As we hit the 10 1/2 year mark in Afghanistan, the state of trust and confidence between the coalition and the Afghan people is at perhaps its lowest ebb, and support for the war effort is wavering across the political spectrum. Given this, it appears time to reconsider the current status of our effort there — what have we accomplished, and what do we still | Read More »
On Friday, Feb. 17, a long-term FBI sting operation culminated in the arrest of a would-be terrorist while he was en route to the U.S. Capitol to carry out a suicide bombing. Amine el Khalifi, a 29-year-old Muslim from Morocco who entered the U.S. with his parents on a trip to Disney World 1999 and illegally overstayed his tourist visa by over a decade, had | Read More »
U.S. officials have reportedly confirmed that deadly bombings in the Syrian cities of Damascus (in December and January) and Aleppo (Friday) were the work of al Qaeda in Iraq, whose members were acting with authorization from al Qaeda central head and Osama bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to McClatchy: The Iraqi branch of al Qaida, seeking to exploit the bloody turmoil in Syria to | Read More »
TEN YEARS HAVE passed since terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In that period, America has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, carried out hundreds armed drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen (among other locations), and conducted covert operations around the world, all in the name of what President George W. Bush termed the “Global War on | Read More »
Note: This is an updated version of my original post on Naser Abdo and the Fort Hood terrorist plot which was prevented last week. The updates have been made in-text due to an increase in the amount of information available on the case. A second terrorist attack on soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered last week, and its plotter, | Read More »
The headline of the day is that a second terrorist attack on Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered this week, and its plotter, Private First Class Nasser Jason Abdo, arrested before the attack could be carried out. The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer | Read More »
Author’s note: This is the third installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and previous installments in this series can be seen here. THE SMALL NUMBER OF TRAINED, reliable, and effective Afghan National Security Forces presents a serious holdup in the effort to secure Afghanistan | Read More »
Author’s note: This is the second installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and part one of this series, “Examining Obama’s Afghan Plan: Introduction,” can be seen here. PRESIDENT OBAMA’S IMPENDING ‘SURGE’ in the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been public knowledge for | Read More »
AFTER NEARLY TWO YEARS of campaigning on a platform of hasty withdrawal from Iraq and a refocusing of American efforts on Afghanistan, a country Democrats have spent years referring to as the location of “the real War on Terror,” President Barack Obama has come out with an overview of his administration’s strategy for the region. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case when Obama | Read More »
Faced with a losing battle against strengthening Taliban elements in its Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA), the Pakistani government officially threw in the towel last week on its already halfhearted efforts to combat terrorism in the key Malakand Division of the country’s northwest, agreeing to a peace treaty with local Taliban leaders that paves the way for terrorist-administered Shari’a law | Read More »
International newswire activity spiked two mornings ago when word came from Afghanistan that nine U.S. troops had been killed in an attack on a remote coalition base. “A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American soldiers Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion,” crowed the Associated Press. “Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades | Read More »
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