I was raised by an Anglo-Saxon trial lawyer (himself the son of another Anglo-Saxon trial lawyer)
...continue Arguments about drone-killing]]> I have been paying almost zero attention to President Obama’s campaign of robotised aerial execution, beyond noting that it has been happening. I didn’t know if this drone-killing was doing good, or harm, or what, besides the potential harm of causing governments maybe later to incline towards drone-killing or drone-harassing their domestic enemies, when foreign enemies have run out or have negotiated a truce. I still don’t know what I think about drone-killing, but recent Islamo-American dramas made me wonder slightly more than usual.

I was raised by an Anglo-Saxon trial lawyer (himself the son of another Anglo-Saxon trial lawyer) and by the daughter of yet another Anglo-Saxon trial lawyer. Barristers, we call these creatures over here. This was the mental and conversational equivalent of being raised by wolves. My father was eloquent enough to present very good arguments. My mother was eloquent enough to stop him ever pulling rank to win such arguments. We all had our turn.

Which may be why I understand things best by watching people argue about them. Only when there is disagreement do the experts feel the need to try to persuade the humans of their own rightness and of the other experts’ wrongness, and thus to speak in clear English rather than in very unclear Expert. And only then do I have much of a chance of getting a handle on things.

Today, the indispensable Instapundit pointed me towards just the sort of drone-killing arguments I had been keeping about a quarter of any eye out for.

Robert Wright, commenting on an article by Micah Zenko, concludes thus:

If this is a strategy for eliminating terrorists, what would a strategy for creating them look like?

This story, as Zenko and Wright tell it, reminds me of the classic counter-terrorism movie The Battle of Algiers. In this movie, the French soldiers spend almost the entire movie winning, by torturing and then killing all their enemies. And then in the final seconds of the movie, they lose. More enemies, enraged by the injustices suffered by their predecessors and clever enough to avoid suffering the same fate as them, have sprung forth out of nowhere. Hearts and minds are not, said this movie, won merely by the most hostile ones being blown to pieces. You have to win the argument.

The good news is that England did achieve total domination over Afghanistan, just two days ago. But, alas, this was only at twenty overs each way cricket.

LATER: Cricket? Sorry I mentioned it.

A spokesman for the Taliban contacted the Afghanistan Cricket Board on the morning of the game to wish the team well and assure them they would be remembered in their prayers.

Pakistan won at a canter, but the Afghans did not disgrace themselves, in their first ODI against a top ranked, Full Member, test playing nation.

Afghan minister of finance Dr Omar Zakhilwal:

“The event appears to have united the entire country. … There is nothing
...continue “Nothing can touch cricket as a force for good in Afghanistan …”]]> From a Cricinfo piece by George Dobell, about the one day cricket international between Afghanistan and Pakistan, played in the United Arab Emirates yesterday:

A spokesman for the Taliban contacted the Afghanistan Cricket Board on the morning of the game to wish the team well and assure them they would be remembered in their prayers.

Pakistan won at a canter, but the Afghans did not disgrace themselves, in their first ODI against a top ranked, Full Member, test playing nation.

Afghan minister of finance Dr Omar Zakhilwal:

“The event appears to have united the entire country. … There is nothing that can touch cricket in popularity or as a force for good in Afghanistan. There is absolutely nothing else that mobilises our society in the same way. Not politics, political events or reconstruction.”

Cricket, says Dobell, is booming in Afghanistan:

Not only is the international team now full time, but there are league teams in 28 of the 34 provinces …

However, Dobell goes on to report that:

… the sport will be made compulsory as part of the school curriculum.

And you get the definite feeling that Dobell thinks that’s good. I am a rabid cricket fan, but I say that nothing puts many people off a sport more completely than being made to play it against their will. For sport, read: anything.

I remember school contemporaries who would have preferred being in the Taliban to playing bloody cricket.

- The opening sentences of a Wired piece by Spencer Ackerman entitled Either Your Phone Plays Taliban Ringtones, or You Die

- I heard an American voice saying that, in connection with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, while I was transferring a recording I had made of a show called The World’s Deadliest Arms Race (shown in the UK about a month ago on Channel 4 TV) from my TV hard disc onto a DVD.

One of the best things about recording TV shows, as opposed to merely watching them, is being able to wind back and find out exactly who said something of particular interest,
...continue Samizdata quote of the day]]> We’ve already killed all the dumb terrorists, so all that’s left are the smart ones.

- I heard an American voice saying that, in connection with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, while I was transferring a recording I had made of a show called The World’s Deadliest Arms Race (shown in the UK about a month ago on Channel 4 TV) from my TV hard disc onto a DVD.

One of the best things about recording TV shows, as opposed to merely watching them, is being able to wind back and find out exactly who said something of particular interest, and exactly what it consisted of. The above words, I quickly learned, were spoken by a big, tough guy in a black T-shirt by the name of Marine Staff Sergeant Jack Pierce. They come right near the end of the show, which lasts just over forty five minutes.

Ssgt. Pierce was reflecting on how he and the rest of the crew of the vehicle they were all in were subjected to attack with an I(mprovised) E(xplosive) D(evice). Six of the crew were badly wounded, including Ssgt. Pierce who is now paralysed from the chest downwards. The other two died instantly.

For example, I am no friend of the Slave Empire (sorry the “Slave Holding States of America” popularly known as the “Confederacy”), and I consider the struggle against the Axis Powers (National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan) and the struggle against international Marxism, as two great achievements of the United States and Britain (and their allies) in the 20th century – not as shameful statism which should be condemned.

I even supported going into Afghanistan. It seemed the correct response to
...continue Is the Afghan War lost?]]> I am not a consistent non-interventionist – as some people are fond of reminding me.

For example, I am no friend of the Slave Empire (sorry the “Slave Holding States of America” popularly known as the “Confederacy”), and I consider the struggle against the Axis Powers (National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan) and the struggle against international Marxism, as two great achievements of the United States and Britain (and their allies) in the 20th century – not as shameful statism which should be condemned.

I even supported going into Afghanistan. It seemed the correct response to 9/11 and the other attacks by Bin Laden organization, to hunt him down and to hunt down his ally Mullah Omar, the creator of the Taliban – contrary to popular propaganda the Taliban was not created by the CIA to fight the Soviets.

However, it soon became clear that the Bush Administration was not making the hunting down of Bin Laden and Mullah Omar their top priority – which is most likely why the two men remain un-captured almost a decade after 9/11. Instead the Bush Administration fell in love with the Woodrow Wilson style “nation building” agenda of the “neo-cons”.

My attitude to the neo-cons is more nuanced than the attitude of most libertarians – in that I do not despise all of them. For example, I regard Frank Gaffney as a professional, I do not share some of his political opinions, but he is not a fool. Unlike most of the leading neo-cons who lined up to list the mistakes of the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan (mistakes often directly connected to their own wildly optimistic assumptions – a “detail” they tended to leave out) for Vanity Faire magazine in 2004 – in return for a promise that the article would not be published till after the election. That they were genuinely surprised when the magazine promptly broke this promise indicates a level of stupidity bordering on mental retardation. However, most neo-cons seem to believe that all cultures are fundamentally the same, and that all people everywhere would be happy democrats (small d democrats) if only the nasty dictators were removed and a lot of help given by the American (and British) taxpayer. To be polite this point of view is in error.

The Founding Fathers, like most political thinkers in Britain at the time – indeed even up to the First World War, were very wary of the word “democracy” (associating it with mob rule – whipped up by demagogues) and held that even a Constitutional Republic could only exist in a certain culture – a culture of mainly moral people capable of strong self control (thus making external control unnecessary), dominated by ideas of self help and mutual aid, not envy of those who had things they did not, and filled with a profound and stable religious faith – and not any old religion, but specific types of religion. This did not mean that they did not support freedom of religion (on the contrary they most certainly did), but they did not believe that, for example, a land where most people believed in a religion that justified the plundering of others would have a good polity.

In many ways a “Republican people” are the exact opposite of a “Democratic mob” – but such distinctions are utterly lost on most neo-cons, whose policy in Afghanistan ignored such ideas.

The regime of President Karzai in Afghanistan is, let us please be blunt, utterly revolting.

His drunk dealing brother, the rest of the endless corruption, the President speaking out of two sides of his mouth (attacking the West – and working with the enemies of the West, whilst demanding ever more aid) stinks to high heaven.

A debate should have been had long ago about whether President Karzai (and the rest of his regime) are typical products of a corrupt local culture (a culture that made “nation building” a non-starter as a policy) or whether the regime was made up atypical people, and that if they were not in office perhaps “nation building” might actually work.

Let us give the neo-cons the benefit of the doubt and assume that President Karzai and company are atypical (the scum has risen to the top – after all it often does in Britain and the United States), even with this assumption there is still a vast problem.

The rigging of the last Presidential election in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration both did nothing to prevent the rigging, and did nothing after the rigged results were announced. At that point many observers gave up all real hope for the Afghan war.

However, the neo-cons clung to their policy – we must “work with Karzai” (that Karzai was also “working” with the Sunni Taliban, to try and save his own skin, and with Shia Iran, caught taking vast sums in cash from Iranian representatives, did not seem to impress the minds of the neo-cons). Trusting the Karzai seems like a mistake straight out of “Carry on Up the Khyber” – but then I doubt the great minds who influence policy watch Carry On films (most likely they would think they are “racist” anyway).

The Taliban will, most likely, murder Karzai eventually – but that will not stop the man, as foolish as he is corrupt, desperately trying to make deals with them (especially as the Obama Administration has basically suggest this by saying they are going to draw down American forces – pretending victory as a 2012 election stunt). And the “hastener” Shia regime in Iran (working to cover the world in “fire and blood” so that the 12th Iman may return and exterminate all infidels – much like the Book of Revelations with the Anti-Christ winning) does not really think much of Karzai either, they most likely intend to give him the death of ten thousand cuts, but that will not stop them giving him money – or stop the man trying to please them by telling them everything he knows about Western political and military matters. The Taliban, being radical Sunni, reject the idea that the man on the white horse being the 12th Iman – to them, as with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood generally, he will be the Mahdi – but they are happy with the exterminating the infidels all over the world bit.

We can not carry on like this – as recent events have made clear.

Contrary to what is being reported the news of the burning of a copy of the Koran in Florida did not at once set off severe trouble in Afghanistan (“where or what is Florida?” seems to have been the general response). It was President Karzai decided to whip up trouble that various UN aid workers (and so on) were cut to bits – and it was not the Taliban who did it, the attack was in the north (not in their southern strongholds) and was by a mob – not by a small team of terrorists.

After Karzai did his double dealing dance of (I am using more plain language than he did) “my beautiful warriors, we can not tolerate this insult – kill! KILL!” and “my dear Western friends, you see how difficult the people are to control – you must sent me more money, and get rid of those irritating auditors…” the scales should have fallen from the eyes of even the most stupid neo-con – but it was not “just” this.

The authorities in Pakistan (not just the intelligence organization the ISI – but elements of the military and the civilian government also) have been playing a double game from the start. Taking money from the West (endless billions) whilst trying to make deals with the Taliban at the same time – even though the Taliban has made it perfectly clear that it intends to exterminate anyone in Pakistan who does not accept its interpretation of Islam (not “just” Sufi Muslims – anyone). Of course this does not stop the Taliban taking money from the Shia regime in Iran (any more than it stops Hamas from taking support from the Iranian regime) – the man on the white horse will decide who are the true Muslims (and who is to be exterminated) when he arrives. Of course none of this stops the over “educated” people who make up the establishment of Britain and the United States thinking they can “talk to the Taliban” – what would such talks be about? The method of execution for all infidels (including moderate Muslims) in the world?

However, the double dealing of the Pakistani government has now come out into the open.

Indeed the Pakistani regime (not the ISI – but the civilian government itself) has ordered out CIA employees from the country – because one CIA contractor broke the “rules” (he killed the people sent to kill him).

Intelligence has already collapsed in Pakistan (and around the world) because of the Obama Administration’s failure to even try and question anyone captured. Indeed the drone policy of Obama Administration (if there seem to be enemy about – blow the place up, do not worry the media will give you a pass if civilians die, because you are a Progressive like them) has the unspoken “we do not want prisoners because we do not know what to do with them” message. CIA prisons (around the world) have been closed and everyone has been informed that Army Field Manual is to be followed in trying to get information out of prisoners.

Therefore a de facto “no prisoners” policy is in effect (partly because there is no where to put prisoners, and partly because the Army Field Manual means that no information can be got out of them anyway). I am not a soft hearted person so perhaps the humanitarian side of the de facto “no prisoners – blow everyone up with drones, and anyone who happens to be anywhere near as well” policy does not bother me as much as it should. But the fact that the United States government is now as blind and deaf (as lacking in any real information) as it was before 9/11 (indeed, if anything, it has less information than it did before 9/11 – when the info was there, but no one had “joined up the dots”) does bother me.

What also bothers me is that with Pakistan now openly in the enemy camp the war in Afghanistan is utterly hopeless.

“Oh you are just an non-interventionist trying to justify despair, Paul”.

Is Charles Krauthammer a “non-interventionist”?

No he is not – he is, in fact, the king of the interventionists, and has been for many years.

Yet I have seen Charles Krauthammer (on several television shows – i.e. quite openly) saying that is hopeless giving the Pakistani government any more money – because they are now clearly (as seen by the kicking out of CIA employees) a hostile power.

Think about that – Pakistan a hostile power. And the supply lines to Afghanistan go through…..

Would anyone still like argue that the Afghan war is not lost?

The struggle with both the Shia “hasterner” regime of Iran, and the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood will continue (inside Britain and the United States as much as anywhere else), but the operation in Afghanistan appears to be totally untenable.

So what. Free speech kills, we knew that. The lack of it kills more. Blame the murders on the murderers.

It should be allowed, but is it, or can it be, right to burn the Koran? In general I have contempt for those who deliberately insult what another holds dear. The fact that I uphold the right to say anything should strengthen, not weaken, my willingness to judge what is said. I despise Pastor Jones. I despise the members of Al-Muhajiroun whose insults to dead soldiers gave birth to the English Defence League.

Allies at odds over death of hostage in bungled rescue

The story is behind a paywall. It does not matter. I am only interested in the headline and whoever wrote it.

Do these people have any idea at all of what life-or-death fighting is actually like? I do not demand that they have actually done any before writing about it; little would ever be reported about war if that were the test. But they could at least have read a few memoirs, or talked to their grandfathers. Reading about the Dieppe Raid might put things
...continue Tuesday morning replay]]> Today’s Times has the headline:

Allies at odds over death of hostage in bungled rescue

The story is behind a paywall. It does not matter. I am only interested in the headline and whoever wrote it.

Do these people have any idea at all of what life-or-death fighting is actually like? I do not demand that they have actually done any before writing about it; little would ever be reported about war if that were the test. But they could at least have read a few memoirs, or talked to their grandfathers. Reading about the Dieppe Raid might put things in perspective.

Hint: it is not like planning a dinner party. With that sort of thing if you make a careful list of Things To Do and do them all in good time you generally can be reasonably confident that it will work out OK and if it does not work out OK, say the soufflé does not rise or the wine was too sweet, it probably was because someone bungled.

Military small group operations – by which I mean small group killings of people who can also kill you – are not like that. They always hang on a knife edge. The most skilled soldiers in the world frequently die young and frequently fail. A hand is a fraction of a second too slow on the trigger – a human mind is a fraction of a second slower than another, hostile, human mind to make sense of the confusion – and a comrade dies, or a hostage dies, and a lifetime of agonized mental replaying of that moment of failure begins.

Six hours later a headline writer in an office far away expresses his displeasure.

After the match, I had to go to do a post-match media conference and they all wanted to know how it felt to beat USA, but the opposition didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to win another cricket match.

I love getting the chance to play against different countries and this was the first time we had ever played USA in an international match. I could never have dreamed when I was young, that I would one day play them in a cricket game.

I am
...continue USA defeated by Afghanistan]]> Read about it here. Victorious Afghan Hamid Hassan blogs about it here:

After the match, I had to go to do a post-match media conference and they all wanted to know how it felt to beat USA, but the opposition didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to win another cricket match.

I love getting the chance to play against different countries and this was the first time we had ever played USA in an international match. I could never have dreamed when I was young, that I would one day play them in a cricket game.

I am a big fan of American television and movies and my favourite film is  Rocky  – I vividly remember watching it when I was growing up – and one of my heroes is Sylvester Stallone.

I think that there is a similarity in the story of Rocky and the Afghanistan cricket team – we both started at the bottom and gradually made our way up the rankings. …

Gradually? I thought Rocky did it with one fight.

Seriously though, it’s fun to see a guy so gripped by the American ideal of the common man excelling, and as a result … defeating America.

The way Hamid Hassan writes about Rocky and Silvester Stallone and so on makes me also think of this piece, about how the imminent decline into relative insignificance of the USA is once again being oversold, in which Joshua Kurlantzick says:

Most important, the United States is a champion of an idea that has global appeal, and Asia is not.

Although my part of the blogosphere is very anti-Obama just now, what with Obama seemingly hell-bent on ruining the USA’s economy, the rise of Obama to being President of the USA must look like a very similar kind of story to Rocky, if you are someone like Hamid Hassan.

What is the world coming to when a valued member of the armed services takes off under fire and leaves their comrades chasing their tails wondering what happened to her? And it should be noted there were persistent rumours that far from being
...continue Australian deserter in Afghanistan gets a free pass?]]> A member of the Australian military went missing in the middle of a deadly clash with the Taliban then, fourteen months later, she just wanders back into camp. Is a court martial convened to see if she is guilty of desertion? No, people just shrug their shoulders and start playing tennis with her. What madness is this?

What is the world coming to when a valued member of the armed services takes off under fire and leaves their comrades chasing their tails wondering what happened to her? And it should be noted there were persistent rumours that far from being held captive by the Taliban, she was sniffing around an area of Afghanistan notorious for opium production while her compatriots were risking their lives facing down the enemy. How can this not cause serious repercussions when she wanders back to base after being located by US soldiers (who reportedly said she was a real bitch)? Shocking.

Doucet wishes to show the motives and perceptions of the Afghan population, yet uses the term Taliban rather than Afghan: her true target is those who resist, not those who
...continue Man’s inhumanity to taliban]]> Lynne Doucet, talking at the Edinburgh International Television Conference, gave a speech on the complexities of reporting in Afghanistan. She lamented that she was unable to convey the complexities of the conflict or the perspective of the Taliban factions. Whilst some may view this as a criticism of television reporting in general, snippets of her speech show the quest for impartiality. Let us consider what she says within that framework.

Doucet wishes to show the motives and perceptions of the Afghan population, yet uses the term Taliban rather than Afghan: her true target is those who resist, not those who support:

“What’s lacking in the coverage of the Afghans is the sense of the humanity of the Afghans.

“In the Prince Harry coverage for example, there were all these people out there you never really saw them.

“You knew that the bombs were dropping in that direction and the guns pointing in that direction but you never got a sense of how Afghans are as a people.”

In further detail, she notes the factionalism of the Taliban, yet does not move beyond her original goal of giving the opponents a voice or conveying their ‘humanity’. Doucet understands that part of her moral mission is to explain the complexities of the conflict, but her method is to give the mic to the other side.

Her impartiality is already flawed by her admission that journalists in Afghanistan support the troops through coverage of the Prince Harry mission:

Canadian-born Doucet said: “It probably did bring a lot of people to think about Afghanistan who normally wouldn’t ordinarily think about Afghanistan. If the Prince Harry story can bring more people to think about Afghanistan then that’s a good thing.

“There was a lost opportunity. There was hardly any mention of Afghans, even of Afghanistan … (just a) sense of ‘I went to a country far away’.

But she added: “Viewing figures went up, Prince Harry got a hero’s welcome and recruitment for the British Army went up so an objective was achieved. Did that mean people knew more about why Britain was there? I don’t think so.

Doucet wishes to be the gatekeeper for explaining the conflict: living up to her perceived concept of impartiality by maintaining a position of neutrality and providing access to all parties fighting in Afghanistan. But her freedom to report is bounded by the protection that the Western forces provide: the Taliban would neither respect her as a woman or as a non-Muslim. Without this understanding of her own limited freedom of movement, she is unable to provide a rounded understanding of the limits to reporting in Afghanistan.

Journalists find that they are unable to report voices where values are incommensurable and their own position is at risk, since they are viewed as the enemy. Underneath all the verbiage, Doucet’s unspoken lament is that the Taliban consider her the enemy too, when all she wishes to do is understand them. Poor lamb.

“So I got down with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield. It was a case of either having four of us as fatalities or badly wounded – or one. I brought my legs up to my chest in the brace position and waited for the explosion.”

The short version: he set off a booby-trap (the old tripwire/grenade shtick) in the middle of his patrol, jumped on the grenade and his body
...continue Eight of nine lives used…]]> … this guy needs to buy a cat and take some well deserved ‘chill time’ for, oh, the rest of his life maybe?

“So I got down with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield. It was a case of either having four of us as fatalities or badly wounded – or one. I brought my legs up to my chest in the brace position and waited for the explosion.”

The short version: he set off a booby-trap (the old tripwire/grenade shtick) in the middle of his patrol, jumped on the grenade and his body armour and the stuff in his backpack took the brunt of the explosion. Other than getting blown through the air, this Royal Marine walked away pretty much in one piece. Fortitude and insane luck are a very cool combination.

Let me offer the Lance Corporal a career suggestion: head back to civilian life and get a job doing endorsements for a certain backpack manufacturer.

I find myself watching YouTube more than TV these days.