Group items tagged

"I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats," he went on. "I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth."

"We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives," Biden went on. "Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it's time to end the forever war."

It was a decisive moment for a President not yet 100 days into the job. Biden has spent months weighing his decision, and he determined a war in Afghanistan that has killed some 2,300 US troops and cost more than $2 trillion no longer fit within the pressing foreign policy concerns of 2021.

The deadline Biden has set is absolute, with no potential for extension based on worsening conditions on the ground.

"After nearly two decades of putting our troops in harm's way, it is time to recognize that we have accomplished all that we can militarily, and that it's time to bring our remaining troops home," he wrote.

Biden said the withdrawal will begin on May 1, in line with an agreement President Donald Trump's administration made with the Taliban.

Biden said American diplomatic and humanitarian efforts would continue in Afghanistan and that the US would support peace efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But he was unequivocal that two decades after it began, the Afghanistan War is ending."It is time to end America's longest war. It is time for American troops to come home," he said in his speech.

Both of Biden's most recent predecessors sought to end the war in Afghanistan, only to be drawn back in by devolving security and attempts to prop up the government. Biden made a different calculation that the US and the world must simply move on.

"While he and I have had many disagreements over policy throughout the years, we are absolutely united in our respect and support for the valor, courage and integrity of the women and men of the United States forces who've served," Biden said.

"War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking," Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room,

He also spoke with Obama, with whom he sometimes disagreed over Afghanistan policy when serving as vice president.

"We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021," Biden said. "Rather than return to war with the Taliban, we have to focus on the challenges that are in front of us."

Deliberations stretched longer than some US officials had expected, even as Biden signaled repeatedly that a May 1 deadline for full withdrawal was nearly impossible to meet. Hoping to provide space for him to make an informed final decision that he wouldn't come to regret, officials sought to avoid pressuring a President known for blowing past deadlines. Top-level meetings were convened at an unusually high rate.

There was not unanimous consent among his team. Among those advocating against a withdrawal, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been among the most ardent, suggesting earlier in the deliberations that pulling American troops from Afghanistan could cause the government in Kabul to collapse and prompt backsliding in women's rights, according to people familiar with the conversations.

"The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support," the assessment said.On Wednesday, Biden offered his rebuttal to the "many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust US military presence to stand as leverage."

In reality, Biden has been thinking about this issue for nearly as long as the war itself, having traveled to the region as a leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as an internal advocate -- at first ignored -- of drawing down troops during the Obama administration.

On the day in 2001 that Bush addressed the nation from the Treaty Room, Biden appeared on CNN a few hours later from his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

"There is no doubt in my mind the Taliban is done and the American people are going to learn about that and the world is going to learn about that in a matter of weeks, I predict," he said in the interview -- a projection that, 20 years later, appears misguided as his administration works to urge peace talks between the Taliban, who control large swaths of Afghanistan, and the Afghan government.

Over the ensuing years, Biden would travel to Afghanistan as part of congressional delegations and grill military leaders appearing before his committee.

By the time he became vice president, Biden had adopted a skeptical view toward a continued large presence in the country

"I'm the first president in 40 years who knows what it means to have a child serving in a war zone, and throughout this process, my North Star has been remembering what it was like when my late son, Beau, was deployed to Iraq, how proud he was to serve his country, how insistent he was to deploy with his unit and the impact it had on him and all of us at home," he said.

This U.S.-led network of international institutions has produced the longest period without a war between great powers since the days of the Roman Empire. We’re at 73 years and counting. Prior to its creation, Europe had plunged the world into two global wars in the span of just 25 years. This alone — peace among the great powers — has been worth every penny spent and every hour of haggling.

But peace is not the only benefit. There’s prosperity, too.

during the ensuing decades of peace, the GDP of the United States has grown to roughly $20 trillion — more than 500 percent. We’ve accomplished that while also enabling the ruined nations of Europe and Asia, our partners in free trade, to achieve similar economic miracles.

Warts and all, this Pax Americana is the unparalleled gem of diplomatic history and the epitome of bipartisan achievement. President Barack Obama was widely seen as backing away from America’s lead role; now President Trump is reviving the very policies that once darkened the world. I can’t shake the image of that young man. He’s asking: How can you forget?

There is ample reason to believe that if the remaining 2,500 U.S. forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban forces fighting the internationally recognized Afghan government would take over the capital of Kabul within a matter of months.

Most important, the country that spawned the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil could well revert to the incubator of violent Islamic extremism that it was once before.

Stacked up against that is candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure.” That statement not only mirrored the pledge made by former President Donald Trump, but also reflected broad public sentiment.

In a sense, that target already has been met: Mr. Trump reduced the troop level to 2,500 from 14,000 as a result of last year’s tentative peace agreement. The problem with going further is that the Taliban has shown neither the ability nor the willingness to actually go all the way toward real peace with the Afghan government.

The Taliban can’t seem to get out of its own way; a wise, if cynical, strategy would be to quell violence until American troops are gone, but that isn’t what has emerged.

On the other hand, there actually is progress in the normally bleak Afghan picture that’s worth protecting. A diplomatic process actually is under way, and the country is making slow progress in education and health.

Even a token military presence—2,500 troops out of America’s active force of some 1.3 million—can have an outsize impact in protecting those gains.

The coalition would combine parties from across the political spectrum that normally disagree on many political issues but have apparently united on the need to move on from the Netanyahu era

But the simple fact that a right-wing party was willing to form a coalition with groups representing progressive, centrist and Arab voters, he said, already amounted to a revolution in a country where politics have been dominated by a single person for more than a decade.

Bennett and Lapid have until late Wednesday to secure the support of 61 members of the 120-seat Knesset, Israel's parliament

Their success may depend on the culturally conservative Arab party known as the United Arab List or Ra'am, which would be the first Arab-led party to participate in a coalition government in Israel.

Though Bennett's Yamina Party is considered more conservative than Netanyahu's Likud, hundreds of right-wing activists protested as reports about a possible coalition with left-leaning parties filled the Israeli media.

But for many Palestinians, Bennett — a former settler who once vowed to "do everything in my power to make sure [Palestinians] never get a state" – is viewed, at best, as unlikely to change Israel's stance toward the long-running stalemate.

Negotiations continued Monday in Israel over an unlikely political coalition poised to dethrone the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The attempt to put an end to Netanyahu's rule, publicly announced Sunday night by hard-right party leader Naftali Bennett, has been welcomed by a surprising cross-section of left-wing and right-wing Israelis, as Netanyahu and his allies fight fiercely to keep him in power ahead of a looming Wednesday deadline for a new coalition to be reached.

If lawmakers succeed, Bennett, a one-time Netanyahu aide who now heads Israel's tiny Yamina Party, would take the prime minister's seat as head of a coalition government sharing power with centrist politician Yair Lapid, a former TV news anchor and finance minister whose Yesh Atid is the second largest of Israel's many political parties. The two would take turns as prime minister if the fragile coalition manages to hold for long enough, with Bennett going first.

The best hope for the species to survive lies in a complete ban on harvesting female horseshoe crabs until the crab population recovers, Dr. Niles said.

The Queen will need to sign off on any plans before they are confirmed, and it is not yet known whether this has already happened.

Philip, also known by his official title of the Duke of Edinburgh, was the longest-serving British consort.

The duke was known for off-the-cuff remarks that often displayed a quick wit but occasionally missed the mark, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

In December 2019, he was taken to hospital as a "precautionary measure" for what Buckingham Palace described as a "pre-existing" condition. He had previously been admitted to hospital on multiple occasions for a variety of reasons, including for a hip replacement and for treatment for bladder infections.

Prince Philip, the lifelong companion of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, has died, Buckingham Palace announced Friday. He was 99.

Philip, also known by his official title of the Duke of Edinburgh, was the longest-serving British consort. He married the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947 after a courtship that charmed a country still reeling from the ravages of World War II.

Suburban and rural districts are much likelier to offer in-person learning than big urban ones, which more commonly serve poor and minority families.

53% of children from low-income families were learning entirely remotely, compared with 40% for those with the wealthiest parents.

young children have played little role in spreading the virus and are the least able to learn remotely.

“Teachers’ unions will have to be more responsible when they cannot point to someone in the White House who is saying: ‘You should inject yourself with bleach.’”

Bilateral relations remained fraught over the last few months of the year. Islamabad issued constant broadsides against New Delhi for its continued security lockdown in Kashmir. By year’s end, an internet blackout was still in effect. Then, in December, India’s parliament passed a controversial new citizenship law that affords fast-track paths to Indian citizenship for religious minorities—but not Muslims—fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

This means Afghanistan is unlikely to have a new government in place for at least another few months, and even longer if the final results are different from the initial ones and require a second vote. Due to winter weather in Afghanistan, a runoff likely wouldn’t occur until the spring. Without a new government in place, it beggars belief that Afghanistan could launch a process to establish an intra-Afghan dialogue, much less negotiate an end to the war.

The two nuclear-armed nations will enter 2020 just one big trigger event away from war. The trigger could be another mass-casualty attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir traced back to a Pakistan-based group, or—acting on the threats issued repeatedly by New Delhi in 2019—an Indian preemptive operation to seize territory in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. 

Under the terms of the February agreement, signed after more than a year of arduous negotiations in the Gulf state of Qatar, the last of 4,500 American troops, and 6,100 other Nato forces, are expected to leave by May of next year.

the agreement says that is contingent on the Taliban meeting their commitments

They want to to ensure Afghanistan does not become a haven to mastermind strikes like the 11 September 2001 attacks

"Those are political decisions," Gen Miller tactfully replied to a question on whether the early May timeline in the deal was still a credible target.

"We make military recommendations. And I'll leave that for policy guidance and a view on how the peace process is going."

We're doing everything we can to give peace with the Taliban a chance,

But peace and war go together and we are also preparing for other scenarios.

Afghan security forces including special forces inflicting defeat and casualties in some battles; losing ground in others; and gratitude for continuing US air support which has made the difference, time and again, in denying Taliban fighters the prize of a provincial capital.

Civil war 'very likely'

In a stark warning that the threat of civil war was "very likely", he emphasised that the entire leadership of the government was now doing "all we can to mitigate it".

US airpower, one of the most powerful weapons in its Afghan arsenal, turned the tide again this month

Yes, the American help was critical in Helmand,

The US's blistering aerial attacks in Helmand provoked furious Taliban accusations that the Americans were violating the terms of their deal.

"One hundred percent, Taliban are here," he shouted, his voice rising in alarm. "They are here, amongst us."

Their growing influence also contradicts those who claim that Muslim leaders have been silent in the fight against violent extremism.

Several of the targeted Muslim leaders said in interviews that, while they were taking the threat seriously, they had no intention of backing off. They have hired security guards and fortified their workplaces, and some keep guns at home.

“It’s an honor to be denounced by ISIS,” said Imam Webb, who frequently engages young Muslims over social media,

“It has only reinvigorated me,” he said, “to provide the antivenom to the poison of ISIS.”

only three days after the group’s suicide bombers had attacked the Brussels airport and train station.

He argued that the terrorist attacks of recent years had clearly violated Islamic teaching because they “cause more harm than good,”

These scholars ridicule the Islamic State’s claim to have created a “caliphate” ruled by a successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Instead, in a highly effective bit of rebranding,

To the Islamic State’s propagandists, it does not matter that the imams are fervent Muslims or critics of American foreign policy

This is not the first time that the Islamic State has targeted Muslim leaders in the United States, but this is the longest list yet.

a Syrian preacher based in London who has spoken in support of Al Qaeda, according to news reports.

but that all it would take is one deluded or mentally unbalanced “lone wolf.”

Sheikh Hamza will soon air a television series in the Middle East, “Rihla With Sheikh Hamza Yusuf” (rihla is “quest” in Arabic).

“I’m not scared of ISIS in America,” he said. “I feel very safe in every mosque I go to. But I am scared of other people in this land who are very ignorant and bigoted.”

Surely Trump and his advisers know it, too. Blustering his way through rallies and interviews with his mix of insult comedy and unrestrained id has earned Trump plenty of media attention and helped him solidify his reputation as the guy who bucks the establishment and doesn’t worry about policy specifics. He obviously believes that approach will appeal to voters who, as TV viewers, have long been energized by outspoken truth-tellers. So far, he’s been absolutely right.

Which all may explain why many people have been observing Trump, and the election in general, with an LOL sort of detachment. The primaries and caucuses notwithstanding, it’s still early, and many of us have engaged with the political theater the same way we engage with reality TV.

This is how we tend to process most things as a culture these days.

So having a reality-TV celebrity running for commander in chief may subconsciously signal our brains to participate in this election the same way we’ve grown accustomed to consuming reality shows: not as if they’re real, as Omarosa suggests,but instead believing that none of it is genuine, that none of it has any actual consequences.

After she moved to New York, Jones worked with a group of her fellow high school graduates to start a scholarship fund for young African-American women to go to college. She also was active in her public housing building's tenant patrol until she was 106.

"Ms. Jones was the very last American from the 1800s," said Young, whose group tracks and maintains a database of the world's longest-living people.

Demographic insecurity is reinforced by divisive partisan forces. The two parties have concluded that there is little overlap between the groups likely to vote for them, and that success therefore lies in making those on their own side as furious as possible, so that they turn out in higher numbers than the opposition. Add a candidate, Mr Trump, whose narcissistic bullying has prodded every sore point and amplified every angry sentiment, and you have a country that, despite its strengths, is at risk of a severe self-inflicted wound

The most worrying aspect of a Trump presidency, though, is that a person with his poor self-control and flawed temperament would have to make snap decisions on national security—with the world’s most powerful army, navy and air force at his command and nuclear-launch codes at his disposal.

Less obvious, but more likely, is the damage Mr Trump will do even if he loses. He has already broken the bounds of permissible political discourse with his remarks about Mexicans, Muslims, women, dictators and his political rivals. It may be impossible to put them back in place once he is gone.

And history suggests that candidates who seize control of a party on a prospectus at odds with that party’s traditional values tend eventually to reshape it (see article). Barry Goldwater achieved this feat for the Republicans: though he lost 44 states in 1964, just a few elections later the party was running on his platform. George McGovern, who fared even worse than Goldwater, losing 49 states in 1972, remoulded the Democratic Party in a similar fashion.

When contemplating a protest vote in favour of tearing up the system, which is what Mr Trump’s candidacy has come to represent, some voters may ask themselves what they have to lose. (That, after all, is the logic that drove many Britons to vote for Brexit on June 23rd.) But America in 2016 is peaceful, prosperous and, despite recent news, more racially harmonious than at any point in its history. So the answer is: an awful lot.

if you are young and you are experiencing feelings of fury and heartbreak about the result, you are justified in doing so.

It’s a lesson that I feel my own generation learned too late, the result of which has been apathy, a lack of political engagement, and the feeling that there is no point participating in a system that does not have our interests at heart. And so we do not vote as much as we should, or even bother to register, and then politicians continue to make policy without considering us. Because why should they tailor their policies to you, when they do not feel they need your vote?