Dancing in the street: A wedding procession through the streets of old Sanaa draws the neighbors out to celebrate the occasion with singing and dancing (Pic: Sandy Choi, Courtesy: Foreign Policy Magazine)

With pundits on TV talking about Yemen, being “tomorrow’s war” – we were curious to see what this incubator of Al-Qaeda looks like.  And the results..were..very pretty! A photo essay in Foreign Policy Magazine features pictures from capital Sa’naa. Take at a look at the slideshow here.

Youssef Al Khattab angered many by being an open Al-Qaeda supporter and making anti-Semitic remarks on his website. He now lives in Morocco

It may have been one of the coldest days this season, but that did not deter angry protesters from gathering at 54-11, the Woodside residence of Youssef Al-Khattab, a Jewish convert to Islam and an open Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

On Sunday, a handful of protesters gathered outside his home in ankle-deep snow in a rally organized by New York City based Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

“We don’t want Al-Qaeda in Woodside,” said organizer Mordechai Levi of JDO into a microphone. Calling the residence the “Al-Qaeda headquarters,” Levi handed out flyers with the landlord’s number on it, and called for Al-Khattab to be evicted from the premises.

Youssef Al-Khattab, however, was not at the scene. He now is in Morocco, allegedly with his family.

Sunday’s protests come after Al-Khattab posted comments on his website, revolutionmuslim.info, supporting the Fort Hood attacks and the violent acts of radical Muslims.

He has also made several anti-Semitic comments on his site, including wanting liquid cleaner to be thrown in Jew’s faces and for the outdoor huts some build during the holiday of Sukkot to be burned as they sleep in them. He referred to that message as a prayer, not a threat.

Earlier, in an audio clip posted online in response to questions emailed to him by Queens Chronicle’s Editor in Chief, Al-Khattab alleges that Jews have no right to live in Palestine, where they established the state of Israel in 1948, and says that he supports the establishment of an Islamic state in all Islamic lands, such as Somalia and Afghanistan.

Asked if he wants the U.S. government to be replaced by Islamic rule, he says that he is not actively seeking that, but believes that it will inevitably happen, even if it takes hundreds of years. The recording is available at revolutionmuslim.blip.tv.

On Sunday, curious passerby’s stopped to see what the commotion was all about at 54-11.

“This is disturbing,” said Woodside resident James Gabriel, who was on his way to the park to snowboard with his son, “but it has got to a point where it is no longer surprising.” Gabriel had not heard to Al-Khattab’s website or work earlier, but was clearly disturbed. He said people had already forgotten about 9/11 and it’s perpetrators and expressed concern that he could be on the subway the next day, when a terrorist struck.

Other residents like Jesse Ortiz and Frank Gibbons came specifically to take part in the rally after reading about it on a local blog. “I have lived here all my life, it’s a shame,” said Jesse Ortiz, referring to Al-Khattab’s radical website. “I have a three year old boy, it’s crazy,” he added. Ortiz worried that even if you got rid of people like Al-Khattab from the neighborhood, they would just move elsewhere to continue their activities.

“Jesse and I both lost friends in 9/11,” said Frank Gibbons, who had posted a message about the protests on his Facebook page inviting others to come. “We don’t want people like this in our neighborhood. This is ridiculous,” he said.

“It’s not just an attack on American Jews, it’s an attack on America,” said Levi, referring to Al-Khattab’s   incendiary remarks on his website.

Al-Khattab meanwhile has dismissed the protests held outside his home, calling them “Anti-Islamic.” In an email correspondence with this reporter, he writes the JDO has every right to express their “anti-gentile” views and practice the freedom of assembly America affords them.

He also points out that these are the same rights that indigenous Muslim and Christian populations don’t have in Israel.

Asked about his anti-Semitic comments in the past, Al-Khattab responded he was against rabbinical Judaism and that there have been several non-rabbinical intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Joseph Stiglitiz who have inspired him.

On being called an Al-Qaeda sympathizer, Al-Khattab scoffed at the label saying if he indeed was an Al-Qaeda sympathizer, he would have been behind bars by now.

Al-Khattab has managed to stay away from jail as his writings are protected by the First Amendment, further infuriating Sunday’s protesters. “The First Amendment is fine,” said organizer Mordechai Levi, “but when writings become threats, then it’s a matter of grave concern,” he added.

Even as freezing temperatures took the nip out of Sunday’s protests and they wrapped up early, Al-Khattab writes he plans to now live in Morocco and has no immediate plans of returning to the United States, except to preach.

This piece originally appeared in The Queens Chronicle

Its title, Five Flawed Assumptions of Obama’s Afghan Surge, says it all, and the piece itself summarizes concisely points that this site and many others have been arguing for months:
1. Expanding the ground war against the Taliban will in no way guarantee us any greater success in finding and confront members of Al-Qaeda.
2. We cannot build an Afghan National Army capable of defending its national sovereignty within a few years.

3. We cannot work with President Karzai.

4. A an alleged withdrawal date will not exert pressure on President Karzai, who has been forging alliances with the expectation that we will leave eventually anyway.

5. Pakistan may take on insurgents that challenge its own government, but it never has, and probably never will fight members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban on the border if they are merely using the region to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Conducting a war under these realities is a lot harder than waging one under the false assumptions the Obama administration has presented.

Surprisingly, the Time article does not even offer an “on the hand” argument. This article is firmly against Obama’s Afghanistan policy, in more decisive terms than any publication of its stature. It’s worth checking out.

The most recent Time issue also includes a typically wishy-washy editorial from Joe Klein, who does include a gem of a sentence in which he calls Obama’s deliberations over the war: the struggles of a highly intelligent, dispassionate man to find a rationale for a mission that is crucial but slightly crazy, a decision that will define his presidency.

Amen.

Quickly reviewing all major post World War II wars, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg asks a series of tough questions he would like the president to answer on Tuesday:

Does it make sense, for example, to spend lives and treasure trying to eradicate “safe havens” in Afghanistan when Al Qaeda has so many other—well, options, from Sudan to Hamburg?

Will a bigger, longer, and presumably bloodier occupation advance or retard the ultimate aim of discouraging Islamist terrorism? Will adding American troops—at a million dollars a year per soldier—encourage Afghans to fight for themselves or prompt them to leave the fighting to us?

Can Afghanistan’s nominal government, with its President elected by fraud and its recent rating as the second most corrupt on earth, be finessed or somehow remade?

The sum we are already spending annually on Afghanistan is greater than its gross domestic product. Are there nonmilitary ways we could deploy that sum which would advance our goals as efficaciously?

Would even forty thousand additional troops suffice for anything resembling the ambitious nation-building program that General Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, has proposed? (Counterinsurgency theory suggests that it would take more than ten times that many; would forty—or ten, or twenty—thousand be only a first installment?)

Any counterinsurgency campaign, we’re told, requires a very long commitment. Is the voluntary association of democracies called NATO, organized to deter war more than to wage it, capable of sustaining a twenty or thirty years’ war? For that matter, does the United States—a decentralized populist democracy struggling with economic decline and political gridlock—have that capacity? And what about Pakistan?

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Speaking of Pakistan, Washington Post columnist Colbert King asks a perfectly reasonable question: But what happens if, in the face of an U.S. escalation in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda moves its terrorist network to Pakistan or beyond? Will U.S. forces follow?

I suppose the short answer is that Blackwater is already there, and U.S intelligence is undoubtedly working with the Pakistani military. The question is whether our soon to be 100,000 troops will be fighting a single Al Qaeda operative six months from now. Some would call that a reason to claim victory and go home. If we get bogged down fighting the Taliban, along with related and completely unrelated insurgents, however, that war could last a lot longer.
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A graphic from the National Post, a Canadian paper, highlights the geographic hotspots where NATO forces have suffered their casualties. The Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southwestern Afghanistan lead the way, with 342 and 210 fatalities respectively. The charts also provide some visually jarring data of the increase in NATO deaths and deaths from IEDs from the relatively tranquil days of 2005 to the present.
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Reuters runs a speculative article quoting administration sources that believe the U.S will begin drawing down troops from Afghanistan beginning in 2013.

Their logic is that by then the U.S will have concluded its training of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan police, such that they can help themselves.

Other officials scoffed at the notion, calling it unrealistic. One truth we can be assured of is vague ‘future withdrawal’ rhetoric from the Obama administration, whether from his lips or in the form of ‘secret leaks’ to the press.

This will be done to damper down opposition to the war. Rank and file Democrats will say, “I don’t approve of this war, but I guess it will be over soon.” We all know how this will go down. And yet we watch…