeld, surge
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Think Again on Afghanistan
Posted: January 3, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, COIN, counterinsurgency, escalation, nonviolence, surge, Taliban
A quick question for the proponents of an escalation in Afghanistan: What are we protecting from a revolution? The “surge” in Iraq was an exercise in counterinsurgency (COIN). Counterinsurgency is by definition the attempt to protect against a revolution. But in Afghanistan, the authority and structures of the corrupt Kabul regime do not and have [...]
Quiet in Iraq is Not Success, and the “Surge” Didn’t Cause It
Posted: September 20, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Bill O'Reilly, Iraq, Jesus, nonviolence, Obama, surge
The war and ongoing occupation of Iraq is a hole into which the English language and American reason have crawled to die. Words and ideas are bent in grotesque contortions until words with usual positive connotations mean crimes against humanity. Our language gets away from us. The most egregious facet of this phenomenon is the [...]
I remember sitting in my office down the hall from the first “Petraeus Hearing,” watching the closed-circuit feed as the general and Ambassador Crocker showed charts tracking the Balkanization of Baghdad. The charts illustrated in mathematical, sterile terms that Baghdad reorganized itself along lines of ethnicity and mutual suspicion. The report below dramatizes the cold [...]
