The Foundry

Posts Tagged ‘Taliban’

• Morning Bell: How Much Risk Will Obama Expose Our Troops To?

  Posted December 1st, 2009 at 9:12am in American Leadership, Protect America with 26 comments

  When President Barack Obama announces his new Afghanistan policy tonight at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, Denise Young of Kokomo, Indiana, who has a 22-year-old son serving in Afghanistan, already knows what she wants to hear: “That he is going to let the generals make the decisions. They have asked for [...] More

• Victory or Defeat: Obama Is Now ‘the Decider’

  Posted November 30th, 2009 at 2:22pm in American Leadership with 1 comments

  President Obama has finally made a decision on Afghanistan, which he will communicate to an anxious nation tomorrow night. The White House announcement no doubt has already fueled many kitchen-table conversations during this Thanksgiving weekend, maybe even heated debates. For the sake of our national security, let’s hope most families have concluded that abandoning Afghanistan [...] More

• Morning Bell: Obama Dithers While Credibility Burns

  Posted November 12th, 2009 at 9:13am in American Leadership, Protect America with 48 comments

  Last month, The Washington Post reported that President Barack Obama had asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan “to help determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help.” He supposedly wanted “the clearest possible understanding of what the challenges are to our forces and what is [...] More

• Pakistan Military Begins Decisive Anti-Terrorism Drive

  Posted October 19th, 2009 at 12:23pm in American Leadership, Protect America with 0 comments

  The Pakistan military began a long-awaited offensive in South Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border over the weekend. The region has served as the principal base of operations for an amalgam of terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and groups formerly based in the Punjab, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Pakistanis launched the operation on Saturday [...] More

• Shibboleths of the Afghanistan Debate

  Posted October 9th, 2009 at 4:25pm in Protect America with 8 comments

  Recent statements coming from the White House making distinctions between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and implying that the Taliban is somehow less inimical to U.S. interests are incongruous with developments on the ground, including a major suicide bombing in front of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Thursday morning and another major bombing that killed [...] More

• Taliban Kills, Obama Appeases

  Posted October 9th, 2009 at 12:07pm in Protect America with 39 comments

  Yesterday morning in Kabul, a sports utility vehicle traveling on a busy commercial street detonated explosives hidden in the car as it approached the Indian Embassy. The suicide bomber killed 17 people and three Indian paramilitary guards were wounded by shrapnel. Hours later, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and specified that the Indians [...] More

• 19 Reasons To Win In Afghanistan

  Posted October 2nd, 2009 at 12:55pm in American Leadership, Protect America with 21 comments

  This email is making the rounds on .mil addresses: There have been many arguments in the past four weeks to withdraw. We have compiled a short review of other social network debates to summarize the basic arguments for staying in the Afghanistan. The 19th reason has been added at the bottom. 1. Afghanistan and Pakistan – This [...] More

• Secretary of Defense Gates Backpedaling on Afghanistan

  Posted October 1st, 2009 at 2:05pm in Protect America with 23 comments

  President Obama yesterday met with his top advisers to discuss Afghanistan policy and afterwards word leaked out that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appears to be wavering on going forward with the Obama Administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan. Yochi Dreazen reported in the Wall Street Journal today that Gates, who has supported the counterinsurgency approach [...] More

• Senator Kerry Misses the Lessons of Vietnam

  Posted September 29th, 2009 at 11:10am in American Leadership, Protect America with 5 comments

  In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) tries to draw conclusions from the Vietnam War for our fight in Afghanistan. Some of his “lessons” are misguided and could put our troops in Afghanistan in greater harm’s way. Senator Kerry asserts that “we should not commit troops to the battlefield without [...] More

• Morning Bell: Hubris, Weakness, and Naivete at the U.N.

  Posted September 24th, 2009 at 9:15am in American Leadership, Protect America with 46 comments

  The United States elected 43 presidents before the current occupant graced the office with his presence. We fought, and won, two world wars, liberated millions of people worldwide from tyranny, and worked cooperatively with other sovereign nations to rebuild entire continents. Some might even say the character of our nation is well established considering we [...] More