Well, I just finished the 1st of Bob Woodward’s three-part series ‘Obama’s War’ in the Washington Post and came away keying a different aspect than Woodward and likely the Obama administration wanted to get across. Woodward’s main theme in this first section is that the high brass of the US military (Mullen, McChrystal, Petraeus) failed […]
Ever since I watched the Ridley Scott film “Gladiator” ten years ago, and winced at the public and private dissembling that was the meat of that film, I’ve always toed a somewhat cautionary line between freedom of expression–as something more than a principle– and responsible art-making. At issue: when does a plausible experience ring […]
Apologies for my lack of coverage regarding the recent Afghanistan parliamentary elections, but I’ve been swamped with some of life’s other challenges…..basically my 4 month year old daughter’s unquenchable thirst for her dad’s attention. Anyhoo, many others have written on the subject, including Joshua Foust and some of his Registan.net colleagues. Here Foust describes some […]
As Moscow’s once indestructible mayor flees on a hastily arranged trip to Austria, the question is less will he accept defeat like Gorbachev did following his 1991 detention in his Crimean dacha but will he even be allowed to return home? “Churchill once remarked that observing a Russian power-struggle ‘is like watching two dogs fighting […]
Foreign Policy Association has seemed to transform into Afghanistan Association as our website has recently produced a myriad of fascinating pieces on the Central Asian state. Here are three really worth checking out! On FPA’s website’s main page, the Viewpoint series features an article by Mehdi Noorbaksh titled ‘Irreparable Mistake to Leave Afghanistan‘. Noorbaksh makes […]
In just a few short months, American troops will be replacing the embedded British soldiers in most of Helmand province. These British troops have spent the past several years attempting to bring stability to one of Afghanistan’s most violent and unstable regions. For instance, one-third of the 335 British soldiers killed in the country since […]
Refreshingly clear insight from the Economist in today’s article about Putin’s legacy: The real problem is not that the state in Russia is too powerful or ambitious, but that it fails in its basic functions of providing adequate health care, security, justice and infrastructure. Indeed, today’s fatal bombings in Vladikavkaz as well as ever increasing […]
The latest Afghanistan and Iraq cost analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) will not sit well with many Americans living on a tight budget. Though the war in Iraq is costing less and less, the US military is basically transferring these saved funds to the Afghan conflict. Between 2009 and 2010, the average monthly cost […]
An American star not only coaches the Russian national basketball team but also praises the USSR’s controversial 1972 victory over his own country, while Putin claims to be modeling himself on America’s greatest president: After a century of representing humanity’s thesis and antithesis, are the two powers merging into one another in a cute form […]
Perhaps Prime Minister Putin is more attuned to Western criticism than he lets on. For example, two years ago the British motoring show Top Gear rather harshly called the Lada Kalina – the newest model from Russia’s much maligned firm – a poor copy of a mid 90s Fiat, made out of turnips. Yet when […]
The big news from Russia has been yet another series of arrests at an opposition rally. Nemtsov and Limonov were predictably hauled off while astute bloggers dissected Putin’s latest macho threat that unauthorised protesters would be hit upside the head with a truncheon. Yet behind these political theatrics, another much less boisterous yet much more […]
In the past two years there have been many (one is too many) reported cases of Afghan girls mysteriously falling ill at school. It was widely speculated that members of the Taliban were purposefully poisoning these girls in order to punish/intimidate them from getting an education. Sadly, recent tests have shown that in ten of […]
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