Archives for 2009

One of the major headlines out of Iraq today is the release of non-insurgent casualty figures for August, which are 456, as Agence France Presse reports. This was the highest monthly toll since July of 2008. I commend AFP on how it reported this story. Unlike a lot of other pieces, this one does not […]

Michael Penn writes in a guest op-ed for IC: The thumping victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Japanese general elections is going to have a strong influence on the future of Japan’s relations with the Islamic world. The DPJ has pledged to make the US-Japan alliance an “equal partnership,” by which […]

I have some basic questions about the “take, clear and hold” strategy that seems to be recommended in Afghanistan by Gen. Stan McChrystal, and which is modeled on the alleged lessons of Iraq. The Sunni Arabs of Iraq, who produced most of the insurgency against the US presence and the rise of a new Shiite […]

There is an old saying in military affairs, that everyone wants to do strategy and tactics, but real men do logistics. That is, moving persons and materiel around and managing supplies seems tedious, but they are crucial to success. The Obama administration has substituted the Logistics of War for the War on Terror. It is […]

Things to worry about on a lazy August Sunday: Abdullah Abdullah, the leading rival to incumbent Hamid Karzai in the Afghanistan presidential elections, told a gathering of hundreds of his campaign workers from the southern provinces that he would not accept an outright victory by Karzai as legitimate. With 35% of the votes counted, Karzai […]

The BBC is reporting that Obama’s special envoy to AfPak, Richard Holbrooke, has had a shouting match with President Hamid Karzai over the desirability of a second round in the presidential election. At the moment, with 17% of ballots counted, Karzai is ahead of his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, by 45% to 35%. That tally […]

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that he did not believe the leaders of Iran’s protesters against the official presidential election results were instigated by the West. He added, however, that the protesters had planned out their campaign even before the elections were held. (Since they could not have even known whether their candidate […]

The big news in Iraq was the death from cancer in Tehran of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the clerical leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. He had been born in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf in 1950, into the household of Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, who served as the spiritual leader of Iraqi […]

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has put forward a plan for a Palestinian state to be attained within 2 years. This is the first time such a blueprint with a timeline has been offered and it is a very big deal. The reason it can be taken more seriously than most talking points generated […]