U.S. Strikes Making Taliban Angry
I must confess some amusement over the YahooNews headline "Officials say Taliban mad over alleged US strike." The lede is also encouraging. The Taliban are unusually angry about the latest suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan, a sign a top militant may have died in the attack, officials and residents said Sunday amid reports the death toll rose by two ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 5, 2008 07:14
Afghanistan is Not Enough
Michael J. Totten takes exception to the frequently expressed view that "the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there." In my New Atlanticist essay "Afghanistan: Necessary But Not Sufficient," I explain why he's right. My conclusion: Defeating the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies there and in neighboring Pakistan is vital to regional security and failure ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 30, 2008 13:17
Al Qaeda is Dead, Long Live Al Qaeda
Juan Cole had an interesting post on yesterday's seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in which he made a bold declaration: "The original al-Qaeda is defeated." No, he's not saying there aren't Muslim terrorists calling themselves "al Qaeda" ready and able to kill us. I mean the original al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda as a historical, concrete movement centered on Usama Bin Laden and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 12, 2008 07:11
Brinksmanship Along the Durand Line (Updated)
Coalition forces based in Afghanistan have launched a raid across the Afghan-Pakistani border into South Waziristan where Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are believed to have taken refuge: North West Frontier Province Governor Owais Ghani says three helicopter gunships and commandos based in Afghanistan raided homes in the Birmal area of South Waziristan, Wednesday morning. The governor calls the operation "outrageous" and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 3, 2008 08:38
Pronouncing Foreign Names
Jonathan Kolieb is upset that Americans don't pronounce foreign names in the other country's mother tongue. I was flipping through the cable news channels the other night, and there were several segments on developments in Iraq. I found myself getting irritated, then angry: Why, five years after occupying a country, do we still not know how to pronounce its name? [...] Language and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 19, 2008 08:17
Ayman al-Zawahiri Killed in Predator Strike?
Al Qaeda number 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri was severely wounded in a US predator strike earlier this week, CBS is reporting. Ayman al-Zawahiri - the second most powerful leader in al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden's No. 2 - may be critically wounded and possibly dead, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports exclusively. CBS News has obtained a copy of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 2, 2008 06:17
Pakistan ISI Planned, Supported Indian Embassy Bombing
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped plan and provided logistical support for last month's bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan according to U.S. intelligence reports leaked to the press by various "officials." Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt report for the NYT that, The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 1, 2008 07:26
Terrorists Are Like Cockroaches
Commenting on a recentish NYT report on foreign fighters flooding into Pakistan to support al Qaeda and Taliban militants, Thomas Barnett observes, Spray one apartment and the bugs move over to the next. Wherever there’s the least resistance or the most opportunity, you find them clustered. The Anbar awakening ruins al Qaeda’s long-term chances in Iraq, and so the clustering refocuses ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 24, 2008 08:26
McCain and Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan
William Arkin contends that recent political maneuvering has put Barack Obama and President Bush in almost identical positions vis-à-vis Iraq: The Bush administration's potential Iraq withdrawal plan, floated in The New York Times over the weekend, to draw down brigades further before September of this year and to accelerate withdrawals in 2009, has collided with Barack Obama's own 16-month plan, which ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 15, 2008 14:46
Obama’s Plan For Iraq
Barack Obama takes to the op-ed pages of the NYT to present his new plan for Iraq which is conveniently his old plan for Iraq. He sees Nuri al-Maliki's proposal for a a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq as "an enormous opportunity." Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 14, 2008 09:19
