President Obama yesterday : The war in Afghanistan is "fundamental to the defense of our people," President Obama said Monday, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Phoenix, Ariz. -- but the fight will not be easy. "The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight. And we won’t defeat it overnight," the president said. "But we must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. " Of course, this is also President Obama yesterday : “That is why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March. This strategy recognizes that Al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” The News quoted Obama, as saying. So the Afghan insurgency didn't develop overnight [because it coul...

20 June 2009 : LAHORE: US President Barack Obama has told a private Pakistani TV channel in an interview that his administration does not intend to send American troops into Pakistan, the Indian media reported on Saturday. Obama said any American military aid to Pakistan needed to be used against extremism. “We have in the past supported Pakistan militarily. I think it is important to make sure that military support is directed at extremists and our common enemies,” the US president said. Obama underlined the need to help Pakistan strengthen its resources to facilitate development, and stressed the importance of turning the bilateral ties beyond just military-to-military cooperation into “something richer”. He said he was confident Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were safe and secure. 21 June 2009 : 10 months ago, the Pakistani government touted the death of top al-Qaeda figure Mustafa Abu al-Yazid in the Bajaur Agency. Today, he gave a notably live interview with al-Jazeera in which he mad...

... he's still an asshole. First things first--credit where credit is due: President-elect Barack Obama has broken his silence on Gaza, just slightly--apparently in the wake of the slaughter at the UN school. He's expressed his "concern" for Palestinian loss of life and promised much more to say after January 20. Here's the most extended quote I can find (ironically from Al Jazeera ): "After January 20 I'm going to have plenty to say about the issue, and I am not backing away at all from what I said during the campaign, that starting at the beginning of our administration, we are going to be engaged effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflict in the Middle East." I still believe he should have spoken earlier--but he has spoken, and for that I both thank and applaud him. [Although I still retain the fundamental difference of preferring a non-interventionist, non-imperial foreign policy. That doesn't equate, however, with si...

There are times when I am so proud to be from Delaware. Senator Biden, thank you. This article if from the Wall Street Journal and expresses Delaware's profound willingness to engage the world through trade, diplomacy and negotiation; a world that George W. Bush and John McCain seem so willing to alienate. Sen. Biden is right, we are on the wrong track and he is offering us the right track to be on; it is the successful policy we have used to engage the world through peace and prosperity. It must have felt so good to tell George W. Bush he is full of shit. I commend you sir. Republicans and Our Enemies By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. May 23, 2008; Page A15 On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy. In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tr...

Indo-European is the source language from which dozens of modern languages--from Hindi to Croatian to French--have descended. Scholars have been working to break down common words and syntax to reconstruct it for decades. There has even been an attempt to create a story in what some researchers believe is our best reconstruction of Indo-European. This is the translation: The Sheep and the Horses [On a hill] a sheep that ha no wool saw horses--one pulling a heavy wagon, another one a great load, and another swiftly carrying a man. The sheep said to the horses, "It hurts me seeing a man driving horses." The horses said to the sheep: "Listen, sheep! It hurts us seeing man, the master, making a warm garment for himself from the wool of a sheep when the sheep has no wool for itself." On hearing this, the sheep fled into the plain. This is the original (note that [w] stands for a super-scribed "w" that I cannot do on blogspot) as written by Winfred Lehrmann ...

Note: long, academic-type post warning. Be prepared for some heavy wading. Recently, I suggested that Edward Said's insight in his work Orientalism --that Westerners often confuse their understanding of foreign nations, individuals, or events for objective truth, could be applied profitably to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the so-called War on Terror . Where to start? Try a 1999 monograph by Professor M. J. Gohari of Oxford entitled The Taliban: Ascent to Power . Two factors make this book particularly interesting: 1) Its pre-9/11 perspective--what was a scholar writing about bin Laden (he devoted an entire chapter to Bin Laden in that time predicting about his future importance? 2) Its non-Western (at least partly) perspective. Here's the review that Oxford University Press chose to put on the back cover: This is an informative account of Afghanistan under Taliban rule. While there is a lot of material on the Taliban [this] covers all aspects of the country. . . . Th...

The late Edward Said (Palestinian advocate, Columbia University professor, and early supporter of Senator Barack Obama ) is sinking into greater and greater disfavor these days. The conservatives have never forgiven him for being an outspoken advocate of Palestine and a strident, over-the-top anti-imperialist . His legacy as an academician is being challenged by charges of plagiarism and falsification of biographical details ; his influence at Columbia is coming under more and more strenuous attack . Recently, apostate Muslim and conservative darling Ibn Warraq has published what he proclaims to be a systematic refutation of Said's most original, ground-breaking work, Orientialism . (I guess I'd best be careful here. I'm finding all sorts of positive reviews or Warraq's, including one on an Ayn Rand wannabe site , so I guess I'm not going to be a good little Libertarian if I don't fall into line. Oh well. You know how that frightens me.) What's all the...

So you're used to seeing Hillary and Barack trade charges over who's too bitter and who didn't get shot at? Whoever thought the guys hiding in the caves would get so mad at the lunatic fringe that they'd have a press conference to deny that Israel was behind the September 11 attacks? Yeah, that's right; Al-Zawahri thinks Jesse Ventura is full of it. From Fausta's blog : Osama bin Laden's chief deputy on Tuesday denied a theory that Israel carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida's strike against the U.S.... One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. "The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hu...