Sam Spade takes on 9/11

Someone on Twitter was asking why everyone felt the need to tell the world where they were twenty years ago when terrorists destroyed the twin towers. Yes, it affected everybody -- it seems almost all of us around at the time have or had only one or two degrees of separation at most from those buildings -- but it did seem to smack a little more of self-indulgence than commemoration. 

So I did like Robert Tracinski's take on things.

PS: Pretty sure the 'Flitcraft Parable' appears in The Maltese Falcon not The Thin Man. But you should read both anyway just to make sure.

Kabul [UPDATED]

CIA officer helps evacuees up a ladder onto US helicopter in Saigon, 29 April 1975.

[Pic by Hubert Van Es, Wikipedia]

It's looking like Saigon in 1975 all over again, isn't it.

There was no good time to pull out of Afghanistan. We can probably all agree on that. But it is possible to question how the pull-out was done -- starting with the 'peace talks' with the Taliban (peace! with the Taliban!) that delivered to those butchers the US's timetable of withdrawal, and right up to the advice from the world's most expensive 'intelligence' agencies that the government, the army and the whole damn place would not collapse in a heap once that withdrawal happened.

Won't happen, they said back in July. Won't happen within 90 days, they said last Thursday. Turns out it took less than 90 hours -- "which is close enough for US intelligence work," as Mark Steyn quipped.

Make no mistake, for anyone concerned with peace -- or with the idea that a Pax Americana could be its source -- this is another dark day indeed in the continuing collapse of that myth. As the great Bernard Lewis warned nearly two decades ago, 

the danger here is that America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend... It's a very dangerous lesson to teach the planet.

That's no longer a risk. That's the lesson the whole world has just watched and learned. Again. To quote a line of Steyn's from about a decade ago, 

Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you're Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you're Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America.

So since we're posting old observations about America and Afghanistan, I thought I'd go back and briefly examine some of mine. Here's what I said on Afghanistan's day of liberation way back in 2001, when the coalition took Kabul:

The beards are coming off, and singing is heard again in Kabul. Although the war against terrorism is far from over, the Taliban retreat makes it possible to believe the war in Afghanistan just might be reaching a conclusion, and that civilisation and peace might come to Afghanistan some time soon. However, I have nagging doubts that will ever happen. First: while the occupying Northern Alliance is less single-mindedly oppressive than the Taleban, they are no less brutal. Second: the Taleban retreat to the hills puts them in their area of competitive advantage - these murderous witchdoctors don't know very much, but they do know all about killing and cave-dwelling.

Third, and most worryingly of all, the West has forgotten how to set up a successful civil government in an occupied area. In the long run this last concern is the most serious, and it might mean that the brutality becomes more visible, and Afghanistan more bloodstained....

If Bush can't set up successful civil government ... then he may have to call off the War Against Terrorism early, just as his father called off the Gulf War early for the self-same reason.

As you may recall, the Gulf War ended in 1991 with the US reluctant to finish the war as they should have - with the toppling of Saddam Hussein. When Bush senior stopped the turkey shoot on the road to Baghdad, it wasn't just a loss of courage - it was also the realisation that they had no end-game, that they wouldn't know what to do when they got there.

Our current statesmen may not know how to go about successfully rebuilding a conquered country, but we only need to travel back half a century to find some statesman who did know how.

Out of the rubble of Japan and Germany, Douglas McArthur, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Konrad Adenaur built new countries that abandoned their militaristic, totalitarian and feudal pasts and instead embraced peace, prosperity and freedom.

In the words of Röpke: "Men are gripped by a desire to be told what to do and to be ordered about, to the point almost of masochism. The state has become the subject of almost unparalleled idolatry." He and his colleagues recognised that attitude as the very source of war, and sought to banish it, new German Chancellor Adenaur declaring in March 1946: "The new state must no longer dominate the individual. Everyone must be allowed to take the initiative in every facet of existence." They set up governments large enough to maintain the rule of law and protect initiative, and small enough to get out of the way otherwise. And they worked like all hell!

Their minimal governments, constitutionally constrained to protect contracts and property rights, allowed free trade to flourish and prosperity to blossom. German and Japanese young men soon realised that there was more to life than butchery and invading their neighbours, and they set about getting rich instead.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Germany and Japan could hardly have started at a lower point. At the end of 1945, both countries were in ruins, yet only twenty years later they were flying. It was called a miracle, but it was in fact the work of some remarkable men.

We can only hope that the lessons from these remarkable men can be learned by the current crop of statesmen. It won't be easy, but if terrorism is to be eradicated and the gun-toting young men and the veiled women of Afghanistan offered any future at all - then the lessons must be learned, and they must be applied.

And if they are successful, then the world might have cause to give thanks once again to Douglas McArthur, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Konrad Adenaur.

In 1945, the knowledge existed to successfully rebuild countries after they'd been liberated from savagery. But by 1991's Gulf War, even the victors had realised that knowledge had gone. Disappeared. Gone with the wind. So they didn't drive to Baghdad, because they knew enough to know they wouldn't know what to do when they got there.

They still don't.

The result can be seen today in Kabul.

Taking questions from the press in July, Biden was asked if he saw “any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam.”

“None whatsoever. Zero,” he replied.

He was, in some way, right. The Afghan collapse was far more precipitous ...

UPDATE: "The Taliban have entered the Afghan capital, having rapidly swept to power throughout the country, while the U.S. is frantically airlifting its diplomats to safety. What explains the fall of Afghanistan? In 2001 U.S. forces targeted the Taliban’s Islamic totalitarian regime, which had harbored the 9/11 plotters. What went wrong? Join Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo for a special episode of the New Ideal podcast":

"We’re outsiders in Afghanistan, and this is Occam’s razor for explaining the Taliban..."

"Someone in Afghanistan must think the Taliban on the other side are good for something too. Otherwise there wouldn’t be an 'Afghan issue.' 
   "The Taliban offers bad law—chopping off hands, stoning desperate housewives, the usual things. Perhaps you have to live in a place that has had no law for a long time—since the Soviets invaded 31 years ago—before you welcome bad law as an improvement.
    "An Afghan civil society activist, whose work has put him under threat from the Taliban, admitted, 'People picked Taliban as the lesser of evils.' He explained that lesser of evils with one word, 'stability.' 
A woman member of the Afghan parliament said that it was simply a fact that the Taliban insurgency was strongest 'where the government is not providing services.' Rule of law being the first service a government must provide....  [W]e have been—ruled. We have been ruled, not governed.”
    "A journalist for Radio Azadi said, 'Afghans were happy in principle that Americans brought peace and democracy. But when rival tribes began to use the U.S. to crush each other, the attitude of the Afghan people changed.' 
    "Afghans think Americans have sided with the wrong people. It’s not that Afghans think Americans have sided with the wrong people in a systematic, strategic, or calculated way. It’s just that we came to a place that we didn’t know much about, where there are a lot of sides to be on, and we started siding with this side and that side and the other side. We were bound to wind up on the wrong side sometimes.
    "We’re outsiders in Afghanistan, and this is Occam’s razor for explaining the Taliban…"

          ~ PJ O'Rourke, writing in 2010 as a 72-hour expert

"The answer to 'what kind of people would do this?' is 'the Taliban,' which is why negotiating with them on a peace agreement was an absurdity to begin with." #QotD

"Trump asked: 'What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?'
    "Is this a serious question? Of course it isn’t, because it isn’t being asked by a serious person. The answer to 'what kind of people would do this?' is 'the Taliban,' which is why negotiating with them on a peace agreement was an absurdity to begin with."
          ~ Robert Tracinski, from his post 'An Era of Moral Crisis'
.

Tony Blair on Terrorism

A good conversation, here, over the weekend, on fighting an ideology.

Meet the Press Sunday, host David Gregory suggested to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US, Britain and others made a mistake when they went after Saddam Hussein, which Gregory said only led to more terrorism.

Watch Blair’s response.

It makes you wonder whether his incredible unpopularity might just be because he still has the ability to concisely state uncomfortable truths.

Time to question the Afghan mission

If you’re not there to win then what are you there for? That’s the question we have to ask ourselves and the Commander-in-Chief after three more New Zealand soldiers were killed—killed in Bamiyan Province when their Humvee was hit by a remote-controlled explosive device. Killed while fighting for …

No, I can’t finish that last sentence either. Fighting for what?

For the last few years, it looks like they’ve been fighting for the right to build infrastructure and encourage tourism (tourism?) in Bamiyan Province; in other words, altruism by force—not a good reason to go to war.

There was a good reason once. New Zealand soldiers joined an international coalition in Afghanistan ten years ago in response to 9/11, sent there on a mission to search out and destroy the perpetrators and those who supported them: to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, and to destroy the Taleban who had supported him and the training of his Al Qaeda vermin.

Sent there by Helen Clark’s government, the mission began with almost unanimous parliamentary and public support.

As we now know however, both of those missions have failed. Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan relatively early while everyone was still pretending Pakistan was our ally; and while the corrupt theocracy of the Taleban capitulated early, leaving Afghanistan in the titular control of the corrupt theocracy of Mohammed Karzai, on the ground the Taleban have been out and about ever since—free to destroy hope, mutilate and slaughter innocents, and plant explosive devices under New Zealand-driven military vehicles.

There was a mission, which has not been allowed to succeed, in a barbaric place, which our soldiers’ sacrifice has done nothing to change.

Instead of helping to hunt down Taleban bases and destroy them, our soldiers have been “rebuilding” the country while leaving themselves in the open to be shot at.

This is neither good tactics not good strategy. Soldiers are soft targets—their weapons don’t protect them against incoming ordnance. The only use for their weapons is to hunt down and destroy these aggressors.

But this stopped being their mission some years ago.  Their job instead has been to “rebuild” the infrastructure in a country that has never had any, for a populace showing no sign of appreciating the gesture.

It’s quite literally a sacrifice of the good to the uncaring.

These are soldiers taken away from their real mission and placed in the field of fire for reasons that no longer hold up. They’re not allowed to win, and they’re not allowed to admit the cause is lost. Instead they’re just there getting shot at.

It’s not an unwinnable war; it’s only unwinnable because those in charge have no idea what winning would mean—which is the situation  in which the war’s leaders have left the soldiers prosecuting the war.

Time to bring them home.

Yes, that would be another signal in a half-century of such signals that that the West is not willing to defend its own interests. But there’s little we in NZ can do about that, except to recognise that a morality dedicated to goals other than overwhelming victory is achieving its aim. 

PS: Now, you can say with some legitimacy that it’s too soon to be asking questions; too soon on the morning we’ve had the news about the weekend’s deaths. And you’re right. It is. But I had planned last week to to write this, after  Lance Corporals Rory Malone and Pralli Durrer were killed in in a village near Do Abe, in north-east Bamiyan province.

RELATED POSTS:

• Afghanistan, an unwinnable war … ? – NOT PC, August 2010
• Afghanistan “on the brink” – NOT PC, October, 2009
• NZ troops are propping up a theocracy – NOT PC, March 2008

Afghanistan, an unwinnable war … ? [update 2]

“AFGHANISTAN IS AN UNWINNABLE  war, and our leaders know it,” says the UK Telegraph.  Well, yes, it’s unwinnable as long as you have no idea what winning would mean—which is the situation  in which the war’s leaders have left the soldiers prosecuting the war.

Four years after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack that killed 2,403 souls, Japan lay in rubble, the  military leaders responsible for the attack were dead, and Japan was already on its way to becoming the peace-loving producer it still is.

Nearly nine years after Al Qaeda killed 2,996 souls in a surprise attacks in Manhattan and Washington, and numerous attacks since from Bali to London to Madrid, the leader of Al Qaeda is still alive, the Taleban who supported him and his group are on the rise, and people are beginning talk about retreat.

So what went wrong this time? Why aren’t we winning?

In a word, because it was never properly understood or defined what “winning” would mean.

On the very evening of September 11, 2001, George Bush almost articulated the right approach:

The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law-enforcement communities to find those responsible, and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts, and those who harbor them.”

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts, and those who harbor them.”  This last was an important distinction.  It was the recognition in policy that no terrorist can carry out his atrocities without a safe harbour in which to train and organise (in either a failed state or an allied aggressor state), nor without the oxygen of financial, logistical and materiel support from an allied aggressor state. For Al Qaeda, that safe harbour was the Taliban's Afghanistan, which is why thirty days later virtually the whole world stood behind the US as it invaded Afghanistan, with NZ solders in the van, to eject the Taliban and hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders.

But “to bring them to justice”?  What was that about? Destroying the Twin Towers and everyone in them was not a criminal act—it was an act of war!  As much an act of war as the attack on Pearl Harbor, from which the US declaration duly followed.  An act of war part of a whole train of infamy that most people would like to forget but should still live in history forever.  Yet nine years after that act we’re still left at the mercy of all the atrocity-mongers, while our solders are running around with their hands tied pretending they’re engaged in some kind of grand policing operation-- with criminal trials as the final outcome. But fighting these anti-human vermin isn't a matter or law enforcement, with all the strings around such a battle; it is war, and we're already in it. As Patrick Henry said in 1775:

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace – but there is no peace.
The war is actually begun!'

So Bush was wrong—and the error is only magnified by his successor.  Instead of hunting down and killing Al Qaeda’s leaders and those who succoured them, western forces in Afghanistan have instead let the leaders escape over the border into Pakistan, and their succourers revitalise and once again take up arms—supplied (as the recent WikiLeaks dump confirmed) with both military intelligence and materiel from both Iran and Pakistan. Meanwhile, doing little to arrest that situation and hamstrung by evasion of who’s now harbouring whom, and by rules of engagement that all but forbid actual engagement, western troops risk their lives while planting flower gardens and building sewage plants--“placing ‘compassion’ ahead of the proper task of self-defense.”

“Compassion” for one’s enemies 9and their helpers) looks a lot like injustice to one’s troops.

AND BUSH WAS CRITICALLY wrong on something else as well.  He called the whole operation a “War on Terror."

What the hell is that about?  A war on a tactic?  This would be like, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, declaring war on surprise attacks.  Or a war against dive bombing.

With the help of the heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Joseph Kellard explains the correct approach:

    “It’s not a war on terror, it’s a war on Islam,” [says Ayaan HirsiAli]…
    “Terrorism” is merely an action, in particular a tactic, and actions are derived from people who initiate them. You wage a war against particular people, not their actions or tactics..
    Wars are started by aggressors, those who initiate force. The aggressors in this war are those faithful to Islam, who initiated this war, decades prior to 9/11, specifically on the West – particularly the people who most represent the core Western values that they adamantly oppose: reason, individualism and freedom. Properly described, this war is the Islamic radicals’ war on the West. And Ms. Ali shows that she understands this fact when she says: “It isn’t a war that was declared on Islam, but it is a declaration of war in the name of Islam on civil society and all the freedoms that we believe in.”

SO WHAT DOES WINNING mean? 

First of all, it requires recognition of the real enemy; and that enemy is not a tactic.  The enemy worldwide is Radical Islam.  The enemy on the Afghanistan front  is Al Qaeda and their Taleban, Pakistani and Iranian helpers.

That’s who we’re fighting. Face up to it. 

Second, it requires actually wanting to win. The errors made by George W in waging his “war against a tactic” (and in the wrong place) are now being repeated by his successor, President Zero, a Commander-in-Chief who confessed just last year while his troops were in harm’s way,

“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”

But, you know O, when Emperor Hirohito was made to come down and surrender to MacArthur that was the beginning of the end for the medieval warrior spirit of Shinto, and also the beginning of the beginning for the peaceful success of the modern-day Japanese who -- liberated from their medieval past -- gave the whole world a lesson in how ragingly successful the peaceful pursuit of prosperity can be.

The Afghans may never get that lesson themselves. But they won’t if we keep pretending they don’t need to.

Third, it requires defining what winning against them would mean.

Does winning mean peace negotiations with the Taleban and “civilising” Afghanistan? Hell now. Our only selfish interest in sending New Zealand soldiers to Afghanistan is not the thankless task of civilising a place of medieval barbarism—a vain hope in a place that only built its first real school in 1903; where life expectancy went up after the Soviets invaded (life in a Soviet war-zone being more life-enhancing than what went on there before); which hosts the world’s most corrupt government; and where women are still sliced up as a matter of honour.  We have no selfish interest at all in civilising such a place, and little sane expectation of success in such a task –certainly s long as we pretend their culture is no different to ours, our defeat will make that happen.

So what would winning actually mean? In summary, it must mean ruthlessly destroying our enemies, and leaving no place for them to receive succour.

In short, it means the policy that should have been followed nine years ago with Radical Islam, one that was followed seventy years ago with Japanese Militarism.  With abundant success.

There is “No Substitute for Victory in the War Against Islamic Totalitarianism.”  We’re already in that war; about that we have no choice.  Our only choice is whether or not we want to win it.

Do we?

UPDATE 1:  

• Two thoughtful pieces from local analyst Paul Buchanan have some useful background, the first in today’s Herald; the second over at Kiwipolitico.
• And for those talking withdrawal, there are grotesqueries like this to consider, as noted by Jihad Watch:
  • Dutch leaving Afghanistan, Taliban pleased – JIHAD WATCH

UPDATE 2: And just in case you missed them, there are a couple of pieces of news revealed in the WikiLeaks dump you should also be considering:

• Reports Bolster Suspicion of Iranian Ties to Extremists – WALL STREET JOURNAL
  ”…some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran's alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria…
  Several reports describe Iran as a hub of planning activity for attacks on the Afghan government..
  Several reports provide new details of the extent of Iran's reach, including apparent payments to kill some Afghan officials and attempts to buy others off…”
• WikiLeaks Reveals Pakistan’s Intel Deceit – TELEGRAPH
  ”The explosive revelations of the “Afghan War Diary” released by WikiLeaks this week reveal several open secrets that have been well known to those who have closely followed this war for many years.
  First and foremost, the documents reveal the abiding treachery of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence service, the ISI, which has helped the Taliban kill Americans in Afghanistan at the same time it has solicited U.S. help to battle the Taliban in Pakistan…
  The second major ‘open secret that the Afghan War Diary confirms is Iran’s long-standing and ongoing support for the Taliban…
  ’Iran is supporting the Taliban, Hamas, and other Sunni groups, as well as Hezbollah and Shiite groups. Iran is an equal opportunity supporter of terrorism,’ [John] Bolton said. He added, “If anything should convince us of Iran’s intentions as regards its nuclear programs, look to their support for foreign terrorism over the past 20 years. Then imagine Iran getting nuclear weapons…”

NZ soldier, R.I.P. [updated]

The first New Zealand casualty in Afghanistan has been announced.

A New Zealand soldier has been killed and two others injured in an attack on a routine patrol in Afghanistan, the Defence Force announced today.”

Our thoughts go out to their families.

UPDATE:  The New Zealand soldier killed in Afghanistan has been named.

R.I.P. Lieutenant Timothy O’Donnell.

“The Runaway General”: The interview that earned NATO’s Afghanistan commander a “please explain” [update 5]

What does a general do who’s in charge of a campaign that has its hands tied politically? If that general is Stanley McChrystal, battling regrouped Al Qaeda, Taliban and allied Islamist fighters across the mediaeval landscape of Afghanistan while the politicians fiddle, you give an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, PJ O’Rourke’s former gig, criticising your Commander-in-Chief—an interview published with the sub-heading.:

  Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

It’s earned him a presidential smackdown and a “please explain” meeting with the POTUS—the last of which occurred when he dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as "shortsighted," saying it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan."

This time it’s more serious. That was just an answer to one question.  This time he’s answered dozens--none of them in a way that’s pleased his boss.  And this is a war that needs plenty of questions answered—a war that now appears to have no aim outside appeasement of the Taliban, and has only got worse since the addition of 30,000 troops in December.

Three obvious reasons why this is so [summarises Jack Kelly at ToThePoint] are the deadline the president set for next year to begin
withdrawal of U.S. troops; ridiculous rules
of engagement [set by McChrystal], and the poisonous relationship Mr.
Obama has established with Afghan President
Hamid Karzai.”

Read the interview online at Rolling Stone. It gives more insight into the war and its White-House related problems than a hundred New York Times editorials, or a hundred-thousand “briefings” by Rahm Emanuel.

UPDATE 10:33am: Gen. Stanley McChrystal has "offered to resign," according to a Twitter post from Time magazine's Joe Klein.  Note: Not resigned, but offered to resign.  The only resignation so far is from McChrystal’s media officer who set up the Rolling Stone profile.  But note also that McChrystal is reported to have seen and approved the profile before it went to press.

UPDATE 10:42pm: Freelance war correspondent Michael Yon, who is always worth listening to and famously criticised McChrystal’s generalship back in April, is picking McChrystal’s resignation to be accepted and Marine General James Mattis to be appointed (Tom Ricks’s thoughts on this are similar to my own, says Yon at his Facebook page).  Meanwhile “Michael Yon's Criticism of McChrystal Deemed Prophetic,” says Kay B. Day at The US Report.  With one addition, Her conclusion on the Afghanistan campaign is sound:

I'd also say we need to either face the brutal reality of war and [give] our men and women [a clear goal and let them] fight, or we should bring them home now. We have to admit at some point you can't earn someone else's freedom. They have to do that for themselves and they will do it only if they want it.”

UPDATE 3: Some background here on Yon from early June, covering his disagreements with McChrystal, his criticisms of the Afghan campaign, and why you should take them seriously.  Yon’s quoted comments are on target and, with talk of Mattis’ appointment, both prescient and hopeful:

Yon believes the war can still be won, but that a change of command is in order. At this level of warfare, he says, ‘McChrystal is like a man who has strapped on ice skates for the first time. He might be a great athlete, but he's learning to skate during the Olympics.’ Yon adds that publicly denouncing the commanding general of a war is not an easy thing for him to do, especially considering it means crossing swords with General Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, two men he greatly admires.
    “Indeed, if anyone can turn this war around, Yon believes it is General Petraeus. He concedes such a return to the battlefield is unlikely, and suggests another general whose name fewer people have heard. "General James Mattis from the Marines.  I get a good feeling about Mattis but I don't know. General Petraeus is a known entity and he is solid gold.’
    “Short of that, Yon's outlook is bleak. ‘Even if the President commits more forces [next year], they will not be effective until 2012.  By that time, more allies likely will have peeled off, requiring us to commit even more forces to cover down. We lost crucial time in building the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army and so forth, and today we are paying the price. This is not to mention that the Afghan government is sorry at best and criminal at worst.’
    He concludes, ‘The trajectory of this war leaves a sick feeling in my stomach.  It's as if I've watched a space shuttle liftoff while sitting at launch control, with full knowledge that it will abort to the Indian Ocean. We are trying to reach orbit with insufficient fuel.’"

UPDATE 4: The headline in The Australian says it all:  “Petraeus steps up as Obama sacks General Stanley McChrystal over Rolling Stone interview”:

GENERAL David Petraeus, who saved a failing US mission in Iraq, has been recruited to rescue a faltering war in Afghanistan.
    President Barack Obama named Petraeus, 57, to be the US commander in Afghanistan after sacking General Stanley McChrystal over an explosive magazine profile in which he and his aides belittled civilian leaders.
    The move means Petraeus relinquishes command of all US forces in the Middle East to take over a military campaign that has been stymied by a resilient Taliban foe, rising casualties and deep divisions within the administration…
     It is the second time Petraeus has been called on to turn around the country's fortunes in an unpopular war.

UPDATE 5: Oddly, Rachel Maddow gets it right for all the wrong reasons:

By accepting Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation, President Obama solved one problem: the rancor within his security team… We're still left with the biggest problem: America's strategy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

A strategy that leaves the war without a real goal, and without a means to achieve it.

“That Afghan Plan

Sam at SOLO looks at “That Afghan Plan”:

So, the President's plan is to pop 30k more troops into Afghanistan. And then to start pulling them out in 18 months or so. This is the 'refined' strategy.
    “Gee, wonder what Osama and team Taliban would make of this? The most potent, ass-kicking military the planet has known is about to upscale operations in your neighbourhood – but only for 18 months or so.
    “That's 18 months to meditate; to have one's followers memorise the Koran & other cool speeches; to hold group fireside chats about our long struggle with the infidel; to take notes on whom of our brothers collaborates with the infidel; to plant the odd IED or to suicide drive into a town or an army base once every couple of months. Lots to do in the downtime, 'til they leave.
    “Then, when they've gone, we can get back to business, refreshed & repaired by our long vacation in the spas of South Waziristan, virgined-out and our thoughts together.
    “Seriously, when in the history of warfare has a leader ever let the enemy know how long he plans to have a crack at a mission?
    “And the President's generals are ok with this?”

Are you?

As commenters at SOLO say, this is a weak-kneed halfway-house of a policy … or should I say out-house of a policy. A policy devised to satisfy both those who heard Obama say he’d “sort out” and “pull out,” with a timeline devised to finish just before the next presidential election campaign.

This is politics, not defence.

Afghanistan “on the brink” says Michael Yon

In this interview at Pajamas TV, journalist Michael Yon (one of the good guys) argues that indecision, prevarication and political posturing leaves Afghanistan “on the brink.”  “It’s going very poorly,” he says [hat tip Robert Winefield].

"The war is being clearly being lost at this point..."
"The coalition is slowly but surely dissolving..."
”The Taliban can sense blood in the water.”
"The British are under resourced..."
"The German's are being badly handled..."
"The Dutch are thinking of taking a secondary role..."
”It’s the perfect storm for the enemy at this point.”
”We’re on the final play here.”

Meanwhile, despite pledging to make Afghanistan his focus once in office, Obama is still not taking the calls of his field commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal.

So What Went Wrong in Afghanistan? asks Elan Journo:

    “How did America, the world's most powerful nation, find itself in this morass? A shortage of troops and resources? Reliance on a corrupt Afghan regime (a fact highlighted by the charges of massive election fraud, to name a comparatively tame example)? Some combination of these themes? No, the problem goes far deeper. Our post-9/11 policy--in Afghanistan and across the board--was subverted by a factor that few have thought to examine: the basic moral ideas that animate our foreign policy.”

Basically, a morality dedicated to goals other than overwhelming victory is achieving its aim.

September 11, 2009 [update 2]

It’s now eight years  to the day since barbarians flew planes loaded with people into two soaring symbols of western freedom with around 5,000 souls inside.  The resulting cataclysm still hangs over this century like a gaping wound. In the words of Christopher Hitchens,

“from Afghanistan the holy order was given to annex two famous achievements of modernism -- the high-rise building and the jet aircraft -- and use them for immolation and human sacrifice... Faith-based fanatics could not design anything as useful or as beautiful as a skyscraper or a passenger aircraft. But, continuing their long history of plagiarism, they could borrow and steal these things and use them as a negation.”

Eight years after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – the only comparable event in modern history – Japan had already been reduced to rubble and begun its rebuilding into the peaceful modern powerhouse into which it was transformed.

Yet eight years on after the brutal slaughter of thousands of innocent people the buildings the barbarians destroyed are still un-replaced, the chief planners and perpetrators of the outrage remain on the loose, and the pursuit of those leading barbarians is greeted with cries that the west itself is the aggressor.

How much has the world changed since 1941.

To be fair, the pursuit itself is so flawed as to be almost completely off-mission.  Sure, there are problems in just finding the bastards who planned this – unlike the bastards who bombed Pearl Harbor, it’s not possible to find them on a map.   But it’s not like there isn’t a rough idea. 

War was declared on the west eight years ago. That it’s still going isn’t for lack of firepower on the west’s behalf, it’s an almost complete lack of moral fibre.  A refusal to believe that it’s a war that we’re in, and a politically-correct misdirection of effort into a war on on a tactic instead of against the actual barbarians responsible for the outrage – a hand-wringing, faith-based unwillingness to identify the enemy.

It should not bave been a “war on terror” in which the west was engaged these last eight years.  In the same way that the Second World War was a war against Nazism and Shintoism, this was should have been a war on Islamic Totalitarianism – a war waged explicitly against this hydra, and with the full moral authority that this was a war of self-defence – a war of civilisation against the barbarians who attacked it. 

It should have been a war in which it was recognised that there is “No Substitute for Victory.”  It has never been that war, which is why it still dribbles on eight years after the outrage that finally brought the enemy to the world’s attention. 

The errors made by George W in waging his “war against a tactic” (and in the wrong place) are now being repeated by his successor, President Zero.  America’s Commander-in-Chief said recently,

“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory’,” said Obama, “because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”

But, you know, when Emperor Hirohito was made to come down and surrender to MacArthur that was the beginning of the end for the medieval warrior spirit of Shinto, and also the beginning of the beginning for the peaceful success of the modern-day Japanese who -- liberated from their medieval past -- gave the whole world a lesson in how ragingly successful the peaceful pursuit of prosperity can be.

It took another six years after World War II was concluded to subdue and modify Japan, and put it on a path to peace and prosperity : Six years and the destruction of Shintoism as an ethical code.   It took seven years to reconstruct Germany and to destroy the bacillus of Nazism – two jobs selfishly important to every anyone who valued a peaceful world after decades of strife and war.  Just as selfishly important now would be a haven of secular peace in the ravaged Middle East or Near East.

Mind you, these jobs were done by people  and was done by people who knew what they were doing.

Now, eight years after the horrors of September 11, 2001, we discover that today’s leaders know nothing.  We discover they were coasting on the knowledge of previous generations, without being able even to apply the lessons learned.

What should have been a day to commemorate the fallen is instead, therefore, a day to berate those who have betrayed them.

In their honour then I offer my thoughts above, such as they are, and this small memento of triumph: architect Minoru Yamasaki in front of his greatest achievement: New York’s World Trade Center.  In every sense they were the symbol of the very best of modern civilisation.  And that’s why they had to die.

UPDATE: Now the clocks have rolled around in the US, there’s more good commentary appearing online from my sort of people:

• Four Important Articles for this God-Awful Date
  “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism” by Leonard Peikoff “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein The “Forward Strategy” for Failure by Yaron Brook and Elan Journo “No Substitute for Victory”: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism by John David Lewis.
• “America fights a self-crippled war on terror” – Elan Journo
• Mark Steyn:

  No dynamic culture can stand still, so we shouldn't be surprised that fewer and fewer people, from the president down, find it harder and harder to remember quite what "the day that changed the world" was all about. Nevertheless, there is unfinished business — starting with that hole in the ground in lower Manhattan.

• Ralph Peters:

      Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died.
      We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot.
      We've learned nothing.
      Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it.
      Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.
      Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.
      Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

UPDATE 2: An email purporting to contain a short piece by one Emanuel Tanay is doing the rounds.  In fact, the  piece is by Paul E. Marek, a second-generation Canadian, whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover. He wrote the following article in February of 2006 to explain why the peaceful majority is irrelevant.

As he says about the deluded young girl on the right,  “She misses the point: Her job is to prevent the fanatics from hijacking her faith.”

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Why The Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant
By Paul E. Marek

    I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.
    “Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
    We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.
    Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The Average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of Killing that included the systematic killing of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving.”
    History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

NOT PJ: Dear Taleban, Enjoy This [updated]

This week Bernard Darnton carries on up the Khyber.

In this week’s edition of Fusspot Watch: the Afghan election has been marred by soft drink advertising.

Three New Zealand soldiers (below) are in trouble after sending home photographs of themselves posing next to a 2,000 lb bomb emblazoned with a Demon Drink sticker and the message “Dear Taleban, enjoy this.” Dr Paul Buchanan, on-again-off-again political science lecturer at Auckland University, has claimed that this stunt was irresponsible because it “might lead to reprisals from Taleban fighters.” Because dropping a thousand kilograms of high explosives on someone’s head can annoy him but a snarky remark and a bumper sticker can really send him over the edge.

Were there academics wandering round during World War II warning people not to sing songs about the cardinality of Hitler’s testicles because the Nazis might turn aggressive?

What’s unfortunate about this incident is that it’s not just a bit of innocent fun; it’s some marketing bollocks for an energy drink. A few days ago there was a story about someone putting a traffic cone on top of the Sky Tower. Now, if that was something two pissed blokes had managed one Friday night I would be impressed. Some inauthentic marketing exercise for a product I can’t remember? I’ll need several cans of that over-caffeinated fizz just to stay awake.

Those most likely to be shocked or – worse – disappointed about all this are those who don’t think we should be in Afghanistan in the first place. The Keith Locke types, who would hand Afghanistan back to the Taleban in a breath. Keith Locke’s ideas on good governance shouldn’t be given much credence. He called the Khmer Rouge’s coming to power in Cambodia “a victory for humanity.” With humanity whittled down by two million souls under his erstwhile hero, he admitted his mistake. Backing murderous thugs once might be bad luck. Twice is starting to look like bad judgement.

There are others all too willing to criticise Western excursions in the middle east and central Asia, too. Robert Fisk, for example, isn’t nearly as bat-shit crazy as Keith Locke. He is an erudite and knowledgeable man who has seen all manner of atrocities and is rightly horrified by them. But he’s a pacifist and regards all war-makers as morally equivalent. The problem with pacifism is that it allows the first person who has an axe and wants to grind it to take over the world.

In many ways, America is its own worst enemy in Afghanistan. Because they haven’t decided whether they’d prefer to win the war on terror or the war on drugs, they’re burning the crops of Afghan opium farmers. “Hearts and minds” didn’t guarantee victory in South Vietnam but the Afghan locals will be tempted to continue their tradition of handing foreigners their arses on plates if those foreigners insist on destroying the country’s biggest export earner.

There probably won’t be a day when America and her allies can shoot the last Taleban soldier and declare victory. Stephen Franks recently suggested that allied troops are on a policing mission, that “the SAS are no more likely to ‘win’ [in Afghanistan] than our Police are to ‘win’ in Manukau,” but that it’s still an honourable and important task.

America’s (and New Zealand’s) job in Afghanistan isn’t to hold a ticker tape parade through Kandahar; it’s to make sure there is no repeat of 9/11. If, on the eighth anniversary of those attacks, all we’ve got to worry about is our soldiers’ larking about and sending rude notes to their enemies, then those soldiers are doing a pretty good job.

* * Read Bernard Darnton’s column every Thursday here at NOT PC * *

UPDATE: Paul Buchanan and the Greens’s Frog Blogger respond in the comments on behalf of himself and Keith Locke respectively.

Friday morning ramble [updated]

I’ve ended up the week with another huge number of things I’d wanted to say to you but never got the chance.  So here, in no particular order, is another ramble through some of the things I’d wanted to talk about at greater length – a bunch ‘o links you can come back to over the weekend and think about yourself.
Enjoy!

• Outgoing European Union President Václav Klaus had some unflattering things to say about his fellow European leaders, and something surprising to say about American president Barack Obama.
  Read Václav Klaus grades EU politicians. [Hat tip Reference Frame]
• Great cartoon and comment over at The Visible Hand on the controversy over Anne Tolley’s canning of night school funding.
  Head over to Cartoon: Night classes.
• College students today face an ideological onslaught from educators who are more concerned with creating "good citizens" than teaching them real knowledge, says Montessorian Marsha Enright, It's time for a new approach, she says, and she’s making one: She’s launching a “finishing school” for intelligent youngsters, to teach them everything they should have been taught in school but weren’t, and to “unteach” all the destructive nonsense they shouldn’t have been taught.
  Anyone who realises the enormously destructive role that leftist capture of the education system has played in the collapse of the culture will want to applaud her, and to read:
  Students Need Mental Ammunition.
• In fact, if you Want Excellence in Education? Return to Reason says Michael Gold at The Egoist Blog.
• And if you want cultural change, we need to get on with the essay competition I talked about last year.  And that’s just the start of it all.  Who’s with me?
• Meanwhile, Rational Jenn offers more another tip for rational parents. "Explaining the virtue of Integrity to children can be difficult,” she says. “I helped my son begin to grasp this idea by pointing out an example of when he displayed that virtue himself."
  Read A Conversation about Integrity posted at Rational Jenn.
• What sort of arsehole architect would design this excrescence on the right for a clinic to treat patients with chronic brain diseases, dementia and cognitive disorders?  Answer: that arsehole Frank Gehry of course.
• As we start to hear calls from the US for yet another “stimulus” package,  throwing good but rapidly depreciating money after bad, it’s time to get the lowdown on the crude Keynesianism at back of all the profligate stimulunacy.
• Here, by the way, are some simple experiments to prove why “stimulus” can not work.
  Read Obama: Please Try This at Home.
• And on a similar theme, why not read up On the Inescapable Contradiction of Fractional Reserve Banking.
• It’s All About Say’s Law, you know. Yes, it really is.
• Bubble, bubble toil and trouble.  Can Bubbles Also Be Made in China?  Looks horribly like it.
• Good quote here from the 3-Ring Binder blog:
  ”1.The concept of individual rights is morality applied to politics.
  2. The purpose of the government is to protect our individual rights.”
• Robert Garmong’s been teaching philosophy to prisoners, and he reports they were far better students than his usual brood. 
  Read Teaching Intro to Philosophy...In Prison.
• By the way, have you ever noticed that when you’re debating with graduates of various subjectivist philosophy courses they invariably end up telling you that your questions are “too complex” to answer successfully.  From whence comes this fetishistic complexity worship?  The Rational Capitalist explains: The Modern Intellectual's Virtue of Complexity, Part I.
• This Bryan Larsen painting (right) is beautiful.  Just thought you’d like to see it too.
  Click on the picture to see it larger.
• I’m still flabbergasted at the Nazis in Hawkes bay who are insisting that a family tear down a seawall they built to protect their home – they have been given until the end of August to pull down the wall, or face the possibility of jail time or a fine of $200000.  Just another example of why the Resource Management Act has to go so New Zealanders can get their property rights back.
• Meanwhile, the Nazis at North Shore City are adding insult to economic calamity for the city’s developers, and those who would like to buy affordable homes from them.  They’ve just hiked their thieving “development levies”  by a whopping 150%.
  Gooner has the news at No Minister: Development levies.
• Speaking of petty fascism, Margaret and Keith Berryman (right) are enduring their last kick in the face from government: delayed for years in their fight for justice by the lying, dissembling and near-fraudulence of everyone from Helen Clark to Jenny Shipley to the NZ Army and beyond, they’ve now been told by a judge that their action against the government will fail because it’s too long after the event.  Poor bastards.
  They’re poster people for Thomas Jefferson’s much-repeated dictum that a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away all you’ve ever earned.
• Mythbusters’ Andy Savage reckons the show will keep going “as long as people keep believing stupid shit.”  Looks like it will be around a long time.  Watch him interviewed here at Reason TV
• Apparently there’s to be a remake of my all-time favourite TV show The Prisoner, opening in October.  There’s a nine-minute preview below.  I’m worried by it. [Hat tip Charles Burris]
  
• The swine flu outbreak has seen everyone look to government to solve the public health problem.  Stephen Hicks offers two cautionary tales to suggest we shouldn’t be so quick to look to government to solve this problem either.
  Read Two cautionary tales about cholera, the plague, and politics.
• Canadian Paul McKeever offers “Required reading for anyone interested in the issue of socialised medicine: the Supreme Court of Canada's 2005 decision, which ended Quebec's ban on private health insurance. The reason: government health care is *rationed* care, which was leaving people to suffer and die.”
  Read Supreme Court of Canada - Decisions - Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General).
• George Reisman reckons you should listen to this phone-in interview on the ObamaCare Plan over at Fred Thompons’s website, including news of compulsory five-yearly counselling sessions on euthanasia for over-65s. “An assault on seniors” Reisman calls it.
  Listen here to the Betsy McCaughey Interview, and visit www.defendyourhealthcare.us/.
• And see also two videos on the reality of ObamaCare.
• So come on, Is Health Care a Right? Answer the question, Congressmen!
• Come on, What 'right' to health care?
• You want a quick post that gives a hint to what a true free market in health care could be like. This is it: Target's Free Market Health Care Innovation.
• Why do so many seemingly intelligent people lose their critical faculties when it comes to public transport – especially public transport by train? Liberty Scott fisks all the idiots gathered around the altar of the train.
• Architectural photographer Julius Shulman died last month. For most people, when they think of modernist architecture, it will be a photograph of Shulman’s – like the classic at right -- that will come to mind.
  Read the Wall Street Journal’s obituary here: How Julius Shulman Told a House’s Story.
• This looks like my kind of art gallery too – a Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow that “has invited art lovers to write their thoughts down in an open Bible on display as part of its Made in God's Image exhibition.”  PZ Myers reckons “It's an interesting idea. I've signed a few bibles at people's request myself — I usually mark up the first page with the question, ‘Where are the squid?’” 
  Read My kind of art gallery.
• Matt Nolan at The Visible Hand reckons there’s now fourteen economics blogs in New Zealand.  Flatteringly, he includes my bumbling efforts in the list.
• If you haven’t yet seen the video of the Inspector General of the US Federal Reserve Bank admitting she hasn’t got a clue where several trillion dollars has gone, then yyou really need to have a look now.  It’s frightening.
• And speaking of mismanagement at The Fed, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been circling the States giving “Town Hall Meetings” to ramp up his popularity in the face of a public appalled at the almost daily evidence of the incompetence of him and his colleagues.  Jeff Perren runs the rule over Bernaanke’s Kansas meeting, saying that “During the entire period the ‘deer in the headlights’ look never left his face.”
  Read Bernanke Grilled At Townhall in Kansas, and see if you can answer Jeff’s question:
  ”It's always a little shocking to see a man who has taught at Princeton be so stupid. What remains a mystery is why men of intelligence like Bernanke absorb and accept the blatant nonsense that a healthy-minded college freshman could poke big holes through without effort.”
  Any ideas?
• What’s the answer?  End the Fed. Economist George Selgin says Congressman Ron Paul's bill may never pass, “but history suggests the US economy would be better off without the Federal Reserve.”
  Read End the Fed? A not-so-crazy idea..
• Here’s some vintage pro-inflation propaganda from America’s last Great Depression.  Maybe Ben Bernanke could re-release it?
• Take a look at America’s Debt Clock.  It’s frankly frightening.
• Speaking of a deer in the headlights, perhaps it’s a shame Mr Bernanke hasn’t got a friend like Paddy, an Irish hunter, who dialled 911 to say, "I just shot at something that I thought was a deer but it was another hunter. I'm afraid I just killed Mick." The operator says, "It's OK sir, it may not be as bad as you think. First, make sure Mick's really dead." Paddy says OK and sets down the phone. Then the operator hears a gunshot. Paddy picks up the phone and says, "OK, now what?"
• Afghanistan: Destination? Non-victory.
• Conservative intellectual Bill Kristol – America’s Matthew Hooton -- demonstrates on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart why the term conservative intellectual is an oxymoron.
  Watch here at this link, and you might begin to understand why Ayn Rand called today’s conservatives “futile, impotent and, culturally, dead.
  “They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing [she said]. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country’s uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship.”
  Kristol is Exhibit A for the prosecution. Watch here at this link.
• Or as Andy Clarkson (aka The Charlotte Capitalist) asks, "Are Conservatives Going To Save Socialism Again?"
• If you thought those subjectivist philosophy professors were snarky about Ayn Rand in the New York Times this week, then you should have seen how Friedrich Nietzsche was received by his “colleagues” at Basel University.  Ouch!
  There’s nothing so vicious as a philosophy professor in the face of a competitor who’s telling them their time is up.
• Subjectivist philosophy professors don’t like Ayn Rand, but why are more and more businessmen falling in love with her novel Atlas Shrugged?
  Alex Epstein gives a pithy explanation in Why Businessmen Love Atlas Shrugged.
• Speaking of outraged charlatans, psychotherapists are outraged that Wikipedia has put online the Rorshach inkblot tests that they use to help practice their chicanery. Poor dears.
  Read A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?.
• By the way, you won’t believe the Internet Porn Statistics, even when they’re so elegantly presented.  Watch Internet Porn Statistics.
  Thank goodness we’re all paying $1.5 billion to get broadband, eh?
• A 1951 Phoenix home that famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his son has been sold for US$2.8 million.  That’s its lounge on the right.  Head here to learn more.
• Eric Crampton reckons Phillip Field’s conviction for corruption is Eroding our Clean Green image.
  Although Jim Hopkins reckons that between Phillip Field and Bill English, they might be able to help us close at least one gap with Australia: the corruption gap.
• Here’s what some people are calling “the greatest letter of complaint ever” – a disgruntled Virgin Airlines passenger writing to Richard Branson.  Hilarious.
  Read Greatest ever letter of complaint.
• Fellow Wagner fans fearful of how Katherina Wagner is execrating her grandfather’s work might at least like to know that she’s bring the Bayreuth Festival experience to the web, including live webcasts of performances! Head to the really excellent Bayreuth website here, and you’ll find yourself in heaven. Or at least Valhalla.
• In Ayn Rand's final public talk, she exhorts a group of businessmen to stop apologizing, and stop supporting anti-capitalist institutions: "It is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers." See how the force of her ideas captivated an audience and drew a tumultuous response.
  Watch The Sanction of the Victims.