If getting the Afghanistan peace process going involved taking out Osama bin Laden, well, in the cynical world of the “Great Game,” to make an omelet, you have to break eggs.
Why the haste to kill Osama bin Laden when we might better have been served by his capture?
Soon after the United States went to war against the Taliban in pursuit of Osama in October 2001, I penned a widely published analysis that at the time provoked controversy. However, it anticipated the course of the titanic struggle between a global power and a determined fanatic over the next decade.
We have, once again, played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands. This might seem like an odd assertion, since the al-Qaeda mastermind is finally dead at the hands of U.S. Special Forces, most heads of state have voiced their congratulations, and practically the entire U.S. citizenry is unified in celebration. But Osama bin Laden always understood that the weak use the weapons of the powerful against them, such as U.S. airplanes against U.S. skyscrapers.
According to a recent WikiLeaks dump, if harm came to bin Laden, the West would be subjected to a “nuclear hellstorm.”
It’s tempting to expect perfection from those we admire, but we romanticize lone heroes at our peril.
Though Abu Zubaydah was rejected by al Qaeda and is mentally ill, he’s been detained at Guantanamo for nine years with no plans to review his case.
If Spain and Italy apply for bailouts, the EU will be split between northern haves and southern have-nots. Can a house so divided long endure?
If U.S. is improving drone-strike accuracy in Pakistan, what happened on March 17 when 41, including women and children were killed?
Canadian sociologist Metta Spencer’s career in Soviet-Western peace activism takes book form in her account of decades of democratic struggle in Russia, The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy. Drawing on a broad spectrum of activist and reformist perspectives from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Spencer dispels three false beliefs in her colorful, informative account of how the Cold War really ended.