Iraq war

UN official: Iraq likely to postpone election

CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:01:00 PST

A United Nations official says Iraq's scheduled January elections will need to be postponed by more than a month because of a dispute over an election law that threatens to derail the U.S. withdrawal.

Obama's surge: Has the president been misled by the Iraq analogy?

Juan Cole — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:02:00 PST

President Barack Obama’s just-announced plan for Afghanistan seems modeled less on Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam strategy than on George W. Bush’s Iraq exit strategy. Or, at least it is modeled on the Washington mythology that Iraq was turned from quagmire into a face-saving qualified success by sheer indomitable will and a last-minute troop “surge.” But Afghanistan is not very much like Iraq, and the Washington consensus about its supposed end-game success in Iraq is wrong in key respects. Are think tank fantasies about an Iraq "victory" now misleading Obama into a set of serious missteps in Afghanistan?

The sleazy advocacy of a leading "liberal hawk"

Glenn Greenwald — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:13:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

Woody Harrelson on war, death, LBJ and Obama

Andrew O'Hehir — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:11:00 PST

Woody Harrelson began our interview by climbing barefoot onto the interior windowsill of his hotel room overlooking New York's Union Square to point out an apartment across the square where he lived briefly, 15 or 20 years ago. (It's in the building that houses the Heartland Brewery, if you know the neighborhood. On the second or third floor, he couldn't remember.) Then he got into bed.

America the superpower melts down

Michael Klare — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:00 PST

Memo to the CIA: You may not be prepared for time travel, but welcome to 2025 anyway! Your rooms may be a little small, your ability to demand better accommodations may have gone out the window, and the amenities may not be to your taste, but get used to it. It's going to be your reality from now on.

U.S. troops are hostages of Iraq's broken democracy

Juan Cole — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:31:00 PDT

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi parliament again on Thursday failed to pass an electoral law to govern the holding of the planned January 16 parliamentary elections. The Kurdish delegates refused to come into the parliament building, thereby denying the session a quorum. The Turkmen and Arab delegates had demanded that Kirkuk be treated differently in the legislation than other provinces. (Kurds are now a majority in Kirkuk, and the Kurds wish to annex the province to their Kurdistan Regional Government, a semi-independent confederacy in northern Iraq; Turkmen and Arabs consider the majority artificial, the result of Kurdistan-backed Kurdish in-migration, and consider having an ordinary election there a reward to the Kurds for land-grabbing. Kurds maintain that the province has long been theirs and that they are just correcting the "Arabization" or ethnic cleansing and settlement policies of Saddam Hussein, who brought Arab families north to make the oil-rich province indisputably Arab.)

"Obama is average"

Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:24:00 PDT

Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?

Obama's foreign policy report card

Juan Cole — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:26:00 PDT

Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama get the word out about its policy successes? President Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear program and persuading the Pakistani government to take on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by critics from both the right and the left in the wake of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set in motion significant change on several of these fronts -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd never hear about these successes from the mainstream media.

The blowback from the Baghdad bombings

Juan Cole — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:26:00 PDT

Two massive blasts shook central Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 136 people and wounding 500, and destroying three government ministry buildings, according to the Times of London's Oliver August reporting from Baghdad. (The total has now been revised upward to at least 155.) It was the most destructive attack of 2009. August notes that the likely perpetrators were either Baathists from the old regime or Sunni Muslim extremists, both of whom want to stop a new, Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated status quo from settling upon Iraq.

What the U.S. military can't do

Nick Turse — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:23:00 PDT

When the Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize to President Barack Obama, it afforded him a golden opportunity seldom offered to American war presidents: the possibility of success. Should he decide to go the peacemaker route, Obama stands a chance of really accomplishing something significant. On the other hand, history suggests that the path of war is a surefire loser. As president after president has discovered, especially since World War II, the U.S. military simply can't seal the deal on winning a war.

Obama stands by Iraqi troop pullout

STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:01:00 PDT

President Barack Obama renewed his vow Tuesday to have all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by next August, while nudging Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to see that his parliament quickly passes a critical election law essential to a nationwide vote in January.

85,000 Iraqis killed in almost 5 years of war

REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:01:00 PDT

Iraq's government said at least 85,000 people were killed from 2004 to 2008, officially answering one of the biggest questions of the conflict -- how many perished in the sectarian violence that nearly led to a civil war.

What do Iraqi women want? Husbands

Tracy Clark-Flory — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:06:00 PDT

What would improve the lives of the estimated 1 million Iraqi women widowed in the war, some of whom have taken to begging, prostitution or searching through garbage just to feed themselves and their children? What could possibly remedy such dire circumstances? A nonprofit by the name of Al Ethar says it has the answer: husbands.

Homophobia on the rise in the Muslim world

Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Daniel Steinvorth — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:15:00 PDT

Bearded men kidnapped him in the center of Baghdad, threw him into a dark hole, chained him up, urinated on him, and beat him with an iron pipe. But the worst moment for Hisham, 40, came on the fourth day of his ordeal, when the kidnappers called his family. He was terrified they would tell his mother that he was gay and that this was the reason they had kidnapped him. If they did, he would never be able to see his family again. The shame would be unbearable for them.

Afghanistan may already be lost

Susanne Koelbl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:10:00 PDT

The images are shaky, but you can see things well enough to recognize that something is not right. And then it happens: An armored car belonging to Western forces races through the streets of an Afghan city. Panicked civilians scramble to get out of the way. A civilian car moves into the lane ahead of the military vehicle. The machine gunner aims, fires and scores a hit.

After Black Wednesday, tensions between Iraq and Syria simmer

Juan Cole — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:09:00 PDT

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) headed by Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is holding public demonstrations against Syria over its alleged role in harboring Baathist terrorists that hit Iraqi government buildings two Wednesdays ago. The demonstration in al-Hillah south of Baghdad on Monday did not strike me as that impressive, consisting of only 200 persons, including high officials. Another set of demonstrations is planned for September 24 ahead of the UN Security Council's consideration of Iraq's request that an international tribunal be established to look into Syria's behavior. Al-Maliki maintains that the Syrian Baath Party, which rules that country, is giving safe harbor to Iraqi Baathists who fled the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country, and who planned out the Black Wednesday operation that left 60 dead and decimated Iraq's diplomatic corps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Jalal Talabani will make another effort at reconciliation during his forthcoming visit to Ankara, where he will meet Syrian president Bashar al-Asad. Turkey has been attempting to mediate the conflict, so far to no avail. Al-Maliki has sent thousands of Iraqi police north to patrol the long Syria-Iraq border, in an attempt to stop further infiltration of Sunni Arab Iraqi anti-regime activists from Damascus.

What ever happened to Gary Cooper?

William Astore — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:14:00 PDT

I have a few confessions to make: After almost eight years of off-and-on war in Afghanistan and after more than six years of mayhem and death since "Mission Accomplished" was declared in Operation Iraqi Freedom, I'm tired of seeing simple-minded magnetic ribbons on vehicles telling me, a 20-year military veteran, to support or pray for our troops. As a Christian, I find it presumptuous to see ribbons shaped like fish, with an American flag as a tail, informing me that God blesses our troops. I'm underwhelmed by gigantic American flags -- up to 100 feet by 300 feet -- repeatedly being unfurled in our sports arenas, as if our love of country is greater when our flags are bigger. I'm disturbed by nuclear-strike bombers soaring over stadiums filled with children, as one did in July just as the National Anthem ended during this year's Major League Baseball All Star game. Instead of oohing and aahing at our destructive might, I was quietly horrified at its looming presence during a family event.

Hell hasn't broken out in Iraq

Juan Cole — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:03:00 PDT

One of the major headlines out of Iraq today is the release of non-insurgent casualty figures for August, which are 456, as Agence France Presse reports. This was the highest monthly toll since July of 2008. I commend AFP on how it reported this story. Unlike a lot of other pieces, this one does not exaggerate the significance of August's figures and points out that there was also a surge of violence in June, when the U.S. military was still largely in charge of security, and when 367 Iraqi civilians and members of security forces were killed.

War is not a video game

David Sirota — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:20:00 PDT

I'm a video game geek, so as I sat through movie previews a few weeks ago, I was sure I was watching Nintendo ads.

Cindy Sheehan protests this president, too

Gabriel Winant — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:45:00 PDT

The president has changed, and so has the vacation spot, but Cindy Sheehan hasn't. Little wonder, then, that the veteran Bush protester isn't giving up her practice of following the president on his summer vacation.