Hearts and Minds

Remembering Bert Schneider

Peter Davis | Posted 02.27.2012

Peter Davis

On Christmas Eve 1973, Bert Schneider, the richly innovative Hollywood producer who died this month, decreed a screening of what eventually became my film on the Vietnam War, Hearts and Minds.

Why Doesn't Reconstruction Work?

Peter Van Buren | Posted 01.04.2012

Peter Van Buren

When a relationship begins with a war and an invasion, and all the acts of violence that go along with that, you start deep in a hole. As corruption, mistakes, accidents and half-hearted efforts plague reconstruction, that hole only gets deeper.

Bonfire of Insanity -- Pastor Terry Jones' Burning Love for Jesus

Dylan Brody | Posted 05.25.2011

Dylan Brody

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Afghanistan: Hearts and Minds and Blood and Anger

Josh Mull | Posted 05.25.2011

Josh Mull

I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan. The view...

Helicopters for War, but Not Flood Relief?

Robert Naiman | Posted 05.25.2011

Robert Naiman

If the White House does not bring all assets to bear in response to the flood crisis in Pakistan, it will be passing up an opportunity to show that the US cares more about saving Muslim lives than taking them away.

The Military Occupation of Our Minds

Tom Hayden | Posted 05.25.2011

Tom Hayden

Paranoia? Do we live under Orwellian thought control? Of course not. But we the people, the media and the Congress, routinely accept taxpayer-funded Pentagon and White House public relations narratives.

Can't Win 'Hearts and Minds' Without Speech

Blake Bromley | Posted 05.25.2011

Blake Bromley

The U.S. Supreme Court made it more difficult to fight the war on terrorism this week. They removed free speech from the arsenal of weapons available.

State Department To Produce Legal Justification for Drone Attacks

Daphne Eviatar | Posted 05.25.2011

Daphne Eviatar

State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh has promised to produce the Obama administration's legal justification for its increased use of drone strikes. Let's hope that moment comes soon.

New US Air Strategy In Afghanistan: First, Do No Harm

McClatchy | Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers | Posted 05.25.2011

Six months after Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S commander in Afghanistan, issued a tactical directive urging troops to walk away from a fig...

Taliban Overhaul Image, Distance Themselves From Al Qaeda, To Win Allies

nytimes.com | ALISSA J. RUBIN | Posted 05.25.2011

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to so...

Bill O'Reilly: 'We Can't Kill All The Muslims... So We Wanna Win As Many Hearts And Minds As We Can'

Posted 05.25.2011

Bill O'Reilly believes that the US effort to win the popular support of Muslims around the world is based on the notion that the US cannot kill every ...

Ryan Grim

Experts On Afghanistan Doubt Survey On Foreign Occupation: Results Are Impossible

HuffingtonPost.com | Ryan Grim | Posted 05.25.2011

A new survey of the Afghan people is being touted as evidence that hearts and minds may, in fact, be warming to the U.S.'s military presence, which is...

Death by Drone: A Policy That Gets Results?

Kit Gallant | Posted 05.25.2011

Kit Gallant

Counter-insurgency experts and military officials have an oft-noted tendency to focus excessively, to obsess, really, on killing or capturing a single pivotal individual.

Losing the People: The Cost and Consequences of Civilian Suffering in Afghanistan

Erica Gaston | Posted 05.25.2011

Erica Gaston

For the last year, I have been living in Afghanistan interviewing civilians harmed in the conflict for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict.

Ten Reasons Why We Don't Need an Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

John Brown | Posted 05.25.2011

John Brown

The dozens of reports that have appeared since 9/11 on public diplomacy have come to a similar general conclusion: the State Department's public diplomacy has failed miserably.