Nation-Building

The New York Times reports that a small team of American geologists and military personnel have discovered vast reserves of precious metals and minerals in Afghanistan , which profoundly transforms the destiny of this battered nation overnight: The previously unknown deposits - including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium - are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries. (...) The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan's existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as we...

John McCain: "I think the great danger now is a half-measure, sort of a - you know, try to please all ends of the political spectrum ," McCain told CNN chief national correspondent John King. "And, again, I have great sympathy for the president, making the toughest decisions that presidents have to make, but I think he needs to use deliberate speed." Many people assume McCain's comments only apply to the left, but the fact is that they also apply to the right, and it's precisely because Obama has in fact taken the right VERY seriously indeed that he's in so much hot water with the Progressives (who I admit in the interest of full self-disclosure I do not self-identify with; I am a liberal on a elliptical orbit around the center of political mass, thus I drift rightwards in a very predictable fashion.) Much of the critique of Obama from the right comes via political scoring rather than a genuine critique of policy; a great example is the replacement of Ge...

There's a new foreign policy group in town called the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy , and they have written a letter to President Obama urging him to "focus US strategy more clearly on Al Qaeda" instead of explicit nation-building. The text of the letter follows: Dear Mr. President: During your campaign for the Presidency, Americans around the country appreciated your skepticism of the rationales for the Iraq war. In 2002, you had warned that such an endeavor would yield "a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and with unintended consequences." You pointed out the dangers of fighting such a war "without a clear rationale and without strong international support." As scholars of international relations and U.S. foreign policy, many of us issued similar warnings before the war, unfortunately to little avail. Today, we are concerned that the war in Afghanistan is growing increasingly detached from considerations of leng...

The obvious answer to the question is yes - and that goes for before as well as after 9-11. In many ways, 9-11 distorts the picture because it was the single largest casualty count of any terrorist attack in history (unless you start to factor in acts of state-sponsored terrorism during armed conflicts, but let's accept the conventional though arbitrary definition of terrorism as solely due to non-state actors). The count of all major terrorist attacks resulting in 100 or more fatalities is an interesting one. There were 33 such attacks prior to 9-11, and a huge fraction of the post-9-11 attacks are in Iraq. I may be mistaken but the only attacks of any significant scale in the West after 9-11 have been in London and Madrid, though there have been numerous arrests of various Western muslims (mostly British) for various plots (mostly inept, like the ricin plot, the shoe bomber, and the liquid bombs). So, what does that all mean? If we exclude 9-11, then it looks like terrorism is a...

cross-posted from City of Brass One of the major problems with the Bush Administration and its conservative Republican stalwarts regarding the Iraq War was the "stay the course" dogma which seemed immune to any attempt at an honest evaluation of the war's goals or purpose. There were no metrics for success, aside from a nebulous goal of "victory". Proponents of withdrawal were accused of defeatism and virtual treason. The bottom line was that " failure was not an option ", which in the absence of a well-defined success meant perpetual war for its own sake. President Obama promised a different approach, where success would be clearly defined and measured and the policy would be defined by the facts, not the other way around. The war in Afghanistan will put Obama's rhetoric to the test. Will he stay the course no matter the facts? Or will he be willing to adapt? It should be noted that the opportunity for genuine and timely intervention in Afghanista...

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, Barack Obama delivered a foreign policy address in which he touched on numerous issues. I am excerpting the portion of his remarks about our Pakistan and Afghanistan policy, however, because I think this is the most critical element. In a nutshell, he advocates a post-Pervez policy, tying American aid to Pakistan not to stability under president Musharraf but rather towards progress in rooting out extremist enclaves and making genuine progress towards democracy. Afghanistan policy: The war in Iraq has emboldened the Taliban, which has rebuilt its strength since we took our eye off of Afghanistan. Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaeda, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe-haven in Pakistan – a thousand miles from Iraq. The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America's enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new ta...

At RedState, Pejman takes Andrew Sullivan to task for an assertion that McCain would withdraw troops from Iraq. I am not defending Andrew's assertion (if anything, the opposite seems more likely, that Obama will not withdaw from Iraq, nor would any Democratic president ). However, Pejman makes the following statement in the course of his argument: al Qaeda will consolidate itself in an anarchic Iraq and use it as a staging ground for the next terrifying attack on the United States and on American interests--think Afghanistan in the run-up to 9/11 is simply misinformed. No one who reads Michael Yon or Michael Totten on a regular basis will believe that Al Qaeda will ever be able to reconstitute itself in Iraq, not with the infrastructure (weak and fledgling though it remains at present) of the Iraqi forces and the tribes. Whatever leverage AQ-Iraq had in the past has been squandered and they are hated fiercely. Afghanistan is another matter, and there is where the true danger of...

A pair of similar news reports give me pause. First , Pakistan tribal elders shot dead Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead eight pro-government tribal leaders in the troubled South Waziristan region on Afghanistan's border, officials say. The tribesmen were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday night and early Monday, a security official said. and second , Suicide Bomber Kills Key Sunni Leader in Baghdad BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber assassinated a key leader of American-backed militia forces in a Sunni stronghold of Baghdad on Monday morning, the latest attack on nationalist Sunnis who have recently allied themselves with American troops. That attack, and a second bomb that exploded minutes later, killed at least six and wounded another 26 in total, hospital officials said. The killing of the militia leader, Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, on the fringes of north Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, was one of the most significant attacks so far on leaders of former Sunni insurgents who have band...

Michael J. Totten has a powerful essay in Commentary Magazine, a film review of James Longley's documentary Iraq in Fragments : Most recent documentaries filmed in Iraq can be fairly categorized as liberal or conservative. All are about the war, and most are cinematic equivalents of op-eds. James Longley’s lush and intimate Iraq in Fragments is different. While the director appears to be some kind of liberal or leftist, his film is refreshingly none of the above. Iraq in Fragmentsis about the war only insomuch as it was shot in Iraq during the war. This film is a collection of portraits of Iraqis, not Americans or the American military. And unlike almost any other documentary out there, Longley’s includes the Kurds.The director is invisible. We never see him or hear him, and he uses his camera as though he were shooting a fictional film. This is emphatically not the kind of documentary you’re accustomed to seeing. Longley’s camera and editing work are so stylish and deft that the e...

This is a good thing : KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 — Afghan and NATO troops retook the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan today, forcing the Taliban to withdraw from the only sizable town they hold in the country, Afghan and NATO officials said. There was no clear picture of casualties, but the Taliban and civilians said there had been heavy bombardment overnight. The news came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and met with President Hamid Karzai. About 7,000 British troops are deployed in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan. Retaking the town of Musa Qala, which they abandoned over a year ago, has been one of their main objectives in the province, which has the highest level of Taliban activity as well as illicit opium production. Of course, this doesn't mean that Afghanistan is stable or that Al Qaeda is defeated, but is unabashedly good news. The locus of terrorism remains Afghanistan and the Pakstiani frontier, wherea...

Mullah Omar, who deserves to burn in hell for appropriating the title of Amir al-mumineen for himself alone, is back . He's spent the last five years building up the Taliban infrastructure and alliances: After the Taliban's fall, Mullah Omar effectively vanished. Still, he did not quit the jihad. As his men regrouped, he gradually emerged from hiding and in 2004 began traveling from camp to camp in remote Taliban-held areas. Only a few trusted assistants know where the fugitive leader is now. But wherever he is hidden, he is closer than ever to many of his followers-not only to long- neglected fighters like Ghul Agha, but even to members of the Taliban's ruling council, the Shura, Newsweek reports. In the past, according to Mullah Rahman, the group's deputy commander in Zabul province, it could take six weeks for senior Taliban officials to send a message to the leader and get a reply. Now, thanks to the Taliban's military gains and growing network of messengers and...