The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster. The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs. This will be the fourth time for the Brits. For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs. Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed. Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam. Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.
Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure. To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.” Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact. On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited. In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.
Cockburn' essay gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan. He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience. I urge you to read Ruttig's report.
I am writing to share with you my new article, “Russia, Iran and China in Latin America,” just published by the American Foreign Policy Committee in their e-journal “Defense Dossier.” The work comparatively examines the activities of the three extra-regional actors in Latin America and the Caribbean, including ways in which commercial and governmental initiatives by each compliment (and occasionally conflict or compete with) each other. I emphasize that each actor presents a different type of challenge to US interests in the region, on a different time-scale.
Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has House of Saud Seen Its Stalingrad?
The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America.
So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented? Firstly, it is not schizophrenic to tie the events in Volgograd to either the conflict in the North Caucasus and to the fighting in Syria or to tie Syria to the decades of fighting in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. The fighting in Syria and the North Caucuses are part of a broader struggle for the mastery over Eurasia. The conflicts in the Middle East are part of this very grand narrative, which to many seems to be so far from the reality of day to day life.
Attached is a very different analysis of emerging politics in the Middle East. I do not know what to make of it. Some of it rings true to me, like the pressures on Turkey to shift gears … but taken together, I just don't know. I welcome any comments, pro or con, about it.
I do not know anything about this publication or the writer. The web site says Al-AkhbarEnglish is based in Lebanon and its editorial aim is to make debates and analyses circulating in Arabic media accessible to English speakers worldwide. It also says it wants to uphold standards of high journalistic integrity while remaining true the the principles of anti-imperialist struggle, progressive politics, and freedom of expression. If the highlighting and reformatting distraction, the original format can be found at the link. CS
By Sharmine Narwani – Sat, 2013-12-21 18:11- Sandbox
Many observers are correct in noting that the Middle East is undergoing yet another seismic shift – that the Russian-brokered destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, a US-Iranian rapprochement, the diminished strategic value of Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a US withdrawal from Afghanistan will all contribute to changing regional dynamics considerably.
Map of ‘Security Arc' by S. Narwani, E. Adaime, A. Amacha
But what is this new direction? Where will it come from, who will lead it, what will define it?
It has now become clear that the new Mideast “direction” is guided primarily by the “security threat” posed by the proliferation of extremist, sectarian, Islamist fighters in numbers unseen even in Afghanistan or Iraq.
This shared danger has been the impetus behind a flurry of global diplomatic deals that has spawned unexpected cooperation between a diverse mix of nations, many of them adversaries.
These developments come with a unique, post-imperialist twist, though. For the first time in decades, this direction will be led from inside the region, by those Mideast states, groups, sects and parties most threatened by the extremism.
Because nobody else is coming to “save” the Middle East today.
Syria: President Bashar Asad Monday called for a battle against Wahhabism, the political and religious theology embraced by the Saudi Arabian government that backs the Sunni uprising against his regime.
“President Assad said that extremists and Wahhabi thought distort the real Islam, which is tolerant,” state news agency SANA reported. He underlined the role of men of religion in fighting against Wahhabi thought, which is foreign to our societies, according to Asad.
Wahhabism is an ultra-conservative Muslim tradition, which is predominant in Saudi Arabia and whose intolerant precepts govern Saudi religious, civilian and political life. It is a sect of Sunni Islam, whose leaders profess has no sects.
Juárez Correa didn’t know it yet, but he had happened on an emerging educational philosophy, one that applies the logic of the digital age to the classroom. That logic is inexorable: Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.
Click on Image to Enlarge
And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else. (In 1899, William T. Harris, the US commissioner of education, celebrated the fact that US schools had developed the “appearance of a machine,” one that teaches the student “to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place, and not get in the way of others.”) We don’t openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested. School administrators prepare curriculum standards and “pacing guides” that tell teachers what to teach each day. Legions of managers supervise everything that happens in the classroom; in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers.
The results speak for themselves: Hundreds of thousands of kids drop out of public high school every year. Of those who do graduate from high school, almost a third are “not prepared academically for first-year college courses,” according to a 2013 report from the testing service ACT. The World Economic Forum ranks the US just 49th out of 148 developed and developing nations in quality of math and science instruction. “The fundamental basis of the system is fatally flawed,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford and founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. “In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills.”
That’s why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn’t a commodity that’s delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students’ own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
I am writing to pass along to you a story from Argentina which, in addition to the story itself, says much about the nature of Chinese engagement in the region, including how the Chinese approach to pursuing business and political objectives in the region differs from that of the US.
For me, the story below illustrates well the nuances, contradictions and complexity of Chinese engagement in the region: here, it is not the Chinese who are behaving badly, but rather, their partners. The Chinese are powerfully exercising influence, yet using informal channels and indirect pressures, rather than public conditions and demands. The Chinese are both attempting to “save face” for their partner, and yet also indirectly show their ire when they themselves ‘lose face.” And finally, a reminder that the dynamics of the China-Latin America engagement is a story of PEOPLE, and not just countries and faceless companies.
