Early this morning, the Taliban launched the deadliest attack on the United Nations in over 50 years.  Militants wearing suicide vests and sporting assault rifles and grenades entered a UN guest house in central Kabul and killed 12 international workers.  Ban Ki-moon — the United Nations secretary general — called the attacks “despicable and brutal”.  The attacks come just as the United Nations, and other entities, try to establish a safe environment for the run-off presidential election after the original was shrouded in corruption and scandal earlier this month.  The attacks prompted a call for President Obama to advance a decision on a request from the senior US commander in Afghanistan to up the ante to 40,000 more troops.  Of course, that decision was put on hold until after Afghanistan confirm their latest president (many argue political stabilization must come first before committing more lives and resources to the conflict).  To make this Wednesday even darker, Taliban forces also killed many more — mostly women — in the increasingly dangerous territory of northern Pakistan.  A women’s market was targeted in the city of Peshawar where some 80 innocent women, and a few men, were killed in cold blood.  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently in Pakistan meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and other officials.  She had this to say about the attack:

These attacks on innocent people are cowardly.  If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs… Let them make the case that they don’t want girls to go school, that they want to hold women back… and see how far they would get. They know they are on the losing side of history, and they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic movement that it is.

-D