Meanwhile the Taliban (or Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as they call themselves) are crystal clear as to their desired end-state: foreigners out and a government under Islamic law. Despite the fact that much of their media output is highly inaccurate – their website this morning claimed that they had killed "several dozen foreign invaders and local puppets" – the Taliban are always first off the mark after every incident. This has long been a source of huge frustration to senior officers, but a problem that Nato's media operations bureaucracy seems incapable of putting right.I am sort of charmed by the Yelpification of propaganda; like, NATO is still buying quarter-page ads in the dying local paper, while the Taliban are writing Amazon user reviews. SPOILER ALERT: we lose.
-Frank Ledwidge in the Guardian
24 comments:
NATO's media operations bureaucracy
This is why we lose. Not only is NATO attempting to communicate with a "media operation", as versus, say, a "statement", or even better, "actions" -- but the generator of said media operation is a bureaucracy. Fail x 2.
Leonard,
The only "action" that would make a difference is "going away", and that's one thing they won't try.
I'm disappointed that the "movie section" link on their website is broken. I was hoping for reviews from TIFF.
It's better than you think...
http://tinyurl.com/63jjvm7
Taliban movie reviews are released in shura six minutes after the press screening ends and give wildly improbable reviews ("Eleven out of Five Stars!"), whereas NATO movie reviews are distributed seven to twelve weeks after the movie's release and are too dry to discern the subject's real merits. As with most of life the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
most i see movies on dvd (and mostly from the library, for free) so late reviews are not a problem for me
Jay, I can think of some actions. But yeah, "going away" (aka "declare victory and leave" aka "lose") would certainly work and it is even plausible for USG, whereas my kind of "action" is not. So, I support losing.
"Eleven out of Five Stars! " Eleventy five?
Wait, The Taliban have a website?
Dude, the Taliban have an ombudsman. What century have you been living in?
Unh,, the twelfth. But we only have dial up.
Puppet violence is always the worst, though it doesn't specify whether they were of the sock or marionette variety.
Either way, kudos to the Taliban for being able to maintain a website, between raping teenage boys and murdering women for reading or listening to music. Good time-management skills.
@HJ
Them backward Talibs ... look at the significantly more superior procedures of Our-Troops(TM), who murder the boys and rape the women. Then murder the women.
Capt'n Obvious
Touché, Cap'n. One is explicitly stated policy, while the other is unconscionable atrocity (albeit one routinely covered up by institutional corruption that exists in virtually any organization of size and power).
However, even if by some sainted miracle we left Afghanistan tomorrow, yes, them backward Talibs would still be proud of violently imposing their 7th century mores on their people. You can take an occasional poke at religious freaks who think it's okay to beat and kill women for showing ankle or learning to read, without automatically reaching for some My Lai moral equivalence.
Do the Taliban rape boys? I thought the Koran was anti-sodomy?
IOZ, you should really consider hiring an ombudsman for your comments section.
Koran, Shmoran. This is Pashtunstan, Fawful: boy-raping is older than god.
And God knows you'd never here about American soldiers raping boys..in front of their parents...at Abu Ghraib prison....in Iraq.....Fertile Crescent......Mesopotamia.......2006........
Yes, and American soldiers also bury women up their waists in soccer stadiums, and stone them to death for the high crime of suspected adultery. Also, too: maiming and disfigurement of women who refuse to marry their assigned mates, or fail to properly accept their designated role as a farm animal, a brood mare in a beekeeper suit.
Those are cultural/religious practices, along with the aforementioned bacha bazi. They were doing those things long before we invaded, they'll keep doing them long after we come to our senses and get the hell out.
HJ, American soldiers have racked up higher body counts, over the last half-century, than anyone else in the world. Millions of corpses can be attributed to Our Boys, from Korea to Vietnam to Laos to Cambodia to Latin America and the Middle East. Atrocities committed by the United States military are not some anomaly, they are policy, and have been for decades.
But hey, the towelheads are so much less civilized in the way they kill people, so fuck it, right? Bring on another round of Hellfire missiles!
American soldiers also bury women up their waists in soccer stadiums, and stone them to death for the high crime of suspected adultery. Also, too: maiming and disfigurement of women who refuse to marry their assigned mates, or fail to properly accept their designated role as a farm animal, a brood mare in a beekeeper suit.
Really? Wow. That sounds terrible. I hope someone invades America and kills me so as to teach those soldiers a lesson.
Heywood: While your basic theme is dead wrong (I'm sure our victims are reassured by the fact that their death and maiming and disfigurement etc etc is not OFFICIAL AMERICAN POLICY (yet somehow seems to follow every American liberation war every time), I would agree with you that Islamic fundamentalism is not much fun. Still...the fact that Taliban control offends your western sensitivities should not justify your reflxive support for TEH TROOPS who don't mean to kill and destroy millions of people for their own good. It just happens, man. I promise it won't happen during the next "police action" or "liberatory non-war-event"!!! We will have better training! And more clearly outlined policy memoranda! And smarter bombs!
I would agree with you, though:
Mr. Fundamental seems to have way too much of a soft spot for clerics and their oppressions. In response to complaints about Catholic boy-diddlery, he worries that "liberals" are impugning the ONLY FORCE WHICH OPPOSES OPPRESSION IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, MAN. Yes, a centralized, billion dollar enterprise based on superstition and hierarchy and oppression which works hand in hand with such luminaries of freedom as Franco and Mussolini (and Hitler, if we are honest) is our only hope, man.
FIGHT THE POWER!
ROFLOL.
Brian, Chris, etc.:
Thanx for the history lesson, really. I did not need to be schooled in the blood and body accruals in our decades-long quest for Kennanesque hegemony. I've written many a pained jeremiad attesting to that very issue. You are preaching to the choir, m'kay?
That said, I do think it's telling that the standard riposte to (if you'll go back and read my initial comment) a mere trifle of a cheap shot, duly noting that the Taliban are fanatical bullies and thugs, routinely oppressing (their own) women and children with a furiously regressive, medieval bent, is to reflexively indict the American military for all its moral transgressions.
Yes, and? So we have two sets of assholes. This was never in dispute. Of course American culture and society has many things wrong with it, not the least of which is our hypocritical support of a similarly repressive Saudi regime.
But there are some things that are objectively worse. Observing that does not automatically cast one into the "'murka, fuck yeah!" mouth-breather claque. It's more of an observation on fundamentalist cultures, be they polygamist FLDS or the woman-hating pederasts of the Taliban.
And no, I don't think there's anything we can or should do to intervene on it there. You just have to wait for the mossbacks to die off, I suppose, just like here.
I like my life,i think the happy mood is very important,if you can keep a good mood,everything will be helpful,how do you feel about that?
@HJ
Is a tad late, but
MY RED HERRING IS BETTER THAN YOUR RED HERRING!
Capt'n Obvious
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