Archive for August, 2021

Secretary of Defense: ‘I Don’t Have the Capability’ to Escort Stranded Americans to Kabul Airport

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the U.S. will continue to evacuate all the Americans “they can” from Afghanistan, although the U.S. is currently unable to “go out and collect large numbers of people” from outside the Kabul airport. “It’s obvious we’re not close to where we want to be,” Austin said at a press conference at the Pentagon. […]

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Trump calls Afghanistan collapse ‘most humiliating’ moment for US

Former President Donald Trump described the recent events in Afghanistan as the worst humiliation in American history but defended the agreement his administration struck with the Taliban last year. “It’s a great thing that we’re getting out, but nobody has ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden,” the former president told Fox News Tuesday. “This is the greatest embarrassment, […]

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Taliban delegation in Kandahar for consultations

A nine-member Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived in Kandahar on a special flight from Qatar on Tuesday night and are expected to hold consultations on the future system. After arriving in Kandahar province, a senior Taliban member, Khairullah Khairkhah, told a news conference that he was pleased to see that there was no enemy in the […]

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UAE confirms it has taken in Ghani and his family

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation confirmed on its website Wednesday that the UAE has “welcomed (former) President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds.” Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday just hours before the Taliban took control of Kabul. Until now, Ghani’s whereabouts have been unknown. This comes after the UAE […]

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The Price Of Biden’s Betrayal – OpEd

It took a couple of days for US President Joe Biden to interrupt his vacation at Camp David and address his people and a world still in shock at the carnage in Afghanistan. In his 10-minute remarks, Biden defended his handling of the US withdrawal, while blaming his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, along with the Afghan security forces and […]

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In the Shadows of the American Century – The Rise and Decline of US Global Power

Reading “In the Shadows of the American Century” is a bit of an up and down ride. The best part of the book for personal interest concerning the author is the Introduction. The author, Alfred McCoy, discusses his personal situation in relation to his family and the environment in which he was raised and the family friends whose lives ended […]

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Biden’s Afghanistan speech: America’s criminal war ends in debacle

On Monday afternoon, US President Joe Biden delivered a nationally televised address in response to the collapse of the US-backed puppet government in Afghanistan. The scale and historical impact of the catastrophe suffered by American imperialism in Afghanistan, which in many respects exceeds even its defeat in the Vietnam War, found expression in the speech, perhaps the bleakest address by […]

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“You’re all going to die”: Persuading Pakistan’s generals to see the light

“You’re all going to die,” the diminutive, senior U.S. intelligence official observed in matter-of-fact fashion to her stunned Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) hosts. Her rather blunt appraisal was uncharacteristic of the engagement to which the senior Pakistani officials had grown accustomed and cut to the chase: the consequences of decades of Pakistan’s support to the Taliban, violent Kashmiri liberation groups, […]

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Can the IRGC-Taliban honeymoon continue? (Part 1)

Tehran’s policy toward the Afghan Taliban has created new clashes within Iranian government circles. These clashes recently escalated as influential hard-line media and associates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made public efforts to portray the Taliban in a positive light.

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After Afghanistan: Western militaries and the rise of new strategic threats

“This marks the end of a historic chapter — an intense deployment that has challenged and shaped us,” wrote German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on June 29. The occasion was the homecoming of the last German troops deployed in Afghanistan. Over the past 20 years, around 150,000 German troops served in these troubled lands, making Germany the second-largest contributor to […]

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