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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Drone War Crosses Another Line
America took an unprecedented step over the weekend.
A car fire at the site of a drone strike believed to have killed the Afghan Taliban leader (Reuters)
KATHY GILSINAN
12:00 PM ET
Following the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour in an American drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry remarked that Peace is what we want in Afghanistan. Mansour, he said, was a threat to that effort. Confirming Mansours death on Monday, President Barack Obama said the Talibans chief, who had held the position officially for less than a year, had rejected efforts by the Afghan government to seriously engage in peace talks and end the violence that has taken the lives of countless innocent Afghan men, women and children.
The strike that killed Mansour crossed numerous lines that have constrained Americas fight with the Taliban, and its drone war in Pakistan, up to this point. It was remarkable for its location and timing, as well as the public acknowledgment that accompanied it. Mansour was reportedly killed while traveling in Pakistans Baluchistan province, where much of the Talibans leadership has been based since being driven out of Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion in 2001. Yet despite the well-publicized Taliban presence therethe groups leadership council, the Quetta Shura, is named after the provinces capital citythe U.S. drone war in Pakistan hadnt targeted the insurgent leadership at its home base prior to Saturday. It has stuck to alleged militants in safe havens in the tribal areas farther north. As Bill Roggio noted in Long War Journal over the weekend, A strike in Baluchistan is unprecedented.
Even in the tribal areas, the American drone campaign in Pakistan has been decelerating in recent years as the Obama administration has sought to facilitate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Kerry and Obama both suggested that Mansours death could remove an obstacle to those talks; as Ali Latifi and Shashank Bengali noted in the Los Angeles Times, Mansour, having earlier signaled support for reconciliation, presided over a resurgence of the Talibans fighting capabilities and made a public statement last year calling for jihad until we bring Islamic rule to Afghanistan.
And Saturdays strike was carried out not by the CIA, which runs and doesnt acknowledge the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, but by the militarywhich means that unlike the supposedly covert strikes carried out by the intelligence agency, this one was publicized by the Pentagon spokesman, on Twitter. And it means that, like the 2011 commando raid into Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Saturdays strike involved public celebration of an attack in a country with which the United States is not, technically, at warand which, in theory, is an ally in the war on terrorism.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/drone-mullah-akhtar-taliban/483863/
malaise
(269,063 posts)that answers to no one and obeys no international law.
rug
(82,333 posts)malaise
(269,063 posts)Same difference
rug
(82,333 posts)Throd
(7,208 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)"I 100% supported and continue to support the military and intelligence efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "
bvar22
(39,909 posts)We've been in this stupid "war" for 15 years now.
How long will it take for the US to learn that there is already another "Taliban" leader that has stepped up?
The "Taliban" is NOT a monolithic organization with a regimented Chain of Command that is the structure we are taught in The West. The "Taliban" is a quasi-religious loose confederation of Tribal Warlords whose common ground is a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia Law.
Taking out one "Leader" does NOTHING to stop or even slow them down. That would be like the Taliban killing Jerry Falwell and claiming to have taken out the "leader" of The Christians.
If taking out "The Leader of The Taliban" had ANY military value, this stupid "war" would have been over 14 years ago.
Didn't Obama promise to keep us out of "stupid" wars?
BTW: Pakistan has "The BOMB".
---President Dwight Eisenhower
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)First we were in Afghanistan to catch Bin Laden, head of Al-quada, but he was really in Pakistan
and we were bombing Iraq, eventually ..supposedly...killing off dozens of #2 Al-Quada which apparently came from Afghanistan to Iraq to attack our democracy..
or something
and then we went back into Afghanistan to attack the Al-Quada but they disappeared and the Taliban showed up, so new we are fighting them again...or always....
and then we left Iraq, after bombing it into essentially a living hell for the Iraqis
we had to go back in to fight ISIS, so we had to bomb Syria and now Libya and pay Saudi Arabia to flatten the villages in Yemen, cause ISIS supposedly is much bigger than the YYUUUUGE danger that we were told Al-quada was.
and meanwhile Snowden puts out documents that show we conspired with the Pakastanis to let Bin-Laden slip off to some remote Island and are sending him 100,000 a month....