Islamic terrorists growing a conscience?

The inestimable Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal is reporting on an announcement from the Caucasus Emirate* terror group's leader Doku Umarov that directs the CE's operatives and fighters to stop deliberately attacking Russian civilians. This is progress of a sort, assuming of course that the CE's leader's order was sincerely made and that he can and will enforce it.

"Doku Umarov, the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate," says Roggio, "has ordered an end to attacks that deliberately target Russian civilians. The move is a shift in strategy after his suicide bombers deliberately attacked civilians inside Russia over the past two years, including in the capital of Moscow."

The Russian state and its political leadership, bureaucracies, military, intelligence, and police are all still considered fair game for attacks though.

* The Caucasus Emirate (Imarat Kavkaz) website.

Two out of three Iraq and Afghanistan vets think wars not worth the sacrifice

According a poll from Pew. US policy makers please note.

The Afpak war is gonna end just like Vietnam did

What started out as a punitive expedition to punish the Taliban and kill Osama bin-Laden a decade ago is now a debacle that will haunt us for decades.

The end game goes like this: The US leaves, the puppet government collapses and the Taliban wave their flag over the smoldering rubble of the American embassy. All that blood and money squandered and lost. Americans elites just won't learn to mind their own fucking business.

Sign of the times: Americans are getting tired of perpetual war

So says historian and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich (TomDispatch.com/)
I sure hope so.

Why America is losing in Afghanistan

Motivation. The Taliban, AQ et al have it in spades. American soldiers are brave and tough as they are don't have it to the same degree. Not at all. "This is not to denigrate", says Pat Buchanan, "the brave Afghan soldiers who have bled and died. But the Taliban have not needed U.S. training, U.S. arms, U.S. air and fire support or U.S. paychecks to go into battle. All the suicide bombers who give up their lives are — Taliban."

The Upside of the Obama presidency? We didn't get a McCain presidency

The main advantage, maybe the only advantage, of Obama's victory over McCain in 2008 is that we didn't get a President McCain instead. If we had a "McCain Doctrine" today American forces would be all over the world fighting for our "values". Obama inherited two wars and started a third. How many would a President McCain have America committed to by now? "Under the McCain Doctrine," says George Will, "America’s military would have just begun to fight, and would never stop."

Sign of the times...cont'd. June 9, 2011

From the comments section of an Ann Althouse blog post:

"Protesting Bush's wars was patriotic and American and Right and Just. Protesting Obama's wars is just Racist."

This describes the political zeitgeist of this time and place perfectly. Since January 20th 2009 the peace movement has entirely vanished from American political consciousness. Charges of racism never cease.

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Does America even remember how to live in peace with the rest of the world? - American Conservative

Sadly, says writer Bill Kauffman, no it does not.

"Since 1941, war has warped American life. Only the doddering and the dotards among us have lived in an America that is not armed, aggressive, and perpetually at war. If you would seek those who know what an America at peace is like, visit the nursing home. If you would hear the sounds of America at war, walk the corridors of a veterans’ hospital. Listen to the shrieks and sobs—the keening for the lost America of Ida and Edgar Eisenhower."

Written on the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address warning Americans about the emergent military-industrial complex.