Al Qaeda terrorist and US-born radical Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is dead, "along with some of his companions". 

One question: how many more top Al Qaeda figures does US President Barack Obama have to have killed before Republican and Tea Party hacks give him just the teensiest bit of credit?

Comments Ron Paul, Republican presidential candidate: 

"Al-Awlaki was born here, he's an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes," Paul said. "To start assassinating American citizens without charges - we should think very seriously about this."

You've got to be kidding.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist

I thought long and hard when I was asked about the grass-roots feelings of us Israelis concerning the Palestinian goings-on at the United Nations this week. All the big hitters, from both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, are in New York for the opening of the UN session. Not to mention President Barack Obama's presence at the General Assembly.

The US President opened with a supportive-of-Israel speech that knocked our collective socks off. The Arabs mostly hated it. The Israelis mostly loved it. Who would have thought? 

Almost since his inauguration some three years ago, Obama has been the bête noire of huge numbers of Jews around the world, including many Israelis. Yet just last week, the lead story in the Sept 18th edition of "New York Magazine" was subtitled: "Barack Obama is the best thing Israel has going for it right now".

On the other hand, also last week, for the first time in 90 years, voters in New York's District 9, which includes large numbers of Jewish voters, chose a Republican candidate and not a Democrat. A slap in the face to the President. What is going on?

President Obama's main message was that the recognition and establishment of a Palestinian State must eventually come about, but will not happen through votes in the United Nations. Samuel Goldwyn once famously said: "A verbal contract is not worth the paper it's written on". Apparently the US President thinks pretty much the same value applies to UN declarations declaring a new member state, authoritative as that declaration may be. Read more

Afghan President Hamid Karzai may be unfamiliar with the Western proverb, "be careful what you wish for." His bi-polar rants lambasting NATO and American forces as virtual occupiers and war criminals surely have made US President Obama's decision on a significant troop withdrawal even easier.

The expected drawdown of American troops from the Afghan surge is going ahead. At least 30,000 troops are headed home from the frontier by sometime in 2012. Many more are likely to depart by 2014.

Karzai's government has had 18 months to get its' act together. Even more important than making the army the backbone of the state, Karzai was supposed to tackle corruption and start delivering real services to all Afghans within government-controlled areas.

No one said it was going to be easy. But no one was realistically hoping for Afghanistan to transform into Denmark overnight, either (Bolivia or Congo would have been a significant step up). That said, the government has largely failed in its goals. It is not seen as legitimate, or even necessarily preferrable to the Taliban, in the contested areas. Making things worse, Karzai has personally alienated his international allies on countless occasions with wild conspiracy theories and legislation intended to appeal to the broad demographic of Taliban-friendly Afghan hillbillies. Read more

Is US President Barack Obama taking his foreign policy direction from Switzerland? Christopher Hitchens looks into the brutal feebleness of the American response to the Libyan revolution:

This is not merely a matter of the synchronizing of announcements. The Obama administration also behaves as if the weight of the United States in world affairs is approximately the same as that of Switzerland. We await developments. We urge caution, even restraint. We hope for the formation of an international consensus. And, just as there is something despicable about the way in which Swiss bankers change horses, so there is something contemptible about the way in which Washington has been affecting—and perhaps helping to bring about—American impotence. Except that, whereas at least the Swiss have the excuse of cynicism, American policy manages to be both cynical and naive.

US President Barack Obama has declared the end of combat operations in Iraq.

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