Taliban Killing US Hearts-And-Minds Strategy

Didn't we win the post-war war in Iraq by winning the hearts and minds of the Sunnis?  Yes, we had to arm them to the teeth and pay the warlords a Hedge Fund CEO-level... stipend, but they came to love America and their Shiite brothers and sisters.  Sunnis even vote now.

So, off to Afghanistan we took this strategy.  Hearts and Minds, people.  That will win Afghanistan.  Forget the occasional stray HMA Rocket or Predator Hellfire missile taking out a village or two.  Enlist the Afghans to clean up that mess of a bazaar (we had to bomb just last year) by paying them with real afghanis (a currency worth about 2 cents).  That'll make them love us in Afghanistan, too.

So we battled to take Marja, a Taliban stronghold.  Once we did that, we set about romancing (that means paying) its inhabitants.

But we have run into the unexpected.  We're paying a bunch of Talibanners, too.  Do they go out and buy bread and jam with their afghanis?  They do not.  They buy IED's and rocket propelled grenades. 

So why pay the Talibanners in the first place?

Because, for the first time ever, we can't tell a Talibanner from Afghan.  Damned if they don't look alike.  They even wear the same clothes and walk the same way.  They shake your hand like an Afghan.  Who would have guessed?

Have we ever had a war where the enemy looked like the people?  Think about it.  The enemy usually looks completely different.  Sometimes, they have uniforms that are gray or blue, like in our Civil War (Or War To Keep Our Slaves Ours, depending on your address).  Other times, they have orange horns growing out of their foreheads.  Some look just like the Kracken in "Clash of the Titans" (pick your version).  One of them, for sure, had only one eye, like the Cyclops in the pre-2000 graphic novel "The Odyssey".  But we definitely have always been able to tell an enemy at 100 plus yards, making them an easy target for our laser-approximating bombs.

The American military is stymied by this radical development.  A guy walking down the street with an AK-47 could be the local grocer or sandal vendor.  Or he could be a Talibaner.  Maybe all three.

Worse, the Talibanners, looking like the familiar foreigner-invader-loving Afghans, are killing off the foreigner-invader-loving Afghans and suggesting to others that foreigner-invader-loving is generally best done on foreign soil.  Somehow, the Talibanners can tell the differences and don't kill their own guys (and they are all guys, by the way), by mistake every fortnight or so.  How can they tell and we can't?

We all were assured that  our military had taken Marja and freed it of its Talibaner interlopers. We were well on our way to daily hugs, parliamentary elections and poppy-laced tea with the locals...

Oh.

Taliban Outduels US in Green

Once again, the US is surpassed by an Asian country in the Green Revolution.

You expect the Chinese to do it.  Their Revolution never stops, so they have all the infrastructure.  The last American Revolution was all about Dot.com's and we know how that worked out.

But now it is the Taliban.

How embarrassing is that?  Mullah Omar's Taliban.  These are the guys who plan to spend most of their time detonating the occasional Buddhas, enforcing a head-to-toe-but-not-hands burka law and stoning anyone they can see without a beard (thankfully, the burkas protect the women).  Not that kind of stoning, either, even though Afghanistan has more poppies than decent stones.

You probably think war is not that great, but it can foster Green innovation.  And it has in a place where the last know innovation was...  Okay, that's not the point, because innovation is happening now in  Afghanistan.

In ancient and even recent times, shields were made of wood and/or metals, like highly polished chrome-steel and the less glamorous cast iron.  They were pretty effective if you could lift them.  But wood requires cutting down carbon-dioxide-gulping trees and metals must be mined, melted, purified and cast or hammered into usable shapes.  All of that metal work takes energy, generally from carbon-based fuels, probably trees again, worsening Global Warming and threatening to flood the family poppy farms.

The Taliban solution may not be for everyone, but it is Green.  Afghan Human Shields.  In Afghanistan, humans, especially women and children, are plentiful and need no hot smokey fires to purify them, although that would help. Unlike oak or metal shields, human shields make your enemy think twice before trying to shred the shield to get to the combatant's vital organs.  In the Taliban case, that might not include the head, but big deal.

Best of all, these days, human shields can last for days and are recyclable as all get out.

Can you wait for this high-powered close up:  Mullah Omar getting his Nobel Prize?

Army Brat Aids Taliban?

The US Army is tough.  They make you roll around in the mud, run with heavy packs, shoot terrorists and, I guess, not have kids.

One soldier, Alex Hutchinson learned that--what other--the Army way, having had a kid without permission and the Army got pissy. 

Okay, Alex didn't show up for a scheduled deployment to Afghanistan, but it's not like Alex was going to the beach with the unit for the afternoon.  For that mission, a teen-age sitter and her inevitable boyfriend would have been fine.

Afghanistan is far away and--don't let the pretty poppies fool you--no place to take a little kid.  Or a marine, for that matter. 

So Alex, skipped the deployment so that little Kamani didn't end up in Army Foster Care and you can imagine how those guys would treat him, being unauthorized and all.  The Army was all angry and threatened a Court Martial or maybe two, one for having an unauthorized kid in the first place and a seconc for missing the first group meet in Kabul.

Don't blame the Army too much.  They did give Alex 30 extra days to formulate another long term plan for Kamani, the original one having fallen through.  Well, Alex did come up with another care plan, but the Army didn't like the part that kept Alex several thousand miles from the Taliban our Army had planned to have Alex shoot at.

Without Alex, the Army's mission will probably falter, Alex being a Specialist... having been a key Specialist.

The good news is that the Army and Alex settled out of Court Martial and Gitmo still has that extra room.  The bad news is that Alex is pretty much out of military and the Afghanistan thing is not going that well.