American Footprints

Gregg Carlstrom offered the following theories regarding the motivations behind the recent spate of arrests of Taliban figures by Pakistani security forces :

On the Taliban arrests, there are two major theories about Pakistan’s motives. One says Pakistan rounded up “moderate” Taliban leaders, those who favored reconciliation talks, so they would be replaced by a more “extremist” faction [...]

Peter Beinart is worried that if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the civil war will reignite and and all the hard work on the part of our selfless liberators will be for naught.  His piece is all over the map (both literally and figuratively) and is as muddled a crie d coeur for the soon-to-be-abandoned Iraq as you’ll come across.  Abandon.  [...]

The residents of Iraq took to the polls Sunday for another parliamentary election.  While the results in terms of voter preference won’t be known for several days, the turnout (in the 60% range) was solid, if not overwhelming (turnout was lower than the mid-70% seen during the last parliamentary elections in 2005, but up from the 50%+ turnout [...]

Elrond and Cirdan counselled Isildur to destroy the Ring immediately in the fires of Mount Doom. But Isildur refused, saying: “This I will have as weregild for my father’s death, and my brother’s. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?” -The Silmarillion: “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age,” p. [...]

Via Adam Serwer, Spencer Ackerman on just the most recent findings of extreme misconduct, and law breaking, on the part of Blackwater:

Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the [...]

In a recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine, James Traub struggles to divine the true nature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy posture – in particular, the quality of the Obama administration’s predisposition to pursue engagement with other regimes and institutions, regardless of the makeup of said organizations.  In this, Traub agonizes over the potential willingness of the [...]

Daniel Levy rightly diagnoses the malady afflicting Israel at this juncture: it is infected with a deadly pathology, and yet the two medical teams prescribing treatment vary between ignoring and covering up the disease on the one hand, to offering a mild painkiller that offers no real relief.

In his keynote address at last week’s Herzliya Conference, [...]