Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley on Sunday, and he sees a diminished American superpower on the horizon. Gates foresaw the winding down of the Afghanistan War, a slow grinding ultimate victory for NATO in Libya, fairly deep cuts in the war department budget on […]
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Terrorism
Ridge Alleges Bush Political Pressure for Terrorism Alert
Ooops, a golden oldie from 2009 thrown up by mistake. Tom Ridge appears to be alleging in a new book that the Bush administration put political pressure on him to raise the terrorism threat level in fall of 2004 so as to help George W. Bush’s chances of reelection. It seemed pretty obvious to me […]
Congress: Yankee Come Home; Iraq, Pakistan: Yankee Go Home
Between 70,000 and 100,000 members of the Sadrist Shiite political bloc rallied in Baghdad on Thursday, demanding that the some 47,000 US troops still in Iraq leave altogether. Sadrist leader Muqtada al-Sadr says that if the troops remain, he will reactivate his Mahdi Army militia. It is a powerful threat. But in some ways, his […]
President Obama’s Address on Change in the Middle East
May 19, 2011 Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery “A Moment of Opportunity” U.S. Department of State May 19, 2011 As Prepared for Delivery – I want to thank Hillary Clinton, who has traveled so much these last six months that she is approaching a new landmark – one million frequent […]
Bin Laden was Operational Leader
Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press got the scoop. USG analysts going through the material captured at Usamah Bin Laden’s residence in Abbotabad described to her some of what they were finding. The biggest surprise was that Bin Laden was still an operational figure. He was in touch, for instance, with the leaders of al-Qaeda […]
On Arab Uprisings & al-Qaeda: Cole Radio Interviews
Here are two recent radio interviews I’ve given on the Arab Spring and the end of Bin Laden: With Grant Reeher at Syracuse University and with Christopher Lydon at Radio Open Source, Brown University.
On Bin Laden: I ask myself ‘Why?’
I ask myself why. Some Pakistanis are complaining about the violation of their country’s sovereignty during the Navy SEALs’ raid at Abbottabad. But why aren’t they complaining about Usama Bin Laden’s violation of Pakistani sovereignty? He and his family entered their country illegally, and then re-formed a paramilitary organization that killed Pakistanis and raided from […]
Junun Musician Ahmad: Bin Laden Demise a Great Good thing for Muslims
In this excellent Dawn article, rock musician Salman Ahmad of Junun explains why it is a great good thing that Usama Bin Laden was taken out. Ahmad, who favors the mystical, often tolerant, Sufi form of Islam, said that few individuals in the past 1400 years had wrought as much destruction on Islam as Bin […]
Anzalone, After Usama: The Jihadi-Takfiri Trend after Bin Laden
Christopher Anzalone writes in a guest column for Informed Comment The killing of Usama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qa‘ida Central, this week in Pakistan has opened the door to intense speculation about the future of the militant organization and the transnational jihadi-takfiri trend that it represents. A great deal of attention has been paid […]
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