War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Why the US is losing the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan population: Between 1-2am on the rainy night of 16 January 2008, a large number of international military personnel wearing desert camouflage surrounded the house of two brothers living in a two-family house in Kandahar. According to various family members, the soldiers knocked loudly…
This dream-like, can’t-believe-my-eyes presidency continues: “And I think it’s fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me. We might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship.” (Illustration found here). And the bare-armed, kick-ass First…
In what could be a major metaphor for the entire climate change debate occurred Tuesday, starting first at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and ending up in the Indian Ocean near Antarctica. NASA and climate researchers are weighing their options after yesterday’s crash of a new satellite designed to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide with…
“Why ain’t they turning?” — Frederick Fleet, in the crows nest of the Titanic. (Illustration found here). As President Obama prepares for a major speech tonight to a joint session of Congress — a State of the Financial Union, if you will — on the mysterious horror of our economy, he might pull a spin…
A lot of verbiage was tossed about last week on President Obama’s approval of 17,000 more US troops for Afghanistan, and even the country’s president declared “We have opened a new page” in the conflict. One needs, however, to check that page against the book from which it comes. (Illustration found here). The problem is…
A now-no-longer-forgotten war, the ponderous grind-down conflict in Afghanistan is getting some payback time in the press. Although economic news played up front in the US — President Obama announced Wednesday his homeowners bailout plan, a day after he signed his $787 billion “overall” economic stimulus package — events in Afghanistan are helping nudge that…
Corruption rot spawned from lies. The entire Iraqi misadventure is a horror-shame of an affair. From UK’s The Independent on Monday: In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a…
The future is still here — “the first time a combat vehicle has used a laser to shoot down a UAV.” (Illustration of General Atomics Predator UAV found here). This morning another report of yet another unmanned aerial vehicle — UAV, or “drone” — attack on a suspected insurgent hideout in Pakistan. From the New…
Wednesday’s seemingly-fearless, intricate attacks in Kabul by a way-over-resurgent Taliban should be very much a sign-post of an eye-opener on the bad road ahead in Afghanistan. Apparently, a near-identical Mumbai operation with its seemingly random assaults and a kind of scatter-brained detail to its movements — The old, time-tested “shooting as they went” scenario. Fifty-six…