We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I thought this was an interesting article in Government Executive Magaine (being a typical libertarian governmentophobe, this not my usual reading I must confess). It is essentially a US Army lamentation and paean to the USMC:
The fact that the Marine Corps was needed to extend into what most Army officers consider their service’s territory had some of them wondering where Army leaders were when the mission planning decisions were being made. “If this doesn’t raise questions about Army relevance then I don’t know what would,” said one infantry captain who says he is beginning to think he might feel more at home in the Marine Corps than in the Army.
and
“You’ve got to give the Marine Corps credit for trying to make themselves useful,” said Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for a New American Century and a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. “At least they’re making some attempt to respond to what the country needs to have done. The Army just seems to be spending most of its intellectual effort trying to find ways to stay out of it.”
Ah, I love the smell of inter-service rivalry in the morning. It smells of…victory.
With thanks to Graham V. for pointing the Samizdata at Government Executive Magaine.
When I read about people like the hilarious American Center for Law and Justice and Family Research Council calling for on-line censorship, I am not sure if I should laugh or snarl… perhaps both. In an article in Charisma News Service, they say things like:
This is an important opportunity for the Supreme Court to protect children in the ongoing battle against online porn,” said Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). “This measure…represents a proper and constitutional protection to ensure that pornographers don’t commercially profit from making pornography available to children,” Sekulow said. “The First Amendment protects free speech — but was never intended to permit the sale or distribution of porn to children on the Internet or anywhere else.
Hmmm. Although as a libertarian I do not usually argue matters on constitutional grounds but rather moral ones (a constitution is just a statement of rights, not the source of them), let us look at the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Now perhaps my copy of the US Constitution is an abridged version but no matter how many times I read it, I cannot see the bit that says:
However freedom of speech, and of the press, can have the crap abridged out of it if computers and the Internet are involved.
Will some legal scholar who reads the Samizdata please take pity and e-mail me and point out in which section of the US Constitution’s apocrypha is that passage to be found?
Now even if these authoritarian statist clowns got their way (unlikely), exactly how do they think a US law is going to prevent 15 year old Hank from Peoria taking a peek at a nice pair of titties on a web server in Amsterdam? These people are not just control freaks, they are pretty damn stupid
Have you ever noticed that groups calling themselves Pro-Family are often the ones who actually want the state to pass laws which remove responsibility from the family and make it a matter of criminal law? If little Hank from Peoria wants to look at porn on-line, why is that not a matter for the family to sort out? I suspect if these people think a US law will have the slightest effect on the global proliferation of on-line porn, then perhaps they are also sufficiently obtuse not to realise that the computer they purchased for little Hank also has an off switch. Doh!
Now Dawson is certainly entitled to his opinion that the Colt .45 “has never been surpassed as a combat weapon side arm”, but I think times have moved on. Sure, it is a fine choice, but I cannot see any real advantage over more modern .40 cal weapons like the excellent SIG 229 but I can see several disadvantages. The SIG has 12 rounds in the magazine (vs. 7 in the Colt), is a smooth double action out of the box and just as reliable as the venerable 1911-A1 (and it’s various grandchildren). To be honest, I think the Colt is only really competitive these days if heavily modified (polished feed ramp, extended slide release etc.). Most importantly, I just don’t like a Colt style lock safety in a combat piece… it is just too easy to forget that it is on at the moment of truth and too dangerous to leave it off in the mean time.
Don’t get me wrong, the Colt .45 is a great weapon and fun to shoot but when the chips are down and it is time for business…I want a 40 cal SIG 229…Don’t leave home without it.
I just felt like posting this short piece from the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke that he wrote a few years ago.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights–the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery–hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
Quite so.
Then read this article Too many cooks about the multiplicity of players involved and their differing agendas. The article also suggests that the Taliban execution of Abdul Haq might have been due to him being set up by the ISI:
The USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which reportedly attaches greater importance to the co-operation with the United Front than to that with Pakistan’s intelligence establishment, and is distrustful of the ISI. This has been particularly so since the capture and execution of Abdul Haq, the CIA’s mole in the Pashtun community, by the Taliban in October.
However, do keep in mind that as the author is a member of the Indian establishment, a rather jaundiced view of Pakistan as the font of all worldly evil is to be expected. That said, just because he is Indian does not make him incorrect and the whole article is an interesting piece of analysis.
There is also an interesting take on the ‘Konduz airlift’ that suggests it was carried out by Pakistan in the confusion rather than with US complicity. I have my doubts on that but only time will tell what really happened. I fully expect that incident will become fodder for conspiracy theorists for years to come.
This is actually a very good site and I shall be keeping an eye on it in the future.
Thanks to Samizdata reader Bob Van Andel for pointing us at the Afgha.com site (availible in English and French).
It is remarkable when a man such as Christopher Hitchens makes the transformation from Prince of Darkness of the Socialist Left to something pretty damn close to a libertarian. He is on excellent form in this article in The Nation.
He even favored us with the most witless and fatalistic of the recent naysayings, to the effect that if we kill Osama bin Laden then others will rise to take his place. I actually think this proposition is an unsafe one: Bin Laden looks like one of a rare kind to me (and increasingly flaky in recent guest appearances). His deputies are obvious goons and would probably start knifing one another if the holy one stepped on a mine. But leave that to one side–does it never occur to anyone that tens of thousands of people would also rise up to rid the world of bin Laden all over again?
This is good stuff. Read the whole article.
Some interesting observations from the good folks as Fevered Rants regarding the prospect of unmanned aircraft being the wave of the future. Is the manned combat aircraft soon to be a thing of the past?
I agree that we will be seeing more and more of a role for UAVs but there are also some serious weaknesses in the theory that they will completely supplant manned fighters. Against the likes of Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan circa 2001, UAV’s have much to commend them. Yet sooner or later (probably later) the USA will have to fight an enemy who will have access to technology much closer in quality to that which is available to America itself…which means high quality sophisticated electronic warfare (EW). One of the realities of EW is that you can never be quite sure of what the enemy can do until he does it and it is a hell of a lot cheaper to jam the controls of a UAV than it is to fire a missile at one. However the only way to completely jam a manned aircraft is with a fast moving object (like a missile or cannon shell).
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.
… don’t leave home without ’em.
For many years, some elements within the US military have argued that due to the range of modern jet fighters and the advent of in-flight refueling, the era of the aircraft carrier is over. The resources for these vasty expensive assets would be better spent on the USAF. Similarly the US Marine Corps is a force without a mission. Why bother with seaborne forces when Rangers etc. can be flown to a target from land bases?
Well, as we can see, it was the USN F-18 and F-14’s that gained air superiority over Afghanistan, not the USAF… and it is the USMC, which is part of the Navy, that has been airlifted off aircraft carriers and helicopter carriers into a land locked central Asian theatre of operations. This was in fact the longest range combat helicopter insertion in military history.
Hopefully this will once and for all put paid to the idea that either large aircraft carriers or the US Marine Corps are a waste of resources. For strategic, operational and tactical flexibility, with the ability to respond to unexpected threats in unexpected places, the USMC and the aircraft carrier are the perfect tools.
An article by Tunku Varadarajan, deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal, discusses this strange incident.
Yesterday, in a conversation with a highly placed diplomat from the region, I learned enough to be able to assert that all these reports are entirely correct. Pakistani air force helicopters and transport craft did, indeed, ferry out nearly 200 regular men and officers of the Pakistan army–including two brigadiers. A large number of ex-servicemen were also evacuated in this manner. According to the diplomat, “this could not have been done without the specific approval and connivance of the Bush administration.” The U.S. controls the skies over Kunduz, and it is unlikely that Pakistani craft would have flown into the zone without attracting U.S. attention.
So there does seem to be mounting evidence that not only is the whole incident now a certainty but that it was mounted by the Pakistani airforce.
Varadarajan also asks:
This affair raises intriguing, and worrying, questions. First: What were these Pakistani soldiers doing in Kunduz? And second, why did the U.S. choose to turn a blind eye to their rescue?
Frankly the answer to that seems pretty obvious to me. Let’s examine what we know so far.
The first report of this astonishing tale came prior to the fall of Konduz from forward combat elements of General Daoud’s Northern Alliance army, who were telling David Chater of SkyNews that there were aircraft flying in and out of Konduz at night. Chater is actually by far the best source we have so far as not only was he in Konduz hard on the heals of the lead elements of the Northern Alliance, but immediately started interviewing everyone who would stand still long enough for him to stick a microphone in their face. People in Konduz all confirmed the basic facts of the flights to him but everyone had wildly different ideas as to what it all meant. However the general consensus in Konduz was that the people being evacuated were the hardcore Al Qaeda fighters. Chater even interviewed the rather grumpy General Daoud Khan himself, who was none too pleased about what had happened. Daoud’s remarks that it is was the Pakistani Airforce were the first fairly authoritative comments we heard (live over the satellite). The fact ground fire from his forces had driven off the attempt to mount a fourth sortie indicates that if he was privy to what was happening (and it seems he probably was), he was sure as hell not going to cooperate regardless of what deal the USA and Pakistan had struck. It must be remembered that Daoud regards Pakistan as his sworn enemies. This is because without the machinations of the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence service), the Taliban would have never taken over Afghanistan in the first place. Afghan warlords are not known for their forgiving nature.
Ok, so where does that leave us? If Debka are correct about the presence of a significant ISI and Pakistani army presence trapped in the Konduz-Khanabad pocket (see previous article), the whole covert airlift starts to make sense.
It is clearly not in American interests to see Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf suffer any major political embarrassments: for better or for worse, the support or at least acquiescence of Pakistan is an absolute prerequisite for US military operations within Afghanistan. Thus the USA has no desire to see the Northern Alliance make major political hay at Pakistan’s expense by parading captured ISI people and maybe a few Pakistani army brigadiers in front of the world’s press. Pervez Musharraf took control of Pakistan in an army coup d’etat and thus it is upon the Pakistani army that his power depends. The last thing George W. Bush wants in Pakistan right now is for the Pakistani army to suffer a political humiliation. The only beneficiaries of that would be the Pro-Taliban Pakistani Islamic political parties
I am starting to suspect Al Qaeda did not get anyone airlifted out of the Konduz pocket and the only people who did get out were members of the Pakistani security services and armed forces. Of course I have no proof of that, but it is hard to see how anything else makes sense in view of what we know so far.
Debka are also carrying the story of ‘the great escape’ and have guestimated the sort of numbers of Al Qaeda who might have been in the Konduz area when the poop hit the fan and they decided it was time to get the hell out before Rashid Dostam and Daoud Khan of the Northern Alliance over ran the city. Whilst I often disagree with Debka‘s analysis on various issues, their guess in this matter seems as good as anyone else’s. However on their site above the article they show a picture of one of the larger Antonov transport jets. I simply do not believe that one of those could have been landed at Konduz on the dates in question. By all accounts (including remarks by Donald Rumsfeld during a briefing), the airstrip had been heavily bombed and given the close proximity of the Northern Alliance, clearly the late night landing would have been conducted with very minimal lighting.
If Debka are correct that there were actually Pakistani ISI personnel in Konduz, then they must have been frantic to get them out before they fell into the hands of Dostam or Daoud’s boys. Apart from the fact they would possibly die horribly, the prospect of members of the hated ISI being taken alive by the Northern Alliance would have been a severe political embarrassment for Pakistan.
However, mixed among these eager students, were several hundred Pakistani army officers and soldiers in civilian dress, as well as some 120 Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI service agents, representing Pakistan’s secret intelligence and logistical support for the Taliban.
And
After that batch is deducted, a total of 2,500 to 3,000 at most should have been found in the Konduz-Khanabad sector – Saudis, Gulf Arabs, Egyptians, Jordanians, Somalis, Yemenis, Chechens and Palestinians. Intelligence estimates before the Konduz siege put the Saudi extremist component fighting with al Qaeda at 500-700.
Well, if Debka are more or less right (and they are guessing like we all are) about the numbers, and if I am correct that it was a single Antonov An-26 doing these three sorties (and the aborted fourth sortie), then there are still a considerable number of Al Qaeda on the ground in Khanabad (near Konduz) who are probably not having a real good time at the moment.
An Antonov An-26 is usually rated for 40 passengers… assume in an emergency they pack in twice as many people (and from their point of view this was nothing if not an emergency!), and that Pakistan is going to get its own ISI people out first, that still leaves one hell of a lot of Al Qaeda boys well and truly up shit creek.
Hehehehehe.
There is a great little observation on Instapundit noting the fact that militia is not automatically a dirty word to BigMedia(tm) anymore. A short but very interesting piece.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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