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"It invokes memories of the early 1990s," Crocker added, referring to the time when the United States abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, leaving behind a failed state that became a haven for terrorists.
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"It's as if we're telling the Afghans, 'We're tired, we're going home, screw you'."
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I agree with Crocker. Yet it's clear that Americans are fed up with the long and costly war in Afghanistan. Obama hasn't made the case for a continued troop presence and probably believes there would be little political or strategic cost to a zero option. If so, he is wrong.
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The importance of a residual military presence (of about 10,000 troops) is more about symbols than numbers. The main function of the troops would be to train and advise Afghans, but they would also symbolize a long-term U.S. commitment to the country's stability.
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Toward that end, the United States signed a bilateral strategic partnership accord with Kabul last year, negotiated by Crocker. A zero option would undercut that accord.
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It would weaken congressional and international pledges to fund Afghan forces and economic development over the next decade.Perhaps this doesn't matter, you might say.
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Why should we be helping a corrupt Afghan government that feeds on Western aid?Answer: If that government collapses, the country will plunge into civil war, with all of Afghanistan's neighbors backing their proxies. Pakistan will support the Taliban, while Iran, Russia, and India will back other factions. Afghanistan would once again become a failed state and potential terrorist haven, as it did in the 1990s.
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"We have seen this movie before," said Crocker.Only this time, the movie would have dangerous new actors and far grimmer pyrotechnics than it did two decades ago.
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The blowback from terrorists within Afghanistan would threaten a highly unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan next door. And Washington would no longer have Afghan bases from which to carry out its favored antiterrorism policy: dispatching drones.Administration officials insist that the president is still undecided about the zero option.
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Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, James Dobbins, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Obama "is still reviewing a range of options" and "has not made a decision about the size of a U.S. military presence after 2014."But as the old saying goes, not to decide is to decide.
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Afghans are already making their decisions based on the belief that Obama wants a zero option.
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"The lack of clarity on this point has led to too much hedging in the region," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "Afghans who may otherwise be interested in building a fledgling democracy want to know that they will not be abandoned by the United States, as the Taliban claims they will be."
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Afghans smell betrayal in the air. U.S. officials insist they won't negotiate a deal with the Taliban behind the back of the Afghan government.
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Yet, at the Doha talks, the Taliban acted as if it were the real Afghan government, insisting it wouldn't talk with the American "puppet" Karzai. Then came the hints of a "zero option."No wonder Karzai is furious.
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In 1971, Henry Kissinger famously scribbled the phrase "We need a decent interval" in the margin of a briefing book that dealt with the withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam. The phrase referred to his efforts to ensure there would be sufficient time between a U.S. troop exit and a likely communist takeover in Saigon _ so that the Nixon administration wouldn't be blamed for the defeat.
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That "decent interval" spanned two years, between the 1973 Paris peace talks with Hanoi and the 1975 fall of Saigon. Unless Obama commits to, and leads, a more coherent diplomatic strategy — with talks that involve all the regional players, not just Washington and the Taliban — there may be no "decent interval" before Afghanistan collapses.
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It could happen before the end of his second term.
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Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her attrubin@phillynews.com.
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Veteran back-row forward Joe Bearman has signed a fresh deal with the Ospreys that keeps him at the region until the summer of 2015.
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Cornish-born Bearman, 34, Dragons ahead of the 2011-12 campaign.
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He helped the Ospreys to the Pro12 title in his first season at the Liberty Stadium.
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"I've enjoyed my first two seasons down here, so I'm really happy to be able to sign a new contract," said Bearman.
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He added: "It was a dream come true to win the league at the end of my first season as an Osprey, particularly the way we did at Leinster in the final.
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"That day will stay with me forever, but the challenge this season and over the next two years is to make sure we achieve that standard consistently as a group, week in, week out."
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Ospreys rugby operations manager Andy Lloyd said: "He's an outstanding athlete, he's really physical and powerful with or without the ball, carrying well and making more than his fair share of tackles.
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"He just keeps getting better and better as a player and even though he is a little bit older than most, his conditioning is excellent."
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The head of Japan's Takata Corp said an internal probe into its potentially deadly air bag inflators was not progressing well, but vowed to stay at the helm until trust in the safety of its products was restored.
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Facing the media for the first time since the company's recall crisis erupted over a year ago, Chief Executive Shigehisa Takada apologized for the defective inflators, which have been linked to eight deaths and more than 100 injuries.
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The lack of progress in finding out why some of its inflators can deploy with too much force and spray metal shards is set to turn up the pressure on Takata as carmakers continue to expand a recall that is already the biggest in automotive history.
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U.S. lawmakers this week also raised the possibility that the company put profits before safety by halting global safety audits. Takata has disputed the accusation.
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"The analysis isn't progressing very well," Takada told a news conference that followed the company's annual general meeting. "I'm concerned about that."
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He said, however, that Takata would continue to use ammonium nitrate, a volatile chemical, as an air bag propellant, stressing that third-party investigations it commissioned have vouched for its safety.
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Since the crisis began, tens of millions of vehicles have been recalled worldwide and multiple investigations are underway including those commissioned collectively by 10 automakers as well as Takata's own probe. Its shares have plunged 38 percent since last June when U.S. authorities opened their investigation.
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Often glancing down to read from a prepared text and sometimes mumbling, Takada, 49, said he intended to continue leading the company founded by his grandfather, saying that was the appropriate way for him to take responsibility.
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At the annual general meeting, shareholders criticized Takada for his failure to appear in public to address the issue, the slow progress in resolving the crisis and the lack of a dividend, although there were no overt displays of anger.
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The meeting was attended by about 200 shareholders - a record number, according to the parts supplier.
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"I'm concerned about the company's future," said 46-year-old shareholder Masahiro Yamazaki, emerging from the meeting. "Without being able to nail down the cause, it looks like a quick resolution will be difficult."
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Clouding its financial outlook, the company, which posted a net loss last year, has not set aside provisions for the cost of most of its recalls. Takada said it was not clear where responsibility for the costs lay for recalls where the cause of the defect is still unknown. The company also faces multiple lawsuits.
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Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday it would recall another 2.9 million vehicles to replace passenger-side air bag inflators. Nissan Motor Co added another 198,000 to its tally.
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Automakers including top customer Honda Motor Co have said they are turning to other inflator makers such as Sweden's Autoliv Inc and Japan's Daicel Corp to supply replacement parts as Takata struggles to produce them quickly enough.
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Analysts say, however, that automakers are unlikely to abandon Takata in the short term given that it accounts for a fifth of the world's production of air bag inflators.
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The Department of Evolution and Ecology (EVE) is a multi-disciplinary and highly collaborative community of faculty, students, post-doctoral researchers and staff who are dedicated to understanding the evolution and ecology of populations, species and communities. Our research programs span all levels of biological organization, ranging from the evolution of genes and genomes, to the diversification of species over time, to the structure, function and biogeography of ecological communities. Research excellence is a priority for EVE faculty members, but a deep commitment to quality teaching and mentorship is an equally important hallmark of our group.
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EVE faculty members advise graduate students in several nationally prominent graduate programs, direct the undergraduate curriculum in Evolution, Ecology and Biodiversity (EEB), and also play a substantial role in campus-wide core courses for students in life sciences. We have many opportunities for undergraduates seeking research experience in diverse groups of organisms, and in a wide range of laboratory and field settings. Welcome!
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A Smartphone will beat a cable news channel, every time.
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Here’s a fun, residual detail in the wake of the re-capture of David Sweat, the Clinton Correctional Facility inmate on the run over the weekend near the Canadian border.
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Sprague was driving to the Cricket Club with his wife, Jennifer, when his daughter called a second time.
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Sprague took over as president of the PGA last fall after his predecessor made some unfortunate comments via social media.
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From the time a farmer harvests strawberries or green beans, they will last — at best — three weeks before they start to rot. It usually takes a week or two for the food to reach the grocery store and then your fridge, leaving you only a few days to eat them.
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A Santa Barbara, California-based startup called Apeel Sciences has invented an edible coating called Edipeel that it says can extend a fruit or vegetable's shelf life by as much as five times. If you spray it on a ripe strawberry, for example, the company claims the fruit will last up to a week longer than normal.
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Made of leftover plant skins and stems, the coating acts as a barrier that slows the decay process. You can apply it to produce anytime during its lifespan — Apeel even claims they were able to make a bunch of bananas grown at the same time ripen on different days.
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A year after its launch in 2016, Apeel has moved into a 105,000-square-foot facility. At least six farms in Southern California, Kenya, and Nigeria are using Apeel's products, CEO James Rogers told Business Insider. The company is also finalizing negotiations to work with at least two dozen packing houses and several farms in Mexico, Peru, and Chile for a "very large commercial rollout" to the US, Rogers said.
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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Apeel's first products as "generally recognized as safe," meaning they're okay to eat and sell. The company also recently received approval to use Edipeel on organic produce.
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Here's how the product works.
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Edipeel is a transparent coating that you spray on produce or dip items into.
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Katlin Svik, MSc, Apeel's Director of Emerging Markets.
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After the coating dries, it acts as a shield to natural gases (e.g. oxygen and ethylene) that make produce decay.
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Edipeel is engineered to keep water from leaving a fruit or vegetable and prevent oxygen from entering. Apeel is also working on a second product called Invisipeel that's designed to keep insects away but is not yet widely available.
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Edipeel's formula differs for each fruit or vegetable.The startup has so far developed Edipeel products for three dozen crops, including avocados, asparagus, peaches, lemons, pears, and nectarines.
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Farms and food packing houses are now able to buy Apeel's products. Edipeel is usually sprayed on produce during the wash cycle, before produce is sorted and packed to go to retailers.
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The coating is are made of discarded materials from organic produce — anything from pear stems to leftover grape skins to grass clippings. "We don't discriminate," Rogers said.
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Dr. James Rogers, CEO of Apeel Sciences.
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The coating could help stores and farmers reduce waste from produce that has ripened too quickly.
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It could allow grocery stores and restaurants to source items from farms that are farther away.
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Workers load a truck with oranges on a farm in Limeira January 13, 2012.
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For example, it takes 30 days for blueberries grown in Chile to travel to US grocery stores. To keep them fresh, farmers sometimes coat them in wax and pick them before they're ripe. Trucks also need to heavily refrigerate the berries (which requires energy and money).
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Since Apeel's plant-based products control the rate of decay, they offer a less costly and slightly more natural way to preserve produce.
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Rogers said Apeel creates more opportunities for produce to be grown in untapped areas, like Peru, that have lower land values and labor costs than, say, California.
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A farm worker picks avocados from Hoja Redonda plantation in Chincha, Peru, September 3, 2015.
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Rogers came up with the idea for Apeel's products while pursuing a PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. On trips from campus to a lab in Berkeley, he passed many farms.
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(Left to right) Dr. Louis Perez, VP of Technology; Dr. James Rogers, CEO; and Dr. Jenny Du, VP of Operations of Apeel Sciences.
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Rogers began thinking about how to protect produce the same way that the carbon and iron barrier on stainless steel keeps it from rusting. "That was the genesis of Apeel," he said.
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Rogers said Apeel will likely offer Edipeel to consumers in the future. "We don't want to be afraid of tackling the world's challenges using science and technology," he said.
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Village trustees have unanimously agreed to file a formal objection if Huntley proceeds with plans to annex 240 acres northeast of Reed and Haligus Roads and allow Cambridge Homes to build 750 homes there.
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"It's probably in the village's interest to object to this, because it's going to impact Lake in the Hills," Trustee Scott Berg said at last week's Village Board meeting.
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The property, known as the Weiss farm, adjoins the western border of Provence and Spring Lake Farms South subdivisions in Lake in the Hills. Cambridge originally sought to annex into Lake in the Hills, but was denied because its plans called for too many houses, village officials said.
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For Huntley to annex the land, the village would also have to annex a portion of Tom Halat's farm, home to Tom's strawberry and produce stand along Algonquin Road. Annexation of Halat's property would make the Weiss farm contiguous with Huntley.
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Lake in the Hills officials said if Huntley approved the annexation and development, subsequent population growth would put more cars on local roads and overwhelm Huntley District 158 schools.
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The Supreme Court is set to rule on the Legal Arizona Workers Act, dubbed the “business death penalty” because it penalizes businesses that “knowingly” hire illegal immigrants. Terry Greene Sterling on how it could give the Obama administration the upper hand in shaping immigration enforcement.
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Sheridan Bailey is a stocky, gray-bearded 67-year-old Phoenix native who owns a steel-framing company and sees himself as a fiscal conservative and centrist. He’s an improbable activist, but in 2007, disgusted with the “growing index of racist crap” in Arizona, he launched Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform, a group of business owners who opposed a new state law that aimed to yank licenses from businesses that “knowingly” hire unauthorized immigrants.
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Bailey’s group, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, immigrant-rights activists, and the U.S. Department of Justice, is battling to squelch the Legal Arizona Workers Act, aka the Employer Sanctions Law, which got a constitutional airing before the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 8.
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Dubbed the “business death penalty,” Arizona’s law allows county lawyers to take businesses to court for possible suspension or revocation of their licenses if they “knowingly” hire unauthorized workers. The law also requires state businesses to check employees through a federal database known as E-Verify.
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The court hearing Wednesday centered on the constitutional issues of whether federal immigration law trumps state immigration law, despite an apparent loophole in the federal immigration code that allows the state to impose licensing sanctions. And lawyers debated whether Arizona can legally demand that all businesses use E-Verify, since the feds require only federal agencies and contractors to sign up for the database.
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So far, the Employer Sanctions Law has passed constitutional muster in lower courts. The high court’s decision, expected in the next few months, will influence the direction of immigration policy in the future. If the court rules for Arizona, a rash of state immigration laws will likely be proposed. (In 2009, the National Conference of State Legislatures reports, states enacted 333 immigration laws, and in the first half of 2010, 319 such measures were enacted.) But if the Supreme Court sides with Bailey and his co-litigants, the frenzy of election-year state-immigration laws will likely subside and the feds will have the upper hand in shaping immigration enforcement. Because Justice Elena Kagan recused herself due to a conflict, Arizona needs only to tie to win the case. But in the case of a tie, no precedent is set for other immigration laws.
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Janet Napolitano reportedly counseled the Justice Department not to get involved in the case because the administration needs to appear tough on immigration enforcement.
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Arizona’s Employer Sanctions Law took effect in January 2008, and since then, the state that can no longer afford certain organ transplants for the poor has earmarked almost $7 million to enforce the law.
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So far, only two businesses have been penalized—a sandwich shop was shut down for two days, and a water park company that had already stopped doing business in Arizona had its license temporarily suspended. A third company awaits prosecution.
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The real targets of the law have been unauthorized immigrants employed in Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has used the law to conduct dozens of investigations and raids of workplaces (like car washes) in order to round up unauthorized workers who are then charged with felony identify theft and fraud.
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Arpaio’s prosecutorial ally, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, now faces possible disbarment stemming from an abuse-of-power ethics probe.
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Arpaio himself is being investigated by the Justice Department for alleged human-rights abuses and alleged abuse of power and faces possible criminal indictment.
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Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, in Washington for the Supreme Court hearing, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday night that the Employer Sanctions Law was important because Arizonans want to “stop losing our jobs to the illegal immigration [sic].” The governor, who has denied reports that she is suffering from a serious illness, stumbled through her interview with Van Susteren.
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Terry Greene Sterling is an Arizona journalist who blogs about immigration in Phoenix at terrygreenesterling.com. Her book, ILLEGAL, Life and Death in Arizona's Immigration War Zone, was published July 1st by the Globe Pequot Press.
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Jalal Talabani (in file photo) is expected to be named as Iraq's president 6 April 2005 -- The 275-member Iraqi parliament has begun meeting today to choose a president and two vice presidents, key steps in building Iraq's first elected government in 50 years.
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The lawmakers are expected to choose Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president.
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The Iraqi parliament is expected to convene tomorrow to pick a prime minister. Shi'ite leader Ibrahim al-Ja'fari is widely believed to be the front-runner for that job.
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Iraqi lawmakers have been in agreement over those two posts since national elections on 30 January. Disagreement over who should fill the two vice-presidential posts has created problems.
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However, lawmakers yesterday reportedly agreed on who should fill the vice-presidential posts. They are Shi'ite Adel Abd al-Mahdi and interim President Ghazi Ajil al-Yawir, a Sunni Arab.
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The parliament should vote on their nominations today as well.
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"I'm 80 years old on the inside."
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If you have eyeballs, you've probably have noticed that for the 27 years he's been in the public eye, Paul Rudd hasn't aged.
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If anything, he's a real-life Benjamin Button. On the left is Paul in 2011, and on the right in 2019. How is this possible?
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