Former Gitmo Commander Denied Pakistan Post

MG Jay Hood's appointment as the top U.S. military officer in Pakistan has been pulled owing to Pakistani complaints about a previous stop in his career as commander at Guantánamo. When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran ...

Zero Sum Wars

Fred Kagan Kaplan makes the argument that, as a matter of practicality, the only way for Robert Gates to move 7,000 more troops into Afghanistan is to take 7,000 troops out of Iraq.Let's look at the numbers. After the last of the five "surge" brigades goes home this summer, the U.S. Army will have 13 brigade combat teams in Iraq (the ...

Discredited Orientalist Texts

Guesting at Crooked Timber, Kathy G argues that the world would be a better place is Edward Said's discredited Orientalism was used as a standard text in our nation's institutions of professional military education rather than Raphael Patai's "racist tract" The Arab Mind. Wouldn't we be even better off if, instead, they used a book that hadn't been widely discredited? ...

Combating Al Qaeda in Pakistan

David Ignatius notes that al Qaeda has "all but disappeared" from Afghanistan and "is on the run" in Iraq and thinks we can draw lessons from these facts. First, al-Qaeda isn't a permanent boogeyman; it's losing ground in Iraq and Afghanistan because of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, especially the alliances we have built with tribal leaders and the aggressive use ...

Marines Attack Taliban Stronghold

The U.S. Marines have launched a major assault into southern Helmand province in an attempt to wrest control from the Taliban and cut the opium backed funding for the anti-government forces. U.S. Marines exchanged gunfire with militants Tuesday after pouring into a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan in the first major American operation in the region in years. Several hundred Marines, many ...

Alliance or Enablement?

Glenn Reynolds links, with praise, to an article about Hillary Clinton claiming that she would go to war with Iran if they attacked Israel.Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. "I want the Iranians to know that ...

Murdoch: NATO Faces ‘Crisis of Confidence’

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says that NATO is in a “crisis of confidence” because Western Europe is “losing its faith in the values and institutions that have kept us free.” He calls for a radical redefinition of the Alliance in order to save it, including extending membership to Australia, Japan, and Israel. Murdoch, who is receiving the Atlantic Council ...

Son of Dutch Defense Chief Killed in Afghanistan

Lt. Dennis van Uhm, the son of Holland's top general, was killed today in Afghanistan. The son of the Dutch defense chief was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and the Taliban claimed they deliberately made the young lieutenant a high-profile target. While the Dutch quickly cast doubt on the Taliban claim, the death underscores the danger high-profile ...

London Subway Bomber Dead in Pakistan

Abu Ubaida al-Masri, the planner of the 7/7/05 London subway bombing and various other al Qaeda operations has been confirmed dead. No word on whether he was the #2 or #3 ranked man in al Qaeda. Abu Ubaida al-Masri, one of Al Qaeda's top operatives and the mastermind behind a plot to use liquid explosives to blow British ...

Iraq or Afghanistan: On the Horns of a False Dilemma

Joe Biden is getting plaudits from the Leftosphere for asking Ryan Crocker a really dumb question in yesterday's hearings. Here's the video: The transcript: BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region? CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the United States wherever it is-- BIDEN: Where is ...

Saudi Woman Killed for Chatting on Facebook

"A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook." The Guardian's Damien McElroy: The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported. The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as ...

U.S. Striking Al Qaeda Targets in Pakistan

The United States is stepping up its attacks on al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, largely without coordination with that country's government. The United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations in that country, according to U.S. officials. ...

Bush Envies Afghanistan Troops

President Bush said he was envious of our troops in Afghanistan and would love to be there if he were only younger and not otherwise engaged being president. In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for ...

Drudge Breaks Media Silence on Prince’s Mission

At 12:20 Eastern yesterday, I got a CNN Breaking News alert that read, in its entirety, "Britain's Prince Harry has been serving on the front line in Afghanistan, CNN confirms." I found it mildly interesting, in that his superiors had previously decided the security risk in sending him to Iraq was too high, but didn't have anything significant to ...

Iraq and Afghanistan Winnable Wars

Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Iraq War skeptic and administration critic, argued in yesterday's Washington Post that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are "winnable." It's a tightly written piece that defies excerpting but here is the crux of it: No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are ...