Feces From The Pakistani Air Impeller

Once the Pakistani government and army turned serious backed by a sufficient percentage of the politically articulate population, life turned rough for the Taliban in Swat. Even discounting the body count provided by the Pak military there can be little doubt but Taliban's trigger pullers have taken a heavy hit. The high command of the Pak army is feeling confident--perhaps too much so--that they will rid Mingora of the bearded Taliban thugs in a very few days.

Taliban has acknowledged its defeat in Swat. The announcement by Muslim Khan, the Taliban public information wallah, that the Mighty Fighters of Allah will not "attack" the incoming Pakistani government forces clearly was the face saving attempt at waving a white flag. In a quite unsurprising move Islamabad rejected the accompanying appeal for a "truce." With equal abruptness the government batted down the request by the UN for a "humanitarian truce" so that civilians might be both allowed to leave the area or be succored in place.

Regardless of the plight of the civilian refugees as well as those caught in the zone of operations the government and army were correct in rejecting any halting or slowing of combat operations. Right now the Pak army has what George H.W. Bush used to call "the Big Mo." As any strategist or tactician--even the most armchair bound--knows, momentum is the key to maintaining initiative and initiative is the key to victory. And, for the past few days the Pakistani forces have had the momentum.

The Pakistani government has to win in Swat. More, it has to win quickly before political support withers in the face of the wave of internally displaced persons. Nearly two and a half million people reportedly have fled Swat and Buner. Many of these come equipped with attention grabbing horror stories of cringing under the rockets, bombs and artillery shells fired and dropped by the government forces. These tales and the coverage given them erode support within Pakistan for the reconquest of Swat. International dissemination undercuts international support for Islamabad and gains sympathy for the Taliban.

There is another reason Islamabad has to quickly and successfully wrap up operations in Swat. No matter how well the campaign has gone there, the truth is Taliban is far from defeated. The blast in Lahore makes this point in a mound of bloody rubble. There is little, if any, question that Taliban made the attack against a police facility and the adjacent building occupied by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence. The Pakistani government believes this to be the case.

Interior Minister Malik was blunt. Taliban did it. The motive was revenge for the army's successes in Malakand. Even if the attack was not one of revenge per se, it is a powerful statement of Taliban's will and capacity to keep on fighting. It was rhetoric made reality in a eye blink of fire and blood.

Lahore is the major commercial center of Pakistan. Punjab province is Pakistan's most populous province. Taliban is obviously well established in both the province and the city given that this bombing is the third terror spectacular there in three months. In March the Sri Lanka national cricket team was attacked. Days later a police training center was taken under siege with numerous casualties during the hours it took for security forces to recapture the facility.

The facts of the internal war combine to put enormous pressure on the army and government to win rapidly in Swat and the rest of Malakand. Unless a convincing victory over Taliban can be demonstrated, public support for the effort will evaporate. Worse, the politically articulate will lose faith in the ability and will of the government to maintain even a slight semblance of domestic tranquility.

The loss of faith by the politically articulate will exacerbate the flight of capital both fiscal and human which has slowed since the commencement of the assault on Swat. The loss of faith will flood--not trickle--down the social pyramid with the result that Taliban will pick up masses of opportunistic support on top of that which is ideologically based.

It is at this point that the army and ISI will have a choice to make. One choice is for the military to take over the government one more time and fight a war to the death with Taliban. The other is to accept a de facto merger with the Islamist jihadists--whether called Taliban or something else.

Neither choice is particularly palatable. Choice number one would result in an outpouring of vitriol from the human rights entities of the world to say nothing of the UN and (can there be any doubt?) the Obama administration. The totems and fetishes of democracy would be waved and flourished.

On the other hand, choice number two would be clearly unacceptable to the US and most other countries. This option would place the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and infrastructure in the hands of Koran-thumping, West-hating True Believers for whom dead bodies are merely Allah's way of keeping score.

In the event of a Taliban takeover under whatsoever cover the US would have few choices other than robust action to draw the nuclear fangs from the new Islamist jihadist serpent. This is not an option that can be contemplated with equanimity.

It is not hyperventilating to assert that any Islamist jihadist supremacy in Pakistan would constitute a world-historical event. At the least it would equal--and probably surpass--the Islamic Revolution in Iran as an event which (permanently) alters the balance of world politics.

In considering the dynamics of Pakistan's politics it is necessary to consider the emerging anti-American narrative in the country. This new narrative is not a replay of the long standing "War on Muslims" theme which has run through the past several years. Nor is it a replacement.

Rather it is a critical addition. This new approach focuses on Baluchistan. There are a few key points to the narrative. The first is that the remote and underpopulated primarily desert province of Pakistan has strategic and economic cruciality for the (presumptively) imperialistic planners of the US. The second is the presence of clandestine support for the Baluch Liberation Army's insurgency on the part of the US, the UK and Israel. The third is that the actual goal of the troop escalation in Afghanistan is to place thousands of US troops in the Afghan province of Nimruz which is primarily populated by Baluchis.

The final point in this paranoiac narrative is the contention that the US forces would cross the border into Baluchistan in hot pursuit of fleeing Taliban fighters. The result would be the de facto separation of the province from Pakistan under Baluchi leadership protected by US arms.

The writing of this new narrative provides a degree of political cover for Pakistani nationalists who are equally uncomfortable with being self-perceived pawns in the American war against Taliban and al-Qaeda and the religiously driven excesses of the Islamist jihadists. These people believe it is better to deal with the indigenous devil with which they share a language, a history and a religion than the foreign Great Satan.

With this new narrative in play along with the old stand-by of the American War on Muslims, it is more important than ever that the current campaign in Swat be brought to a speedy conclusion. It is critical that the conclusion be seen generally as a meaningful victory for the government. Then, Islamabad with the full support of the US and other interested countries must win the peace as well by rapid resettlement of the displaced persons, a rebuilding of ruined buildings, farms and personal property, a genuine renewal of civil life and institutions.

Anything less is defeat on the installment plan. Defeat for Islamabad. Defeat for the US. Defeat for Pakistanis hoping for a decent life.

Benign Neglect--Why Not Try It?

The Hermit Kingdom of North Korea did the totally expected. Dear Leader and Company went ahead with the well-known and well-publicised plan to let go with another underground nuke test. As an added attraction for the world, the Merry Makers of Pyongyang fired off a set of short range surface to surface and surface to air missiles.

This temper tantrum from the Terrible Twos of the Hermit Kingdom was in no way shocking. It in no way caught any government--including that of the US--off guard. Unless no one bothered to read the news over the past month.

Now people all over the globe are tossing hissy-fits like confetti at New Year's Eve. Investors and speculators are shaking in their portfolios. Take a look at this alarm bell for market wallahs. Even the Mexican peso took it on the chin from the Great Nuke of the North surpassing the impact of the drug slaughter down south. In the US, market prices fell at first, but the Gnomes of Wall Street took comfort from consumer confidence and decided the world was not going to end in the near future just because the Hermits blasted a big hole in the mountains of their northeast.

Then, of course, there are the diplomats. The UN Security Council was in a tizzy. So also is the Obama administration. Susan Rice melded the two with her threat that the Hermit Kingdom of the North would "pay a price." Ms Rice's rhetoric almost matched the frothings of Senator Kerry speaking in China yesterday.

Heck, even Iran got in the act with a mild denunciation of the North Korean test. This remark should be considered along with the strong probability that the Tehran regime had observers present as they did during last month's ICBM test firing.

Underneath all the posturing, threatening noises and stock market pants wetting, there is a real dilemma. The best way to put it is in the words of a famous treatise by Lenin: "What Is To Be Done?"

To make a long and rather boring story short, there is not much that can be done. The Chinese are quite unlikely to support any more sanctions than those already in place. There is a good reason for this.

The Men of the Forbidden City do not want to deal with the consequences of more impoverishment, more hunger, more disease in North Korea. Quite simply Beijing does not want to face the flood of refugees which would pour across the porous border particularly along the shallow, slow moving Tuman river. The last thing the Chinese government needs considering the effects of the global economic slowdown is the expense and attendant dislocation imposed by hordes of North Koreans seeking a partially filled rice bowl. (Neither do they want the ministrations of those NGOs which leap into action at the first scent of a humanitarian crisis.)

Any other gambit, including some sort of promise of inducements would be counterproductive. One of the main reasons, if not the primary one, for the nuke test and surrounding missile shoots was that the Hermits in Pyongyang suffer from a form of Attention Deficit Disorder. As Dick Morris once wrote of the Clintons, when deprived of attention, Dear Leader and Company suffer from a disorder.

The real deal at work has nothing to do with the Six Power Talks or bluffing South Korea into returning to the Pyongyang loving days of deceased Prime Minister Roh. No. The North Korean regime wants to be bribed. The sort of attention Pyongyang desires, demands, is expressed in dollars and yen.

As the Geek has argued in previous posts, North Korea is a master at the fine art of extortion. They have taken extortion to the level of major economic input. Along with the export of weapons and weapons related knowledge, extortion is the only source of hard currency available to Pyongyang.

The money-for-cooperation gambit has been attempted. It failed. It failed as it must before the ever-escalating demands of the extorter.

A far better approach is that of benign neglect. It doesn't really matter if the Hermit Kingdom has a small--make that very small--nuclear arsenal. This reality, unpleasant as it might be in principle, in no way perturbs the balance of power in the region, let alone the world.

The North Koreans have never demonstrated that rare degree of insanity which would couple the assured destruction of the country and the regime with victory. Pyongyang is not about to go on a nuclear tipped rampage against the South. It is not going to send its low yield devices off on a one way trip to Tokyo. Or Beijing.

A North Korean nuclear capacity will not alter the realities of the region or the world in the slightest. The nuclear djinn is not going to leave North Korea quickly or easily. Not only does the Hermit Kingdom have such a small stockpile of plutonium that it must horde its widow's mite tightly even in the face of ready buyers with gobs of cash, the means to track and interdict shipments of fissile materials exist. While not absolutely leakproof, this capacity is sufficient to minimise the probability that North Korea will be the source of nuclear materials for al-Qaeda or Taliban or some other Islamist jihadist entity.

But wouldn't North Korea getting away with becoming a nuclear power make it all the harder to keep Iran from reaching the same goal?

Perhaps. However, is that consideration relevant? The Iranians have plugged on with their quest for the "Mahdi Bomb" regardless of sanctions and diplomatic disapproval. As the recent indictment sought by New York federal prosecutor Robart Morgenthau demonstrates, the Iranians have become very accomplished at sanctions busting using Chinese and British fronts. Beyond that approach, both Venezuela and Bolivia allegedly have been selling uranium to Iran regardless of any UN or US disapproval.

Ahmedinejad has been making points both at home and with anti-American, anti-West governments and entities abroad with his full-court defiance of the P5+1 and the Obama administration. If, as all indications point to, Ahmedinejad is re-elected next month, there is no reason to believe he is suddenly going to drop the highly successful hardline he has been following for years now.

In short, events on the small appendage on the far east edge of the Asian landmass are of no moment to Tehran. The mullahocracy is going to get the "Mahdi Bomb" unless stopped by force.

But, Geek, won't a failure to curb North Korea make the task of making the Earth a "nuclear free zone" as President Obama has said he wants even less possible? Won't a North Korean success make nuclear proliferation more likely?

The short answers? Yes. And, yes.

President Obama, progressive ideologue, is meeting realpolitik once again. While it is certainly undesirable that Pyongyang or Tehran possess a nuclear capacity, this eventuality does not bring the end of the world as we know it measurably closer. Dear Leader and those military commanders on whose support the regime depends for survival are not a collection of suicide inclined folks for whom death before dishonor is a watchword. While some of the clerics who are the power behind the Iranian government as well as Ahmedinejad may be of an eschatological bent, there is no plausible indication that the Apocalypse announcing the coming of the Mahdi is either a goal or a tool of state.

The record of the Tehran regime over the past thirty years points to the contrary. The gambits played by the mullahs and their front men have been conservative. They have taken no action which places Iran at risk of destruction. Just because the lot of them are Islamists, jihadists even, does not imply they are a passel of suicide bombers hoping to push the clicker on the nation which they rule.

To put it bluntly there is no reason to eschew a policy of benign neglect toward North Korea. There is no reason not to pat the Terrible Twos of the Hermit Kingdom on the head and say, "That's nice. You have a bomb all of your own. Join the club and pray for peace. Oh, by the way, how many people up there can eat your atoms?"

Are We Safer Or Not? Does It Really Matter?

Dick Cheney affirms that the US is now much less safe from terrorism because President Obama has banned "torture." Obama released the legal memos authorising the use of intensive interrogation techniques and made noises about closing Gitmo. As one the Right stood and did the wave in a paroxysm of agreement with Cheney.

On the other side, assorted people of the Left maintain that the doctrines and practices of the Bush-Cheney years did nothing to assure the US was safe from the tender ministrations of the Islamist jihadists of the world. On top of that, the Thunderers From The Left following the baton of Nancy Pelosi hold that they were lied to repeatedly and effectively by the evil doers of CIA and the crafty minions of the previous administration generally.

Both sides can agree on only one fact. The US has not been directly attacked since the bleak day of 9/11. Beyond that they can agree on nothing. Not even what can, should or must be done to continue the record of the past seven years, eight months and thirteen days.

Some of the considerations raised in the past few days are totally irrelevant to addressing the primary issues. Are we safer or not since the Obama "reforms?" Do the Obama driven changes really matter in looking at the question of immunity from terrorist attack? And, what are the necessities for continuing future freedom from both attack and the enervating fears surrounding potential attack?

On Obama's actions an accurate parsing of effect is easy to do. Releasing the legal memos has no impact on the continuation of our collective safety from terrorist attack. The methods employed were already well known and widely discussed. The knowledge and discussion extended to the assorted Islamist jihadist websites. The release of the legal thinking of the assorted Bush vintage lawyers in no way compromised the American capacity to elicit actionable intelligence from captured enemy combatants.

The release of these memos particularly if eventually accompanied by assessments evaluating the usefulness of the enhanced interrogation methods might serve to show how limited the utility of severe physical pressure actually is. That would ultimately demonstrate that other approaches to acquiring information are not only better but carry no moral baggage.

The President's decision not to release the photos and videos showing prisoner abuse at the hands of US personnel after having initially agreed to do so was well advised. The reasons adduced by Obama for this seeming flip-flop are both well rooted and self evident. The gratuitous release of the photos would only inflame hostile emotions with the result that US personnel, citizens and interests would face greater risks. It is regrettable that the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and similar groups cannot understand this--or that they understand it but are indifferent to the results.

Closing Gitmo is not at all complex. The vitriol and fear provoked by the possibility of closing the facility at Gitmo and relocating the 240 more or less inmates in federal facilities surpasses rational understanding. The initial reason for putting the assorted "illegal enemy combatants" and others suspected of terrorist inclinations at Gitmo was the desire of the Bush-Cheney administration to assure that those detained would not have access to the federal courts. By holding them off shore it would be possible to have the lads available for interrogation while preventing some hypothetical "bleeding heart" federal judge from releasing them.

Beyond that original reason there was a desire for vengeance suitably disguised as justice. After all, these guys were most assuredly enemies of the US who had fostered and facilitated terror attacks on the US. The military commission, particularly when coupled with measures carefully calculated to maximise the potential of conviction, seemed a fine way to get the emotional (and political) rewards of wreaking vengeance while posing as administering justice.

The use of military commissions in and of itself is neither without precedent nor inherently unjust. With reforms such as those mentioned by President Obama, such as the barring of statements obtained under coercion or hearsay testimony, the accusations holding military commissions to be unjust would be undercut.

(The Geek recommends that those who oppose the use of military commissions read the manuals outlining the processes of courts-martial and the military court of appeals as well as the relevant sections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If they were do to do so, they might be (pleasantly) surprised to see that the military justice system is remarkably jealous in its protection of the rights of the accused. It is no way a drumhead system--although on occasion it has been perverted by over zealous convening officers.)

Without the justification of keeping enemy combatants (legal or otherwise) and other suspected terrorists out of the reach of the federal courts, there is no real, compelling need to keep the Gitmo slammer running. Howls of public safety such as have been made by assorted Republicans are absurd.

The federal slammers are already holding (typically at the Florence, Colorado supermax) a prime selection of very, very bad guys including the men behind the first attack on the World Trade Center and the Unibomber. As the President pointed and accurately noted, none have escaped. And, none are likely to.

This being the case the risks of closing Gitmo are slim to none. The benefits, as SecDef Gates has commented, are high. Gitmo has become an international symbol of America acting at its worst. This significance may be undeserved, but in the war against Islamist jihadists, symbols and their manipulation are critical.

ATTENTION! There is a thunderstorm approaching and the Geek's solar system must be shut down. So must the satellite. Have to finish this when the weather improves. See you tomorrow, weather permitting.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Hits Again?

President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, inadvertently or otherwise linked the progress on the "two state" solution with that of deterring Iran's quest for nuclear capacity. Emanuel's remarks to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) a week or so back were later "clarified" by other White House wallahs as not being any sort of "pressure" on the Jewish state.

One might be forgiven if the words, "yeah, right," drift unbidden across the field of awareness.

No subtle reflection is needed to understand that the Obama administration has nailed its flag to the two state solution. No deep thinking is required to come to the conclusion that the current government of Israel (GOI) under PM Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is not enamored of the two state approach for a variety of reasons, not all of them unjustified.

Today as Bibi and the One talked, the problem of an Arab-Israeli peace shared top billing with the challenge presented by Iran. Unless a person lives somewhere deep in the State of Denial, there can be no disagreeing with the basic proposition that Iran is hot after acquiring the "Mahdi Bomb. There can be little debate over the collateral point that the quest will continue full speed ahead regardless of who wins the presidential election in Iran next month.

In one of the most unedifying "debates" in recent political history, the chattering class of the US has divided over domestic political lines regarding both vexing problems. The ancient American maxim holding that "politics stops at the high tide line" so often invoked during the Cold War is well and truly dead, a moldering corpse of bygone years.

The "progressives" hold Israel directly responsible for both the on-going violence in the Mideast and the push by Tehran for a nuclear capability. These "progressives" are convinced that if Israel would only withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, allow a Palestinian "right of return" and dismantle its nuclear arsenal and means of production, peace would prevail forever more.

The "reactionaries" most of whom are, no surprise here, Republicans of the neocon version take an antipodal view. In their estimate Israel bears little, if any, responsibility for the irredentist posture of the Palestinian Authority, let alone the more extreme pose adopted by Hamas. Israel is not responsible for the cynical and callous way in which the assorted Arab regimes manipulate and exploit the Palestinian grievances for their own purposes. And, the "reactionaries" contend, there is no way in which Israel and its nuclear arsenal is to blame for the ambitions of Iran.

Both sides have some measure of historical truth in their contentions. Or, to put it bluntly, both the Israelis and the Arabs have periodically shredded their own better interests in the pursuit of goals which were too expansive and too lacking in realism. But, when it comes to assigning liability for the morass in the Mideast, the least subjective view of the historical record must place the greater fault with the assorted Arab actors.

In the narrower issue of culpability for the Iranian nuclear ambitions, the historical record clearly absolves the GOI of responsibility. Both the late (un)lamented Shah and his ayatollah successors embraced the nuclear option for subjective reasons of Iranian national interest.

Whether Shah or Ayatollah, the goal has been the same: acquiring undisputed regional hegemonic status and achieving Great Power potency. The GOI was in no way the impetus for these twin, interlocking ambitions.

(The same cannot be said of the US. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, the US followed the policy developed by National Security Advisor and SecState Henry Kissinger, which sought to develop regional surrogates for American power. Iran became our surrogate in the Persian Gulf area. Thus we supported nuclear development programs in the country--for peaceful purposes only, of course.)

Benyamin Netanyahu today made reference to the best, most realistic linkage between the problems of Mideast peace and the Iranian "Mahdi Bomb." In essence, he acknowledged the effects of the often ignored Law of Unintended Consequences.

Bibi averred that in his fifty-nine years of breathing he has never seen Israeli and Arab so united in fear of a common threat. The threat is, of course, the "Mahdi Bomb." Beyond the shadow of the bomb lies the spectre of Iran as the regional hegemonic power. That thought is sufficient to make the oil sheiks quiver in their air-conditioned tents.

Without a nuclear capacity Iran has the conventional military capacity to dominate the Gulf states. The combination of conventional power and demonstrated will and capacity to foster groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas is more than sufficient to provide Tehran with the ability to be the primary actor in the region. Only the continued engagement of the US with the affairs of the Mideast offsets the paralysing potential of Iran on the councils of the Arab states.

While "progressives" might argue that the US will continue to involve itself in the Mideast and Gulf regions because of our ongoing need for the oil under the sand, it is equally if not more plausible to contend that the major imperative behind US engagement in these areas is the lack of a comprehensive Mideast peace settlement coupled with the long-standing American commitment to the existence of Israel. In the event of a genuine peace, would the US have critical national and strategic interests at stake sufficient to continue a significant presence in a very unpleasant part of the world?

Yes. If Iran attains a nuclear capacity. Atoms, not oil, give the reason for the US to stay in the icky Mideast game of nations.

The matter of atoms, atoms sitting, ready to fission in a "Mahdi Bomb," provides the single strongest reason for two developments to occur in the short term.

The first development rests implicitly in Bibi's observation. An Iranian nuclear threat would exist on the existential level not only as regards Israel. It would do the same for the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf and Mideast.

This reality, unpleasant as it may be for the sheiks to contemplate, provides a very strong impetus for them to get behind a genuine regional peace accord. With their own thrones at stake, rulers from Saudi Arabia to Jordan and on to Egypt have a very fine reason to find peace with Israel on terms which are acceptable to the GOI. To be acceptable to GOI means the peace agreement will not meet the irredentist demands of assorted Palestinian figures. (The Geek can't bring himself to call the panjandrums of Hamas or even the "moderate" Palestinian Authority "leaders" considering their blatant disregard for the best interests of the people living under their sway.)

The second development would be the continued involvement by the US in regional matters. In the (not unlikely) event that a continuation of the talks-and-sanctions approach does not deter Tehran from gaining the "Mahdi Bomb," the US will have no choice but to continue a heavy presence in the region. The American capacity to retaliate is the best "good office" the US can provide when--not if--Iran reaches the nuclear goal.

The practice of putting American troops and facilities in harm's way as a trip wire has a long and to date quite successful record in guaranteeing nuclear good behavior by hostile governments in Europe and Asia alike. The presence of Americans on the trace in Europe and the Z in South Korea has not been directed solely against the putative "bad guys" on the other side of the line.

All too often overlooked in the numerous commentaries on American Cold War strategy in both Europe and Asia has been the reassurance role of American troops. Their presence guaranteed stasis along the great divides in both continents. The Kremlin and the Warsaw Pact states knew that no resurgent Germany would turn itself loose as long as the GIs were there. Even the North Koreans occasionally understood that the South would not be marching north as long as the Americans were on the Z.

The US can (and has on some few past occasions) play an identical role in the Mideast. The US can and should be a guarantor of stasis. The threat of the "Mahdi Bomb" gives an additional force to this role.

This suggests that the Mideast peace settlement must be given priority over the Iranian nuclear program. The challenge is to convince the several Arab states that their best interests are to be served by the peace settlement. This means they must back down from the maximum two state solution. The Palestinian "right of return" must be abandoned. So must any demand that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. Irredentist figures must be removed from play--whatever that takes.

The US must commit itself to a long duration role as the final guarantor of stasis in the region. This implies that the US must again take up the unpleasant task of manning the trip-wire. It further implies that Iran must come to understand that if it continues with its quest for the "Mahdi Bomb" and succeeds, it will be held fully accountable for its actions and those of its proxies.

The ayatollahs must be made to understand that they are not immune to the same sort of consequences that have been faced in the past by the lads in the Kremlin or the Forbidden City. The US will not allow Iran or any other country to emerge as regional hegemon. Period.

The Israelis (and AIPAC) must come to understand that there are limits both to the territory of the state and its unilateral rights of self-defense. The W. Bush administration did not do a service either to Israel or the peace of the region by its stance during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. To steal from an advertising campaign of a few years past: "Friends don't let friends invade their neighbors."

Finally, we must all appreciate the delightful irony of the current situation. The best hope for a genuine, lasting Mideast peace is Iran's nuclear crusade. The Law of Unintended Consequences has forced Iran into a role it most assuredly did not want--force for peace in the Mideast.

Learn From The Past--And, Then, Get Over It

Release the "atrocity" pictures! Don't release the "atrocity" pictures! Prosecute the "torturers!" Don't prosecute the "torturers!" Nancy Pelosi is a down-to-the-bone liar! Nancy Pelosi was the innocent victim of CIA misleading obfuscations!

Along with those battling slogans, buried in the midst of the shouts of accusation, is the single most important issue regarding "torture" or "enhanced interrogation techniques" or the commission of "atrocities." Also lost in the fog of accusation, counter-accusation, and tear filled wails over the (mis) conduct of US personnel both military and civilian is a single, unpleasant but very plain truth.

First, the issue which really matters. It is best put as a question: Does the mix of stress filled techniques reportedly used by American interrogators produce better, more accurate, more useful information in a more rapid way than methods which do not rely on physical pressures?

Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who worked the USS Cole bombing case among others, maintains that the measures used by CIA interrogators were inherently ineffective compared with other, less physically stressful means. Former Vice President Cheney vehemently disagrees with this. In the ex-veep's view the robust methods produced vital, life-saving, actionable information when milder techniques failed.

Unless and until the documents demonstrating the accuracy of Mr Cheney's perspective emerge, the Geek, using his direct and vicarious experiences, will have to lean toward the view expressed by Ali Soufan. There is, however, one very important caveat: The Geek never had to deal hands on with a hard-core leadership cadre from an Islamist jihadist group. Nor, has his years of research dealt in sufficient, verifiable detail with the experience of those who have had to interrogate Islamist jihadists.

The historical record coming from such venues as the Algerian War of Independence and the ongoing Israeli counter-terror and counterinsurgency efforts provide a very fuzzy image of mixed results. Indeed, one can find apparent support for both the Cheney position and that of former Special Agent Soufan.

For example, during the Battle of Algiers the French forces used genuine torture on a wide spread basis. The French methods went far, very far beyond those employed by the Americans. Arguably the extreme methods used by French troops did produce actionable intelligence. It is equally to be argued that the consequences of the use of torture outweighed, both politically and psychologically, what ever positive results may have been achieved.

Perhaps the most important unintended, perhaps even unforeseen consequence of the French use of torture was the erosion of support for continuing the counterinsurgent campaign in Algeria among the members of the French elite, the country's academic, press and political classes. The emergence of knowledge regarding the methods used by the Paras in Algiers ignited a fire of condemnation which in turn caused a further factionalization of public opinion both in France and throughout the West.

Another, almost as important a consequence, again neither intended nor, perhaps foreseen, was the "free pass" given to the Algerian insurgents, the National Liberation Front, for their use of torture, summary executions and indiscriminate lethal violence against civilians. This Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card looped together with the Algerian Arab Muslim population's increased willingness to side with the National Liberation Front's war of independence.

All in all the French military success in the Battle of Algiers, brought about in large measure through the vigorous use of intelligence obtained in part from the use of torture was more than offset by the loss of political will in France and the increase in political will among the native Algerian people. The Law of Unintended Consequences can assure that battles "won" can result in wars which are well and truely lost.

The former Feeb was, perhaps, warning of this possibility.

The possibility, battles "won" so that wars are lost, would be enhanced significantly by the release of the "atrocity" imagery sought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Human Rights Watch (HRW). The release would serve no useful purpose, despite the beliefs of these groups and others of like mind.

The release would, as SecDef Gates warned weeks ago and President Obama asserted yesterday, would cause an upsurge, quite probably of a dramatic sort, in actions against the US and its troops. Certainly, given the history of such triggering acts as the release of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison photos or even the Danish cartoons, the release of the currently contested images would make the tasks of bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan much more difficult.

As was the case with the French in Algeria, these photos would serve to convince many to overlook the far, far worse violations of human dignity and rights committed on a daily basis by Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamist jihadist entities. The use of these photos to infuriate the easily infuriated people who have a desire to lash out at the Great Satan through martyrdom operations would be easy.

The net effect of any release would not only be more American deaths. No. The net effect would be the prolongation, perhaps the expansion of Islamist jihadist actions. This means, quite simply, a hell of a lot more death. A hell of a lot more fear. A hell of a lot more human misery. More deaths, more misery, more fear, more pure human suffering without any redeeming result.

The seekers after their version of Truth should consider these implications. This is particularly the case for outfits such as HRW which proclaim their concern for human rights, since the most basic right of all is the right to be left to live.

While either losing or refraining from exercising the "right" or, better, the desire to embarrass, to humiliate the United States may deny a measure of emotional satisfaction, it would have the benefit of saving lives, lessening fear, reducing misery. And, isn't that a higher goal than getting one's rocks off bashing Uncle Sam?

The sad, underlying reality which rests, unspoken under these photos is that in all wars, at all times, involving the soldiers and para-military forces of all combatants, atrocities have been committed. In all the wars of the Twentieth Century, the memoirs, the combat diaries, the oral histories of those at or near the sharp edge of battle are universally redolent of atrocities. No armed force has been immune to the killing of civilians, the slaughtering of those who have or are trying to surrender. None have failed to mistreat prisoners of war. None have been absolutely scrupulous in their observance of the laws, customs, niceties of war.

US troops have been no different from those of other nations. Yes, times and sensitivities of a culture, a society may change, but the actions of those at war change far less.

During World War II, no one objected to Life magazine having a photo spread which showed among other images, a picture of an attractive young woman writing a letter to her guy over in the Pacific area of operations. On her table was a skull. It was identified as the skull of a Japanese soldier sent to her as a token by the guy "Over There." There were few objections to this clear violation of the American Articles of War (and moral sensitivity.)

During the American effort in Vietnam there were rumors, reports and periodic photos of grunts with trophies. Strings of ears, fingers or other members retrieved from the bodies of dead Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops were whispered about, talked of and photographed to the revulsion of a few, the anger of some and either indifference or flat out glee to many.

In both of these previous American wars, the atrocities and violations of law were balanced in the public mind by accounts of despicable behaviour by the opposition. It was not so much that two wrongs were seen as making a right so much as that the wrongs committed by Americans were more than overmatched by those committed by the enemy.

From all reports the images in controversy today do not come within long, long cannon range of the photos in Life magazine in WW II. There are none showing grinning grunts with a string of Iraqi body parts held out for the camera like a prize swordfish taken off Florida.

The problem comes in the lack of countervailing imagery. The photos of women disfigured by acid attacks, the mutilated bodies of Americans killed in action--or killed after having been captured by the Islamist jihadists. There are no photos of Iraqi men, now fingerless or (in a couple of cases) lacking lips because they had been caught in the sinful act of smoking.

Again the argument is not that two wrongs make a right. The argument is that war itself is an atrocity rich environment in which American and other Western forces are remarkably restrained even by the (sometimes) absurd standards of today--particularly as held by the Blame America First crowd.

ACLU, HRW and kindred groups want the pictures released to the world not because it will somehow serve truth and justice. It has been acknowledged that Americans who have been proved to have violated the Laws of Land Warfare, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, have been dealt with appropriately. Justice and transparency have been served.

A similar case can be made against the proposal that a "Truth Commission" be established to root through the "torture" allegations and defenses. No truth will nor can emerge from such an exercise. It would inevitably be incomplete since some, (most?) information which might be relevant to an inquiry must of necessity be classified. Without an absolutely, utterly full release of all data and documents, can the conclusions of any "Truth Commission" be evaluated, let alone trusted. (And, who can ever be sure that all relevant documents have been released?)

Any "Truth Commission" no matter how allegedly "non-partisan" would inexorably dissolve into the usual slinging of diatribes between "progressives" and "reactionaries." Only those hostile to the US and the West would benefit from the ensuing search for truth, accountability and transparency (to employ the customary buzz words.)

Embarrassing and humiliating the United States is not a worthy goal. Placing the troops of the US and its allies at greater risk for no reason beyond satisfying emotional needs or political agenda imperatives is not laudable. Provoking more violence, more death, more fear, more misery is not an appropriate activity for groups committed to the protection of human rights.

It is for many (including the Geek) unfortunate to leave the issues of "enhanced interrogation techniques" unaddressed in totality. It may be unpleasant to accept the reality that American troops can, on rare occasions, perpetrate actions which can be seen legitimately as atrocities.

But, it is important, very important, to recognise that US personnel and institutions learn from experience, admit mistakes, try not to repeat them. It is just as important to realise and even celebrate the vast gulf which separates our conduct of and behavior in war from that of the Islamists jihadists we oppose.

Syria Flexes Its (Troublemaking) Muscles Again

One of the really fun aspects of assessing developments in Mideast politics is Syria. For a long time now it has been near or at the top of the troublemaking heap. It doesn't seem to matter if the actions taken by Damascus in Lebanon, Iraq or in facilitating Hamas are in Syria's best interests or not. Bashar al-Assad is playing a game even more devious than did his father.

Getting a fix on the possible strategic goals of the younger Assad and his cohorts sure ain't easy. Some of the imperatives seem to be quite obvious.

Syria wants the Golan Heights back in toto without any genuine constraints upon its free exercise of complete sovereignty. That has to be on the top of Bashar's list as it was his father's.

Syria has never left its ambitions to exercise complete hegemony over Lebanon. While the old dream of physically incorporating Lebanon into some sort of Greater Syria may have faded, the same can't be said of the desire to exercise a reasonable simulacrum of sovereignty over the place.

Finally one must not overlook Bashar's desire that Syria be taken every bit as seriously as a major regional actor by the US and other Great Powers as it was back in the days of his father's long rule. It is important that the Ego of Bashar not be underestimated when considering the factors entering Syrian diplomacy and foreign policy. It is critical to recall that the younger son was never expected (nor did he himself expect) to succeed his father. It is equally critical to bear in mind that Bashar has had to fight, and fight hard, in order to establish himself as the national leader and not a puppet in the hands of his dad's Old Guard.

North Korea, and, even more, Iran, have shown that the way to be taken seriously is to be an obstacle to American objectives. Even better, to show the capacity to dial up and down the interference with the realization of US goals.

It is this last factor which makes the recent reports credible of the old pipeline for martyrdom seekers, which had been valved down by Syria last fall, being back and running. The ramping up of foreign origin martyrdom seekers has been exhibited dramatically in the recent upsurge of suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul.

The tension between the recognised reality that Islamist jihadists are again moving into Iraq from Syria and the announced policy of the Syrian government came into sharp relief on May Day when the Syrian ambassador contended that his government supported a stable Iraq and wished to assure the US could leave the country pursuant to the timetable established in last year's agreement. It is a tough circle to square.

But, not impossible.

Another circle desperately in need of squaring is the relationship between Iran and Syria. This diplomatic tie was tightened recently when President Ahmedinejad visited Syria. While there he purportedly spent time with assorted terrorist leaders as well as Bashar al-Assad. Admedinejad had enough time in between gabbing with the capos of Hamas and other "hardline" Islamist groups to gnosh and talk with the Syrian president. Bashar al-Assad was pleased enough with the meeting to characterise the Syrian-Iran alliance to be "strategic" in nature.

In comparison the meeting between two mid-level Americans with the Syrian president passed by without any official or media attention in that country. As a response to the Obama administration's attempt to repair the relations between the US and Syria, this comparison must have been a tad disheartening. And, a very real warning.

The trick to squaring the circle is twofold. The first is scarcely a surprise: Israel or, to err on the side of accuracy, a settlement with Israel which gives complete and unencumbered sovereignty over the Golan Heights back to Damascus.

The second is a bit more surprising. The US must convince Syria that it is not going to abandon its role in the Mideast. That the US is not going to surrender the field to Iran. Particularly a nuclear armed Iran.

Bashar al-Assad, no more than any other Arab state leader, loses no sleep over the "plight of the Palestinians per se. They are Hecuba to Bashar and he is Hecuba to them--unless cranking up Hamas or some other Islamist jihadist bunch serves Syrian strategic interests. The Palestinians can rot as long as Syria gets the Golan back. Get a grip on that. And, take it to, if not the bank, at least the bargaining table.

Nor is Basar al-Assad any more enamored of the Tehran mullahocracy than is the House of Saud. The Iranian bi-lateral relationship is "strategic" as long, and only as long as it appears that the US might turn its back on the Mideast. Syria is coppering its bets to cover this not-implausible possibility.

The hidden irony in the so called "fifty-seven state solution" which, according to Jordan's King Abdullah II he worked out with President Obama and will be publicly put on the table by Mr Obama during his speech from Cairo to the "Arab and Muslim world," is that a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum would seem to allow the US to gracefully withdraw from the Mideast scene. This would leave Iran as the regional Big Guy.

However the US plays the game of the "fifty-seven state solution," it must at the same time reassure Syria of its ongoing presence in the Mideast. Making the job more difficult is the need for the US to at least match the Iranian offer of a free hand to Syria in Lebanon.

The fact that the highly efficient and lethal Syrian clandestine services have made no move in Lebanon against the rapidly blooming Hezbollah hints at an understanding between that Iranian puppet and the boys in Damascus. The US must match, and, if possible, better that offer if the Syrian policy circle is to be squared. Whether the US is in favor of the idea or not Syria will play an ever larger role in Lebanon's internal affairs under whatsoever convenient guise.

Syria is a very critical player in the region. It is a player that was alienated and mistreated by the policy makers of the Bush-Cheney administration. We continue to undervalue the importance of Syria to a balance of power stabilized Mideast only at our peril. Even if the Israeli-Palestinian problem is settled, the Mideast will be most stable if there is an internal balance of power between the several major powers, including Syria.

Get a grip on it.

While you are at it, President Obama, you might get a grip on history. Particularly the history of sanctions. You might note that it was a sanctions regime which drove Cuba into the Bear's arms.

Sanctions are not going to have a positive effect in Syria either. They are an affront to the nation's dignity--and Bashar's ego. Far from reducing the will or ability of Syria to "support" terrorism, they will do the opposite.

Oh, well, "When will they ever learn?" is the constant refrain of American foreign policy.

Remember Serbia, 1999

The contretemps over American use of air delivered fire in Afghanistan, which appears to be a story with undeservedly long legs, has served to remind the Geek of the worst abuse of aerial operations by the US and other NATO countries in the years since World War II. In making that assessment the Geek is in no way ignoring the arguable excesses of Linebacker I and II and Rolling Thunder. Nor is he overlooking the widespread, militarily unjustifiable use of air strikes on civilian infrastructure targets far removed from the area of combat operations in Desert Storm or in the more recent invasion of Iraq.

Ten years ago we were near the end of the seventy-eight days of air operations against Serbia and the other components of what was known then as the Federal Yugoslavian Republic (FYR). Casting even the slightest respect for either the immunity of civilians from deliberate targeting as well as the Doctrine of Proportionality into the scrap heap, the US and others of the NATO partnership waged unethical, unjustifiable aggressive war from the air against the civilian population of the FYR. At the time the MSM of the US and at least some other countries were filled with cheers for the war and nary a peep about the fate of those down range.

Like Saddam Hussein was and would be again, Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was widely portrayed as Adolph Hitler's more evil twin. That characterisation was totally unfair--to both Hitler and Milosevic. At the same time the MSM sung hosannas onto the Clinton administration for taking firm and effective action to stop "genocide" in Kosovo. The Americans failed to see a reality quite apparent to their European colleagues. The real bloodletting in Kosovo started after the first US bombs and missiles hit Serb cities, towns, villages.

The media and politicians here ignored the impact of CBU-87/B, which delivered hundreds of sub-munitions over an area of several hundred square yards spreading awesome wounds over the "soft targets" of Serb civilians. These leaders, movers and shakers, the lot of them, blamed the parliament of the FYR for the "necessity" of the war.

The intellectually honest person then or now can only reply, "Crap!"

The responsibility for the "war" with its unending air assaults upon civilian targets (there were darn few genuinely military targets to hit) lies solely and strictly with the US and, to a lesser extent, its NATO partners. Take a look at the Rambouillet Accords which were signed shortly before Clinton and Company launched the high-tech air attack on the FYR. Specifically take a close, hard look at Annex B.

Take your time, the Geek is happy to wait. This deadly document has slumbered unexamined for entirely too long. And, too many people died wrongly, unethically, because of it for it to mould away in the archives unnoticed.

This document is in large measure the product of Richard Holbrooke, who became a legend in the Clinton years for his astute diplomacy in the morass of former Yugoslavia. He has been brought back as the American Special Envoy with a brief for Afghanistan, Pakistan and, at least implicitly, India.

Annex B constitutes an ultimatum. The demand for a NATO occupation in all but name only is clearly meant to be unacceptable to the Serbian government. It is on a par with the ultimata presented by the US to Spain before the "Splendid Little War" at the turn of the Twentieth Century, or that presented by the Dual Monarchy to Serbia which touched off the "Great War" of 1914-1918, or those handed to Baghdad in 1991 and 2003. The wording was carefully calculated in each case to provide a cause for war and a way of displacing responsibility for the effects of war later.

While the genuine motivations of the Clinton administration for desiring and provoking "war," which is to say an exercise in "regime change" before the term was coined, can be debated. And, hopefully will be.

The results are not debatable although they were not given any attention by the MSM at the time--or later. The seventy-eight days of attack by the most advanced manned and unmanned air platforms in the possession of the US (and some others) were massively employed in killing civilians and turning essential civilian infrastructure--power grids, water supply systems, roads, bridges, railroads and public buildings, including hospitals--into bloody rubble. In at least some attacks, anti-personnel munitions including the amazingly deadly CBU-87 Bravo were used on the marketplaces of small towns and villages.

All of this slaughter and devastation took place below the radar of the media and most observers, including the same human rights monitors which are so vocal today with far less cause or justification. Talking heads were bedazzled by the "gee-whiz" nature of the Pentagon's advanced technology munitions and their delivery systems. Government spokespersons gravely and falsely placed the responsibility for any collateral damage on the Belgrade regime and broke their arms patting themselves on the back for having halted genocide and prevented aggression.

Three years later the administration of George W. Bush applied the "lessons" of Operation Allied Force in the implementation of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The aerial destruction of the FYR's civilian infrastructure gave rise to the misguided "shock and awe" approach to war on the cheap of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. The prostitution of the media was continued and improved upon by the administration and Pentagon planners. Misled and bamboozled with dissent and debate disallowed by flag waving jingosim of the same sort which had sped the bombers and cruise missiles on their way in 1999, the American public stood and cheered as the unnecessary invasion and concomitant destruction of Iraq took place.

This time the human rights community was not silent. This time the advocates of the civilians caught in the crosshairs were quickly on the job. But, this time, in Iraq and even more in Afghanistan these advocates have demonstrated the sort of extreme pendulum swing that so often characterises Americans of passionate empathy. This time the human rights crew has ignored with peril to both their credibility and ultimate effectiveness the responsibility of entities other than the American military for civilian death, misery and fear.

This time around the voices which were so conspicuous by their absence during the seventy-eight days of airborne slaughter in the FYR have been equally silent about the responsibility of the Islamist jihadists for civilian deaths in Iraq and, even more, in Afghanistan. In both cases, now and ten years ago, the human rights community has acted, inadvertently or otherwise, to harm the cause of limiting war, restricting the ways in which wars are fought, sparing civilians from use as targets, shields or sacrifices.

For those of us who realise that not only are there conditions and requirements which make the waging of war a necessity of international politics or national self-defense and who are desirous of limiting the destruction and death which is a part of war, it is time to reflect on the lessons of the not too distant past.

It is time to ask ourselves: What did we do, say, think as the bombs rained down on the women and children of Serbia?

Maybe Some Good News From Af-Pak

General David Patraeus was reported to have made some encouraging observations regarding Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to the general, al-Qaeda has suffered losses in the past six to ten months which have forced it to leave all its bases in Afghanistan. Considering the accuracy of General Patraeus' assessments of the state of play in Iraq during the time he was commander in that area of operations, there is reason to accept his comment on Afghanistan as accurate.

As a historian specialising in interventionary operations, the Geek is as predisposed to discount public assessments by high ranking military personnel as he is the statements of presidents and potentates generally. However, there are other indications which independently support the Patraeus position.

One of the most important is the clear dominance of Taliban as both the initiator and recipient of military operations. Even a year ago al-Qaeda was featured equally with Taliban as the actor of insurgency in Afghanistan. No more.

This is not surprising. Al-Qaeda has always been the junior partner in the Afghan war. The majority of the trigger pullers as well as the most effective leadership has been in Taliban. The Taliban, despite outside assistance from Pakistani organs headed by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been authentically Afghan. While foreign fighters have been killed in confrontations with US and other forces, they represent a distinct and quite small minority of bodies buried and captured.

Removing al-Qaeda bases from Afghanistan is encouraging, but is unimportant in and of itself. The defeat of Taliban as a military reality is far, far more important whether in the context of a purely punitive expedition or in that of leaving behind some semblance of a functioning nation-state.

The US and its partners including the Afghan national government are a bunch of Texas miles away from that goal. And, the forced relocation of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan to the FATA of Pakistan in no way contributes to the possible success of Islamabad against its Islamist jihadist adversary.

Before taking a short dekko at Pakistan, it might be instructive to reflect on the latest "human rights abuse" out of Afghanistan. This latest add-on to the "American war crime" of last Monday may well be a case of very good news hiding in the cloak of the bad.

Nadar Nadery who is described as a member of Afghanistan's human rights commission has hinted that the US employed white phosphorus (WP) in its air strike in Farah province last Monday.

WP (also known in the jargon as Whiskey Peter and Willy Peter) is a chemical added to some artillery and air delivered munitions to provide screening smoke. It may also be used for night illumination fire missions. It is also a fearsome anti-personnel munition. WP was widely used in both World War II and Korea in the anti-personnel role. In Vietnam a cynical saying which was heard on patrol and in the firebases alike was, "Willy Peter make you a believer." Meaning: It made the people down range dead, painfully dead.

While there are powerful, perhaps irrefutable indications that the Israeli Defense Forces used WP improperly during its combat operations in the Gaza Strip, there have been none to the effect that US and other foreign forces have employed it Afghanistan in other than a limited number of screening applications. The reasons for this are simple. The military commanders in the Afghan AO are not inclined to hand the opposition a perfect propaganda weapon. Second, WP is less effective than other, more conventional munitions in the current combat setting.

Neither in the Farah province operation nor in an earlier one in Kapsia province have US forces used WP. If WP was used it is far more likely that it was employed by Taliban. This chemical can be delivered by small caliber mortar shells. Taliban has such. It is used for screening. Taliban, once engaged by US and other forces, is often in need of screening to break contact. Taliban's fire control capacity is less well developed than that of the US and associated forces.

The Doctrine of Inherent Military Probability points directly at Taliban not the US and associated forces as being the user of WP in both alleged incidents. Considering that Taliban, in common with all Islamist jihadist groups, uses civilians as shields, the culpability of the group becomes all but incontestable. Finally, the use of civilians as human sacrifices on the alter of victory sought through propaganda reinforces the case against Taliban to the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Should the latest wrinkle on the "American war crimes" theme gain legs it will encourage Taliban to aim its mortars with more intent and deadly effect upon civilians. By doing so the Islamist jihadist hopes to both offset the ever increasing military advantage enjoyed by the US and International Security Assistance Forces as well as stimulate a groundswell of highly vocal disapproval among the chattering classes of Western Europe and the US.

This, of course, is a tactic of desperation. One which recognises that a clear cut military victory is not likely, perhaps not possible. For Islamist jihadists whose cavalier attitude toward civilian life is approaching legendary status, a few human sacrifices for Allah and victory over the infidels and apostates is a very small price to pay. After all, it is so easy to say of those writhing in pain as the WP burns through to the bone, "Allah knows his own."

Taliban in Pakistan will probably be going the human shield, human sacrifice route now that the Pakistani government appears to be serious about defeating its trigger pullers in Swat. Perhaps propelled by the fear of a military coup, the government has authorised both an advance into the Taliban dominated region and the redeployment of forces from the Indian border. Adding to the possibility that the current assault against Taliban is genuine and not a sop to American pressure is the moderate but real chance that the government of Pakistan and the ISI have decided the djinn they let out of the bottle is too dangerous to continue.

Working from the historically validated predicate that ISI pursued with the full agreement of the military to seek strategic depth by putting Taliban into power in Afghanistan, both the ISI and the new civilian government along with the military high command may have decided that there is a better way to achieve the same goal. The better way is the full collaboration between the more or less democratic and ever-so-slightly secular governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Failing an effective rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad, the government of Pakistan faces the possibility of surrendering influence in Kabul to India, which is heavily involved in infrastructure and other projects in Afghanistan. At the same time the current regime in Islamabad is caught in the jaws of military coup and Islamist jihadist takeover with all that entails. The civilian government of Zardari and company has a finely honed sense of self-preservation. Neither a coup nor a Islamist takeover would be desirable.

Given that the Pakistani military is biased toward high intensity war with India and its competence at counterinsurgency is so low as to make the IDF look good at the game, one can only feel sorry for the civilians caught in Swat. While the government is trying (ineptly) to deal with the refugee flow and encourage other civilians to leave the Swat AO, Taliban has mined the roads and is taking other measures to assure they have a plethora of civilian shields and sacrifices.

Taliban has no hope of defeating a determined multi-brigade Pakistani army operations. Rather, it must rely on revulsion in Pakistan and other countries against the civilian butcher's bill to win the campaign for them. The more civilians who die or who live in wretched, under supplied refugee camps, the better are Taliban's chances of coming out on top in the current affray. And, "Allah knows his own."

But, the more Taliban in Pakistan, like its cohorts in Afghanistan, relies on turning civilians into highly visible bullet (and Whiskey Peter) catchers, the closer it is to actually losing. Get a grip on that.

Today's Totally Gripless Award Goes To---

Drum roll, please. Suspense as the Geek opens the envelope. The winner for Meritorious idiocy above and beyond the call of sanity is Human Rights Watch. More specifically the gold plated skull symbolising an empty headed understanding of human affairs goes to Rachel Reid. Ms Reid according to the AP dispatch is the group's "Afghanistan researcher."

Ms Reid is evidently researching an Afghanistan which exists in some alternative universe considering her characterisation of the recent skirmish between Afghan national force members and Taliban. You know, the shoot out last Monday in the wake of which US and other NATO aircraft jockeys were accused of killing nearly 150 civilians.

Ms Reid vented vitriol as she characterised the Monday affray as having the probability of being "the largest and most tragic loss of life to U.S. bombs so far in Afghanistan." Blowing aside the conclusions of the joint preliminary investigation conducted by US and Afghan personnel, Ms Reid went on in a fine bit of rhetorical overkill which was as strident as it was disconnected to reality,

Yet another devastating error inevitably calls into question the continued viability of the use of U.S. and NATO airpower in Afghanistan. The procedures for protecting civilians and verifying intelligence before launching attacks are clearly not working and must be thoroughly reviewed again.

This crock of self-evident delusion is redolent of an attitude which emerged within the context of the anti-Vietnam war movement, "If the government says it--it must be a lie."

As a specialist in US national security history, the Geek is well acquainted with the will and ability of the US (and other) governments to lie, to lie early and often. But, this time around the stance of the joint investigative team holding Taliban responsible for the deaths--even those which occurred due to US or NATO delivered ordnance passes the test of Inherent Military Probability.

The Inherent Military Probability notion was developed over a century ago by Hans Delbruck, a German historian of ancient warfare. It is a useful filter for evaluating not only the exaggerations of ancient writers on the wars of their time but also for assessing the degree of truth resident in a government statement regarding the wars of our time.

As the Geek has written in previous posts, the Taliban, like other Islamist jihadist groups violates with intentionality the customary usages of land warfare meant to protect civilians. The jihadists of Taliban use civilians just as did Hamas--as a means of defeating the military superiority of their opponents while assuring that the inevitable civilian deaths can be used in propaganda to undercut support for the status quo government.

Now, listen up and listen tight, Ms Reid. When Taliban takes up positions in civilian residential compounds, it is violating not only the laws and customs of land warfare, it is discarding the basic ethical imperatives which have served over the centuries to separate war as politics from mere bloodlust driven butchery. When Taliban opens fire on US or International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) or Afghan National Forces (ANF) without allowing civilians to leave the area of operations, it is doing the same. Only with more intent, with more evil in mind. When Taliban forces the civilians to stay in harm's way as was the case last Monday, it, Taliban, is responsible ethically for every dead or injured civilian.

Whether you like it or not, Ms Reid, Taliban is the bad guy in this episode as it has been in so many others which you and your kindred spirits have improperly blamed on the US, or the ISAF or, rarely, the ANF. This reality, the culpability of Taliban, is not surprising. Consider, Ms Reid, if you can, that Taliban, again like all Islamist jihadist movements, engages in suicide bombing and the use of improvised explosive devices (IED) against soft, civilian targets rather than take on troops capable of fighting back.

Ms Reid, you are obviously afflicted by a mental disease common to the academic and chattering classes of the US and Western Europe. It is a form of self-loathing. A form of desperately seeking to blame, to devalue, to deprecate your own culture, your own society, your own country. Thus, you rush to blame-America-first regardless of the realities on the ground.

This is injurious not only to the culture and country which gave you birth. It injures as well the civilians of Afghanistan, the people whom you purport to be protecting.

The only real and final protection of civilian life and hope in Afghanistan is an end to the war. That ending can come only when and if Taliban and the other Islamist jihadist groups are militarily destroyed. Until and unless that happens the ideology of Islamist jihadism will assure that more and more civilians are placed in the crosshairs.

Ms Reid, the Geek has no idea how old you are. Are you of sufficient maturity to remember the Sixties? The Seventies? Even the Eighties of the Reagan administration? Do you remember the ban the bomb campaigns of those years?

If not, you might take a quick look at the history. Back during the Cold War, the ban-the-bomb crowd directed their manifestos, their demands, their demonstrations at the US and the various countries of Western Europe. They did so because these countries are democratic. Amenable at least in principle to the pressure of public opinion. The Soviet Union was not. No protests were aimed in its direction. It would have been a waste of time and energy.

Taliban and the other Islamist jihadist groups are even more immune to public opinion than was the autocracy of the Kremlin. Still, if you and your group, Ms Reid, want to have both credibility and ethical integrity, you must condemn Taliban for its unethical actions. You must, if you are real in your interest in the well-being of the civilians of Afghanistan, take Taliban publicly to task for every one of their recurrent violations of basic human rights.

Human rights? Isn't that in the name of the group for which you speak, Ms Reid?

The Israeli Bomb--And Iran's

Of late the Obama administration has started putting pressure on Israel to come clean on its nuclear arsenal, sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, implicitly at least, follow the lead of South Africa and abandon its nuclear capacity. There has been more than a little bloviation about a link between the Israeli bomb and the inability of the US and its partners to convince the mullahs of Tehran to give up their quest for a "Mahdi Bomb."

There has even been some degree of quacking over the High Minded concept of a regional pact making the Mideast an area free of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. This notion, which is much more a product of Fantasyland than an emigrant from the shores of Utopia, is of a piece with the Obama vision of a world without any nuclear weapons anywhere.

There is not much to say in favor of nuclear weapons. Except one small, but very relevant fact. They, and the much maligned doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, have made the world safe for war.

That's right. The shadow of the mushroom cloud hovering over the chancelries of the globe have made the place safe for the waging of controlled, more or less purposeful war.

One can never say that the Big Bomb has kept the peace per se, not in the face of the historical record covering the past sixty-four years. But, the wars have not involved widespread, high intensity operations of the massively destructive scale of, say, the two World Wars. And, that is no small accomplishment given the international dynamics of the period.

Without the Israeli nuclear capacity the wars of the Mideast, including that of 1967, would have been far greater, far more bloody and not necessarily any more decisive in outcome than the low scale conflict which has occurred during this period of "Nuclear Ambiguity." The unchallenged possession of the "Samson Option" by Israel, not the diplomatic support of the US nor the nanny like nattering of the UN has limited and prevented regional hectatombs from happening.

The documentary hints which have leaked out around the Great Wall of Secrecy make it clear that the US government has been fully aware not only of Israel's ultimately successful efforts to develop and refine its nuclear weapons capabilities but the existence and size of the resultant stockpile. There is also no doubt of our complicity in maintaining the thin and porous scrim of secrecy behind which lurk the missiles and bombs of Israel.

The policy of nuclear ambiguity was dictated to Israel by the forces of reality.

The first was particularly important early in the Israeli development and procurement effort: The ambiguous threat is always perceived as being larger than any reality would dictate. Ambiguity encourages the enemy to contemplate the worst conceivable case, not the worst realistic one.

The second justification--no, requirement--for the ambiguity policy is the US Congress. In one of its fits of High Mindedness, Congress legislated that no country which possesses either nuclear weapons or an active research and development program in that area can receive US military assistance including monetary aid. Israel may no longer be dependent upon US money for its defense needs, but what rational government is going to chuck gigabucks without a very, very good reason?

Even the achievement of that long sought, but always elusive Holy Grail of a comprehensive Mideast peace agreement in no way nullifies the cruciality of Israel's nuclear deterrent. The German diplomatic maestro, Bismarck was reputed to have said regarding treaties--they are "mere scraps of paper." So also might any emergent Mideast leader.

Given the record of diplomatic agreement longevity in the Mideast, any dropping of defenses and deterrents in the warm glow of the post-signing celebrations would be the height of folly. It would be folly as well for Israel to rely upon some external protecting power rather than itself when faced by an existential threat.

Offers to extend the American nuclear umbrella over Israel are well-intentioned, but ultimately meaningless gestures. Forty-five years ago the abrasive but quite insightful French president, Charles de Gaulle, made that point in a characteristically blunt fashion when he questioned the willingness of the US to expose New York to the possibility of nuclear obliteration in order to protect Paris.

His point was very well taken. Other European leaders whispered what De Gaulle shouted. It was only the presence of American troops in the potential killing fields of Europe which gave any credibility to the nuclear umbrella concept. Except for the anglophobic French president, most Europeans were willing to concede that the US would go nuclear if and when their troops were on the receiving end of a Soviet strike.

Even the political power of AIPAC and other components of the Israel Lobby lacks the potency necessary to turn any American nuclear pledge from the dross of rhetoric to the gold of action in a time of dire need. Would We the People really, truly, undoubtedly continence the placing of New York or any other city at risk in order to protect Tel Aviv?

The second guess doesn't count.

Absent the Israeli nuclear deterrent, even though the shield of ambiguity has been holed, most notably by Robert Gates during his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense, there is no means of inhibiting a Mideast leader, Islamist most likely, from abandoning any then extant treaty or agreement to mount total jihad against the "Zionist Entity." There would be nothing to inhibit the manufacture and use of chemical, biological or radiological munitions against Israel with results which would lethal on a grand scale.

Nuclear weapons may be icky-poo in the extreme. Their use may be revolting to civilized sensitivities. They do have one redeeming factor in comparison to their equally nasty relatives in the clan of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Compared to chemical, biological and radiological munitions, nuclear weapons are both expensive and difficult to produce and stockpile. Chemical munitions can be manufactured quickly, easily and cheaply from widely available industrial precursors. Biological threats can be conjured up in a modestly equipped laboratory from progenitors which are available globally. Radiological weapons require nothing more than access to high level radwaste, a little bit of explosives and operators who are willing to die.

None of the "Smaller Three" demand major investment in infrastructure facilities which are as visible as they are expensive. None require highly trained and skilled technicians in brigade lots. None require equipment which is readily identifiable as to purpose and thus easily interdicted before or during shipment.

While the "Small Three" of the WMD clan lack the diplomatic prestige of the nuclear option, they make up for this deficiency by their ease and invisibility of manufacture. They are also more suited to ambiguous signature operations, which is an advantage if the author has reason to apprehend a military response to an attack.

And, as the recent "swine flu" imbroglio amply demonstrated, biological munitions have a potential for terror effects far outweighing any actual damage inflicted. Fear without any concurrent high body count is the terrorist's ideal. It represents maximum damage with both limited investment and very low potential of a military response by the victim country(ies.)

Without its nuclear deterrent Israel would be wide open to chemical, biological or radiological attack. Only the deterrent and uncertainty as to the threshold level which would trigger an Israeli atomic reaction has any genuine likelihood of keeping the "Small Three" threat remote in probability.

The government of Israel has taken a dim view of the NPT's inherent efficacy. While Brazil and South Africa abandoned their pursuit of a nuclear capacity it is doubtful that the NPT had any role in the decision. Brazil, by its own admission, had no reason to acquire the bomb. It had nothing to gain and much to lose by going ahead with its program. South Africa made its move as part of the groundswell of internal governmental change. Again, any linkage with the NPT owes more to High Minded wishful thinking than political reality.

Adherence to the NPT did not inhibit North Korea. The NPT is, after all, another of those "mere scraps of paper" to be abandoned when reasons of state demand. The Hermit Kingdom of the North ditched the NPT officially three years before its first test.

Not too much should be made of Japan or South Korea not pursuing a nuclear procurement effort. Each has the base for very rapid breakout. It would take either country only months, not years, to put a deliverable weapon on the shelves. Each could (and would) resign from the NPT if it saw more to gain by the action than would hypothetically be lost.

Like all treaties the NPT is no stronger, no more effective than the political will and self-perceived, subjectively defined national interests of the states which are signatory to it. The Great Menace of that chimera, global public opinion, in a manner akin to the sanctions of the UN Security Council, are toothless in comparison with a reason of existential nature compelling abandonment of the NPT.

Even when no official abandonment of the NPT has happened, as in the case of Iran, reasons of state will both allow and compel the "illegal" pursuit of nuclear weapons. As the Iranians have shown to date, the risks of doing so are acceptably slight. The differences between the Permanent Members of the Security Council as well as the needs of important constituencies within industrialised countries assure that economic and diplomatic sanctions are less effective than would be a black powder muzzle loader on a modern battlefield.

The Australians estimated in a recent White Paper that as many as twenty countries will have joined the Nuclear Club within the next decade or two. This conclusion does not seem to be unwarrantably pessimistic. Nuclear technology is ever more broadly disseminated around the world as is the supporting hardware. The proliferation of "civilian" reactors both research and power producing will drag the potential of increased distribution of nuclear weapons in its wake. There is no way around that reality. Knowledge plus hardware plus fissile material equals a bomb--actual or potential.

The lesson is simple. And, to many, unpleasant. The NPT is a thin, greasy, slippery rope on which to take a grip. It is more delusion than reality. It will let us down, hard, unless we put it in the same category as the halcyon hallucination of a "nuclear free world."

Getting a grip on the alternative of a world in which more countries have nuclear weapons or the rapid capacity to acquire these weapons is hard. Not impossible. Only hard. Deterrence, particularly that which resides in the hands of a responsible country such as the US (or, history shows, Israel) has protected us from worst case wars for over a half century. There is no reason to anticipate any change in the future.

A world without nuclear weapons is pleasant to contemplate. A continuation, even an expansion of mutually assured destruction is not.

Now ask yourself, would a world without nuclear deterrence in which the threat of the "Small Three" reigned supreme, its use not susceptible to effective retaliation be any better? Perhaps, it would be even worse?

Those Darn Pesky Civilians

No matter where you look, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza all you see are those doggone civilians getting in the way of a good, honest war. It's getting so a commander can't order up an air strike or an artillery stonk without some bunch of civvies getting blown up. Heck, darn near any snuffy who wants to bust caps after taking fire is going to find some local yokel standing there, picking his nose and blocking a clear field of fire.

Then there are the other civilians. This bunch wouldn't get caught dead in a combat zone. They value their butts too much for that to happen. No. With exceptional bravery this crew stays far, far away from wherever the bullets fly and bombs blow. This civilian assembly is comprised of the High Minded who worry overtime about the effects of war on civilians.

Not to oversimplfy matters, the Save The Innocent Civilians Coalition is at root the anti-war component of the Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned whose wrinkled foreheads and lips ever pursed in disapproval use the plight of civilians caught in the battle zone as the tool of choice to end all wars now. They make no distinction among wars. From their perspective there is no such thing as a justifiable war, not even one undertaken in national self-defense.

The purported "humanitarian crises" which are an automatic part of all wars, and an important aspect of guerrilla, insurgent and similar conflicts provide a mediagenic cover story for the genuine goal of ending war as a feature of human experience. Ironically, one of the major consequences of the STICC campaign is to prolong war so that more civilians suffer more death, fear and misery.

Going to the videotape we quickly discover that with the possible exception of the 150 years separating the end of the Thirty Years War and the start of the Wars of the French Revolution, civilians in the form of impediments, refugees and corpses in the wake of armies have always been a feature of conflict. Civilians have often been the direct targets of military operations.

Whether Sherman's campaign against civilian morale and political will embodied in both the March to the Sea and the subsequent March Up Country, or the Prussian counter-partisan efforts in the Franco-Prussian War a few years later, the intentional targeting of civilians has been a feature of modern war. The refugee generation effects of the German advance across the Low Countries and France in 1940 and the later British firebomb raids against German civilian residential districts brought the intentional targeting of civilians to a new high (low?) in military strategy.

During World War II the High Minded were conspicuously silent in denouncing the "humanitarian crises" which characterised the war. They were equally speechless in the years immediately following V-E Day. Literal hordes of Displaced Persons (DP's they were termed by lips curled in disdain) thronged through the wreckage of Europe. The diseased and famished in the millions crowded DP camps (many of which were former Nazi KZ Lagers) with nary a whisper of concern.

The lowering of the Iron Curtain announcing the onset of the Cold War changed that. Reasons of state, the need for political stability as seen from Washington brought the plight of the Displaced Persons to the center of the stage. Humanitarian relief efforts culminating in the more or less altruistic capstone of the Marshall Plan sought to bring order, health and eventually even prosperity to the displaced, the war ravaged, the hopeless of Europe.

In a delightful exercise in cynical and self-serving politics, the Soviet Union sponsored front groups which sought to offset not only the effects of the Marshall Plan but also the American nuclear superiority with a "peace offensive" which focused on the effects of war, particularly one in which the US would use its atomic weapons on the civilians of Europe and, by implication, the rest of the world. With remarkable rapidity the High Minded signed on to the Stockholm Peace Appeal and its successors.

The rights and immunities of civilians caught in war became a new and growing focus of those who opposed war, all war under all conditions, against any enemy, even a country given to aggression. Horror stories (some of which were true) abounded as wars proliferated on the margins of the Cold War.

Credence was immediately, seemingly automatically and without question, granted to the claims by North Korea and China that the US was engaging in biological weapons in the Korean War. The patent absurdity of the North Korean and Chinese accusations met no pushback from the High Minded.

New stories of atrocities committed by the Israeli forces during the War of Independence were circulated and believed without investigation. While some of the atrocity tales were absolutely true, no mention was made of the role played by the Arab states in the movement of Arabs from the new state of Israel. Apparently the High Minded of the STICC persuasion never met a negative view of the Americans, or the Israelis which was disbelieved.

Neither did they meet a narrative of atrocious behaviour by Soviet or Soviet leaning states which they found credible. The same might be said of accounts of cruelty or human rights abuses suffered by civilians at the hands of authoritarian regimes in the Arab or Asian or African states.

During the years of American involvement in the Wars in Vietnam the US was recurrently damned for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" for its forces' employment of napalm or tear gas. Despite the exceptional care the US exhibited in its conduct of air operations against North Vietnam, the American fliers and those who commanded them were repeatedly accused of causing unnecessary civilian casualties and misery. The STICC camp frothed and spewed over each and every civilian casualty which might have occurred at the hands of American forces.

At the same time silence reigned over the recurrent violations of the laws and customs of land combat committed by the North Vietnamese forces or the Viet Cong guerrillas. Not a single word was made of the civilian slaughters which were repeatedly committed by the anti-Saigon forces.

The Mai Lai massacre was rightly and resoundingly condemned, not only by the High Minded it might be noted, but also by members of the American military. However, the literally dozens of Mai Lai level killings conducted by the Viet Cong or the Peoples Army of North Vietnam went by unnoticed and uncommented upon by the fine folks of STICC.

(Can we say, "Double standard?")

The double standard was at work during the long and bloody years of the Iraq-Iran War. Both the European and American members of STICC seemed to be out to a very long lunch during this exsanguinary and ultimately inconclusive effusion. Long range and highly inaccurate missiles fell on Iranian cities. The mullahs of Tehran rounded up brigades of child-soldiers and sent them into the electrified swamps as human minefield clearing units. The Iraqis used chemical munitions against unprepared Iranian troops--and their own dissident citizens.

The High Minded yawned and looked elsewhere. Only when an American warship caught in a fit of buck fever shot down a civilian Iranian airliner did the Protectors of Human Rights Everywhere sit up, take notice and shout, "War criminal!"

The US inspired coalition which waged the 1991 war to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait was relatively immune to the usual accusations of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." There were several reasons for this (temporary) immunity. The first and most basic was that the war was fought in deserted country. The pesky civilians were conspicuous by their absence. Also important was the obnoxious nature of the Iraqi regime. Saddam was such a totally unpleasant person that it was hard to work up sympathy for the Iraqi civilians. Finally, the war was over with quickly.

(Another, perhaps far from unimportant contributory factor was the recently concluded collapse of the Soviet Union and the confusion this engendered in the minds of many High Minded people.)

In the wars of recent years from the First Intifada through to the current affrays in Afghanistan and Pakistan, civilians, civilian corpses and the clamor of "humanitarian crisis," "crimes against humanity" and shrill denunciations of the US or Israel have become the common themes. The TV images of Israeli soldiers shooting at insult, rock and Molotov cocktail throwing Arab teenagers sensitized the eyes and minds of the world's public--particularly the opinion molding elite--to the fundamental asymmetry of the Mideast conflict.

From that beginning the double standard demanded by the High Minded of STICC has grown to monster proportions. The adversaries of the West, particularly those who oppose the US and Israel have become increasingly sophisticated in the use of civilians, their misery, fear and death, as weapons of war. Taliban, al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist jihadist horde have discovered and are effectively exploiting the key vulnerability of Western military doctrine--the use of firepower and technology to limit friendly casualties to a politically acceptable level.

In pursuing the exploitation of this vulnerability, the assorted adversaries which includes the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the pioneer of many of the use-civilians-as-weapons tactics, have been powerfully assisted by the High Minded, by the members of STICC. To put the matter simply but not oversimplified, without the force multiplier provided by the anti-war advocates working under the cover of concern for civilians and avoidance of humanitarian crises, the efforts to exploit the critical vulnerability of the Americans (and others) would have gone in vain.

It is of more than passing interest that the High Minded never, but never, demand the trigger pullers and suicide bombers and fighters who hide behind women and children to conform their tactics to the customs and laws of land warfare. There are never any calls that the fighters of LTTE or Taliban or al-Qaeda or Hamas or Hezbollah show even the most rudimentary respect for the presumed immunity of civilians from military operations.

Hamas, which acts under the color of being the de facto government in the Gaza Strip, is never denounced by the High Minded for having taken no effort to separate their fighters from the civilian population. Not even the United Nations has noticed that Hamas both allowed and encouraged the "defense forces" of the Gaza Strip to place their bunkers, fighting positions, munitions dumps, rocket launching facilities in the midst of densely populated residential areas.

Of course, Hamas wanted their trigger pullers intermingled with civilians. Naturally Hamas wanted their rocket launching teams to set off their deadly missiles from the courtyards of mosques, schools or housing complexes.

To do any thing else would be to expose their brave and fearless fighters for Palestine to the overwhelming capacities of the Israeli Defense Forces. By sticking offensive capacities in civilian centers Hamas sought to both neutralise Israeli capabilities and place a (false) onus on the IDF for any and all civilian deaths and injuries.

The High Minded played along with Hamas. This is not to the credit of the anti-war and humanitarian crisis dreading crowd. Regardless of the lofty minded nature of the goals when they climbed into bed with a criminal terrorist group, the High Minded, the STICC members, besmirched themselves and their cause.

By being in large measure responsible for the Israeli government calling off Operation Cast Lead before the military capacities of Hamas had been degraded fatally, the High Minded have assured that more civilians will die, more will live in fear, more will be miserable. They have assured the war will last all the longer. Great job, people!

Taliban and its kindred groups are doing the same in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While decrying the US air strikes in Afghanistan, no one either in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world has demanded that Taliban stop using civilian residential compounds as bases of fire. Nor has there been any demand that Taliban call for a truce when the American or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops return their fire.

By the customs of land warfare, Taliban should call for a brief truce during which the civilian occupants of the compound can be evacuated to a place of safety. If Taliban had any ethic transcending survival and victory or even the slightest shred of genuine concern for the well-being of their fellow countrymen, they would remove the civilians before the shooting started.

It is Taliban, not the United States and its allies, which violates the doctrine of proportionality in the hills, deserts and villages of Afghanistan. It is Taliban, not the US and its allies, which seeks civilian deaths as a necessary adjunct to combat.

It is Taliban which, like LTTE and Hamas, seeks to blunt the military advantage enjoyed by its enemy though using civilian as shields. Taliban, again like LTTE and Hamas or Hezbollah, seeks victory through the exploitation of civilian corpses and the sympathy of the High Minded, the efforts of the anti-war people hiding behind the tenets of STICC.

Contrary to the innuendo of the High Minded or apologists for the Islamist jihdist groups, American military doctrine and the operations or tactical expressions of doctrine well recognise the immunity of civilians as well as the doctrine of proportionality. It is Taliban, al-Qaeda, LTTE, Hamas and the rest of that monstrous regiment that do not.

The United States must push back against the innuendo and accusations of the adversaries as well as the High Minded tergiversators of STICC in both public and private diplomacy. We must forswear apologies and explanations. Rather the necessary message the US (and others) must deliver repeatedly is this: We take all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, misery and fear, but we will neither place our troops at inordinate risk nor unnecessarily prolong the war in order to give our enemies an advantage.

We Americans will not play the game according to the other side's rules. We will not allow their lack of ethics, their intentional use of civilians as weapons of war give them any advantage.

To do so is to surrender to evil.