As the second Mother’s Day without my mother approached, Rasil Basu reappeared via an unexpected Google alert.
U.S. historian and writer Noam Chomsky and Indian counterpart Vijay Prashad had resurrected my late mother s prophetic warnings from the late 1980s about the plight of Afghan women and girls under our proxy war with the Soviets.
Chomsky and Prashad examine the legacy of America s two decades of war in Afghanistan, now set to end by Sept. 11 under President Joe Biden s order. (In a rare instance of agreement, Biden s predecessor, Donald Trump, had planned on a pullout.) But the authors, who have long argued against a U.S. military presence in favor of our brokering political talks between factions, are concerned about the impact of still leaving several thousand U.S. troops and contractors there. As Politico reported, top military leaders advocate keeping them to keep the Taliban in check and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for terrorists. �
Antiwar.com Original
Afghanistan Papers, 2019
Even before Joe Biden’s announcement of the US withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan by September 11th reviews were mixed. Surprisingly – or maybe not, double-amputee combat veteran Senator Tammy Duckworth, in her best Donald J. Trump, was way less than enthusiastic when asked on Fox News about leaving our wholly warranted foothold in the dustbin of history. Well, I don’t believe in artificial timelines. I want our troops to come home, absolutely. But, I want them to come home in a way that we don’t have to send them back three months later, six months later.
Rolling Stone Menu Biden to Pledge September 11th Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Afghanistan
The president intends to announce his decision on Wednesday
By Sipa USA via AP
President Joe Biden intends to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11th, 2021, an extension of a May 1st, 2021 deadline negotiated by former president Trump with the Taliban.
The president plans to announce his decision on Wednesday, according to the
Washington Post, which broke the story, and other outlets. Although the Taliban has threatened to renew attacks if the U.S. and NATO do not adhere to the deadline, it is not yet apparent if pushing the date back by months will lead to retaliation.
Letter to the editor: Building commuter rail could really move Maine
This is an opportunity to convert Bath Iron Works to peaceful production, creating more jobs and mitigating the climate crisis at the same time.
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Thanks for your excellent March 28 editorial, headlined “Our View: Transit plan lays out route for Maine’s future.” The time is long past for us to be making changes in the way people get around Maine.
For those who say it can’t be done in our state, just check out the history of railroads reaching far and wide in Maine during the “old days” before the gas-guzzling and polluting cars changed everything – for the worse.
New research shows the U.S. conducted counterterrorism operations in 85 countries from 2018 to 2020.
The data comes from the Costs of War Project at Brown University s Watson Institute. Researcher Stephanie Savell, co-director of the project, says U.S. troops engaged in combat on the ground in 8 countries during this period including Somalia, Mali and Yemen.
In Kenya, a 2020 raid by the fundamentalist group Al-Shabaab on an airfield in Manda Bay an important military base for U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Somalia killed one American service member and two contractors, Savell says.
The same year, a hostage rescue mission in Nigeria left six of the captors dead. The U.S. stepped in quickly out of fear that the captors would sell the American hostage to a local affiliate of al-Qaida or ISIS, she says.