Operation Enduring Disaster
Tariq Ali : Barack Obama
Given a severe global economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama, the possibility of a serious discussion about a US exit strategy from the Afghan disaster hovers on the horizon.
2008
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Bearing Witness: The Afghan Tragedy
Malalai Joya : Human Rights
Seven years after the US invasion, Afghanistan is still chained to the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban. Women and children suffer the most.
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Blackwater's Not Going Anywhere
Jeremy Scahill : Blackwater
Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Business has never been better for Blackwater and its future looks bright.
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Obama in Afghanistan: Careful What You Wish For
Graham Usher : Barack Obama
He says Afghanistan is the war America should be fighting. But on this much-ballyhooed listening tour, will he be hearing anything he doesn't already know?
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Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan
Tom Hayden : Presidential Election 2008
Obama's plan to de-escalate the war in Iraq only to ramp up another in Afghanistan just might work. It could also entrap the US in an even wider quagmire.
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The Wedding Crashers
Tom Engelhardt : George W. Bush Administration
In Bush's wars, the singer dies, the bride does not get a chance to run away, and the event might be relabeled my big, fat, collateral damage wedding.
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Getting Pakistan Wrong
Graham Usher : Pakistan
The US military's aggressive confrontation with the Taliban and its Al Qaeda cohorts in Pakistan is only making matters worse.
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Torturing Iron Man
Nick Turse : Film
The Pentagon does a star turn in Iron Man, and the summer blockbuster turns the realities of the war in Afganistan upside down. Will anyone notice?
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Amid Silence, Terror War Escalates
Tom Hayden : Pakistan
Bush's "war on terror" is escalating without discussion or dissent amid the most open and democratic of American processes--the presidential debates.
2007
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Amnesia at the Multiplex
Lakshmi Chaudhry : Islam & Muslims
Two films address US adventures in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a big dose of historical amnesia, political pandering, moral superiority and outraged innocence.
2006
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Waltzing With Warlords
Five years after the United States ousted the Taliban, optimism about Afghanistan's future is evaporating. Three new books shed light on what went wrong.
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Who's Running Afghan Policy?
David Corn : US Foreign Policy
Even if the United States has the will to do the hard work necessary to rebuild Afghanistan, there are few signs that senior Administration officials are engaged.
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Taliban Rising
Christian Parenti : US Wars & Military Action
If the corruption of Karzai's government is Afghanistan's new cancer, then the Taliban are increasingly seen as chemotherapy: an unpleasant but necessary remedy.
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Chaos and Fear Stalk Afghanistan on 9/11 Anniversary
As Taliban fighters clash with thinly spread NATO forces across Afghanistan and "suicide cell" claims lives daily in Kabul, hope is fading that the country can avoid descending into chaos.
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High on Opium, Not Democracy
In Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban, proving the President is better at starting wars than winning them.
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Women and Warlords
A policy of "affirmative discrimination" helped put twenty women in the Afghan Parliament, but how can they confront the warlords and criminals who hold most of the power?
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Typecast as a Terrorist
The detainment of two actors from The Road to Guantánamo reveals a legal apparatus that is no longer able to distinguish between real and invented threats.
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Afghanistan: The Other War
Christian Parenti : US Military
Despite Bush's feel-good rhetoric, the United States has done little to help Afghanistan, leaving the impression of abandonment. Meanwhile, European troops work hard to build bridges to the locals.
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Fury Over Foreigners
Christian Parenti : Islam & Muslims
Western cartoons deemed insulting to Islam are only part of what is fueling mob frenzy in Afghanistan. Growing rage against the presence of foreign troops and frustration with ineffectual aid programs are feeding the flames.
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Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
It's appalingly clear Team Bush is unwilling to do the hard work it takes to make Afghanistan the functioning nation it was before cold war games tore it apart.
2005
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The Most Revolutionary Art Form
Can a vibrant and cosmopolitan artistic scene help heal the wounds of Afghanistan's traumatic past?
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Pattern of Deception Persists in Tillman's Death
The White House knew more than it let on as it played the Pat Tillman story for political benefit.
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A Cover-Up as Shameful as Tillman's Death
Once again, grieving relatives point out that the Bush Administration will exploit anything for political purposes.
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Afghan Poppies Bloom
Christian Parenti : Drug Policy/Drug War
The war-ravaged, opium-dependent country lives in fear of a new drug war.
2004
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Cultivating Opium, Not Democracy
Robert Scheer : Drug Policy/Drug War
Afghanistan's crop "has spread like wildfire."
This week: Imagining a new new deal, with Howard Zinn, Frances Moore Lappe, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Eric Schlosser and...FDR himself. Plus: Ennis Carter and Stephen Duncombe on the political propaganda legacy of the WPA. (13mb mp3)
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