Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — The United States has been throwing around millions and billions and trillions for so many lost causes, unjust causes and dumb causes that it’s hardly surprising to realize that Egypt ranks as one of the biggest recipients of American largesse. As far as I know, only […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — As the clock ticks down to an American military pullout from Afghanistan in late 2014, civilian deaths in the troubled country have ticked up as Taliban insurgents focus on “soft targets” and set the scene for wider intimidation in the wake of a Western pullout. The number of Afghan […]
Sol W. Sanders For those of us who lived through it, current negotiations for the American exit from Afghanistan smells much too much like the end of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. Washington, after a decade of enormous sacrifice of life and treasure, has chosen to negotiate with the enemy following diplomatic “modalities” pretty […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Brian M Downing Carter Malkasian, War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier. (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). A government that is losing to an insurgency isn’t being out-fought, it’s being out-governed. – Bernard Fall In 1972, late in the […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The Hydra-headed challenge of global terrorism continues as the multi-faceted threat changes and mutates in response to increasingly effective counter-measures. Few countries have been in the cross hairs of violence as has been Pakistan, so it should come as no surprise that in the Security Council’s urgent meeting to […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Brian M Downing, FreePressers.com President Obama whisked into Afghanistan unannounced, inked a somewhat nebulous yet significant agreement with Afghan president Hamid Karzai, then quickly returned home. It was an impressive diplomatic coup that guarantees an appreciable U.S. presence in the country over many years, for better or worse. Many regional powers […]
Sol W. Sanders [See Archive Two recent deeply intertwined violent events demonstrate the terrible burden hanging on the outcome of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An American soldier’s rampage allegedly taking the lives of 17 Afghan villagers paralleled the attack of a Franco-Mahgrebian youth resulting in seven deaths of French [Muslim] veterans and Jewish […]