Whether it's online or in the real world, I do seem to attract some interesting "characters" into my life.

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.


~ ~ ~

Afghan Autopsy

After a month traveling around Afghanistan this autumn, I was forced to a grim conclusion: This project is lost, and nothing very good will likely replace it. The reasons for the international community’s failure here are several. First, there are the immediate blunders of the occupiers who, despite extensive European involvement, are led by the Americans. Next are deeper historical dynamics dating back to the U.S. role in the anti-Soviet jihad. And finally there are much older cultural, political and economic facts about Afghanistan that have long made this a wild, lawless place, impervious to conquest and even resistant to the modernizing efforts of its urban middle classes.

Learning to Live with the Ayatollahs

How in the world did George W. Bush manage to turn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of “Axis of Evil” Iran, into a prophet of peace in the Middle East?

Good question Mr. Scheer.

So it is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was so desperate in his pleas to the ayatollah, admitting that “We are in dire need of Iran’s help in establishing security and stability in Iraq.”

Of course he is, because six years of Bush’s foreign policy has had the presumably unintended consequences of elevating radicals and theocrats into positions of dominance throughout the region, from Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and even, this past week, to the oil emirate Bahrain, where Shiite and Sunni radical Islamists split elections in an upset.

So you say you want a revolution?

How Bush Wrecked the Army

The generals' revolt has spread inside the Pentagon, and the point of the spear is one of Donald Rumsfeld's most favored officers, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff.

The trumpet sounded last month, when Schoomaker refused to give Rumsfeld a detailed Army budget proposal for fiscal year 2008. The Air Force and Navy met the Aug. 15 deadline for submitting their program requests. But Schoomaker—in an unprecedented move—said he preferred not to.

Rumsfeld had limited the Army's budget for 2008 to $114 billion. Schoomaker told him that the sum wasn't enough to maintain the Army's present commitments. Simply to repair the tanks, radios, and other equipment damaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, he would need at least another $17 billion. If he didn't get it, he said, there was no point drawing up a budget at all.

Bush and Torture

The pressure George Bush has exerted the last several weeks to obtain a law from Congress validating the decisions he has taken in the name of his "war against terror" is about to bear fruit. The Republican senators who resisted the White House assert that they have imposed a compromise on it that respects human rights. The truth is that this apparent victory hides a capitulation on an essential point: the president of the United States sees recognized the right to authorize the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to employ methods of interrogation that respect neither American legislation nor international law as codified by the Geneva Conventions. Clearly stated, the agency will be able to resort to torture, as it very probably has already for four or five years in the secret detention sites situated outside the United States.

Even the French know McCain's assurances are connerie.

Newsweek is news-worthy next week for a couple of reasons:

Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan:

Editor's Note: Newsweek has scrubbed the cover of the United States edition for October 2, 2006. The cover of international editions, aimed at Europe, and other world regions has maintained the original title of the story, "LOSING AFGHANISTAN." The new cover for the United States edition features photographer Annie Leibovitz and is titled "My Life in Pictures." We offer the European edition cover and story here. -vh/TO

Seriously? Does no one in the Journalistic community have any balls? Well, other than Mr. Olbermann? Read on:

In a parched clearing a few hundred yards on, more than 100 Taliban fighters ranging in age from teenagers to a grandfatherly 55-year-old have assembled to meet their provincial commander, Muhammad Sabir. An imposing man with a long, bushy beard, wearing a brown and green turban and a beige shawl over his shoulders, Sabir inspects his troops, all of them armed with AKs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. He claims to have some 900 fighters, and says the military and psychological tide is turning in their favor. "One year ago we couldn't have had such a meeting at midnight," says Sabir, who is in his mid-40s and looks forward to living out his life as an anti-American jihadist. "Now we gather in broad daylight. The people know we are returning to power."

Not long after NEWSWEEK's visit, US and Afghan National Army forces launched a major attack to dislodge the Taliban from Ghazni and four neighboring provinces. But when NEWSWEEK returned in mid-September, Sabir's fighters were back, performing their afternoon prayers. It is an all too familiar story. Ridge by ridge and valley by valley, the religious zealots who harbored Osama bin Laden before 9/11 - and who suffered devastating losses in the US invasion that began five years ago next week - are surging back into the country's center. In the countryside over the past year Taliban guerrillas have filled a power vacuum that had been created by the relatively light NATO and US military footprint of some 40,000 soldiers, and by the weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration.

Mission Accomplished!

The United States worsened an already horrifying situation by invading and then abandoning Afghanistan. We are unable to fix the damage we caused and Afghanistan is headed towards being a "lost cause" because of us.

Not long ago, the Bush administration was fond of pointing to Afghanistan as a model of transformation. That mountainous landlocked country, we were told, was being converted from a "failed state" - Al Qaeda's base for the worst ever attacks on US continental soil - into a functioning, responsible member of the international community. In speech after speech, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior US officials ticked off the happy stats: the Taliban and Al Qaeda had been routed, democratic presidential and parliamentary elections had been held, more than 3 million refugees had returned and 1.75 million girls were attending school.

Heck of a job Rummie.

The Taliban doesn't always share Al Qaeda's goals or tactics, although some units have taken up suicide bombing. But a guerrilla calling himself Commander Hemat, a former anti-Soviet mujahedin fighter who now works closely with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, says foreign Arabs are being welcomed again. "Now the money is flowing again because the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are producing results," he told NEWSWEEK. Zabibullah, a Taliban operative who has proved reliable in the past, says the Qaeda operatives "feel more secure and can concentrate on their own business other than just surviving."

Why might that be? Because of our other disastrous foreign policy choices in the rest of the Middle East?

Does no one in the US government recognize that, as distasteful, as heinous as the Taliban and Al Qaeda and others are, they are fighting on their own soil, for their own version of governance? Did they learn nothing from Vietnam? From the Soviet's attempt to deal with Afghanistan? This will not end any time soon. They are fighting for their own survival, whatever that survival entails for them. We should never have entered Afghanistan in the first place. I said that in October of 2002 and I'm saying it now: A multinational police force should have been sent to find bin Laden - not the US or it's alllies' Armies. Carpet bombing these people back to the stone age isn't the answer. They will retreat to the hills and wait everyone out:

And while Ahmad's unit is now regrouping to the east, at least 35 Taliban have stashed their weapons and stayed in the village posing as farmers. They will lay ambushes and plant IEDs to harass Afghan and US troops, Ahmad says, and the larger Taliban force will return when it's safe. He shrugs off the setback, saying it's only temporary. "We never expected the success we've had," says Ahmad. Nor, five years ago, did anyone else.

This jihad against themselves and the West is their Revolutionary War. It began in Iran in 1979 with the overthrow of the Shah. It won't end until they exhaust themselves or win their objectives. The battle field isn't confined to just their own counties, towns and villages, but the whole world. It's no solution, but maybe we should just leave them alone and allow them to destroy each other or figure out which way to go. By illegally invading Iraq, by using brute force to find a terrorist in Afghanistan, we have made bad situations so much worse. We need to back away and allow these people to find their own way. And sort out our own "houses" before telling others how to fix theirs.

It's not a good solution. I'm not sure there is one. But I do know that what we're doing isn't working, so isn't it time to change tactics? We've gone overboard on the militaristic answers - perhaps it's time to retreat. We haven't the fiscal or human resources to deal with the problems we have exasperbated. Perhaps it's time to call in the United Nations and ask them to work with the Arab League to fix this nightmare.

Before it's too late.