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Brendan O’Neill
How a few burqa-clad militants terrified the West
The so-called ‘Kabul offensive’ by the Taliban was nothing like the Tet Offensive in Vietnam – but it’s telling that the two are being compared.
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| Tuesday 28 June 2011 |
Tim Black
Mission accomplished? What mission, exactly?
It’s fitting that the aimless, pointless Afghan War is being wound down according to a timetable drawn up in a White House backroom.
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| Wednesday 4 May 2011 |
Brendan O’Neill
The killing of OBL: therapy for the West
Why the shooting of a sickly has-been jihadist was turned into a momentous and historic occasion on a par with VJ Day.
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| Monday 17 January 2011 |
Tim Black
A war in search of a raison d'être.
The revelation that British troops are in Afghanistan simply to ‘keep busy’ exposes the surrealism of a disastrous war.
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| Tuesday 30 November 2010 |
Frank Furedi
Wikileaks: this isn’t journalism ‑ it’s voyeurism
High-minded newspapers’ celebration of the latest Wikileaks revelations is a cynical attempt to turn voyeurism into a virtue.
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| Monday 20 September 2010 |
Tara McCormack
Afghanistan: democracy
as publicity stunt
Saturday’s elections were more about giving a shot in the arm to Western politicians than giving control to Afghanis.
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| Tuesday 31 August 2010 |
Nathalie Rothschild
Are Pentagon-paid goons crushing Wikileaks?
The idea that the molestation charges against Julian Assange were a dirty tricks campaign looks like pure political fantasy.
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| Monday 2 August 2010 |
Sean Collins
This is a ‘digital deluge’, not the Pentagon Papers
Some are comparing Wikileaks’ 92,000 Afghan documents to the internal US study of Vietnam leaked in 1971. But the differences are striking.
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| Tuesday 27 July 2010 |
Brendan O’Neill
The Afghan War leaks don’t tell us The Truth
Journalists’ increasing reliance on leaks is turning them into passive recipients of information rather than active seekers of truth.
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| Monday 28 June 2010 |
Brendan O’Neill
Afghanistan: the politics of PR by other means
Recent events confirm that the Western powers’ main motivation in Afghanistan is not to ‘save the Afghan people’, but to save face.
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| Thursday 24 June 2010 |
Sean Collins
Staging a mutiny in Rolling Stone magazine
General McChrystal’s anti-Obama blabbing to a hippie mag exposes the internal disarray of the US elite.
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| Thursday 18 February 2010 |
Tim Black
Afghanistan: why there’s no anti-war movement
The lack of public protest against the current conflict has its roots in the inadequacy of opposition to the Iraq war.
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| Tuesday 16 February 2010 |
Mick Hume
NATO’s offensive: a model of how not to win a war?
The bizarre notion of giving your enemy advanced warning of an assault reveals much about the West’s self-defeating adventure in Afghanistan.
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| Thursday 7 January 2010 |
Brendan O’Neill
Wootton Bassett: a
political pantomime
The clash between self-pitying Islamists and weeping military men is a perfect metaphor for the ‘war on terror’.
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| Thursday 3 December 2009 |
Sean Collins
A bizarre declaration of war-and-withdrawal
In sending an invading force of 30,000 and admitting the war is unwinnable, Obama’s Afghan policy is as dangerously unhinged as Bush’s was.
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| Wednesday 11 November 2009 |
Brendan O’Neill
‘Lettergate’ reveals the illiteracy of British politics
The bizarre controversy over Gordon Brown’s letter to a grieving mum shows that we urgently need to improve and deepen political debate.
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| Wednesday 21 October 2009 |
Tara McCormack
An Afghan farce, produced in the West
For Hamid Karzai to justify the West’s unjustified war, the Afghan presidential elections had to be rigged.
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| Tuesday 22 September 2009 |
Mick Hume
Afghanistan: the West has defeated itself
Who needs the Taliban when Obama and the top NATO general both admit that the Western allies do not have a winnable strategy in Afghanistan?
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| Thursday 17 September 2009 |
Tim Black
Osama bin Laden’s
cut-and-paste job
The al-Qaeda frontman’s latest address to the American people wouldn’t sound out of place in mainstream US politics.
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| Monday 7 September 2009 |
Frank Furedi
Afghanistan: the dangers of a risk-averse war
In continually advertising their fear of suffering casualties on the battlefield, Britain’s rulers are unwittingly strengthening their enemies’ hand.
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