Word: talibans
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During the recent campaign you pledged to send an additional 20,000 American troops to fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. I supported your campaign, but I hope you will now break this pledge. It served its purpose by reassuring skeptics you would be ready to use force if necessary as Commander-in-Chief, and it cleverly reminded voters of the Bush Administration’s decision to downgrade the original war on terror in Afghanistan, in favor of a dubious project in Iraq. You turned it into a good applause line: “The war on terror began...
...should abandon this line, for two reasons. First, security in Afghanistan has deteriorated so much that the 20,000 troops you have proposed to send are no longer enough to turn the tide against the Taliban. Second, America’s war on terror is no longer centered in Afghanistan, or even Iraq. Al Qaeda now works primarily out of Pakistan...
...Sending 20,000 more forces in Afghanistan will push total American troop strength in that country up to 58,000. If Afghanistan were as urbanized as Iraq and if the Taliban insurgency had an urban base, then a troop surge on this scale might have an impact. But Afghanistan is physically larger than Iraq and more than 75 percent of all Afghans live in remote rural communities where the Taliban now has a significant base of support. Controlling a growing Taliban insurgency across this vast countryside will be impossible with just 58,000 American soldiers. Our NATO allies are showing...
...Like Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, this is a war movie that spends virtually all its time at war, showing how soldiers fight and die. Che's depiction of guerrilla war tactics is so minutely detailed, it could provide an illuminating education to West Point cadets, or Taliban recruits. With about 80% of the two-part picture taking place in the Cuban or Bolivian jungle, it's the woodsiest war movie ever, and not so much a long march as the daily log of a sylvan slog...
...Some of those arrested in Belgium connect with earlier episodes of al-Qaeda violence. First among them is Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian national whose Tunisian husband Abdessater Dahmane was one of two men recruited from Belgian extremist networks to assassinate Afghanistan's key anti-Taliban commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days before 9/11. Since then, blogging under the pseudonym Oum Obeyda, El Aroud has been a fiery advocate for the jihadist cause, urging Muslim men and women to take up the fight...