All Posts Tagged With: "terrorism"
Winning Afghanistan
The Obama administration has begun a 60-day review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, and the outlines of a debate over how to win there are beginning to emerge. At its heart is a familiar question: how do we define success?
The Limiting of American Power
The New York Times reported today that the Bush administration has since 2004 secretly given broad authority to the military to carry out attacks on al-Qaeda in 15 to 20 countries including Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and others. Some thoughts on the implications on American foreign policy follow.
Achmed The Dead Terrorist
This is funny, original, and not even a little bit politically correct. Enjoy.
Quote of the Day
I’ve been pretty busy starting law school (and will be for, you know, a while), so I haven’t posted anything substantive, and I’m not about to now, but I thought this was an appropriate quote to commemorate the sixth anniversary of 9/11 given the current circumstances:
9/11 has been robbed of its significance. It no longer lights up the neurons recalling an American tragedy, but those that understand political strategy. I hate them for that. So this isn’t a 9/11 remembrance. We’ve never been allowed to forget 9/11. Not for an instant. What we have been allowed to forget is 2,974 individuals who perished in that attack,who didn’t die because they wanted to invade Iraq, or because they thought Republicans were insufficiently competitive in elections, but because they were murdered. Remember them.-Ezra Klein
A Mighty Heart
My parents and I went to see the movie A Mighty Heart today, which tells the story of Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and eventual murder in Pakistan five years ago. Don’t have much to say about it, except that I highly recommend it. It reminded me of United 93 in the sense that its emotional impact comes through a startling sense of realism. Both movies are among the most terrifying I have ever seen. They also both use the subject of terrorism to effectively illuminate the best and the worst that humanity is capable of, leaving us with appropriately difficult questions about the state of our collective soul.
After we got home, my mom pointed me toward this negative review of the movie written by Asra Nomani, who appears as a character in the movie and who worked with Pearl at the Wall Street Journal and who rented a house in Karachi where Daniel and Mariane Pearl stayed when Daniel was kidnapped. Among her criticisms is that Daniel’s character is barely to be seen in the movie at all, which is in its way true (though to the extent that he is shown, I believe his character is fleshed out quite well). It is difficult to argue with a woman who lived through the experience herself, but it seems to me she misses the point of the movie, which is not meant to be a tribute to Danny, or even one to Mariane, as much as one to the people, like Nomani herself, who worked together to do the best they could to bring Daniel home. Go see it if you get the chance.