Group items tagged

Iraq was the bad war and Libya was the good war and Afghanistan was the necessary war and Bosnia was the moral war and Syria is now another necessary war.

They are all the same war.

multisectarian societies, most of them Muslim or Arab, are held together for decades by dictators ruling vertically, from the top down

how the people in these countries respond to the fact that with the dictator gone they can only be governed horizontally

own social contracts for how to live together as equal citizens

without falling into Hobbes or Khomeini.

Saddam to Jefferson

“the army of the center.”

Iraq, we toppled the dictator and then, after making every mistake in the book, we got the parties to write a new social contract

“army of the center.”

Ditto Afghanistan.

Libya: No boots on the ground. So we decapitated that dictator from the air.

Hobbes took hold before Jefferson.

For any chance of a multisectarian democratic outcome in Syria, you need to win two wars on the ground: one against the ruling Assad-Alawite-Iranian-Hezbollah-Shiite alliance; and, once that one is over, you’d have to defeat the Sunni Islamists and pro-Al Qaeda jihadists.

both will be uphill fights.

The center exists

weak and unorganized

pluralistic societies

lack any sense of citizenship or deep ethic of pluralism

tolerance, cooperation and compromise

pluralistic society but lack pluralism

not without an army of the center to protect everyone from everyone.

not just poison gas, but poisoned hearts

self-governing, largely homogeneous, ethnic and religious units, like Kurdistan

modus vivendi, as happened in Lebanon after 14 years of civil war

smaller units will voluntarily come together into larger, more functional states.

“arm and shame,”

spare me the lecture that America’s credibility is at stake here. Really?

Their civilization has missed every big modern global trend

learning to tolerate “the other.” That struggle has to happen in the Arab/Muslim world

quality of local leadership and the degree of tolerance

Mr Kleinman told the court that it would take several months to sort through hundreds of thousands of documents before the case could proceed.

There has been anger in Libya over the US commando raid on 5 October, which many say was a breach of Libyan sovereignty.

Mr Liby had been on the FBI's most wanted list for more than a decade, with a $5m (£3.1m) bounty on his head.

I'm not sure why conservatives who grasp this point domestically refuse to seize it internationally. But Libya could be a good point to start fighting back against the welfarism of constant intervention. And when you look at the recipients of this welfare, it would be tough to find harder cases: Iraq, Afghanistan and now, for goodness' sake, Libya. It's like providing welfare to individuals who are the most hopeless cases, and from whom you do not dare remove the teat.

The US is fast beco

ming not the world's policeman, but the world's welfare officer. I favor welfare reform. Which means leaving all these places as quickly and as cleanly as we possibly can.

It was the deadliest attack on the Shabab in the more than decade-long American campaign against the group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, and a sharp deviation from previous American strikes, which have concentrated on the group’s leaders, not on its foot soldiers. Continue reading the main story #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap { max-width:180px; } .g-artboard { margin:0 auto; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180{ position:relative; overflow:hidden; width:180px; } .g-aiAbs{ position:absolute; } .g-aiImg{ display:block; width:100% !important; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 p{ font-family:nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:13px; line-height:18px; margin:0; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle0 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle1 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle2 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; text-align:right; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle3 { font-size:12px; line-height:13px; font-weight:700; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle4 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle5 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; text-align:center; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle6 { font-size:9px; line-height:8px; font-weight:500; text-transform:uppercase; text-align:center; color:#000000; } Gulf of Aden ETHIOPIA SOMALIA Camp Raso Mogadishu KENYA Indian Ocean 300 miles MARCH 7, 2016 By The New York Times

It comes in response to new concerns that the group, which was responsible for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on African soil when it struck a popular mall in Nairobi in 2013, is in the midst of a resurgence after losing much of the territory it once held and many of its fighters in the last several years.

The planned attack on American and African Union troops in Somalia, American officials say, may have been an attempt by the Shabab to carry out the same kind of high-impact act of terrorism as the one in Nairobi.

Pentagon officials would not say how they knew that the Shabab fighters killed on Saturday were training for an attack on United States and African Union forces, but the militant group is believed to be under heavy American surveillance.

The Shabab fighters were standing in formation at a facility the Pentagon called Camp Raso, 120 miles north of Mogadishu, when the American warplanes struck on Saturday, officials said, acting on information gleaned from intelligence sources in the area and from American spy planes

One intelligence agency assessed that the toll might have been higher had the strike happened earlier in the ceremony. Apparently, some fighters were filtering away from the event when the bombing began.

The strike was another escalation in what has become the latest battleground in the Obama administration’s war against terror: Africa.

The United States and its allies are focused on combating the spread of the Islamic State in Libya, and American officials estimate that with an influx of men from Iraq, Syria and Tunisia, the Islamic State’s forces in Libya have swelled to as many as 6,500 fighters, allowing the group to capture a 150-mile stretch of coastline over the past year.

The arrival of the Islamic State in Libya has sparked fears that the group’s reach could spread to other North African countries, and the United States is increasingly trying to prevent that

American forces are now helping to combat Al Qaeda in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso; Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad; and the Shabab in Somalia and Kenya, in what has become a multifront war against militant Islam in Africa.

The United States has a small number of trainers and advisers with African Union — primarily Kenyan — troops in Somalia. Defense officials said that the African Union’s military mission to Somalia was believed to have been the target of the planned attack.

Saturday’s strike was the most significant American attack on the Shabab since September 2014, when an American drone strike killed the leader of the group, Ahmed Abdi Godane, at the time one of the most wanted men in Africa. That strike was followed by one last March, when Adan Garar, a senior member of the group, was killed in a drone strike on his vehicle.

If the killings of Mr. Godane and Mr. Garar initially crippled the group, that no longer appears to be the case. In the past two months, Shabab militants have claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed more than 150 people, including Kenyan soldiers stationed at a remote desert outpost and beachcombers in Mogadishu.

In addition, the group has said it was responsible for a bomb on a Somali jetliner that tore a hole through the fuselage and for an attack last month on a popular hotel and a public garden in Mogadishu that killed 10 people and injured more than 25. On Monday, the Shabab claimed responsibility for a bomb planted in a laptop computer that went off at an airport security checkpoint in the town of Beletwein in central Somalia, wounding at least six people, including two police officers. The police said that one other bomb was defused.

At the same time, Shabab assassination teams have fanned out across Mogadishu and other major towns, stealthily eliminating government officials and others they consider apostates.

The Shabab have also retaken several towns after African Union forces pulled out. The African Union peacekeeping force, paid for mostly by Western governments, features troops from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Djibouti and other African nations.

The Shabab were once strong, then greatly weakened and now seem to be somewhere in between, while analysts say the group competes with the Islamic State for recruits and tries to show — in the deadliest way — that it is still relevant. Its dream is to turn Somalia into a pure Islamic state.

Abu Bakr al Baghdad

rusader" countries and beyond.

indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets

, symbols of Western power or decadence

Beyond ISIS "branded" attacks -- those launched by affiliates and members -- ISIS also seeks to make political capital out of individuals who claim to be "inspired" by it, such as those in San Bernardino, California, in December and last week in Philadelphia.

stage of the investigation, there is no evidence accused gunman Edward Archer was part of an organized cell or that other attacks were in the works.

here is no doubting ISIS' lure to a fringe of extremist Muslims and Muslim converts

A year ago, ISIS was focused almost exclusively on carving out its self-declared caliphate. Overseas terror attacks in the style of al Qaeda did not appear high on the agenda

An early indication that ISIS' leadership favored overseas attacks came when the Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- a high-profile member of the group, if only a lieutenant -- plotted a series of gun and bomb attacks against police stations

"Know that we want Paris -- by Allah's permission -- before Rome and before Spain, after we blacken your lives and destroy the White House, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower."

the "caliph" himself, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, suggested ISIS will look for further opportunities to export its war to the "far abroad."

Throughout 2015, there was a steady stream of terror attacks that could be linked firmly to ISIS-associated groups, even if the relationship between them and the group's central leadership was often opaque

What, if any, role the central ISIS leadership had in the bombing of the Metrojet plane is still unknown. Its Sinai affiliate claimed the attack, and it was some time before the ISIS online publication Dabiq referred to it.

The suicide bomb attacks in Ankara were likely ordered by ISIS itself

The Paris attacks in November were a landmark: the first clearly organized and claimed by ISIS itself from Syria rather than the autonomous actions of affiliates or individuals.

t has a growing network of wilayat, or provinces -- places where it has an established presence such as Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan -- where government is weak and conflict endemic. In some instances it has sent fighters from Syria and Iraq to expand its presence in these places, most notably in Libya.

It also has a pool of experienced foreign fighters

The disappearance of one of the Paris attackers, Salah Abdeslam, and several alleged co-conspirators suggests ISIS may have a network of safe houses and travel facilitators in Europe

Researchers have found that World Cup goalkeepers, for example, are more likely to dive during a penalty kick, though they’d have a better chance of catching the ball by remaining in the center of the goal.

political scientists have also applied this concept to explain the decisions of leaders like George W. Bush, whose impetuous choices have been attributed by scholars to his “impatience for unnecessary delay.

Political pressure and criticism from opponents, combined with the news media’s habit of disparaging inaction, can render even the most cautious leaders vulnerable to pressure.

The American policymaking system reinforces this tendency.

America’s overwhelming military strength and the low cost of airstrikes only add to the notion that action is less costly than inaction.

Acting too quickly means that policymakers don’t have full information when making key decisions, and it prevents them from carefully considering the long-term consequences

it can be disastrous. Just look at the Obama administration’s 2011 decision to intervene in Libya.

Mr. Obama’s own reflections on Libya (as well as Iraq) and his criticisms of the bias for action in American foreign policymaking were ultimately behind his decision to resist pressure to strike Syria in 2013. Mr. Obama came to understand that poorly thought-out military interventions can be even costlier.

If Mr. Obama found it challenging to resist the bias for action in foreign policy, imagine how difficult it is for a president with questionable impulse control, a military-centric foreign policy and a fixation on media praise.

It takes a determined leader to resist the overwhelming pressure to “do something” in a crisis. Mr. Trump is not that leader.

The U.N. report goes on: "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."

Azerbaijan used armed drones to gain a major advantage over Armenia in recent fighting for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Just last month, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly used drones to drop tear gas on protesters in the occupied West Bank, while Hamas launched loitering munitions — so-called kamikaze drones — into Israel.

While this incident may or may not represent the first battlefield killing by an autonomous drone, the idea of such a weapon is disquieting to many.

"Diplomacy is always our goal. Our goal is to reduce the risk of escalation. But, to date, we have not received any response," Psaki said, noting that the outreach "follows over a year without active dialogue with North Korea, despite multiple attempts by the US to engage."

However, experts told CNN prior to Kim Yo Jong's message that Pyongyang was likely to rebuff diplomatic efforts for the time-being for a number of reasons including the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden team's ongoing North Korea policy review, the meetings in the region and above all, the administration's rhetoric.

"That's just a non-starter for the North Koreans," said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration had reached out to North Korea, noting they have "a number of channels, as we always have had, that we can reach out through."

"It has to be nuanced because you can't just say, you know, we want to have talks, and the talks are going to be about North Korea's complete denuclearization, because that sounds very one sided," he told CNN. "It would have to be long term and not the Libya model of complete denuclearization upfront before we give them anything they want."

But after the summit, Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the agreement pledged North Korea to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, despite the fact that it said nothing of the sort.

Former officials and experts also noted that Biden administration officials' commitments not to lift tariffs on North Korea during confirmation hearings did not go unnoticed, which could be one factor driving Pyongyang's decision not to engage directly with the US.

"What if the US and China come out of their meetings this week and make it clear that they are headed for escalating US-China tensions? If you are Kim Jong Un you would read that as meaning that it is less likely that China will put the squeeze on North Korea," said Anthony Ruggiero, a former National Security Council official. "If that happens, maybe Kim now knows he can go to China to buy more pieces for its nuclear programs, or to go to China and sell more coal. That would be a bad sign for the future of any US-North Korea diplomacy."

Aum said that he doesn't think they'd "want to do anything to provoke the US prior to some greater signal that the US is going to take a very hostile approach."

Libya has been wracked by conflict since the 2011 uprising which ousted long-time strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

According to the UN, the fighting has killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands more from their homes.

Among the investigators’ other findings, they also highlighted how people had been reportedly detained for expressing “views about the elections, or support for candidate

Just because a consensus exists, though, doesn’t mean that the consensus is correct. Americans who watched Monday night’s showdown benefited from the relative honesty of the discussion. But they were deprived of a real critique of the incumbent’s record, and a real debate about what an alternative approach might look like.

Romney’s “me-too” approach on Monday night gave the impression that there should be nothing particularly controversial about, say, the dubiously constitutional way the president took us to war in Libya, or his march-up-the-hill-march-down-the-hill strategy in Afghanistan, or his willingness to claim and then use the power to execute an American citizen without trial.

More broadly, you would have no sense that there are any alternative grand strategies available to America beyond our current focus on terrorism and the greater Middle East – and, of course, the occasional detour into China-bashing.

On the evidence of the debate, the world beyond the borders of the United States starts in Mali and ends in Kandahar. Entire continents and major powers might as well not even exist.

the Bush-Obama consensus he embraced has already marginalized many other groups and ideas as well. Obama’s policy choices have co-opted or neutered the anti-war and civil libertarian left. Romney’s campaign rhetoric has marginalized realists and right-wing libertarians. The result is a landscape where huge swathes of public opinions and major schools of thought are represented only by fringe third party candidates

The U.S.-led airstrike campaign has increasingly assaulted ISIS logistical operations, forcing the terror group to retreat from territory it once controlled. Such losses have made it harder for ISIS to move weapons, food, and fighters around the self-proclaimed caliphate and appear to have weakened the group’s ability to expand its state across the Middle East and Africa.

as it appears ISIS has instead spread its foreign fighters across the region to places like Libya and Egypt. The terror group has even asked recruits to stay in Europe and attack from there.

The potential fall of Manbij with the help of the Kurds, along with the fall of areas around Raqqa, suggest that the U.S. is willing to risk creating potential new tensions to rid the northern city of ISIS.

They’re not really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.”

temperamentally unfit

It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin,

She listed Trump statements on everything from the NATO alliance to threats from Russia and North Korea — and played Trump’s assertions about climate change for laughs.

“If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin,” she said. “We cannot let that happen.”

He is too reckless, ill-informed and egomaniacal to be entrusted with the biggest job in the world,

she has the experience, expertise and practical temperament to be commander in chief, and Trump does not.

Trump had sought to rebut Clinton before she even spoke, spending parts of the last two days criticizing Clinton for her temperament and legacy as secretary of state.

Her speech, Trump said, would be full of “such lies.”

On New Jersey on Wednesday, Clinton hammered Trump over the legal controversy surrounding his now-defunct Trump University, labeling him a “fraud.”

He said she was “sleeping” during the seige of U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in the closing months of her State Department tenure.

Although it has faded as a central campaign issue eight years later, both Trump and Sanders have sought to use her vote as evidence of poor decision-making.

comes as Clinton is trying to deny Sanders an embarrassing but symbolic victory in California’s primary.

put Clinton just two points ahead of Sanders in the nation’s most diverse state.

she is widely expected to secure the Democratic nomination the same day when five other states also hold primaries

Trump criticized Clinton’s support for both the Iraq war when she was a senator and military intervention in Libya when she was secretary of state, policies he had also supported.

Her tenure as secretary of state may be a weapon for Trump

As we navigate this complex world, America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership,

We can’t be isolationists. It’s not possible in this globalized, interconnected world.

“Former secretaries of state are held in high regard; candidates are not — and she’s a candidate,

“Her strength is her temperament: she is so cautious so scripted that she won’t scare people in the knee jerk way that Donald Trump can scare people,”

risks knee jerk scaring people, but he’s against so many of the interventions that many of the American people themselves are against...it’s a real fair fight.”

All four gulf countries actively back the Syrian rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, and all see Shiite Iran as a regional rival. But now the split with Qatar makes it harder for the West to work with them as a group on common concerns like Iran or Syria.

. The internal tensions make it harder for Washington to reassure the nervous governments in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that American negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program will not undermine gulf security.

In its own statement, Qatar expressed “surprise and regret” and denied that the rift had anything to do with “security and stability.”

“The whole issue is really about Sisi,” he said. “These countries are supporting a coup d’état” and “they want Qatar to support such a policy” but “we will never support another regime that kills its own people.”

Qatar, on the other hand, was Egypt’s most important donor when the Brotherhood was in power. Doha, along with London and Istanbul, has become a hub for Brotherhood leaders in exile.

The United Arab Emirates state news media reported last month that its government had summoned Qatar’s ambassador to express “extreme resentment” at a declaration on Al Jazeera by Sheik Qaradawi that the Emirates “has always been opposed to Islamic rule.”

ential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law.

The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”

t is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptiona

Such warnings are part of the expected theater of these negotiations, in which the United States must look simultaneously accommodating enough to a new Iranian leadership to keep fragile talks

Lengthening that period, so that the United States and its allies would have time to react, is the ultimate goal of President Obama’s negotiating team.

“Rollback may be a step too far for the Iranians,”

“because he can’t been seen at home giving up such a huge investment or abandoning national security.”

The North Korean example has become Exhibit No. 1 in Israel’s argument that the deal struck on Sunday gives a false sense of security. “There are two models for a deal: Libya and North Korea,” Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and intelligence, Yuval Steinitz, said in an interview during a recent trip to Washington. “We need Libya.”

89 percent of Democrats described themselves as concerned that intervention in Iraq and Syria “will lead to a long and costly involvement there.”

Mrs. Clinton resisted disavowing her original vote for the war for a long time and as secretary of state pressed for a muscular approach to the world.

At first, the president seemed to lean more toward Mrs. Clinton’s view, if not entirely, as with the 2009 Afghan troop surge. But the war in Libya in 2011 proved a turning point. After his reluctant approval of airstrikes left a fractured country, Mr. Obama soured even more on intervention.

For his part, Mr. Biden could point to Libya as a case study in the perils of Mrs. Clinton’s brand of American meddling in the conflicts of other countries. She might argue that she favored a more expansive involvement than that taken by the administration, which all but washed its hands after Qaddafi’s death, but the terrorist attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi has become an enduring political liability for her.