“There should be a review of the strategy in the fight against terrorism, because the experience of the last eight years showed that the fight in the villages of Afghanistan has been ineffective apart from causing civilian casualties.” -Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, to the visiting speaker of Germany’s parliament, Aug. 30, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan [...]
Posts under ‘Foreign affairs’
Russian subs can probably stop oil leak,
if only someone high up would ask
A BBC report offers the most intriguiging possibility yet for stopping the Deepwater Horizon wellhead leak — using powerful Russian submersible craft that work at depths of 6,000 meters, far deeper than the disaster site. A skipper of one of the Mir subs is reported as saying the subs are already at work in Lake [...]
Afghans in for wealth and all that goes with it
If Afghans think they’ve been through one rough patch after another, what with having been invaded and occupied by Russians, ruled by the Taliban, then invaded and occupied by Americans, they haven’t seen anything yet. That’s because news is breaking about colossal finds of mineral wealth in Afghanistan — enough to transform the country from [...]
Bush & Co. knew of detainees’ innocence
We might be inclined to give Bush and his crackpot crusaders the benefit of the doubt if they hadn’t spent eight years lying to the American people and the world. If they hadn’t lied us into a deadly, costly, unnecessary war. . .
Deterrence wise, Obama policy change bombs
President Obama is reshaping nuclear arms policy to assure nations without nuclear weapons, and complying with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, they would not be hit with nukes in response to an attack against the U.S., even if they were to use chemical or biological weapons. Think of it as putting cards on the table that [...]
This year, send Israel a reality check
Vice President Joe Biden went to Israel last week, hoping and expecting to hear his hosts were prepared to engage in direct talks with Palestinians, toward finally achieving a lasting peace in one of the world’s worst spawning grounds for hatred and violence. What the Israelis treated Biden to instead was a declaration they would [...]
Good insights into Haiti’s history
Realizing most of us know little about Haiti and how it got to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and put off by how the media portray the country, Brown Man of the Brown Man Thinking Hard blog put together an informative video. We think Brown Man has done an impressive job on [...]
Haiti relief effort still too little, too slow
As Haitians endure additional big-Richter aftershocks, struggle among the dead and hang on for help that’s trickling in, the U.S. aid effort fumbles along, with high-level officials making lame excuses for bad decisions and poor execution. WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US military defended its management of the flow of aid flights into Port-au-Prince airport Wednesday, [...]
Haiti response a Katrina-style fiasco
No, Gates, the purpose of this exercise is not to prevent desperate people from rioting around aid distribution sites. The purpose is to get enough food, water and medical help to them quickly enough that they won’t be driven to rioting. What’s more, fully armed U.S. troops should be well capable of seeing to it half-starved Haitian civilians simmer down, especially if the aid those civilians are after is right there and being handed out.
As world sends help to quake-stricken Haiti,
Robertson contributes tale of deal with devil
The supposedly Rev. Pat Robertson practices a perverse theology, one in which it’s standard operating procedure in times of calamity, pain and grief, to blame the victims — any way his twisted excuse for a mind can devise. While the U.S. and much of the rest of the world began marshalling money, manpower and all [...]
