Tag: Conflict
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Some Numbers from AfPak 2010
From the AfPak Channel at Foreign Policy magazine, some numbers on casualties in Afghanistan and links to a further 3 reports on the Afghan war. It all makes for sobering reading at the start of 2011, combined with what is looking like the collapse of the Pakistani government and the tentative position of the Afghan…
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Obama and The License to Kill US Citizens
I commented on this earlier this year, that the Obama administration had continued the Bush policy of allowing the killing of US citizens abroad who are allegedly associated with terrorist groups. Now this already distasteful scenario has gotten murkier as the Treasury Department has made it illegal to have lawyers represent these US citizens in…
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The Great COIN Toss
Counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan are not working, in fact, very little is and the country continues its record of being the ‘graveyard of empires’. Drones firing at will into Pakistan are further fanning the flames, for the 150 ‘leaders’ that have been killed (some only to return…) there have been over a 1,000 causalities, this…
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Comparison of the Costs of Major U.S. Wars
FAS brings our attention to a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service that makes a comparison of spending on major U.S. wars from the American Revolution onwards, of course it is not perfect but the report does note this through various caveats. Considering the dept the U.S. has incurred since 2001 and the…
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Drones – The Legal and Moral War
Image via Wikipedia A common theme that keeps coming up of late is the use of drones by the US military. While in previous posts we have seen how the US Air Force is wrestling with integrating the new drone pilots into its structure we now see other more important issues are starting to be…
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When is a Pilot Not a Pilot? The Unmanned Air-Force Emerges
For the first time the US Air-force is producing pilots who have never flown a plane, this is the first class of pilots just trained to fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). There is obviously some friction emerging from the old guard who believe there can be only one kind of pilot. However, the air-force is…
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Foundations of Terror, Pakistan’s Education System
These clips are taken from a look at Pakistan’s education system and how it neglects to teach the children the basics but rather instil in them a type of hero worship of those that are determined to keep power in the country. Poorly targeted programmes but external states (like the USA) have failed to make…
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Fly Air-Qaeda: Because Nobody is Watching
Reports have emerged (in 2008!) that Al-Qaeda (Africa) in conjunction with FARC (Latin America) have been using a fleet of rogue aircraft (as large as Boeing 727s) to transport drugs from Latin America to Africa, then filter them up to Europe. This is obviously the path of least resistance, why risk sneaking on a drug-mule…
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Global Jihad – Only Graduates and Wealthy Need Apply
For some reason policy makers seem to think that reaching out to the poor will help stem the tide of Jihadist’s that are trying to strike at America. You can look at work by Fathali M. Moghaddam and his “The Staircase to Terrorism” to support the view that poverty plays a significant part in radicalisation,…
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Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too
“Throughout 2008 and 2009, U.S. officials repeatedly trumpeted al-Qaeda’s demise. In a May 2008 interview with The Washington Post, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden heralded the group’s “near strategic defeat.” And the intensified aerial drone attacks that President Obama authorized against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan last year were widely celebrated for having killed over half of…
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