All posts tagged: ground forces

What Is Israel Trying to Accomplish?

What Is Israel Trying to Accomplish?

Israel’s invasion of Gaza awaits the parting of clouds. Clear skies favor Israel, which dominates the airspace and wants to be able to look down to see what awaits its ground forces. The early morning yesterday brought rain, and at dawn, orange cumulus clouds rolled over the Mediterranean. Today’s forecast calls for more rain, and therefore probably another day without Israeli infantry in Gaza. Rarely has the Weather Channel been such ominous and thrilling viewing. Everyone knows the invasion is coming. Less clear is what it will ultimately bring for Palestinians. Within about a day of Hamas’s attack on October 7, an Israeli consensus emerged that no response short of total annihilation of Hamas would suffice. A second, corollary consensus didn’t take much longer: To annihilate Hamas, Israel would have to invade Gaza. Hamas has given Israel the best possible excuse to do so. Hamas hides in the civilian population, stores its weapons there, and fires those weapons from civilian areas. It does this by choice. And that gives Israel the rationale of self-defense, the …

Afghanistan Changed Me – The Atlantic

Afghanistan Changed Me – The Atlantic

In January 2009, I flew to Dubai and got my first taste of what I would come to know as the Terminal of Lost Souls. Dubai International Airport was one of the glitziest in the world—enormous and modern and filled with luxury shops and lounges. But that was only Terminals 1 and 3. Terminal 2 was for the discount carriers flying to South and Central Asia and parts of Africa—places like Uzbekistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The passengers were generally poor construction workers, mercenaries, contractors, and journalists like me. I was a public-radio correspondent and had produced stories about Afghanistan for years, but I had been longing to report from the field. When I finally had the chance, I dove in. Only later would I realize how oblivious I had been to the true human costs of the conflicts I had sought to cover. Read: Afghanistan did not have to turn out this way That first trip, I was reporting on the Taliban’s use of Pakistani tribal regions as a training ground. It was clear …