Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
I have become a veritable Cassandra with my warnings about the folly of America’s involvement in Afghanistan. Instead of wondering why I keep beating this dead horse, however, my only wonder is why more people aren’t doing the same… Hell, even the recent spate of U.S. soldiers being killed by the Afghans they’re supposedly training… Read more.
Nothing affirms the proposition that only authoritarian regimes can govern Arab countries quite like the very Egyptians who protested against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak being the ones now cheering for the authoritarian regime of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Especially given that al-Sisi seized power from the country’s first democratically elected government of Mohamed… Read more.
All of Washington was atwitter yesterday over excerpts the New York Times and Washington Post published from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s forthcoming book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War. Significantly, President George W. Bush nominated Gates in 2006 and President Obama retained him until he retired in 2011, evidently, as a thoroughly dismayed… Read more.
The United States is considering pulling out all its troops from Afghanistan next year, U.S. officials said, amid tension between the President Barack Obama’s Administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government. (Reuters, July 9, 2013) I am pleased to see President Obama finally coming to his senses. But this raises the question: what has he accomplished… Read more.
No doubt you’ve heard about the Algerian hostage crisis that ended in a bloody massacre last Thursday when government troops stormed the gas plant where the hostages were being held. The plant is run jointly by Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil, and Algeria’s state oil company. Reports are that thirty-seven hostages (of multiple nationalities, including three… Read more.
I have become a veritable Cassandra with my warnings about the folly of America’s involvement in Afghanistan. Instead of wondering why I keep beating this dead horse, however, my only wonder is why more people aren’t doing the same… Nothing suggests that the war in Afghanistan is being waged in a parallel universe quite like more… Read more.
Yet another Afghan police betrayed his U.S. trainers on Sunday by opening fire on them, killing four. This brought to 51 the number of NATO soldiers killed in these so-called “green-on-blue” attacks so far this year. Ominously, this happened just days after Afghan authorities ejected some 700 members of the Afghan security forces for suspected… Read more.
No doubt it’s a tragedy that a U.S. soldier marched into an Afghan village on Sunday and slaughtered 16 people in their sleep; especially so because among the casualties were nine children, including a two year old. But there’s something perversely American about this shooting rampage. After all, people (even soldiers) “going postal” like this in the United States has… Read more.
We are thoroughly investigating the incident and we are taking steps to ensure that this does not ever happen again… I assure you … I promise you … this was NOT intentional in any way… I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the president of Afghanistan, the government of… Read more.
A video of U.S. marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan went viral yesterday. But instead of hiding their faces in shame, this is an occasion for U.S. government officials to hold their heads high. Let me hasten to clarify. No doubt this is an unpardonable desecration. And it is bound to incite paroxysms… Read more.
