Street protests in Chicago targeted a NATO summit where President Obama was promoting a gradual military withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, protesters challenged the continued need for this expensive alliance designed for the Cold War, reports Lawrence S. Wittner.
The horrible toll of war is not only inflicted on soldiers and their families but on the doctors and nurses who care for the wounded. For the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the injured are flown to Landstuhl in Germany, where the medical personnel suffer from seeing the consequences of combat, writes Michael Winship.
By definition, “terrorism” applies to attacks on civilians for political ends. But the U.S. government has revised the term to cover any attack on Americans, including soldiers fighting anywhere in the world, a misuse of the concept that is hampering a deal to free a U.S. POW, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
U.S. news correspondents often compete to cover Americans wars with an eye to making a name or building a career. But – when the wars drag on or when problems are just festering – the news media quickly loses interest, ironically setting the stage for more wars, as Danny Schechter writes.
Exclusive: Despite what Official Washington thinks it knows, the real error on Afghan policy after the Soviets left in 1989 was not the abrupt cutoff of U.S. aid but nearly the opposite, continued CIA support for the Islamist mujahedeen and rejection of peace overtures from Moscow, writes Robert Parry.
The secret of President Obama’s strategic agreement with Afghan President Karzai is that U.S. Special Forces will continue raids to kill Taliban leaders who won’t make peace — even as the new accord is sold to the American public as an end game to the long war, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service.
The long U.S. war in Afghanistan is finally being wound down by an agreement that removes U.S. combat troops in 2 1/2 years but lets a small contingent of Special Forces remain. The larger reality is that the war has gone on way too long for the American and Afghan people, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: President Obama signed a U.S.-Afghan strategic agreement on May 1, committing U.S. combat forces to withdraw by the end of 2014 while leaving behind U.S. counter-terrorism teams for another decade. But Obama and his aides still duck a full debate over the causes of terrorism, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Exclusive: Army Sgt. Robert Bales stands accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians, a crime that some trace to the financial pressures his family faced back home. However, to the rich financial swindlers, the ruining of Bales’s family – and many others – is just another day’s work, writes Mark Ames.
Exclusive: President Obama’s choice in 2009 to expand – rather than wind down – the Afghan War now looks to be one of his worst decisions as the conflict drifts toward a bloody defeat. But a key factor behind his misjudgment, the myth of George W. Bush’s “successful surge” in Iraq, lives on, writes Robert Parry.
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