The downhill slide?

If we lose in Afghanistan, this will be why:

“Commanders have also ordered troops to hold off attacking militants in some situations where civilians are at risk”.

If you can think of a statement of more use to irregular forces that have no concept of the Laws of Armed Conflict, I’d like to hear it. It gets better, too:

'Mr de Hoop Scheffer said Gen Dan McNeill, the commander of the Nato force in Afghanistan, Isaf, had also instructed troops to delay attacks on Taleban fighters if civilians are at risk.

"We realise that, if we cannot neutralise our enemy today without harming civilians, our enemy will give us the opportunity tomorrow," he added,

"If that means going after a Taleban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then."'

I could go on and on about this, but I’ll content myself with just saying that if this is permitted to stand as NATO’s official position, we will inevitably lose in Afghanistan, and the opposition will manage to claim PR points on us every time we accidentally kill the civilians that they were hiding behind.

This leads me to the UN announcement that they want peacekeepers for Darfur. This is of course no surprise, but the uselessness of the plan is manifest (emphasis mine):

“UN resolution number 1769 will allow peacekeeping troops to use force for self-defence, to allow humanitarian workers to move freely and to protect civilians under attack.

However, they won't be able to seize and dispose of illegal arms.

A threat of future sanctions against Sudan was also removed from the resolution, which had been watered down during negotiations.

The resolution authorizes up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police in what is being called a "hybrid" force.”

As with pretty much everything the UN has been responsible for, this will be an expensive waste of time. Probably not an issue, as Canada has its’ hands full, but those of you who know me can smack me in the head if I ever let myself get sent on one of these missions. If I learned anything for Lt. Gen. (ret) Dallaire’s book, Shake Hands with the Devil, it’s don’t get sent on UN missions that tie your hands in such a fashion that they prevent you from doing what needs to be done.

Afghanistan is so far not at that level, but if the powers that be restrict the rules of engagement further, it’ll turn into another Bosnia. We’d then not only fail to meet our objectives, but there would be a lot more cases of PTSD (my pet hypothesis) and it would destroy the Canadian Army, again. As always, all opinions stated are my own; it's more fun that way.

Military-Industrial Complex Economics

This is a drop in the bucket in terms of their trade deficit, but selling a crapload of expensive weapons to the Saudis and other OPEC states is a good way for the US to recoup some of that oil money.

It doesn’t really look at a casual glance that others are seeing it this way, and the Israelis are understandably nervous. Or that is they are, but not so much that $3B per annum in aid from the same US military industrial complex can’t mollify them. And you can bet they’ll get all the good stuff too.

Some people have a problem with this, but as I’ve always said, I’d back Israel against any country over there. It is the only real, functioning democracy over there (wish that it were the case also for Lebanon) which needs outside assistance to maintain the status quo. Said status quo isn’t great, but I don’t see any viable options that everyone can agree on.

Israel is suffering from a real lack of leadership at the highest levels, but at least steps are being taken to get the IDF back to brass tacks so they aren’t embarrassed by Hezbollah in Round 2, whenever that is. It occurs to me that you could (in the context of the Mid-East) look at the sales to the Arabs as the "carrot", and the aid to Israel as the "stick" of American foreign policy. Just a thought.

The idea of JDAMs in the inventory of a probable eventual enemy (House of Saud is unlikely to stand forever) on the face of it sounds like really bad idea, but if the Americans sell them the hardware, they know what it can do, most likely where it is, and in any event they’ll have a lot more of it and better trained troopies to use the stuff when push comes to shove. Besides, it’s only a matter of time (if it hasn’t happened already) before Iran or China comes up with GPS guided bomb kits that they’ll sell to anyone. And never forget the Russians…

Speaking of Russia, there was an article in JDW for 27 July about the US offering the Joint Strike Fighter to India. This is obviously designed to frustrate said Russians, and helps convince the Indians that the US can be worked with. The Yanks get themselves so worked in a twist about inspecting peoples’ nuclear plants, particularly foolish in the case of India which has had nuclear weapons for 30 years. They seem to have worked something out, which should help bring our common interests with India into focus for all parties.

I’ve seen a bit of traffic on the state of the US economy, particularly their massive trade imbalance. Oil is a large chunk of that, and the exporting of manufacturing jobs to China, etc. has really undermined the position of the US as the dominant economy of the world.

How long they can maintain what they have, let alone if they can recover what they have lost, is a serious concern to the rest of us “western” democracies. For ideas on that, see my earlier posts (and the plethora of stuff on the web) about seriously developing REAL alternatives to oil. Ethanol is NOT one of them, although it’s making a lot of corn farmers more financially solvent (ha!) in the meantime.

The US needs to sell as much of this expensive stuff as they can to recoup the development money, but at the same time I’ve not heard them offer the F-22 Raptor to anyone, so they maintain an edge. That too is good for us, even if a lot of people forget which side their bread is buttered on…

About time, with the inevitable brainiac backlash.

This was placed under "Entertainment" for some reason, where it is pretty evidently a political story.

"The Australian government says it will enact a far-reaching law to ban films, literature and games advocating terrorist acts."

Of course the ivory-tower types see this as an assault on freedom of speech, but it's obvious that it is designed to counter the proliferation of jihadist material that infects the world.

Fisher points out that "terrorism itself is a subjective term."
"History is littered with this type of subjectivity masquerading as the voice of reason. So-called terrorists have been criminals one day and revered leaders the next. For example, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were both labelled as terrorists in their pursuit of the freedom of their peoples."

Uh huh. Missing the point of course, but the question is is it willfully or not? There are already laws on the books against making threats, and that is technically an infringement on peoples' "freedom of speech". It is therefore obvious that the precedent exists to curtail the rights of people to say whatever they want.

I would like to see this same group's position on "hate speech", Holocaust denial, that sort of thing. I am personally of the opinion that if people want to say stupid stuff about history or whatever, anything which doesn't directly advocate violence they should be allowed to do so. Then it is up to people like me to call them on their crack-headedness.

To anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to the world, this legislation is designed to give the police tools to use against (primarily) the spread of pernicious Salafist/jihadist propaganda; beheading videos, books exhorting acts of violence against "the infidel", this sort of thing.

Reading the article I linked to doesn't even hint at any of that, it just makes it look like Australia is about to start Nuremberg Rally style book burnings. Again, more balanced journalism. And to trot out comparisons to Gandhi and Mandela is at best moral relativism (albeit of the worst type) and at worst an insult to those men, their political successors, and the people of those free, democratic countries.

They don't know, they don't care, or both? I've no idea, and no inclination to find out, having better uses for my free time. The sort of people this law is targeting are not any stripe of "freedom fighter", quite the opposite.

It does conveniently cover any other breed of terrorism, which, let's face it, is ILLEGAL by its' very definition anyway. This just closes some loopholes and gives the government more of a handle on these clowns. We need more of this kind of thinking, not less.

“Truthers” and other abominations against Reason.

Since I seem to be on a minor run of posts before I’m temporarily exiled, I could hardly leave this one alone.

At a party I attended this past weekend, I made the error of saying out loud that I would be happy to punch in the head the next person who seriously tried to tell me that 9/11 was a Bush/Jewish conspiracy.

I do in fact possess the restraint to NOT follow my (in this case justified) impulses, but this restraint was soon sorely pressed. As much as I like a vigorous debate, I CANNOT STAND people who say stuff they can’t back up, and swear in the face of all evidence that “something else” caused it.

So, I have now been informed that it is “impossible” for the WTC towers to have fallen as they most obviously DID on live TV feeds to hundreds of millions of people. I guess I’m just a brainless dupe of the NeoCon/Zionist conspiracy to have believed my own eyes.

It seems as time goes on and memories fade it becomes easier for people to think that the simplest explanation cannot possibly be true, even if the options are illogical and nonsensical. I will admit that I have overestimated the scruples of those in the US government in the past (CIA-US Air Force running drugs into the US to finance the Contras for example), but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that anyone other than a bunch of disaffected Muslims who by cruisemissling (new verb) hijacked planes into them, took those buildings down.

This covers ground I and many others have been over before but I do feel an urge to violence when I’m fed a pile of uncorroborated hogwash. Taking as an example the bit about 7 or so of the suspected hijackers being “still alive”, if that is in fact the case, there are still 12 or so that were properly identified and correspondingly confirmed killed in the perpetration of a crime, as mass-murder is generally classed. Some misidentified Arabs (or guys with the same name that they dug up after the fact) suggest to me a lack of a clear trail on people who don’t even exist as DNA samples anymore, not a bloody FBI/CIA/Mossad/ad nauseum plot.

The big thing is sources and evidence. Sources are great; having any at all is better (in most cases) than not, but said sources must be considered. In this vein, I rudely dismissed Truther boy’s emphatic insistence that his source was “the UN”, as I think the UN isn’t worth the gelignite to blow it to hell. This of course is a broad generalization, but when I hear something palpably absurd, I can trot it out.

What particularly set me off was this guy’s assertion (swearing on the UN) that 50,000 Iraqi civilians were killed on the infamous “Highway of Death” in 1991. This is a preposterous number, when you figure that the accepted figure for deaths in the firestorm generated by the bombing raids on Hamburg in 1943 is 45,000.

Note that Hamburg was a saturation bombing raid on a densely populated city with the intent of causing a firestorm and destroying the city, versus a bunch of aircraft and various vehicles shooting up a MILITARY exodus from an occupied country along a deserted stretch of highway. I would have been at least partly satisfied if he could have even explained to me where 50,000 civilians could have come from to be there to be killed in the first place, but even this minimal proof was beyond him.

This is the general quality of our opposition folks, but there are a lot of them. Being the voice of reason is hard work if you’re to do it right, and even then often you’re wasting your time because they’ve already made up their minds. I don’t have to convince everyone that I’m right (after all, none of us are infallible), but I’ll be content if I can at least make them THINK. Sometimes it seems that’s asking a bit much.

Sub-Continentental Drift to War?

One of the maxims I try to follow in life is "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst". Most of this preparation is mental, and I feel it tempts fate mightily to say things are ever as bad as they can get.

That said, I do engage in a fair bit of worst-case type projection, and this seems a good place to try a bit. There are elements in the current Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan/Kashmir/India/China/Russia arena that could indeed spin wildly out of control if too many things go wrong, with a reasonable chance of some domino action. I don't see things degenerating into a World War level of widespread conventional and/or nuclear warfare, but there are some things which are starting to show up that portend some more trouble at least.

Pakistan has been to put it mildly a weak link in the GWoT to date. I am not alone in going so far as to say they have done us at least as much harm as good. The pragmatist in me can understand Gen. Musharraf's reluctance to really lay the smackdown on the ISI and the other elements in Pakistan that support the Taliban. After all, a lot of these same factions are what keep him in power, and from our perspective, it's important to realize that these "extremists" would most likely take control of the country outright were he not there.

Now these guys are fed up with Musharraf's balancing act, and are putting the pressure on. This is either good news for us or bad, completely dependant on who comes out on top. If the good General's side does, the actions required to do so will have shorn off the Talibani elements, and forced his interests into closer accord with ours. If not, then our ground supply route to Afghanistan will be hopelessly compromised, if not just plain cut.

Without getting into something so wide-ranging that it escapes the scope of this post, I will mention one thing that could get out of hand with potential to destabilize the whole area. This is, of course, Pakistan's relations with India.

These have been improving of late, but if someone with less restraint than Gen. Musharraf were to take control of Pakistan, more specifically its' military, India may (with good reason) feel itself compelled to do something aggressive. Another Indo-Pakistani war could now involve nukes on both sides, and in the best case it REALLY complicates things for NATO and the USA in that region. We have a de-facto alliance with Pakistan, but our long-term interests line up much better with those of India.

So, things going even more downhill in Pakistan will hamstring NATO's supply situation In Afghanistan, possibly giving the Russians more leverage if we suddenly needed to shift our stuff through their territory/sphere of influence. I don't know how vulnerable our logistics operations are through Pakistan, but we may yet find out the hard way. Any significant war between India and Pakistan for whatever reason has the possibility of completely screwing our operations in that region, plus complicating our life diplomatically.

Lots of fun. Well, that's enough of a scratch of the surface for the moment. If anyone has anything to add or call me on, the opportunity is always there.

Social Dis-ease

As the world continues to do what it does, I’ll leave it (mostly) to it for the moment and turn my volatile attention span on something possibly more ephemeral: Facebook.

It’s certainly here today, and I doubt it’ll be gone tomorrow, but I’m not really sure how I feel about it. It bills itself as a “social utility”, and the title seems to fit. It’s a bang-up way to do that whole six (usually less) degrees of separation thing and/or find people you used to know. Even I find it useful for that sort of thing. My issues with it are rather vague, but I’ll try to put my finger on what bothers me about it.

I think it’s the whole “friends race” that I feel is going on with it. My social life is perhaps not what it once was, but on reflection that’s not a bad thing on many counts. I have always preferred quality to quantity in the friends department, and this seems to inflate that currency.

What I mean by that is that according to Facebook, people that are acquaintances get a free upgrade to “friend”, sort of like rank inflation to make sure that during a merger your people don’t lose relative position. A bad comparison, but if I come up with a better one I’ll replace it.

What’s in a name? Well, if history and a lot of reading has anything to say about it, a LOT. I may (or may not) be rare in this regard, but I don’t call just anybody I know or have once met, much less a friend-of-a-friend one of MY friends. I won’t get into the whole system I use to denote different levels of “friendness” but I have one that I notice if I stop to think about it, which Facebook has made me do.

Now, I go on about this, but it hasn’t really happened to me, and the one or two exceptions are not actually offensive, just curious to me. There are for example people that I have known for a long time, or knew fairly well a while ago but I am not in regular contact with that I have seen on there, but I do not presume to foist myself on them as a “friend”. It’s not that I’m stuck up, but I have my ideas of how things should go, and it seems a lot of people don’t share them.

If you have noticed a lack of a real lunge for the jugular in this piece, you’re not alone. I have a nebulous feeling that all is not right with the Facebook system, but it may just be a bit of cyber enochlophobia. Hell, I don’t even like the name of it(Fb) for no reason I can think of.

In any event, it has been niggling at me, so I felt the need to say something about it. Now that is done, so I’ll start looking for the next bit of geopolitical/military foolishness to get me back in the groove.

Crack-Rock Steady

I have been looking for a) something else to write about here, and b) always looking for ways to get me off my “clash of civilizations” hobby-horse. Lo and behold, something of a very local and yet widespread problem comes my way.

The idea of “safe injection sites” and needle exchanges for drug addicts is fairly common in western countries, albeit not without controversy. I am personally not well disposed to people stupid enough to get themselves mixed up in addictive drugs (it’s not like they haven’t heard about meth or heroin, for examples), but this whole warm-and-fuzzy approach has gone definably too far, and at least some politicians will stand up and say so.

In this case, I speak of the minor shit-storm than has been kicked up in Ottawa about cancelling (the fact that it existed is another matter) the practice of handing out “safe crack kits” to crack users. The point has been made by the local police that drug paraphernalia is illegal, thus the fact that Ottawa city council is distributing such sends an interesting message. The story I’ve linked to is late in the day on this issue (this has been going on for a week or more at this point), but it distils it nicely. In fact, this particular bit from it got my attention:

It's a move health activists are warning could repeat itself in other jurisdictions as city councils move away from harm-reduction philosophies toward a more American-style law-and-order justice.

Curse the scourge of law-and-order justice! What will come next, Rule of Law? The Horror!

While I’m at it, what exactly does something like a “harm-reduction strategy” mean? My interpretation from the context seems to be that it enables people to break the law and/or mess themselves up without interference from our judicial system. The fact that there is even a debate about ending this (again, why did it start?) points to the deification of “victimhood” which afflicts us.

Certain people have a fast and loose interpretation of what makes someone a victim, but for the record I’ll state that I have no time for those who are the architects of their own misfortune. This encompasses groups as diverse as the above-mentioned (self-made) drug addicts and the Arabs in what was formerly known as Palestine, now mostly Israel. The latter group and their delusion that the Israelis have been at fault for their current situation causes a lot of trouble throughout the world. The same mentality that makes a crack-pipe exchange program look like a good idea enables that whole Palestine thing to drag itself out interminably.

My prediction is that the crack stuff exchange projects will continue to be recognized as having gone too far and be (quietly or otherwise) canned. However, the cult of the victim marches on; witness the successful $635M lawsuit against the makers of OxyContin by those who feel “misled” about the addictive qualities of this opiate painkiller. There may have been merit to part of it if people were assured that it wasn’t addictive. That is hard to explain but plausible, though to me the doctors who prescribed it should be held responsible for mis-prescribing it and/or failing to warn those ignorant of the general nature of opiate drugs.

The part that gets me, is people testifying that the drug company is responsible for they or others abusing it and messing themselves up, terminally or otherwise. Again, the laws seem to not be able to enforce sensible behaviour, which is hardly surprising or we wouldn’t need the laws. The fact that victims of their own stupidity continue to be able to successfully (in the US at least) litigate for huge damages proves that we have more crack-kit type debates to come. At least I hope there is a debate, and it isn’t just foisted on us again.

Cutting to the chase

Time for an update, if for no reason than I have a bit of time and it’s been a few days.

First of all, a shout out to all of you who I was railing at in person last night (you know who you are); I am pleased that you found my ranting informative, entertaining and well-reasoned, so all my homework is paying off. In particular to our “Belgian” connection, feel free to spread this link to this around to your friends, but the caveat remains that my upcoming “trip” will limit my opportunities to update this for the next several months. I’ll be around though, albeit sporadically for while.

Topics for last night included Afghanistan (largely) and Iraq (to a much lesser extent). The problem I have is that the more people ask me what good Canada is really doing in Afghanistan, the less useful I really see our military presence being.

When I say “useful” I must be clear that I mean “critical to our National Interest”. I could very well be wrong, but I really don’t think us spending the next 10 years playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban, etc. is going to help Canada or NATO one bit in real terms. This does not mean I’ve gone soft (no fear of that), just that we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns in terms of dealing with a tangible threat to the West.

I invite a challenge on this, really I do. The idea for going into Afghanistan in 2001/02 was that the status quo, unacceptable as it already was, had shifted far beyond just flinging some cruise missiles at the Al-Qaeda camps there. Nobody could be bothered to do a whole lot when the Taliban took most of the country, or even when they blew up the Buddhas in Bamiyan and outlawed anything that even vaguely resembled fun. Oh yeah, and the general repression, stoning, executions for “un-Islamic” behaviour, etc.

In this vein, I return to my earlier postulate that we should salvage the civilizable parts of the country and write off the others (like Kandahar and Helmand) as a free-fire zone or, if we feel compelled to be nice, an autonomous “Talibanistan” that can do what it likes as long as it stays in there. This we could back up and enforce with NATO’s current force levels, and the useless German and French troops wouldn’t even have to move, lucky them.

I am all for rebuilding the place, except that a) it’s not working because we don’t hold it, and b) there are a lot of other places that need the same sort of thing and we sure as death and taxes can’t help them all. Reality rears its’ ugly head once more, for those who have the moral fortitude and clarity of vision to see it.

This reminds me of a debate I had with someone last night. It was about my (hardly exclusive) position that Islam is FUNDAMENTALY at odds with secular government, whereas Christianity (and some other religions no doubt) is not. I feel that my contention was better presented (if not proven) than that of my opponent. The reason for that was not that I know more, but that I cut through a lot of “noise” and try to look at the fundamentals. I don’t care about how things are misused (except that the effects can be significant and unpleasant) but about what they ARE.

A spade is a spade, and the fact that someone uses it as a hammer or a screwdriver does not change its’ nature.

Speaking of that, what about Iraq at this point? The general disastrousness of it is well established on all bands of the political spectrum, but the resistance to the US just bailing out of the place and leaving it to its’ fate is starting to crumble, even on the Hawkish sites I look at. Iraq is even more of a bag of snakes than Afghanistan, but the question is being raised seriously of whether things would be worse for “us” if they’re left to fight it out. It would then be a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians, with the Turks ready to roll over the border into wanna-be-Kurdistan and get all Ottoman on their ass.

Really, I fail to see a downside to this for the US which is more serious than what is happening to them right now. Pull out, re-group, take a deep breath, and figure out what you (Uncle Sam) REALLY NEED. The capability to smash things and even do “in-and-out-clever” invasions (ala Operation ANACONDA) would be unimpaired, in fact improved since your troops are no longer tied down in Iraq.

A re-hash perhaps, but while my thoughts on these subjects are evolving, they are not changing because I see the world any differently. Containment is looking more and more manageable than “Engagement” and getting bogged down. I want to see a world that still has room for peaceful, progressive, productive societies that allow you to have fun without being a soft target for the anti-fun forces of the world. “We” have our parts of the world (the best parts) and “they” can go to hell in the rest of it.

Is the worm turning?

There have been glimmerings of resistance/fed-up-ishness from various places in the last year or so, and they thankfully continue. The resistance of which I speak is to the Islamofascists that seek to destroy the West, and at least some influential parts of our intelligencia are starting to speak out about it.

The comments recently from the German Minister of the Interior about tougher anti-terrorist laws, and what amounts to the existing Israeli policy of targeted assassinations (fine idea in my books) are highly revealing. To my way of thinking, they are a trail balloon from the German government to see test the mood of the public.

"Those ideas have nothing to do with concrete, current government policies," Thomas Steg, the government's deputy spokesman, said at the regular Monday press briefing in Berlin. Citing Merkel, Steg said that "there shouldn't be any ban on ideas over how to fight terrorism" and that the German Constitution must always be adhered to.

Schäuble, a senior member of the Christian Democratic Union, has taken an increasingly tough approach toward preventing terrorist attacks in Germany since becoming interior minister in November 2005. He has stepped up surveillance, sanctioned a special database for suspects and wants the army to play a role in internal security.

His remarks, made in response to the terrorist plots in Britain, run counter to Merkel's views and represent a significant shift in how Schäuble wants to deal with terrorism. "You must take risks to defend liberty," he told German television, "but you cannot just sit back and do nothing, either."

The usual suspects (the Greens, etc.) were predictably in opposition to the very idea that anyone would take some aggressive action, let alone target “minorities” (although nobody said that, you know they’re thinking it), but the tone of the opposition was a bit frantic. Not frantic as in scared, but “shrill” may have been a better word. The first link I used is obviously agin’ it, but the fact that it came out at all says what a lot of people are thinking. The bad guys don’t follow our rules, but it’s very important of course that we have nice soft ones to not even bother applying to them…

In the last few days I’ve actually been reading the Ottawa Citizen after a hiatus of a couple of years. The shift in editorial direction is evident, and to me, refreshing. A spade is a called a shovel, and a sense of balance is maintained. Even I get tired of having to read American-style right-wing stuff all the time, but that’s where a lot of the fight against apathy and appeasement is to be found.

What I think may provide a much needed slap to those who repeat the mantra about “poor, disenfranchised terrorists” is that (admittedly amateurish) “Doctors’ Plot” in the UK. The fact that educated Muslims are also involved in the anti-western jihad should come as news to anyone makes me shake my head, but it’s hardly surprising.

That’s about it. The only other thing of note is that "Shrek 3" was a pale shadow of the first two. Look at that, a new direction: reviews! Not really, but I keep feeling I need to break things up a bit, although the conundrum is that only things that bother me motivate me to use my spare time to spit out these screeds, so things tend to be a bit dark. Oh well.

Pointless Hypocrisy/Consciousness Raising?

The big “Live Earth” foolishness is over with, and I am not alone in thinking the whole thing was heavily flawed, that is if it served any useful purpose at all.

From my perspective, it was a typical publicity grab by a special interest group. You’re familiar with what road I think is paved with good intentions, but I’m not even sure about the purity of motives of Al Gore and his ilk. There are those who see these neo-environmentalists as the latest Commie threat to free enterprise, and I have to say the case can be made for that.

In any event, I do think that most of you will agree with me when I have a real problem with people who make a crapload more money than I ever will telling me what sort of sacrifices “we” are required to make. $2/L gas (or heating oil) might not bend Madonna or Al Gore out of shape, but those of us who live in the real world are already starting to see our standard of living (via disposable income) impacted by energy prices.

I am fully in accord that burning a lot of oil isn’t the best idea, but not for the same reasons. A possibility exists for a confluence of objectives between the pinko Global-Warming-the-world-will-end crowd and the hawkish let-the-Arabs-(including Iran and Chavez)-drink-their-oil school. This will not of course include kneecapping us economically, but a drive for better renewable and/or non-polluting energy sources and technology benefits everybody. Everyone, that is, except those self-loathing true believers who want to destroy Western civilization by screwing us over to the benefit of the rest of the world.

I’ll leave it you to identify them, but they’re very thinly disguised at best.

Auxiliarii; Plus ca change...

It's not news to professionals and informed laypeople, but yes, we don't have enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan. It has been the plan for the last several years (after we finished off al Queda in Afghanistan, the original reason for going in there) to get the local Army and Police up to speed so we can get out and let them run themselves. My bet was always that it would be run straight back into the ground, but I'm a well-known cynic.

The linked article from Military.com addresses these challenges briefly so have a look at that. With that done, we'll talk about the roots of my cynicism, or as I term it, ''realism''. They are simple; I read (present and past tense) a LOT, and generally prefer history, natural science, that sort of thing.

Jerry Pournelle, whose mail section is the precipitating factor for this piece, has frequently pointed out that our side needs to recruit ''auxiliaries'' to actually police the place, freeing our small armies to do the jobs of ''breaking things and killing people''. The Romans knew this (and many other things many of us seem to have forgotten) and recent developments in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought it back to those who are involved in trying to sort both of those messes out.

Specifically about Afghanistan, Karzai and a variety of western media sources are starting to harp on the civilian casualties that are coming as a result of us trying to do our job over there. This brings to mind the Israel-Hizbollah fight last summer, but the idea of attacking ''western'' forces in the middle of civilian areas, or hiding there to provoke an attack with ensuing collateral casualties is a common terrorist tactic which is not exactly new.

Having auxiliaries like the Anbar Salvation Front can cause different sorts of headaches for our side, but summary executions are ''just how they roll''. Payback's a bitch, and if we don't want to get our hands dirty, having the locals sort things out at least allows us a bit of plausible deniability with people who care about the treatment of terrorists. As you could guess, I'm not one of them.

I personally am of the opinion, backed loosely by the Laws of Armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, etc. that we should only be taking these yahoos prisoner if it seems likely we'll get some worthwhile int from them. Otherwise, they have by their actions placed themselves outside the protections our rules provide. Therefore, getting locals to clean their own house is win-win and is to be encouraged.

In this vein, it has to be realized, and PUSHED to the media and the public, that these counter-insurgencies are nasty business, and heads are going to be cracked in a most decidedly non-Charter of Rights and Freedoms kind of way. Particularly when we train, equip, and turn them loose to straighten out their own mess. We didn't make it, and I think it's very nice of us to try to drag them into the modern world. Pity many of them have no desire to go there...

And now, the fearless prediction part of the piece. I like the sound of that so much that I'll see if I can make it a regular feature. As always, you are guaranteed your money back on any promises I make or imply here. ;)

Anyway, my notional money is placed on Canada not renewing our Battlegroup level commitment to Afghanistan past its' current expiration in early 2009. There is nothing happening politically which favours such a move, and the mounting casualties are fueling the calls to at least not extend things over there. From my perspective, I honestly think that we are past the point of diminishing returns considering the half-assed support that NATO is giving to the mission. Long-term success requires short to medium-term commitment of at least three times the troops we have there right now, particularly in the south.

Someone asked me recently what I saw as a possible positive, non-military solution to Afghanistan. The only thing I could come up with was some sort of political arrangement with the Taliban factions, but unless they loosen up significantly (not likely) this will put things right back where we started. As well, the time to do that was last year when NATO (the useful members at least) had handed the bad guys a solid pounding. Now it would just look like (and be) backing down. And don't even get me started on Pakistan...