“For Mr Blair knows better than most how ill-timed was the capture of Kabul by the Northern Alliance. Far from this being the “VK Day” event claimed by some of the more excitable commentators, it has happened at a pace that makes it a serious setback to hopes of securing a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan. Put at its simplest, the Northern Alliance is simply too powerful for comfort, with little sign of the Pashtun population, the largest single ethnic group, joining what Mr Blair called the “uprising against the Taliban.” – The Independent today! Meanwhile Pashtun revolt in the South seems to be growing. Do these people ever ever learn?
V-H AWARD NOMINEE: “Huge earth-shaking explosions, horizons filled with flame and smoke, doomsday clamour and an indiscriminate devastation: these are the familiar, unnerving symptoms of a bankrupt policy, of plans lacking or gone awry, of exponential escalation and dread futility. Familiar because the world has seen the Americans go this way before, in Vietnam, in Cambodia and in Iraq, with no good result. Unnerving because the impression strengthens that President George Bush has no clear idea how proportionately to attain his ends or even what those ends may ultimately be. Futile because carpet-bombing, whatever its immediate consequences, looks to all but an implacable American public like an act of desperation prompted by a failure of imagination. Every towering column of dust and ash obscures ever more completely the twin towers whose appalling downfall was the root of it all. With every unguided bomb that drops, with every pinpoint missile gone astray, with every child maimed and with every redoubled cry of Taliban defiance, the military assault on Afghanistan becomes more of an obstacle to justice in its broadest sense, less a legitimate part of the solution.” The Guardian, November 2
V-H AWARD NOMINEE: “Perhaps Britons have simply decided that bombing is not an effective way to defeat al-Qaida. Maybe some of them accept that aerial assault can only boost Osama bin Laden’s standing in the Muslim world, spectacularly confirming his claim that this is a clash of the west against Islam – pitting the richest country in the world against the poorest. Perhaps they now accept that killing Bin Laden would merely make a martyr of him, and that his chosen hideaway was the worst possible place to pick a fight. Maybe they have heard the Afghan national epigram: “When God wants to punish a nation, he makes them invade Afghanistan.” – Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian, October 31.
The Dish 