Had a weekend up in Opo, where lack of 'net access - and lack of desire as well - prevented the recording of a number of events ranging from weather and the trivial to the more important.
The weather was crap, the trivial was finding a very pissed cockroach on the dregs of a kahlua drink.
The more important was the news that some petty little bureaucrat was criticising as "potentially illegal" the US use of UAV's in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
First thing to be said is that at last the US military machine and administration is showing a measure of strategy and sense.
The so-termed "war against terror" is and has never been anything other than an "assymetric war". That fact alone should have ruled out the use of the traditional "send in the US Cavalry". However the US, led by its cowboy administration, preferred the idea of the cavalry charging over the hill to save the day; or to up-date the image somewhat, "sending in the Marines" to secure territory by charging over the countryside.
Despite the fact that some 30% of the casualties to the Predator raids have been civilians, the numbers of non-combatants killed have been measured in tens rather than hundreds.
The "excuse" that the US did not have this technology available washes not. How long did the US have the U2, before the US public knew of it (courtesy of the Russians)? What other technologies already exist within the US armoury that are also unknown?
No, this is and always has been an assymteric war.
This is how you fight it. What a shame it took eight years, two Presidents, and thousands of dead to realise that.
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I do repent for ever having said anything nice about Bush. He did damn near everything wrong. Afghanistan could be argued for - though, even if the military had limited its focus to just that, it would still be a quagmire now - but Iraq was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Osama is winning.
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