This PRISM piece has been doing the rounds. I think it’s interesting more for the patterns it reveals, which are those of the early 1970s. The argument is that the British armed forces are unlikely to deploy anywhere in future, for various reasons that aren’t really unpacked, but which are basically “because Iraq was a…
Read More Doomed Britain is doomedThinking about the political castration of Ken Clarke and the fact that not even the Treasury in its most R.G. Hawtrey-esque mood seems to be able to stop the expansion of the prison industry, it struck me that the political class’s attitude towards the public service known as justice is fundamentally different to its attitude…
Read More Why not foundation courts?Pakistan Policy Blog speaks sense: Zardari’s attempt to present himself as a savior belies the reality and the way most in Pakistan and even the United States see him. Billionaire Zardari is part of Pakistan’s feuding oligarchy, not a revolutionary against it. The sad fact is that most Pakistanis have been hostage to this sadistic…
Read More stuck, stuck, stuckVia Kings of War, an Anglo-Australian spat of sorts. The British Army has the reputation of being good at counterinsurgency, and in 2003 and 2004 there was lots of fairly snide criticism of the United States by British commanders saying that Americans didn’t understand counterinsurgency [and] were taking too kinetic an approach,” said Kilcullen, who…
Read More Are you sure?There hasn’t been much progress on my long-term beef with Martin Kettle for a while. But it’s worth remembering that if the Guardian has a major leading article that isn’t a business/economics story, it’s probably him. And Saturday’s second lead (behind a rather competent finance story) bears the Kettle hallmarks. Forty years ago the Royal…
Read More The Guardian Is Not Serious About CVFI am currently reading Antonio Giustozzi’s Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop – The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. I’ll review it more fully when I’ve finished reading it – now there’s an idea – but here’s something that stands out for reasons of pure partisan rage. John Reid has been mocked plenty for saying that he thought…
Read More John Reid RetrobloggingSaid Sir Michael Rose, speaking at the SAS passing-out parade in 1979: One intelligent soldier can achieve more than a fleet of B-52s. There’s some debate as to whether that statement could be applied to Rose himself, but I doubt many would disagree with it. David Davis apparently agrees. His resignation from Parliament should be…
Read More one intelligent soldierSays Bryan O’Sullivan in his bookmarks: Kevin Myers, the ne plus ultra of ballbag Anglo-Irish reactionary hacks, surprises us all by writing what might be an essential close-up of the Troubles. Maybe his lunatic, protean nature was a perfect fit for the time. This was the upshot of this post. I promised, I think, to…
Read More Review: Watching the DoorAz-zaman, via Cole reports that the Iraqi government “honoured” SCIRI…sorry…ISIC militiamen for their role in the Basra fighting, and that some 10,000 of them were officially signed up to the Government’s own forces (I thought they already were). The reason for this step is apparently that large numbers – thousands – of men in the…
Read More MutinyWell, it’s not as if we weren’t warned; the Iraqi government had been threatening to move against Fadhila in Umm Qasr, and there had been increasing tension between the Iraqi government and the Sadr movement going back to Christmas. Not so long ago, there were demonstrations in Sadr City against Sadr; they thought the movement…
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