05 August 2007

No moral agency watch

That Palestinian “refugee camp� in north Lebanon, home to the Al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam and about 40,000 “refugees,� has been completely wiped out by the Lebanese army.

It’s been a couple weeks now since this happened, and I have yet to see the world wide condemnations and UN investigatory committees get under way. Odd, isn’t it?

[source]

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Penny wise, pound foolish

British military leaders had a brilliant idea. Instead of fighting in Afghanistan (aka, the Graveyard of Great Armies), the Ministry of Defence decided to buyoff the other side. Hey if Saddam Hussein can buy off George Galloway, why not buy off the Taliban?

Brilliant plan.

Except for the part where it did not work because the bureaucracy tried to do it on the cheap.

[…]

Here is why the Brits failed: They were too damned cheap. The MoD only ponied up £1.5 million — $3 million. We spend more than that on toilet paper for our soldiers.

[…]

The Brits say they bought off 4,000 people with this £1.5 million. That’s $750 a man.

Oddly, that wasn’t enough to insure permanent loyalty. One advantage the enemy has is that he doens’t have to buy off everyone, just select members of the chatterati, who then become the darlings of the “trangressive” Left. If we tried the same thing, the enemy would just shoot them. On the other hand, maybe we should buy enemy commanders, just for a short time, to engage in defeat in detail.

[source, source]

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