Tag Archives : Obama

Tibet is touted to be a land of peace and quiet. Its reputation is that of timeless tranquility. Its people are of heightened consciousness, at peace with the world. Amid blue skies and cinematic vistas, its image is bliss. Tibet conjures up the exact concept of ethereal purity. It may not necessarily be this dreamscape, though. In Foreign Policy, Christina [...]

Gabriela Campos, an intern at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks about a compilation of analyses regarding the New Taliban. The book, entitled Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, is edited by Antonio Giustozzi who is a fellow at the London School of Economics. The book asserts that a stronger Neo-Taliban has definitely emerged, [...]

US President Barack Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize while ‘justifying the deployment of 30,000 more troops to the “graveyard of empires”.’ Obama’s acceptance speech was used as a rationale to deliver a ‘lengthy defense of the “just war” theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world’s [...]

A significant way in how the whole world turns actually rests in the hands of US President Barack Obama and his administration. Tempering the nuclearization of global weaponry, harnessing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions posthaste and on a global scale, truly changing the fate of Afghans, assuring stability in the potentially combustible [...]

The Afghan surge can’t defeat terrorist ideology, experts say. According to Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, ‘President Obama should have used his speech to declare victory and announce the start of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of an escalation. Even if the surge achieves its immediate mission—at huge cost—the operation [...]

Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan has less to do with military action than ‘turning the war over to the Afghans.’ ‘The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan, and consequently in Pakistan, has three core elements: ‘maintain pressure on al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world;’ ‘blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of [...]

The new US troop surge has started to move into the homelands of ethnic Pashtuns in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Pashtuns are fierce fighters of invaders. They hate intruders. The Taliban are made up of ethnic Pashtuns. Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan, sending 30k new troops into the country, ‘will result in immediate spike in battles.’ [...]

US President Obama’s troop pledge to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan rests on a gamble on unreliable and dubious allies supposedly working towards the pressing goals in that country. The troop surge will have to rely on the corrupt Karzai government, perceived to be one of the most corrupt political administrations in the world [...]

100 luminaries were asked, including the likes of Bill Clinton, Francis Fukuyama, and David Petraeus, about their opinions on past year events, as well as their predictions for the foreseeable future. Here are some of the 2009 reflections and 2010 predictions of big thinkers: The most significant notes are that China is ascendant, Pakistan is dangerous, [...]