Terrorism

“Think Again: 9/11,” by Juan Cole. Published in Foreign Policy No. 156 (Sep. – Oct., 2006), pp. 26-28, 30, 32. Copyright Foreign Policy, all rights reserved. Not for further reprint. These responses were my assessment of 9/11 and the Bush Forever Wars five years after the attacks. It is perhaps worth revisiting them now, 20 […]

Afghanistan

Who is Mullah Hasan Akhund? What does the Taliban’s choice of interim prime minister mean for Afghanistan?

The Conversation

By Ali A. Olomi | – The Taliban announced on Sept. 7, 2021, that Mullah Hasan Akhund has been appointed interim prime minister of Afghanistan. The decision comes more than two weeks after the militant Islamist group seized control of much of the country, including the capital, Kabul. The Conversation asked Ali A. Olomi, a […]

al-Qaeda

Facing Hostility from most of World’s 1.8 bn Muslims, Al-Qaida, Islamic State group find few recruits

The Conversation

By Charles Kurzman | – Al-Qaida was planning two sets of terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. On Sept. 11, 2021, as Americans commemorate and mourn the lives lost that Tuesday morning 20 years ago, it is important to remember the second plot as well – the attacks that didn’t happen. Khalid Sheikh […]

Afghanistan

Biden: Afghanistan Withdrawal is “about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced the end of the war in Afghanistan. I saw the Neoconservative Bill Kristol on CNN deploring Biden’s speech for not assessing the sweep of the war. Kristol was the biggest warmonger of all the pundits in the early zeroes, arguing for invading and occupying […]

Afghanistan

Ida: The Climate Emergency and Fossil Fuels, not Afghan terrorists, just Knocked out Power to America’s 4th-Largest Port

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The two big stories on Sunday, of the continued evacuation effort at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the landfall of Hurricane Ida on the coast of Louisiana have something in common. Both are about potential threats to the United States. America’s national security elites and arms manufacturers […]

Afghanistan

What is ISIS-K, the Organization that Bombed Kabul Airport?

The Conversation

By Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines | – An attack on a crowd gathered outside Kabul’s airport on Aug. 26, 2021, has left at least 60 people dead, including at least a dozen U.S. Marines. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the coordinated suicide bomb and gun assault, which came just days after President Joe Biden warned […]

Afghanistan

The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror: Living With It Forever and a Day

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com) – It ended in chaos and disaster. Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan. But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not. It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George […]

Afghanistan

Top Nine Policy Recommendations for U.S. in wake of Afghanistan Debacle

Farhang Jahanpour

Oxford (Special to Informed Comment) – I do not wish to rub salt into the wounds of US and British officials who are responsible for the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, but there is no way of sugar-coating this appalling tragedy, especially for hard-pressed Afghans who have experienced war and occupation for over 40 years. In […]

al-Qaeda

Imperial Overstretch: Is the American Empire going the way of the Soviet Union?

Tom Engelhardt

By Tom Engelhardt | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of […]