Free Republic

War is never something the United States should engage in without very good cause. Too many of our past wars might have involved some bit of national interest, but they weren't really necessary. Kicking the crap out of Afghanistan following the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden? I got that completely. I was less thrilled with us going into Iraq. My take has always been that we should be slow to anger, but when we hit that point, we should descend upon our enemies like the fiery hand of God. It's what we did in the Gulf War,...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan said Sunday it targeted militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Kandahar region overnight, as the fighting that erupted between the two neighbors late last month showed no signs of abating.

Osama bin Laden is dead, according to Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari. This week he stunned the world with the exciting news that Pakistan's intelligence services have "obviously" concluded that bin Laden "does not exist any more, that he is dead."

Video August 2007 AFL-CIO Presidential Forum Obama puts a spin on his early remarks about invading Pakistan, and then claims the the American people should have a say in shaping our nation's foreign policy. Both he and Hillary Clinton speak of the importance of fighting Al Queda. Hillary Clinton said, " The last thing we need is to have Al Queda like followers in charge of Pakistan." Is it now OK to have Al Queda in charge of Libya? Now Obama is aiding Al Queda, a sworn enemy of the United States, in the overthrow of the sovereign nation of...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan is beefing up its arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles by embracing China as its new strategic arms partner and backing away from the U.S., analysts have told Fox News. Pakistan earlier this month test-fired a nuclear-capable missile from an undisclosed location – the second in a month of try-outs for its short-range surface-to-surface Hataf 2 class rocket, co-developed with the Chinese. It was the latest in a series of arms collaborations between the two nations, which view their strategic partnership as a counterweight to a boldly confident India, which has American support. Until the mid-1960s, the United States...

New Delhi: As Pakistan sinks steadily into the pit of political oblivion, it will inevitably drag the US' Afghan policy down the drain with it, because without the availability of Pakistan's logistical and civil infrastructure, and regardless of Gen. David Petraeus's (top US military commander in Afghanistan) vaunted military talents, what remains of America's struggle to wrest Afghanistan from eventual Taliban investiture is almost certainly doomed to failure. US President Barack Obama's pledge to draw down the American military commitment in Afghanistan may ultimately turn out to be more a Vietnam-like strategic capitulation than a victory lap. Should this turn...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rang in the New Year with a visit to Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Embassy in Kabul) (CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which by its own admission has thus far failed to control even half of America's nearly 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico, is now sending personnel to Afghanistan to help that country secure its border with Pakistan. On a New Year’s visit to Afghanistan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there are now 25 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. That...

Another strange scene in the White House briefing room Thursday. President Obama released his administration's annual review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the unclassified version, not the WikiLeaks documents. This is the review the Democrat promised last year in his West Point troop surge speech that omitted any mention of victory (that Dec. 1, 2009, speech analysis and full text are available here). These assessments will presumably fuel the discussions on troop withdrawals that Obama also promised would start next July 1. Like the Guantanamo Bay closure, that withdrawal deadline seems to be sliding somewhat into the distance,...

Pakistan told the United Nations on Monday it would take all measures required to protect its citizens from militant attacks emanating from Afghanistan as tensions between the neighboring countries intensify, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of harboring armed groups and the Afghan Taliban denying the allegation. Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, laid out Islamabad’s position during a debate at the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan, warning that cross-border militancy posed a serious threat to regional security. The remarks came after clashes between Pakistani and Afghan forces erupted last month when Afghan forces attacked Pakistani military positions along...

House panel votes to constrain Afghan drawdown, ask for assessment on 'incentives' to attack US troops BY REBECCA KHEEL - 07/01/20 11:24 PM EDT House panel votes to constrain Afghan drawdown, ask for assessment on 'incentives' to attack US troops © Getty The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday to put roadblocks on President Trump’s ability to withdraw from Afghanistan, including requiring an assessment on whether any country has offered incentives for the Taliban to attack U.S. and coalition troops. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment, from Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), would require several certifications before the U.S. military...

Cross-border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan continued on Tuesday, with intermittent fighting reported along the frontier as Pakistani forces expanded aerial and ground operations under Operation Ghazab lil-Haq. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said 464 Afghan Taliban personnel had been killed, over 665 injured, and 188 checkposts destroyed as of late afternoon, with multiple military installations targeted across Afghanistan. Amid escalating violence, including strikes on Bagram and Khugyani bases and border skirmishes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the United Nations urged both sides to halt hostilities and warned of the growing risk to civilians and worsening humanitarian conditions in the border...

On Sunday afternoon, protesters in Islamabad pressed shoulder to shoulder, most of them dressed in black, and chanted slogans that rippled through the crowd. “Death to America, death to Israel,” they shouted in unison. Among them was also Kazim Hussain, who clutched a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei. The student, also an activist affiliated with Shia group Imamia Students Organisation (ISO), believes that the crisis unfolding in Iran was not a distant geopolitical conflict playing out beyond Pakistan’s western border. For him, it is deeply personal and emotionally moving.“This is not just an attack on Iran. It concerns all Shia Muslims,”...

The ongoing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have boiled over into what looks like a full-fledged war. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, in a carefully crafted statement, took the Taliban to task for violating "the rights that Islam grants women" (can we guffaw at this point?); he reminded the Taliban that the Pakistani Army will not go away; and, in a final dramatic flourish, decalred that "open war” existed between the two countries.In a clearly worded post on X, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has made the following statement:After NATO forces withdrew, it was expected that peace would prevail...

Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan’s two largest cities on Friday, including the capital, Kabul, according to officials from both nations, escalating months of tension and border skirmishes into an open conflict. Beyond Kabul, home to six million people, the strikes hit the southern city of Kandahar — where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives — and the border province of Paktia, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government. Pakistan launched the strikes hours after Afghan troops had attacked Pakistani border positions, according to Afghan and Pakistani officials. The Afghan attacks were described as retaliation...

Mohammed was the original feminist. The moderate Islamic terrorist state of Talibanastan (they must be moderate, after all we did a deal with them and we’re still negotiating with them) has explained that in its moderate approach to Islamic law, beating women is encouraged, but they draw the line at breaking bones. Truly, Islamists in America have told us that Mohammed was the original feminist. The Taliban has passed a law that allows men to beat their wives as long as it does not cause “broken bones or open wounds”. The Telegraph obtained the 60-page penal code – signed by...

Taliban “supreme leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada recently approved a novel criminal code, multiple outlets reported this week, that dramatically expands the legal ability for men to physically abuse women and children and provides for the creation of a formal “slave” class in the country. The Taliban is a radical Islamist terror organization that currently operates as the uncontested government of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, following former President Joe Biden’s decision to extend the 20-year-old Afghan War beyond the deadline of May 15 of that year that President Donald Trump had previously agreed to. The Taliban’s...

In stop-start efforts since November, Taliban officials have cracked down on women and girls in the western city of Herat who have been ignoring the hardline group's rules by showing their faces. Enforcement agents are preventing them from entering hospitals and seminaries and pulling them out of public transport. Initially, women and girls were punished for not wearing a burka — the Afghan burka is typically blue, has a netted opening for the eyes and drapes down around the body, largely constraining the woman wearing it. Later, after what residents described as pushback, officials enforcing the rules relented and allowed...

THE separatist militancy, which has gripped Balochistan for the past two decades, now seems to have escalated into a full-blown insurgency. Last week, hundreds of armed terrorists launched simultaneous attacks reportedly in 12 locations, including the provincial capital Quetta. They stormed security installations, set government buildings on fire and looted banks. Highly trained terrorists engaged the security forces in gun battles for hours, revealing their capacity to challenge the state. While the government claims to have killed 145 terrorists and restored order, such large-scale attacks, which breach even high security zones such as the provincial capital and cause many casualties...

The House of Representatives has passed a bill which seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam. The bill, H.R. 5665, is truly remarkable as it amounts to Congress making a law respecting the establishment of Islam and reducing the United States government into a tool of the world’s ayatollahs. The actual text of the bill not only seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam around the world – and solely against Islam at that – but even requires the federal government to reorganize some portions of the State Department along the lines of an Islamic religious institution which will be responsible for...

Rahmanullah Lakawal, the Afghan national who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington DC, killing one of them, shared a close tie with an Afghan “suicide bomber” arrested in Texas the day before the shooting. The New York Post has revealed that Lakanwal and Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, who was arrested for making terroristic threats, both worked at the same US military base in Afghanistan for years. It’s not yet known if the two men interacted with each other at the base. “Alokozay used to be in this unit for six years. He was guarding the towers inside the base,” Gen. Haibatullah...