The ramifications of the EU’s disastrous choice of Catherine Ashton for its first full-time Foreign Minister are going from bad to worse. Following a less-than-stellar performance during a question-and-answer session with the European Parliament, America’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, embarrassingly struggled to remember her name at dinner with European bureaucrats this week. While EU elites have been worryingly obsessed with Brussels’ internal reorganization for the past eight years, Washington and London have been leading the bloody campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. From …
A glaring omission in President Obama’s speech Tuesday was any attempt to address the propaganda war that is currently being waged with increasing sophistication and success by the Taliban again the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Information operations are a critical aspect of warfare and will help determine the outcome in Afghanistan, being focused on the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. Unless the Afghan people and their tribal leaders reject the extremist, violent Islamism of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the grim vision of the future they represent, military …
While the Obama Administration has appeared anything but decisive in response to field commanders’ calls for more troops in Afghanistan, the Administration is earning kudos from some for efforts to protect biodiversity. Rep. Elliot Engle has sent a “dear colleague” urging members to sign a letter to Special Envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke commending the U.S. State Department for developing a biodiversity program in Afghanistan. According to the Engle’s letter, “…thousands of Afghans have been trained in natural resource management, seven environmental laws and regulations have been drafted and 45 …
The appointment of a Senior Representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan is a welcome development that should help fulfill a long-standing need to better integrate U.S. policy toward these two key countries. It will be helpful to have the focused attention of a senior official who is neither attached to the Embassy in Afghanistan nor the Embassy in Pakistan to bring these two countries together to counter the Taliban/al-Qaeda threat that spans both countries. Part of the problem of dealing with terrorism in South Asia over the past seven years has …
