Remora

Limited Inc is far better at pointing at the defects of the press corps and their depressingly banal minds then in extracting the sty in our own eye. So our readers might have noticed that, in the early stages of the Afghanistan war, our attitude was that this would be a long slog, one in which we, like the Russians of yore, might see a lot of good young men disappear. Not to mention the disposable Afghanistani demographic - you know, kids, men, women, etc that tend to get combusted in a bombing war. The betail de guerre.

Well, the war was won swiftly, decisively, and by the same application of TAC -- tactical air command -- that had previously collapsed the Serbian opposition in Kosovo.

We don't do mea culpas around here, though, so forget it. We adapt. We take the machete, wipe it off, and wait for tomorrow. We talk tough, smoke cigs, and drink vodka out of dirty glasses. Apology is for the pussywhipped, we say to each other.


Patrick Cockburn in Counterpunch has a nice report on this 'Strange War." His idea, and I think this must be correct, is that the Taliban couldn't represent themselves as defenders of Afghanistan, as the mujahedeen had done against the Soviets, because they had exhausted their cred. He doesn't mention it, but surely part of the devil's deal with bin Laden is that the Taliban imported into the country a mercenary force. Bin Laden's terroristique theater starred Egyptians, Saudis, Algerians - Arabs, in short. A country in which ethnicity is negotiated at the point of a gun is not going to be too happy about this.

Here are two grafs from P.C.'s article:

"A problem of covering the war was that it was difficult to meet members of the Taliban. This was their own fault, since they had banned the media at the start of the crisis. After the fall of Kabul, I did meet Mullah Khaksar, who had been the deputy interior minister. He said: "They did not know what all the world knows, that the people hated them." Yet when the Taliban had first taken Kabul in 1996, he had "liked them because they provided security", he said � and he had not been alone.

The savage civil war between the different parties of the Northern Alliance has reduced most of Kabul to ruins. But the brutality of the Taliban and their obsession with controlling people's private lives meant that they had long outlived their welcome. The diminishing number of people who went to Kabul sports stadium to see alleged thieves have their hands amputated discovered that their bicycles were stolen while they watched. Even those fond of innocent pleasures such as kite-flying were rewarded with a beating or even prison."