The U.S. military has had its eyes on Afghan mineral deposits for some time. A 2007 Pentagon memo that the New York Times quoted in a 2010 article says that Afghanistan could be the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
A return to air drops signals a possible deterioration of security for US troops operating in Afghanistan.
The US carried out its first combat airdrop in Afghanistan in more than two years last month, according to newly released US Air Force data. A return to airdrops signals a possible
A quagmire is defined as a complex or unpleasant position that is difficult to escape. President Trump’s recently announced war plans in Afghanistan maintain that quagmire. They come at a time when US Empire is failing and its leadership in the world is weakening. The US will learn what other empires have learned, “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.”
OPINION -- During the presidential campaign, some became convinced that Trump would not be an interventionist president. His tweets about Afghanistan were one of the reasons. In January of 2013, he tweeted, “Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there.
Trump is fond of boasting about “his” generals. But over the short course of his presidency’s first months, the possession and control have reversed themselves. Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly have banished all opposition and now pour the neo-con agenda straight into Trump’s ear.
WASHINGTON – The U.S., long known for its meddling in the affairs of other nations, also has a long and sordid history of supporting military juntas abroad, many of which it forced into power through bloody coups or behind-the-scenes power grabs. From Greece in the 1960s
One of the ways McMaster tried to persuade Trump to recommit to the effort was by convincing him that Afghanistan was not a hopeless place. He presented Trump with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul, to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return. The irony is that, in 1972, when this photo was taken on the grounds of Kabul University, Afghanistan was firmly in the orbit of the Soviet Union, as it had been since 1953, when Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan rose to power and instituted a series of progressive reforms, including equal rights for women.
There is no way to uncouple the massive surge in Afghan’s opium production from the burgeoning crisis of opioid use in the United States. In banishing all thought of an Afghan “endgame,” has Trump just made our “national emergency” of opioid abuse a permanent one?
With last Friday’s departure of his chief strategist Steve Bannon – one of the few members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle opposed to American “empire building” -- many speculated it was only a matter of time before the Trump administration took an even more hawkish turn. Less than two days later, Secretary of Defense
The civilians were reportedly attempting to flee an ISIS advance when they were killed by a U.S. airstrike.
Afghan officials today confirmed that US airstrikes targeted and killed at least 16 civilians, mostly women, and children, in the eastern Nangarhar Province, targeting the civilians as they tried to flee out of an ISIS-held district where
