This not talking shit is hard! Yesterday, I couldn’t/wouldn’t keep silent about some year-old bullshit from David Ignatius. Well, today it’s the National Review’s Rich Lowry, opining about General Trump’s plans to reignite the war in Afghanistan: “At the end of the day, this is Trump concluding that he doesn’t want to lose a war…
Tag: Afghanistan
I spent $800 billion in Afghanistan and all they gave me was this lousy tee-shirt
As R. Jeffrey Smith, who hangs his hat at the Center for Public Integrity, so admirably demonstrates, every word of that headline is true, except the part about the tee-shirt. Jeff puts the blame on Hillary, but I’d give the lion’s share to President Obama, who rather gratuitously decided that Afghanistan was the “good war,”…
What Robert Gates said that no one said he said
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, former Secretary of State Robert Gates’ memoirs of his years as SecDef, have been excerpted and/or discussed by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. If you follow this sort of thing, you know that Bob loved Hillary, definitely a feather in her…
U.S. bad guy identification technology no longer lighting Fred Kaplan’s fire in Afghanistan
Well, that was quick. It seems like it was only two months ago—on Oct. 21, to be precise—that Slate’s Fred Kaplan was raving about our abfab, state of the art Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System (aka “the 70-kilometer sniper round”), our High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (a “a 15-ton wheeled vehicle carrying a computerized fire-control system…
The Obama doctrine: Shoot first and ask questions later. Sir, may I ask a question?
Now that President Obama has won a significant victory for improving the health of millions of Americans, he might feel secure enough politically to stop, you know, murdering innocent people in Afghanistan. So far this year, our current “Slaughter the Innocents” policy in the country we are fighting to prevent from having, someday, a government…
So I guess we lied
You may recall my complaints here and here about the U.S military’s footdragging and evasions regarding the question of whether American air strikes on August 22 on an Afghan village killed “5-7” civilians, as the U.S. said, or 90, as the civilians themselves said. Well, now U.S. Air Force investigators have concluded that the civilian…
Does that mean we lied? Part II
The way David Ignatius tells it, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates will do anything to express his sorrow for the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians killed by U.S. troops. He’ll even stand in the hot sun, wearing a pinstriped suit! According to Ignatius, Gates also announced that “United States will adopt a new approach of…
So does that mean we lied?
Yesterday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking in Kabul, offered “sincere condolences and personal regrets” for recent deaths of Afghan civilians as a result of U.S. air strikes. You may remember that on August 22 a U.S. airstrike killed “five to seven” civilians, according to the U.S. military. Or was it closer to 90? Gates…
The Ample Ass-Covering of Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is back from Afghanistan, and she has a tale to tell. According to Anne, the job is tough but doable. “Though Americans like to talk about “winning” and “losing” the war in Afghanistan, on the ground it’s clear that those categories aren’t relevant. Of course we can “win”: The real question is whether…
Keeping Posted: The Myths Keep Coming
Myth debunking has become a full-time job on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Last Sunday, Jacob Heilbrunn debunked five myths regarding “those nefarious neocons.” On Monday, Ann Marlowe took on two myths regarding Afghanistan. Myth 1. Hamid Karzai is a good president who looks after American interests. Myth 2. The second is that…