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This story seems to be making the rounds...

The US military said Wednesday it was investigating a report carried on an Australian television network that claimed American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and then used the action to taunt other Islamic militants

...and my response is why oh why is this news? Just to state the obvious, the Taliban bodies in question were dead prior to being burned, so who cares?

I guess is that if they had not burned those bodies, the same people making a big deal of this would be penning articles with the title:

US forces start epidemic in Afghanistan!

As for this being an 'affront to Islam', if the object was to 'smoke out' the enemy by enraging them, again... so what? The job of US forces is to KILL members of the Taliban and I fail to see why it is unacceptable to outrage their sensibilities and perhaps even hurt their feeling prior to punching them full of 5.56mm holes.

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The Taliban is history and Al Qaeda is a mere shadow of its former self, so the question is why are US (and UK) forces still in effective control of Afghanistan? The latest example of appalling behaviour by US interrogators (who appear to have tortured a taxi cab driver to death at Bagram for being in the wrong place at the wrong time) is starting to turn local opinion against the over-mightly US presence. Not only do the people responsible need to be suitably called to account a good way up the chain of command, clearly there are some serious institutional problems in sections of the US military that need to be stamped on pretty harshly.

Given Afghanistan's history, the fact locals have reacted so well to the US presence for this long is remarkable (and of course understandable considering we enabled the 'Northern Alliance' to destroy the Taliban), but staying for much longer is counter-productive. There is no need to kill every single Taliban/Al Qaeda supporter in Afghanistan (or Pakistan come to that) as the infrastructure that supported the September 11th attacks has been well and truly smashed.

Also, the preposterous attempts to curb narcotics production is both utterly doomed to fail and hugely counter productive in that messing with people's lucrative livelihoods is just about the surest way to guarantee armed opposition to the allied presence in that part of the world. Sure, in an ideal world we would have no heroin and no armed factions willing to tolerate/support Islamic terrorists but in the real world it is likely to be a choice between one or the other. So please, enough with the preposterous obsession with narcotics! If the US and UK states cannot stop tonnes of the stuff coming into their own countries every year, what chance do you think they have of doing so in far off Afghanistan? The effort will of course fail dismally just as it has failed in Columbia but with the extra added 'goodness' of encouraging resistance to the pro-Western regime on Kabul. Sheesh.

By all means leave a couple thousand 'liaison'/training teams behind to bolster the Karzai regime but unlike the clearly unfinished business in Iraq, it is time to declare victory and get the hell out.

Job done. Let's go home.

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There is an interesting story in the Telegraph about a teenage Afghan arrested as a Taliban supporter and held in Guantanamo Bay. Although he was none too happy about being taken away from his parents, rather surprisingly he claims that he had a good time in the US military prison!

In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: "They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons." Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer.

What a funny old world.

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James Lileks has a piece today on the war and its critics that is worth reading (scroll down a bit, although the first few paragraphs about his daughter culminate in a nice insight into diplomacy).

James can certainly speak for himself, but his point is that there is a war on, and wars are all about who wins, which means that anyone who cares about the war has to pick a side sooner or later. He hopes that we win (as do I). While it is certainly possible to criticize a war effort in order to help it succeed (and indeed, such criticism is very helpful to ensuring success), it is clear, and has been for awhile, that some critics of the war do not particularly care if we win or lose. Some are quite open about their desire for us to lose, others seem simply not to care that the result of their preferred policies is the advancement of terrorism.

Quick sample, but you really should read the whole thing:

I can’t help but come back to the central theme these edits imply: we should have left Iraq alone. We should have left this charnel house stand. We should have bought a wad of nice French cotton to shove in our ears so the buzz of the flies over the graves didn’t distract us from the important business of deciding whether Syria or China should have the rotating observer-status seat in the Oil-for-Palaces program. Afghanistan, well, that’s understandable, in a way; we were mad. We lashed out. But we should have stopped there, and let the UN deploy its extra-strong Frown Beams against the Iraqi ambassador in the hopes that Saddam would reduce the money he gave to Palestinian suicide bombers down to five grand. Five grand! Hell, that hardly covers the parking tickets your average ambassador owes to the city of New York; who’d blow themselves up for that?

Would the editorialists of the nation be happier if Saddam was still cutting checks to people who blew up not just our allies, but our own citizens? I’d like an answer. Please. Essay question: “Families of terrorists who blow up men, women and children, some of whom are Americans, no longer receive money from Saddam, because Saddam no longer rules Iraq. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Explain.”

The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.

Lileks' piece fits nicely with Thomas Friedman's op-ed in the New York Times, in which he reaches the reluctant conclusion that France is not our friend, is not our ally, but is instead acting as our enemy.

It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.

If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.

Now, I tend to have a different view of events than Friedman (France's obstruction at the UN did not prevent a "real ultimatum" from being put to Saddam; that had already occurred), but his larger point is, I think, sound.

Wars, among their many, many faults, do have this virtue: they are enormously clarifying. This war is revealing who places other causes, whether transnational progressivism, anti-Americanism, narrow political self-interest, or even the preservation of their age-old view of themselves and the world, above the cause of winning this war.

The stakes are very large. The immediate stakes are, of course, the extermination of the current terror network before it gets its hands on WMD. Rest assured that, without this war, the Islamists would obtain these weapons - they fervently desired them, had the money to obtain them, and had close ties to governments that have them and are seeking more. In the corrupt cesspool of Middle Eastern politics, it was only a matter of time.

The larger stakes are, of course, changing the "root causes" of Islamist terror. The so-called "neo-con" strategy being pursued by the US addresses the root causes of terror by identifying the prevailing corruption, oppression, theocracy, tyranny, poverty, and ignorance in the Mideast as the root causes, and attacking those root causes at the source - the governments of the Mideast. Without some change in the current cast of characters, no improvement in the Mideast will be possible and Islamist terror will continue to be with us. Regime change throughout the Mideast is a necessay, but not sufficient, condition for the end of the Islamist terror networks.

Opponents of the war bear the burden of either demonstrating that the terror network and its state sponsors are no threat to the West (palpably impossible after 9/11), or coming up with a viable alternative strategy for triggering regime change throughout the Mideast. I await such an alternative strategy.

Not every issue has to be seen through the prism of the terror war, but those who address themselves to the war, either as diplomats, heads of state, or pundits, need to understand that their actions will aid one side or the other, and need to think very hard about which side they want to see as the victor and whether they are helping, or hurting, whoever it is that they want to win.

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The second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is as good a time as any to take quick stock of progress in World War IV:

(1) Afghanistan. The Allies (America and its ad hoc coalition) have driven the Taliban from power and deprived the Islamic terror network of one of its primary bases. The Islamists still in Afghanistan are now on the defensive, and are focussing, apparently, on trying to regain control of one of the world's poorest countries, rather than exporting their theology to other countries. Despite ongoing difficulties, this is a clear win for the West because Afghanistan is less of a threat now than it used to be.

(2) Iraq. Pretty much exactly the same analysis applies in Iraq. The Baathists are no longer funding any part of the Islamist terror network, and are no longer a potential source of WMD for the islamists. Based on current information, I would say that this is also a clear win for the West because Iraq is less of a threat now than it used to be. Ultimately, of course, Iraq still has miles to go, etc., but it certainly does not seem to be on course to be a net exporter of terror. Right now it is a net importer of terrorists, and that is fine be me - better to kill them in Iraq than in Iowa.

(3) International Islamist terror network. Clearly on the defensive and less capable than it was before 9/11. Many of its leaders or members are dead, in hiding and emasculated, or in prison. Many of its resources, including terrorist havens, are gone. Recent attacks have been directed, not against Western targets, but against Middle Eastern and South Pacific ones. Offhand, I can't think of any theaters where radical Islamism is stronger now than it was before 9/11.

(4) Middle East. So far, it is hard to say that the Islamists have gained any ground even in the Middle East. Syria is going multi-party and has made some, admittedly not terribly significant, stand-downs in Lebanon. Arafat is isolated and his days certainly seem numbered. The Saudis have executed a number of their princes that had ties to al Qaeda, and seem to be going after al Qaeda with a little more credibility since it broke its promise not to operate in Saudi Arabia. Lots of fulminating and bitching about the Great Satan everywhere, of course, but that isn't new and doesn't really count on the debit side of the ledger. It is still early days, of course, but all told, I would say that the Middle East is certainly no more hostile to the US than it was, and in significant ways is less dangerous, if no more friendly, than it was.

(5) Diplomacy. The common complaint is that the US has sacrificed or damaged many good relationships in order to pursue its war. I think that this is complaint is overstated, at best. Rather, World War IV has tested relationships and revealed which of them were shallow and weak.

I am willing, on the whole, to say that the diplomatic front has been a break-even for the US. On the one hand, many erstwhile "allies" are more vocal in their criticism of us, and possibly even have withheld substantive aid that they might have offered a different diplomatic team. On the other, the UN has permanently devalued, the true colors of the transnational progressives have been revealed, and many of the other impediments to a new and much more functional international order have been weakened or cleared away.

(6) Homeland security. Well, we Americans may or may not be marginally safer from terrorist attacks on our own soil than we were before 9/11. Its hard to say; in spite of the obvious idiocy of most of the high-profile homeland security measures, we haven't had a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Measured against the baseline of 9/10/01, I think it is hard to say that we are much safer than we were. Measured against where we should be two years on, I would say that homeland security is a major disappointment.

But the war won't be won or lost based on America's homeland security. That is purely a damage control issue, because no matter how good the homeland security is, we will surely lose the war if we do not succeed with our "forward defense" of draining the Islamist swamps where terrorists breed.

The schwerpunkt of America's offensive is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of those campaigns were crushing military and strategic victories for the US, victories that have not (yet) been frittered away. They may not turn into little Swedens, but there is really very little chance that either nation will return to being a terrorist haven bent on exporting mass murder to its enemies. That counts as victory in my book.

At this point in history, the Islamists cannot defeat America, but America can certainly lose the war through loss of will and resolution. So far, the will is there.

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My first reaction to this story was "Aha! Another reason to despise the UN and its tranzi fellow travellers! As if I needed one." And indeed, there is plenty to despise in this story. It turns out that a thriving market in endangered animal skins has sprung up in Afghanistan to serve the demands of the UN and NGO personnel assigned there.

When I asked him if he had any coats made of snow leopard skin, he said no. But the reason was far from reassuring - he had sold out.

They have become so expensive for us - $500. Too expensive for Afghans but foreigners can buy them," he said.

We have asked most of the foreigners not to buy these things and if there is not a market from the foreigners the Afghan people probably don't need it," [Afghan Environment Minister Yousef Nouristani] says.

"It's the market created by the foreigners - particularly those who are working with the UN or other NGOs."

The tooth-grinding hypocrisy of UN and NGO personnel flouting international law banning the trade in these skins is bad enough. The fact that most tranzis are also pious "movement" environmentalists is merely salt in the wound.

However, for dedicated libertarians, it raises one of the perennial dilemmas: what to do with wild animals? Laws restricting the harvesting and sale of wild animal skins, organs, meat, and whatnot would appear to run afoul of libertarian principles espousing free trade and free markets, and indeed the Afghan government is trying to reach the benchmark for protection of these animals set by, gulp, the Taliban.

The dilemma is sharpened in Afghanistan because the dire poverty of many people there puts their interests in direct conflict with protection of endangered species.

Snow leopards are most commonly found in north-eastern Afghanistan in an area known as the Wakhan.

I spoke to Ali Azimi, the author of a report on Afghanistan's environmental problems, who has just returned from a 10-day trip to the area.

"I was struck by the abject poverty of the people," he said. "Most can barely afford to have one meal a day.

"And the meal usually consists of a type of grass that grows in the Wakhan six months of the year. Six months it is snowbound.

"What they eat is what has been collected over the summer months - and it is a desperate situation for them. So they're facing poverty and starvation in the Wakhan."

This poverty and starvation is forcing people to hunt animals that would normally be the prey of the snow leopards - and the thousands of dollars that some people are prepared to pay for their skins is encouraging poachers to hunt these rare and beautiful creatures.

The long-term solution to these environmental issues is, of course, to raise the level of income and wealth in Afghanistan so that no one is forced to compete with wild animals for survival, and so that the "luxury good" of protected lands and species becomes affordable. In the shorter run (and in the long run as well) it is difficult to see how wild lands and, especially, wild animals can be protected from the tragedy of the commons without some form of state intervention, whether it is via market regulation outlawing the trade in animal products, the purchase and "protection" of lands, the regulation of hunting activity, or some variant or combination of all three.

Thanks to the inevitable and ubiquitous Instapundit for the first link to this story. Thanks also to (this hurts, folks) the BBC for originating the story.

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The ubiquitous Instapundit, who is accumulating a stable of international correspondents, posts a missive from Afghanistan that is sure to remind you of why you loathe transnational progressives, their NGO tools, and all associated parasites, hangers-on, and do gooders. A juicy bit, to whet your appetite:

It's not all monotonous or pointless in Kabul; at one French NGO housed in a stunning antique-laden chalet, I’ve devoured a seven-course meal prepared by a 4 star chef. Then there's always the sumptuous UN House, where one can take a dip, mingle poolside among scandalous bikinis and dowse dehydration with inspired cocktails fashioned by our languid Euro masters. Unfortunately, since "American UN employee" is an oxymoron, our one attempt to storm the formidable barricades is a spectacular failure. We're rudely turned away, despite flashing $20 bills to the Afghan UN security. My companion, a fierce Pushtoon-American licensed to pack a very visible Glock 19, glances back at the sunbathers as we're escorted out: "We've paid for all this with our taxes, you bastards!"

One has to shake one's head at the pistol-packing Pushtoon's naivete; since when has the fact that a taxpayer funded something ever triggered appropriate feelings of gratitude and respect from our betters in government 'service'?

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It's not quite MASH but it's blogging from the war zone. Thanks to Instapundit for this one.

Staff SargentSanchez appears to be almost as heavily armed as our own Perry de Havilland!

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Canada is treating its soldiers disgracefully. The fighting in Afghanistan is not a gentlemen's game between sportsmen, it is a fight to the death with desperate terrorists. If some dead Al Qaeda/Taliban soldier was posed for a photograph with a cigarette and a placard around his neck saying 'fuck terrorism' then I say so what? It is okay to kill a man, to blow a hole in his body with a 50 cal slug, to shoot him dead, at the behest of your government... but not to disrespect the terrorist supporting son of a bitch's corpse? Ludicrous.

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In today's Times, war correspondent Anthony Loyd reports on the current counter-insurgency sweep through an 'undisclosed' valley in Afghanistan by British Royal Marines of the 45 Commando battlegroup, called Operation Ptarmigan.

He also moans at some length that [emphasis added]:

Whilst promising greater detail on the operation after it has finished, the coalition's information policy has been a mixture of assumption and contempt. Morning press briefings at Bagram begin with a US officer stating how many days have passed since the September 11 attacks. He then gives the name and family details of one attack victim. A short statement follows and relevant questions by journalists are quashed as glibly as they are by Pentagon spokesmen in Washington with the words: "I won't answer that."

The justification for this silence is "operational security concerns". In reality it appears that the US and Britain are using the ferocity of the September 11 attacks as carte blanche to be all but unaccountable to press and public.
[...]
This policy will probably work admirably until official silence is revealed to have hidden an unpleasant truth.

So he thinks the US and British military are accountable to the press? Interesting concept. Now Tony Loyd is actually a reasonable reporter (he is certainly a million miles from the ludicrous Bob Fisk and his ilk), but such petulant foot stamping on his part is unbecoming. The newspapers have been roasting the US for allowing Al Qaeda and ex-Taliban forces to slip away, and for failing to achieve operational surprise during Operation Anaconda... and now they are going to roast the coalition military for taking operational security seriously?

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Here is an interesting, much footnoted and rather less upbeat take on Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan by Brendan O'Neill on Sp!ked, a site I find useful and maddening in equal measure.

There is also an interesting article (also by O'Neill) about the domestic political mess that the hapless Karzai is presiding over called When nation-building destroys. However this last article rather misses a major point: firstly regardless of the occasional ill-advised propaganda blurb by the Americans, they are not there to 'nation build' other than en passant... they are there to kill the people responsible for September 11^th. If Afghans insist on killing each other, that is primarily a problem for the Afghans. However it does highlight the madness of getting too deeply involved in Afghanistan's domestic woes as both Dale Amon and I pointed out quite some time ago.

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I've just been perusing the stats in a CNN poll of Americans taken recently and thought this line is worth sharing:

Q23: Now I'd like to ask you a few questions about the U.S. response to the September 11th attacks. Do you approve or disapprove of the military attacks led by the United States against targets in Afghanistan?
               Total     Rep    Dem    Ind            Feb02a
Approve      88%    95%   87%    81%           87%
Disapprove    9%     2%   11%    14%            85%
DK/NA          3%     3%    2%      5%              5%

This is perhaps one of the few times in my life I've found myself in agreement with 9 out of 10 people, although I'd like to at least think I agree more strongly than most.

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I sometimes find myself agreeing with Steven Den Beste's articles but sorry Steven, this is one of the dumbest pieces you have written in a while.

When he is right, he is sometimes very right and when he is wrong, he does tend to descend into crude history-by-Hollywood-stereotype. The picture he displays of two Royal Marines sparing with boxing gloves and an automatic weapon toting US soldier in the background is indeed symbolic... of the fact Steven does not know the slightest thing about modern British attitudes to war, British military culture or British military history.

The symbolism isn't fair to the two Europeans [by which the 'Canadian' Den Beste means British] in the picture. They are members of the Royal Marines who just arrived there, and if they were to go into real combat they'd be armed similar to how the American is. But in a larger sense, it seems to epitomize the difference now in approaches that Europe and the United States want to take to the war: Europe is trying to fight it according to Marquis of Queensbury rules (i.e. "International law", UN resolutions, and all the rest) because honor is the most important thing; the United States, on the other hand, is fighting to win.

People would think Britain had not won a war in the last 100 years if they got their history by reading what Steven writes, let alone in 1982. The Germans, Austrians, Argentines, Malays, Indonesians, Kenyans, Irish, Italians, French, Turks, Greeks, Japanese, Afghans etc. etc. etc. probably have a rather different take on British military culture. There is a reason Britain won in Malaya during The Emergency and the US lost in Vietnam under similar conditions. Marquis of Queensbury? Get real.

Here is a picture I think rather better sums up Britain's 'Red and Green War Machine'

Update:
Note to Steven: Britain, an island off the European coast, may be part of the European Union at the moment, but the EU is not a military alliance in any meaningful way. Any reading of British or European newspapers should make it obvious there is considerable acceptance of the British/European distinction, even by those who lament the fact. Thus your remarks are at best misleading. To describe the British troops in the picture as 'European', given that they are there under British, not 'European' auspices, does rather suggest you think there is no difference between the military or political cultures of mainland Europe and Britain. This is not just incorrect but pretty obviously so.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, the Academy of Drivelling Idiots is proud to announce its award for Best Writer in a Terrorist-Supporting Role. And the nominations are:

Ted Rall for How We Lost Afghanistan

"The principal goal of this adventure in imperialistic vengeance, it seems obvious, should be to install a friendly government in Kabul. But we're winning neither hearts nor minds among either the commoners or the leadership of the current regime apparent"

Robert Fisk for The Awesome Cruelty of a Doomed People

"And then how easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans or any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber."

John Pilger for Inevitable Ring To the Unimaginable

"Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims - principally the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on earth"

Susan Sontag for The Disconnect

"The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy."

And the winner is.....(rustle, rustle, rustle).....ROBERT FISK

(Whoops, cheers, wild applause)

FISK: Thank you. Thank you. I am not worthy of this award. I am not worthy of being so honoured. For I, too, am guilty. I, too, am an opressor (wipes way tear). Save your awards and your honours for all the hapless victims of global capitalism and American imperialism. They are the real heroes and I accept this award on their behalf. I thank you

(More whoops, cheers, wild applause, standing ovation)

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In this report in the Times of India, US reduces reward on Bin Laden, we see the strangest manifestation of the backward bending demand curve I have ever seen!

Update: As a couple people have ask me to simply explain what a 'backward bending demand curve' is, it is a strange and counter intuitive phenomenon in which sometimes as a product gets cheaper, people buy less of it or if a product gets more expensive, they buy more of it. This does not seem to make sense but it does occasionally happen.

Example 1: A high price designer 'name label' dress is offered at a reduced price... still out of reach of the 'woman in the street' buyer. Paradoxically the high end target market buy less of the dresses, presumably because the reduced price indicates it is probably 'last years design' (even if not true, the price is used as the primary source of information by the potential purchaser as to 'what is hot').

Example 2: Soviet made wristwatches, made to uncharacteristically high quality and standards were marketed in Britain in the early 1970's. They were every bit as good as other high quality wristwatches available at the time but were almost half the price. Even though Soviet products were a relative rarity in the UK, British buyers stayed away in droves, presumably taking the view that any watch that cheap had to be complete rubbish. The Soviets were baffled but on advice from a British consultant raised the price to just below the typical UK price and they stared to sell.

Thus, the US is lowering the price on the head on Osama bin Laden in the hope the new level of reward is something rural Afghans can actually relate to in the real world. In each case the specifics are different but price is just a form of information and sometimes if the price of something is unexpectedly high or low, the effects is the opposite of what one might normally expect. That is what I mean by a 'backward bending demand curve'!

Also on reflection, I was thinking of this in terms of the US doing the 'selling' of an outsourced service here (terrorist removal)... but I suppose one could argue that this is a backward bending supply curve: the US is offering money in the hope some impoverished Afghan will 'supply' a dead or bound-hand-and-foot Osama bin Laden

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Yes, I know that the UK has been far and away the most 'involved' of the USA's allies in the war against Al Qaeda, with almost the entire Special Air Service (SAS) being deployed in Afghanistan at one point.

But the latest commitment of 1,700 Royal Marine Commandos to a offensively tasked Brigade forming in Afghanistan is a significant step that indicates a much more robust policy of aggressive engagement by Britain.

Some libertarians will grimace that the state is sending men far away to march to the sound of an American drum, but I for one am delighted, for the enemy in question is the enemy of modern civilisation itself. I live in a major metropolitan area that would make a lovely target for a small nuclear weapon and thus am of the opinion that the only good Al Qaeda is a dead Al Qaeda and I do not much care where the men armed and equipped with my tax money have to go to find them. Godspeed Gentlemen.

The Royal Marines, with their specialised arctic and mountain warfare training and equipment, years of extreme weather training in Norway, air mobility and formidable élan make a very high quality addition to the corkscrew and blowtorch warfare that is to come as the remaining cadres of Taliban/Al Qaeda are exterminated.

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Over on the excellent blog Flit, Bruce has done a good 'back of the envelop' bombing survey that highlights some interesting facets of 'smart' bombing vs. 'dumb' bombing vs. 'real indiscriminate' bombing (i.e Al Qaeda). The article pointing to Bruce's survey "U.S. Aerial bombing: a statistical summary" provides a simple interpretation of what the numbers mean.

This sort of short but thoughtful factually based commentary really does the blogosphere credit and is an excellent example of high quality original content blogging.

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Way back when, I pointed out that DEBKA were making some highly questionable contentions about thousands of Al Qaeda soldiers being airlifted out of Konduz before it fell to the Northern Alliance forces of Generals Daoud Khan and Rashid Dostam. World Net Daily has belatedly picked up on this DEBKA theory.

First of all let me lay my cards on the table and say I think DEBKA are by and large a waste of pixels. Almost nothing they say cannot be deduced from open source data that is also available to anyone with a search engine and a working computer. Their analysis ranges from 'okay' to 'wild conjecture'. What is more, to put it bluntly I am not sure I really trust them or their alleged 'military sources' given the quantity of dubious calls they have made in the past.

Military sources have solved the mystery: The planes belonged to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. Under cover of the Pakistani airlift, 3,000 of the group's fighters were secretly lifted to safety from the besieged towns of Konduz and Khandabad about 15 miles to the south. The double airlift lasted five nights. The planes arriving to ferry Pakistani fighters home were closely shadowed by a phantom airlift extracting al-Qaida personnel.

The rescued Pakistanis were flown to air bases in northwest and central Pakistan. The al-Qaida men were taken long distance to the Persian Gulf emirates, landing, according to Gulf sources, in Abu Dhabi and the Somali town of Baidoa.

My objections to this whole weird scenario remain unchanged from when I first suggested my interpretation of what probably happened in Konduz, which I posted to the Samizdata on November 27^th. This section is relevant and nothing I have read has changed my mind since I wrote it

Likewise I think we can assume no pilot is crazy enough to try to land a large multi-engined jet on an unlit cratered dirt strip at night, so we can safely eliminate any of the large multi-engined Antonov jets.

My guess is that the aircraft in question will turn out to be an Antonov An-26. The Pakistani Airforce operates a single An-26 and it would be perfect for a rough strip landing under less than optimal conditions. My money is on that particular one being the specific aircraft involved in 'The Great Escape'.

DEBKA does not explain where the 'Al Qaeda' air assets came from, how they avoided detection by the USAF/USN and how they managed this feat of night time airmanship with the larger Antonov's than an AN-26 that would be required to get those sort of numbers out of the Konduz pocket. In two other articles on November 28 ^th, I discussed DEBKA's view that it was the Pakistani ISI behind it (and I agreed) but pointed out their numbers did not really add up.

In the very next Samizdata article after that, I pondered the views of Tunku Varadarajan of the WSJ, who was saying much the same, only on the basis of sources probably far more reliable than DEBKA's. Like Tunku Varadarajan, I felt (and still do) that it is hard to believe that the airlift of Pakistanis trapped there was not done with American acquiescence...and therefore indirect observation by sensor (not to mention nearby US and UK Special Forces). Thus it becomes even more fantastical to think a veritable airfleet was going in and out of Konduz unnoticed and unhindered, when all the US was acquiescing to was a limited airlift out of 'sensitive' ISI people. I think we can assume AWACS and JSTARS crews are fairly numerate folks. Unless we see some evidence other than DEBKA's alleged 'military sources', I would recommend treating their story of 3000 Al Qaeda folks winging their way to freedom with considerable skepticism, to put it mildly.

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Over on Matthew Edgar's blog, you can hear the sound of grinding teeth every time mustachioed Rivera prances across the screens at Fox.

As an aside, I was watching the news with my extraordinarily bright grandmother the other day. She was surfing through the cable channels and came to Fox News. As Rivera is completely unknown in Britain, she was unaware he is a fairly well know, even if not widely respected, 'investigative reporter' across the puddle. She watched him declaiming about the situation in Kandahar for a few minutes and then turned to me:

"I think this is an American version of one of those news parody shows like 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'... can you get me a real news channel?"

...whereupon she handed me the remote control.

She was rather perplexed when I started rolling on the floor laughing uncontrollably.

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In my earlier article, as I think Natalija noticed, I spoke primarily of what I think are realistic options on what will happen. My own views are of course imbedded in what I write, but perhaps a clearer statement is in order.

If Mr. Walker is a member of al Qaeda, then there are no options. He should be tried for Treason.

If he is not an al Qaeda member he should be given the option to stay in Afghanistan. He would be handed over to the Northern Alliance with the other foreign Taliban soldiers.

If he wishes to retain his American citizenship and to ever return there, he must take his chances with a Treason trial. If ten years from now he finds he really wants to return, the answer is the same.

There are some rules you must keep to if you chose to be a member of a society. It is one thing to wish to change the society you exist within; it is quite another to work to bring about the deaths of fellow citizens while simultaneously partaking of its' liberties.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

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It's a hard call without really knowing what Mr. Walker was up to and why. There is little doubt in my mind that he should be tried for Treason; whether or not he is convicted, whether or not there were extenuating circumstances is a matter for the courts to decide. The fact that he was found where he was found is rather damning evidence but is not "beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt".

What should be done with him if he is found guilty? That again is a matter for the courts. We don't know what he actually did so how can we decide his fate from in front of our comfortable computer screens? For all we know he could have been dragged along by events and lain cowering in the basement wondering at his own idiocy. Or perhaps he went to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance never imagining he could end up fighting his own country. After all, on September 10th how many of us would have considered US forces in Afghanistan as even the remotest possibility? If that were the case he is a soldier of fortune who got caught up in the wrong war at the wrong time. A few years in prison and a slap on the wrist would suffice.

Of course as Glenn Reynolds has suggested a number of times, we could take it as given he has chosen to give up his US Citizenship. We could leave him to the tender mercies of his chosen enemies, the Northern Alliance. An article about his interrogation in Ananova seems to indicate the CIA men were thinking along these lines just before "the balloon went up":

On the tape, Walker is seen being brought to the two CIA men for interrogation. Spann is then seen saying to his colleague: "I explained to him what the deal is" and then tells Walker: "It's up to you." Dave then says: "The problem is, he's got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he's going to die here. "Or he's going to f****** spend the rest of his short f****** life in prison. It's his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.

If he was there specifically to fight against America, there are no options. He should be put away for a very long time. And if he was actively assisting the al Qaeda... well that is another kettle of sharks entirely. He would, and should, face the death penalty.

Fortunately we have the right President for it.

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It has been widely reported that no sooner does the multi-party conference in Germany select pashtun leader Hamid Karzai as the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan than a stray 2000lb JDAM bomb from a USAF B-52 comes within a hair's breadth of killing him. I suspect the only reason the conspiracy theorists are not already in full voice on this one is that three US soldiers were killed in the same incident.

But give them time... once it has rattled around in their heads for a few days, the dark theories will start to emerge. You think I am wrong? Well if an armed prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif can be reported in some quarters as a 'massacre involving US forces' in spite of the fact a German TV crew caught on video a captured prisoner blowing himself with a hidden grenade (and injuring attractive British ITN reporter Andrea Catherwood) and SkyNew filmed outgoing rifle, machinegun and mortar fire (having a camera man injured in the process), then methinks you underestimate the strangeness of the conspiratorial mindset. When wild and woolly theories about Hamid Karzai's close call start to appear, I call on all Samizdata readers to e-mail them in to us.

Emmanuel Goldstein and I have crossed swords over this one on the Libertarian Alliance forum. That said, I do not regard Emmanuel as a complete looney tune conspiracy theorist (in spite of some intemperate remarks I may have made in the past), merely someone with a few looney tune theories and his Airstrip One blog is not without it's perverse charms.

Although I am someone who finds 90% of all conspiracy theories not just bogus but ludicrous, they do have a certain entertainment value. I have my own pet theories regarding the conspiracy fetishists (as I prefer to call them). One of my more sublime discoveries after reading many of them is that they almost all, if you regress them far enough, will be traced back to the Knights Templar.

As Fox Mulder of the X-Files would say, "The truth is out there"... but so is the paranoid bullshit. And so for your edification, gentle reader, I present my semi-serious conspiracy meta-theory:

The vast majority of conspiracy theories tell us nothing about the subject matter of the conspiracy but quite a lot about the mind of the theorists themselves. However the endless procession of conspiracy theories are in fact perpetuated by institutions with real conspiracies to hide on the basis that when a true conspiracy theory actually hits the mark, it will then be dismissed out of hand as the paranoid ravings of a fantasist.

Are you impressed? You should be: that is an anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy theory!

Of course as I fit the profile of a sinister globalist illuminatus myself, you can safely assume I am just saying these things to conceal The Truth.

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Calling all pedantic obsessives who read the Samizdata.

I have had two e-mails from eagle-eyed blog readers with way too much time in their hands. Both asked me why I have been referring to Northern Alliance General Daoud Khan as General Daoud whilst calling other Generals by their surnames (i.e. General Dostam, General Musharraf, General Franks)?

Well, because everyone else has been calling him General Daoud.

But that got me thinking...why?

Then I realised the answer: the surname name Khan in that part of the world is rather like Smith in the English speaking world. There are two Generals called Khan in the Northern Alliance: The Tajik Daoud Khan from the Panshir Valley (who just captured Konduz) and the Herati Ismail Khan from Herat in the north-west of Afghanistan (who captured Herat from the Taliban a few weeks ago).

So now you know.

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...with advance apologies to a certain nameless Reuters reporter who occasionally posts his own articles to the Samizdata.

This little gem was pointed out to us by Mathew Drachenberg on the hilarious satirical U Thant.com site (recommended). As you might know, Reuters have been heavily criticised for refusing to call Al Qaeda 'terrorists':

NEWSFLASH! 12:00PM 11/20/01
Reuters Journalists Die in Taliban Ambush
Reuters reports that "so-called murderers" may have "in the opinion of some Westerners, killed" individuals that "Reuters claims were journalists." Witnesses say that the journalists had no warning of the impending irony before the terrorists shot them.

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What little was reported in the US on the Antonovs was there were some aircraft sent by Pakistan to get out some Chechans and Pakistani nationals "working for the Taliban." The impression was a bunch of unfortunate clerks caught in a bad situation and fearing for their lives petioned their government to save them from maurading liberators.

It was only mentioned briefly with no follow-up and no real details. Certainly no mention that it was a rescue airlift of combatants.

Personally, I've got to believe that the only way anything could have made the run four times was the US allowed it. This is supported by the fact the final flight was forced away by Northern Alliance ground troops - who obviously weren't privy to the arrangement - and still managed to escape without fighter contact.

Theories abound on why we let them escape. A couple of my favorites are:
1) it was a political bone for our hard-pressed ally, Pakistan.
2) it will be a pretext to move on to phase two when the mainstream press suddenly discovers that, " a large number of Al Qaeda and Taliban warriors who made a daring escape in the final hours before the fall of Konduz have been located in ____ (fill in the blank)"

It could be that Bush is very aware of the evil snakes still lurking in the political garden at home and sees this as a way to end run their upcoming machinations. Instead of widening the war, he will be simply following up on his promise to get "all those who aid and abet the terrorists." On another personal note, there are a number of notables in both the House and the Senate that, given their to zeal to discredit Bush and the Republician Party, could reasonably be described with those words.

Only time and independent news reporters will tell.

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Judging from the number of e-mails I have received with theories of what the the hell might have happened, the story of the audacious escape by Al Qaeda terrorists from Konduz via covert airlift was interesting to many who read this blog. Yet what I really find fascinating is that the US media never did pick up on this story. I would be curious to hear from any Samizdata readers in America if this sorry tale was reported anywhere in the USA.

Now call me naive if you will, but I was under the impression the whole reason for the US involvement in Afghanistan was to apprehend or (preferably) kill as many members of Al Qaeda as humanly possible.

So how in the hell is the escape of three Antonov transport aircraft full of Al Qaeda fighters from Konduz not a major story? David Chater of SkyNews claimed in a new report that I saw at about 14:15 GMT today that the facts were corroborated by source after source within now liberated Konduz, so it really does seem to be a legitimate story. David Williams also mentions this incident in passing today in the Daily Mail. He reports speculation in Konduz that the aircraft were sent by Pakistan to evacuate trapped Pakistani Al Qaeda or Taliban supporters as part of some secret deal (with the US? With the Northern Alliance?). This seems to be just one of several conspiracy theories circulating on the mysterious Konduz airlift during the last days before the Northern Alliance took the city.

Granted, it is not the end of the world and hopefully the US military will catch up with these 'gentlemen' again sooner or later, but it is certainly not a trivial incident: so why the deafening silence? CNN have reporter Satinder Bindra in Konduz as well, yet all we get in his reports are soggy 'human interest' pieces like "I saw three dead Taliban on the streets today..." (cue video of dead Taliban soldiers covered in flies) and "A Pakistani is taken off in a truck, accused of being a Taliban supporter"...(cue video of terrified bearded Pakistani man being heaved into a truck by grim faced Tajik Northern Alliance soldiers). In short, clueless MTV style photo-journalism rather than serious reporting.

What on earth is going on here? How very curious indeed.

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It seems the reporters in Afghanistan have decided to start a little war of their own. As in all wars, a very high proportion of the correspondents are British and they seem to be itching to take digs at each other. Has someone been denying these guys their early morning cup of tea or something?

John Simpson has naturally attracted more than his fair share of flak after claiming he and the BBC liberated Kabul ahead of the Northern Alliance. Of course Lara Logan from GMTV had actually been in Kabul for some time before Simpson's portly frame rumbled into town.

And speaking of the truly delectable Lara Logan, ITN's sour puss Julian Manyon accused her of "exploiting her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy" to get interviews with General Babajan.

But note he does not criticize her reporting, which has been just as sound and professional as Julian Manyon. Time for a reality check: if you were General Babajan, who would you rather chat with, Lara Logan or Julian Manyon? Sorry Julian, no contest.

Somehow I suspect that if it had been Lara skinny dipping in the Salang Gorge rather than Manyon, the locals would have taken a considerably less hostile stance.

And of course, the Guardian cannot resist a little sniping either:

Speaking of Kabul. Has Lara Logan, the GMTV correspondent stationed outside Kabul had her Clarins drop yet? Don't know about the US airforce plans, but the French cosmetics company is on the case already.

Journalists are a bitchy lot.

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When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Rudyard Kipling (extract from 'The Young British Soldier')

For more Kipling verse, see everypoet.com.

The Americans have the right idea: get involved with the enemies of our enemies, and make it clear to them all we want to do is kill said mutual enemies, not mess in their internal affairs. Offer them money by all means but to even contemplate 'peacekeeping' or 'stabilisation forces' is utter madness.

The West, no, who are we kidding...the USA and to a lesser extent the UK, can play a constructive role by tying ongoing aid to more moderate behaviour by the future rulers in Kabul. But for goodness sake, realise that the victorious army we have backed hates Taliban/Al Qaeda because they allowed large numbers of armed foreigners into the country (Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens etc.). It is absurd to suggest large numbers of British troops are going to be any more acceptable.

It is obvious that the anti-Taliban/anti-Al Qaeda forces are more than happy to work with small scale deployment of special forces, but to suggest 6,000 regular British soldiers will be seen the same way is a grave misjudgement. A brigade sized British force would be there for only one reason: to act as a counter balance to the various local armies. From the perspective of the 'Northern Alliance', what possible good could that serve other than to dilute their hard won gains?

Let's keep our eyes on the ball people. We are in this ghastly hell hole called Afghanistan for one purpose and one purpose only: to destroy Al Qaeda and just incidentally to destroy the Taliban because they stand in the way of that objective. Sure, lets help them form a stable society that suits not just their interests but also our own by removing a breeding ground for terrorist vipers... but leave the armed aspect of politics and the 'peacekeeping' to the locals. We can give wise counsel but to suggest we could forcibly keep this armed-to-the-teeth society from fighting amongst themselves if they are determined to do so is ridiculous.

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Julian Manyon sees the devastation wrought by the B-52s, but says that the fall of Kabul is not the end of the struggle. He gives an excellent eyewitness report in The Spectator from the front line in Afghanistan.

I look forward to hearing from all those out there in 'establishment pundit land' who sneered at the effect of the US bombing.