Thread: Afghanistan Occupation ~ News and Analysis

JANUARY 2, 2010 Killings Rock Afghan Strategy Bomber of CIA Base Was Being Recruited as Informant; Retaliation for U.S. Push By SIOBHAN GORMAN and YOCHI J. DREAZEN WASHINGTON -- The attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency officers on a U.S. base in Afghanistan appears to stem from a strategy of calculated risk in running the spy agency's informant network, posing a sharp challenge as operations ramp up for the Obama troop...

December 16, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist Doubts About Certitude By MAUREEN DOWD It is the greatest example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. In a bit of unpoetic justice, Bob Gates helped create the mess in Afghanistan decades ago and now has to try to clean it up. At the C.I.A. in the '80s, Gates conspired with Charlie Wilson and the Saudis to help the insurgents in Afghanistan turn back the occupation of a superpower. Now he's...

NYT: Report finds early Afghanistan missteps New unpublished history shows effort was undermanned and resourced By JAMES DAO The New York Times updated 5:48 p.m. ET, Wed., Dec . 30, 2009 In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions,...

Last week, Michael Cohen was astounded by the news that 50 Afghan drug traffickers believed to have ties to the Taliban were being put on a U.S. military hit list . He wrote: You want to know how messed up this idea is: even Andrew Exum agrees with me ! Are we really going to spend our time, money and precious ISR assets going after the Pashtun Pablo Escobar? Again, why are we in Afghanistan? To fight drugs? Here's the thing: if...

Forty more years of occupation - that's what the next head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, is predicting. And he also predicts that US and British troops will be actively fighting there for "the medium term", i.e. about 15-20 years. He thinks that's a good idea but Conservative Party Shadow Foreign Secretary Liam Fox described it as "not a runner. It would require a total rethink of our...

"If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort. It is not and does not. It is not certain that doing more will achieve more. And no one should forget that doing more in Afghanistan lessens our ability to act elsewhere, including North Korea, Iran and Iraq. There needs to be a limit to what the United States does in Afghanistan and how long it is prepared to do it, lest we find ourselves unable to contend...

The New York Times Magazine looks at General Stanley McChrystal's Afghanistan war recommendation and notes the "magnitude of the choice" now facing President Obama "is difficult to overstate." "For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge -- a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal's plan is a blueprint for an extensive American...

Keeping Afghanistan Safe from Democracy TruthDig By Robert Scheer November 4, 2009 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig , where this article originally appeared. His latest book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve). The most idiotic thing being said about America's involvement in Afghanistan is that the best way to protect the 68,000 US troops there now is by putting an additional...

By ANNE GEARAN and PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writers Thu Mar 26, 7:23 pm ET WASHINGTON - Concerned about the faltering war in Afghanistan , President Barack Obama plans to dispatch thousands more military and civilian trainers on top of the 17,000 fresh combat troops he's already ordered, people familiar with the forthcoming plan said Thursday. Obama also will call for increasing aid to neighboring Pakistan as long as its leaders...