Diana West

Love in a Cold "Eurozone"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:40:00 GMT

Protocol calls: Who in the EU gets to receive President Obowma?

While EU officials mud wrestle each other for the fun of receiving Obama and, more important, his bow in a US-EU summit to be, the words "Greek" and "economy" come together and threaten to pull the EU apart. Paul Belien explains in "The EU's Horrible Honeymoon" at the Brussels Journal:

Last week, Barack Obama snubbed the Europeans by refusing to attend next May’s European Union summit in Madrid. The Europeans are very upset. But that is not the worst of their problems, and neither is the looming bankruptcy of Greece. Analysts fear that Spain might sink the euro, the EU’s common currency, and with the euro also the dreams of greater political integration.

At this point Europe is not even halfway its 100-day political “honeymoon” since the Treaty of Lisbon, which transformed the EU into a state in its own right, came into force. So far the honeymoon has been a nightmare. Since the beginning of the year, the EU’s currency, the euro, is on the brink of collapse; Greece has been placed under EU financial supervision to prevent it from going bankrupt. Now U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will not attend next May’s EU summit in Madrid. It was to have been Obama’s first visit to post-Lisbon Europe – the consecration of the new political order.

Washington informed Brussels last week that Obama is not coming because it is not clear who is his European counterpart. Since the Lisbon Treaty came into force on January 1^st, Europe has its own President, Herman Van Rompuy. This former Belgian politician chairs the European Council, the assembly of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. However, there is also José Manuel Barroso, a former Portuguese politician, who is the president of the European Commission, which is the EU’s executive body. And there is José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, who is hosting the Madrid meeting and as such co-chairs the summit meeting of the EU heads of government with Mr. Van Rompuy.

Messrs. Van Rompuy, Barroso and Zapatero all want to be the first to shake Mr. Obama’s hand and receive the deep bow which the American President is in the habit of making to foreign leaders. Because of the embarrassing intra-European squabble about who should have the honor, Obama has declined the invitation until the Europeans have figured out which of them is the most important.

Obama’s decision has come as an unexpected blow to the European leadership. It has upset them so much that they are considering postponing the summit to the autumn. Meanwhile, they have begun quarreling about who is to blame for the present debacle. The Europeans generally agree that the vainglorious Zapatero is mostly to blame, but others are damaged more. “The Spanish have made a mess of the summit but Van Rompuy and the post-Lisbon EU institutions will carry the can in the long term. The squabbling has damaged the EU in the eyes of the most powerful nation in the world,” a senior EU official said.

Although Obama’s snub hurts Europe’s pride, the euro’s monetary problems are far more serious. They not only affect Europe’s finances and economy, but may also tear down the political EU framework. When the European Commission placed Athens under EU supervision last week, Greece was almost bankrupt. Brussels has forced the Greek government to present a plan to drastically reduce its budget deficit from 13% to 3% by the end of 2012. The plan will cost the Greeks blood, sweat and tears. It includes a freeze on civil service wages and the postponement of retirement. Brussels has invoked new EU powers under Article 121 of the Lisbon Treaty, which allow it to reshape the structure of Greece’s pensions, healthcare, labor market and private commerce.

“The envisaged correction of the deficit is feasible but subject to risks,” says EU Commission President Barroso – an understatement. The Commission fears a backlash from the Greek unions, who might organize strikes and bring down the Greek government. Trade unions in other countries are nervous, too. They warn that it is unacceptable that the European Commission intervenes in setting national wages.

The EU’s Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia declared that the Greek targets will be enforced strongly and that, if necessary, even more draconian measures will be taken. “Every time we see or perceive slippages, we will ask for additional measures to correct these slippages. Never before have we established so detailed and tough a system of surveillance,” Almunia said. He has demanded quarterly updates on progress towards reduction targets, as well as a first report on 16 March. “This is the first time,” he said, “we have established such an intense and quasi-permanent system of monitoring.”

Much is at stake. In the coming weeks, the strength of the euro will depend on whether the markets believe that the government in Athens is strong enough to implement the reforms or trust that the other eurozone countries will bail out the Greeks. This year the eurozone governments have already borrowed a record €110bn from the markets, thereby forcing up the cost of borrowing for countries with the weakest public finances, such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy....

Read the rest here at the Brussels Journal.

Something Rotten in ... Sweden

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:10:00 GMT

Ilmar Reepalu is the Mayor of Malmo, Sweden, but he could well serve as the Mouthpiece of Eurabia, having crystallized its essence in a recent interview about rocketing Antisemitism in his city. Malmo (pop. 250,000), a confortable train ride across the Oresund strait from Copenhagen, is Sweden's third-largest city, a Leftist-jihadist territory where like-minded Leftist "antifa" Swedes and Muslim immigrants, the 21st-century's alliance of Brown Shirts and Black Shirts, effectively arm "civilized" Socialist rule with the under-flowing threat and as-necessary implementation of violence.

You may recall the March 2009 Davis Cup match between Sweden and Israel that was played in Malmo sans spectators after the City Council voted five to four to hold the match in an empty stadium. As the Jerusalem Post noted at the time, this made "winners" of the "Stop the Match" campaign "which prevailed on the council's Socialist-Left majority to quarantine Israelis and Jews behind an apartheid police cordon to protest israel's action in the recent Gaza war."

Six thousand Palestinian partisans marched on the stadium in a protest that, naturally, turned violent, resulting in 100 arrests.

Malmo, whose population is more than 25 percent Muslim immigrant, is also infamous for recurring violence in Rosengard, a mainly Muslim housing project I have had the opportunity at least to view. I drove by on a rainy and very quiet afternoon with friends from the anti-Islamization party Sweden Democrats, but on riot nights, fire department and ambulances can't go in without police escort. (Here is an excellent report on Malmo by CBN.)

Now, some of Malmo's tiny Jewish population, estimated at no more than 700 people, are leaving this Islamized city, where the 79 crimes against Jews reported to police in 2009 were double the number reported in 2008.

What about it, Mr. Mayor? In Reepalu's January interview, as Tundra Tabloids puts it (and translates), the mayor "blames the collective Jew, Israel, for recent attacks against Jews in Malmö, `due to the conflict in Gaza last year [spilling] over to Malmo.' "

TT continues: "But Reepalu goes further to elucidate his true views on Israel, which basically follows the thinking in the Islamic world, that Jews are not allowed a national movement of their own...."

From the interview:

Skanskan.se: "Have you considered to say in public that Malmo does not accept anti-Semitism. Or is that controversial?

Reepalu: We don't accept Zionism or Antisemitism. They are [both] extremists that want to set themselves over other other groups and believe [other] groups are worth less.

This is indeed the Islamic world view, which, as Bat Ye'or has long and patiently explained to mainly deaf ears, has been adopted by powerful sectors of the European elite who made common cause with Yasir Arafat to delegitimize the very existence of Israel. In a recent speech in Israel (video here, text here), Bat Ye'or discussed the resurgence of Antisemitism in Europe and again placed it in the key framework of "Eurabia":

This new Judeophobia is not aimed at individual Jews, [not] at the populations that since the Shoah have become marginal and insignificant on demographic and political levels.

It is [rather] expressed through an implacable and disdainful hate for the state of Israel, for what [Israel] represents and stands for, and [it is also expressed] by the glorification of Palestinianism, which is an ideology for the elimination of Jews as in former days of Nazis. ... In other words, one does not express institutional racism, one celebrates Palestinianism and its jihadist ideology. ...

Or, as Mayor Reepalu puts it on the flip side, one denounces both Antisemitism and Zionism, as though Jews living in a Jewish state is similarly a manifestation of irrational hatred and therefore deserving of eradication. Of course and as usual, such thinly veiled and ultimately genocidal attitudes are not just a problem for Jews. Bat Ye'or explains:

[Europe's] anti-Israel strategy initiated in the 1970's will not change. It will continue. It is too late to change. It will continue to its conclusion: the destruction of Europe.

For there, finally, is the paradox and the pitfall: this new Judeophobia is, in fact, inseparable from Europe's long-term policy of fusion with the Arab world, which includes the mass immigration from Muslim countries, with demographic, sociological, political and religious changes that come with it.

In other words, make a deal with the devil, end up in hell.

Such changes are not the result of chance, but [rather] a planned and intended strategy, whose unfolding can be followed in the texts of the numerous Euro/Arab conferences.

I have called this transformation of Europe: Eurabia.

Eurabia is not Europe. It is its enemy. It does not represent the majority of Europeans nor all its politicians.

It is the Ilmar Reepalus that represent Eurabia, Europe's enemy -- and our own.

Avallone: "Flirting with Afghanistan" 2

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:16:00 GMT

Here is Part 2 of "Flirting with Afghanistan," text, photos and captions by Paul Avallone.

(Part 1 is here.)

By 2008, the Taliban had finely honed their roadside bomb-making, -employing and -initiating skills to the point where, as here, a bomb totally demolished the uparmored humvee, immediately killing the four GIs and one Afghan interpreter. September 2008.

Oh, for a return to those halcyon days of the first couple of years of the war, when there was no thought at all about the possibility of losing or the Taliban ever managing a comeback. Then again, we were just a lone Green Beret team in a big province, and with our hundred-plus militia of Afghan fighters culled from the best of the local warlords' armies (for a price to the warlords, of course, from an unlimited CIA stash of cold cash), we had complete control. As operators on the ground, our concern was not our Washington, D.C., leaders' big-geopolitical strategic picture that should have been taking into account the possibility of a very wounded Taliban recovering then resurging then swarming back in one day. Did they take that into account? It sure doesn't look like it.

Back in 2003, the sum total in the country, all American military personnel—Army infantry, Green Berets, Air Force, Delta, Seals—numbered less than ten thousand. Had someone said that within a few years the Taliban would outnumber our 2003 forces by more than two to one at twenty-five thousand, we would have laughed it off, not imagining it even remotely possible. Then again, all we had to go by was the little picture of Nangarhar.

It was mid-2006 when the honky-dory here turned dicey. Contrary to popular media opinion then, the Bush Administration had not really neglected Afghanistan, unless you consider neglect to be a doubling of the under-ten-thousand-strong 2003 force to twenty thousand by 2006. At the same time, the NATO mission, called the International Security Assistance Force (or, ISAF, pronounced "I-saf"), had doubled its 2004 numbers to twenty thousand. It was then in 2006 the Bush Administration's intent to turn the entire conventional part of the war over to NATO/ISAF, with a U.S. pullout to begin in the autumn.

The start of 2006 had the U.S. turning control to ISAF of Regional Commands North and West, the two non-Pashtun, relatively untroubled areas. In the spring it turned control of the more hostile, Pashtun RC South to ISAF, with the Dutch taking responsibility of Uruzgan province, the Canadians taking Kandahar province and the British taking neighboring Helmand. To understand the prevailing attitude about Afghanistan at the time, it should be noted that it was just prior to the British deployment that then Defense Minister John Reid told the press, "We are in the south to help the Afghan people construct their own democracy. I would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing a shot, because our job is to protect the reconstruction." Man, if a guy ever had to eat his words…

By summer, shots had been fired and were being fired. So much so that the Canadian Parliament came one vote shy of pulling out of its ISAF commitment. As for the British press, they were having a field day. As for John Reid, he'd last less than a year longer, and his "without firing a shot" comment still brings out the mockery in the British press.

As for the Taliban and their surprising summer offensive, in hindsight it was probably their single biggest strategic blunder. They should have waited a year and allowed the Brits and Canadians and ISAF to get comfortable and complacent throughout the summer, because in September the U.S. was to turn RC East over to ISAF, thereby giving the entire mission command to NATO and beginning its own withdrawal, with plans to leave only air assets and special forces, about 8,000 troops. Had the Taliban waited, by spring 2007 they could have launched a massive offensive against what would have been then an entirely-NATO commanded mission, and that fragile, sickly coalition would have either collapsed under the political strain of so many casualties and deaths or begged the U.S. to come back in and help. And Bush could have put blame for the failure squarely on NATO and either demanded that NATO pony up the forces to take care of it on its own or shamed NATO into an eternal gratitude by deploying massive American forces to pull ISAF's ass out of the wringer.

As it was, technically the U.S. did turn command of RC East over to ISAF in the fall of 2006, but it was a tacit, in-name-only changeover. American troops did not leave; their numbers only increased. The two-star American generals who have commanded RC East since then may have technically fallen under the ISAF commanding general, but if that general has not been an American, you can take it to the bank that for the American two-star, with his own career staked on his decisions and performance, RC East is his to command, no one else's.

Today, the summer of 2008, the U.S. has over 35,000 troops in the country, and NATO about twenty thousand. Now-retired John Reid took a lot of hits, and still does, for his assessment back in 2006, but he was not completely wrong for the time. Then the war was a holding action, with an American and ISAF strategy to provide a layer of security, financial assistance and infrastructure building to a brand new Afghan government until the Afghan security forces were built up and could take over. A holding action, no longer an all-out war, and without the consideration of the volume of the Taliban rebuilding in Pakistan nor a realistic consideration of how inadequate the Afghan security forces would be once trained up and deployed into action. Nothing was going to happen overnight, everyone knew that, and there was time, plenty of time, as there wasn't really much of an insurgency then, or so it seemed, and again, perhaps most importantly, no one seemed to take special concern about what was happening right across the border in Pakistan.

By now we know that there will be no return to those halcyon early years, and there are some who might steal a thought from the American Civil War scholar Shelby Foote, who said that in years past every Southern schoolboy would daydream that Pickett had disobeyed General Lee at Gettysburg and had never made that fatal charge, which sealed the Confederates' fate. Today it might be a daydream, but had the Taliban only held off their offensive for a year, America would have been more or less gone and the blame for this ever-worsening fiasco would be at NATO's feet. Yeah, free of Afghanistan, no wacky uncle in the attic…boy, is that a dream.

No rational American would argue with the initial justification for the sacrifice in life and treasure—in blood and dollars—in Afghanistan as the Taliban government then harboring al-Qaeda was given the opportunity to hand over our self-described enemies and refused. The American invasion that followed was light, quick and nearly painless, with the routed Taliban and al-Qaeda not killed or captured managing to flee to the safety of Pakistan. Which, a couple of centuries ago might have been the end of the story. In that earlier, less enlightened time, a superpower such as America would have then declared the land a colony and subjugated the people. Or, as in this instance in Afghanistan, wise commanders and civil servants on the ground would have appraised the situation and then informed the leaders back home that there was nothing of the land worth colonizing and even less of the people worth the effort to attempt to subjugate.

One should wish for those less enlightened times, for this 21st century moral standard of vanquishing now requires that the victor humble himself to the vanquished, while molding the population into a freedom-loving, equality-based, uncorrupted democratic republic Garden of Eden, with a strong standing army, double-laned paved highways, countless schools and medical clinics, 24-hour electricity and, heck, why not just throw in a Coca-Cola factory or two. In Afghanistan it was all part of that holding action. Just give it time. "Golly gee willikers, Maude, it worked in Germany and Japan." There's a TV playing here, with the tic toc, tic toc, bing, go the Jeopardy timer and bell, and, "The answer is," corrects Alex Trebek, "What Is, Rebuilding."

Rebuilding. Re. R-E. As were the cases with both Germany and Japan post-World War Two. They both had been literate 20th century economies before the war, with physical and educational foundations and structures upon which to re. There is no re in Afghanistan. There was no 20th century economy, nor were there any physical and educational foundations upon which to build a modern state before even the Russian invasion of 1979 began the 25 years of war, never mind before 9-11. Sure, the Western victors here in their enlightened paternalism have established provisional reconstruction teams (PRTs), but it's all construction, from scratch, without the re. Be honest and call them PCTs. High-degreed State Department careerists might scream in rebuttal, "You're wrong, dead wrong! Kabul in the 1960's was the Paris of Central Asia!" First, that's an insult to Paris; second, Kabul's slight renaissance then was due largely to the Cold War competition between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., who were both throwing money and projects around in an attempt to win influence in a mostly influenceless land. Then, what the Cold Warriors built, left intact by the departing Russians in the late 1980's, was destroyed by the competing mujahedeen warlords—guys like the Tajik Massoud and Uzbek Dostum—who preferred no one having anything if it could not be themselves having everything.

So, again, where is the R-E in Afghanistan? I look at the letters, I look at the alphabet, I look in the dictionary for a misspelling, then I remember a fellow soldier during that "shit suit" era once remarking, "You know, if it wasn't for the internal combustion engine, these people would be back in the seventh century." Worse, they did not invent the engine, they did not improve the engine, and they don't even manufacture the things. I am neither an anthropologist nor historian, but for the life of me I cannot figure out one thing, not one tangible thing, that the Afghan people have created, discovered, invented or brought to the world. Which in itself is not crime. A person, a society, a country, should be free to achieve or not achieve, progress or not progress, have electricity or not have electricity. They should be free to relax away a morning, an afternoon and an entire evening just hanging out with the guys drinking chai. No negative judgment assessed against them. No forced achievement thrust upon them. "This land is your land, This land is my land," is good enough for Americans, why can't we allow it to be good enough for, hmmmm, let's see…tic toc, tic toc, bing! "The answer is: Who are Afghans."

Yes, it is their land, this Afghanistan, and that the Afghans would choose to make so very little of a land that holds less than minimal mineral wealth, just slightly more arable agricultural potential, and thin, almost nude forests only at the higher altitudes should be their choice, not ours. Not NATO's. What is it our business to re, or without the re simply c? Which begs the question, Why are we any longer in Afghanistan? We threw out the Taliban, we set up a federal government and have given it the building blocks to form its own security forces, so why are we still here? Just because the Taliban once allowed the terrorist al-Qaeda its hospitality, the Taliban themselves were not terrorists, and I would argue, they still aren't. Afghanistan was their country, and they want it back, which in my book, agree or disagree with their platform or philosophy, is a pretty damn legitimate reason for an insurgency. But, if the Taliban are allowed back they will establish "Terrorist training camps, and we can't allow the terrorists to have them in Afghanistan" is the slogan pitched as if it were written in stone. And that is a half-truth that, used as the single overriding justification for our expenditure of blood and dollars here, is a vile deception, because the ones hocking the enterprise on such blatantly illogical reasoning have to know the falsehood in their argument and must go to sleep every night smirking, gloating that they have been allowed to get away with their disingenuous spin unchallenged for so long.

The terrorist training camps are no longer in Afghanistan. They are in Pakistan.

There is no disputing those two sentences; everybody knows they are true. Whatever backdoor strategic political maneuvering and diplomatic shell games being played between Washington, D.C., and Islamabad to deal with the truth—headline: The Terrorist Training Camps are in Pakistan—are obviously not working, because the camps are still there and the Taliban, al-Qaeda, etc., keep recruiting, growing and waltzing from those camps right across the border into Afghanistan, waging an ever increasingly successful insurgency.

Strategically, politically and diplomatically it's a mess. The U.S. fears invading our "ally" Pakistan, which could well lead to an Islamic jihadist overthrow of that iffy government, and then what would we have—a nuke bomb-armed jihadist state? At the same time, Pakistan enjoys the idea of having an unstable neighbor that the Taliban create crossing over and fighting in Afghanistan. The Afghans, there is no debating this, hate the Pakistanis and dream of a day when they have retaken for themselves their Pashtun lands made a century ago part of Pakistan when the British arbitrarily drew the border. Now, if you're Pakistani, and you've got a neighbor right next door who hates you and wants to snatch away half your country, wouldn't you want to keep that neighbor unstable and weak? Did I mention?—it's a mess.

If it is terrorists we're after and their training camps we want to eliminate, since we can do neither, and are doing neither, in Pakistan itself, might not it be more practical to pull out of Afghanistan completely—lock, stock and barrel, with the caveat that, Hey, Afghanis, it's your place to do with as you like, but if we see terrorist training camps from our super-duper spy satellites, we're going to cruise-missile and B-2 bomber them to smithereens—and let the terrorists stream in and set up shop, and kabloom kablowie, there they go, lots of dead terrorists! Something we can't do right now in Pakistan.

As it stands today, with a combined NATO/U.S. force of over 50,000 here in Afghanistan, the terrorists are free and secure to establish and build up training camps—heck, why not whole jihadist armies?—in Pakistan. And everybody knows it. So, is it ignorance or vile deception that has our American leaders continue to justify our own 35,000-plus in Afghanistan as a frontline against the re-establishment (there now, re is put to an accurate use) of terrorist training camps here? I'm a nobody from nowheresville, with no college diploma, no State Department experience—I was enlisted, not even an officer, in the Army, for Pete's sake—and I've never read de Tocqueville, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Aristotle or Will & Ariel Durant, and I would stake my above-average IQ (as measured by military entry tests, not real IQ ones) on the fact that those leaders are a lot smarter than me (or, than I am), so, if even I can see the truth, it cannot be ignorance that has our leaders firm in their justification, and thus it must be vile deception.

What would make that deception all the worse would be that the leaders' training camp justification/slogan is just a way of avoiding a referendum by the American public on the real reasons for our continued presence here, which, as I've heard argued, is a Risk board game-like strategy of having a foothold, bases, a hegemony in Central Asia. That of a great power extending itself, requiring strongpoints from which to logistically and tactically maintain its sphere of influence. Perhaps, simply, having the United States Army, Air Force and Marines on Iran's eastern front. If that big-picture strategy is, and our leaders are not arguing it to be, the real reason for our blood and treasure being squandered here, it is a disrespect that our leaders are showing us that we are not smart or wise enough to understand or accept it as valid reason, or it is an acknowledgement that, post the Gulf of Tonkin, post the dominoes of Vietnam, post the WMDs of Iraq, we are smart enough to understand it completely to be tragically flawed reasoning, and they don’t trust us not to reject it. And reject them.

Leaders, politicians, don't easily accept rejection, so we are beginning to hear another justification for being here—that Afghanistan is a battle "on a frontline of the War on Terror." Ehhhhhhh goes the buzzer, and "Wrong answer," says Alex. Terror is a concept, and wars are not fought against concepts. What, how? Does one throw into battle the concept of happy-go-lucky against terror? In World War Two it wasn't Nazism that was fought, it was the Nazis. You can't beat Nazism in a physical war without going after and wiping out the Nazis. Terror is no different, but if one argues that America must remain in Afghanistan because it is "a frontline on the War on Terrorists," that then raises the question that no one really wants to answer: Who are the terrorists? Tic toc, tic toc, bing! Silence, dead air. Why, wouldn't you know it, Jeopardy's gone to a commercial break.

While Alex is out, how about this, here's a cheery thought: A terrorist is grandma Mabel Dot McCoy from Sparta, Wisconsin, on her way to Denver to visit the kids and grandkids for Thanksgiving….being strip-searched at the airport security checkpoint.

Less cheery is to admit that all the terrorists that seem to have their crosshairs on the Western democracies and cultures just happen to be Muslims. Hmmmmmm, you don't say? You do, and you'd have to conclude the barely mentionable—We're fighting Muslim terrorists? Yikes, back up! We can't bring religion into it—separation of church and state, all religions are created equal—we start defining the terrorists for their own declared Islamic jihadist holy war on us—they are terrorists, real people, declaring and fighting that war, not mere concepts, terror or terrorism—why, that's racism, or religionism, or some kind of –ism of the unfairly judgmental sort. And in modern Western culture to be judgmental is judged to be the worst, the most sinful, the most immoral culturally Neanderthal of personal characteristics.

So, we fight in Afghanistan as a battle on the frontline in the War on Terror, or, on an even grander scale, in the Global War on Terror, or GWOT for short, and in refusing to define our enemy we then commit a cardinal error in a nation's execution of war.

Dutch Fun: "Spoofing" Assassination

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:01:00 GMT

Behold the smug mug of Willem Stegeman, who has made a Dutch state-subsidized film "spoofing" an assassination attempt on Geert Wilders.

"Spoofing."

Of course, the grotesquerie of Stegeman and his "spoof" are not the main story in a backward -- no, twisted -- report from Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) that leads with the response ("furious") of Party for Freedom (PVV) members over "Radio FunX's" assassination-attempt entertainment. Almost as breath-taking is the nasty photo of Wilders with which RNW, supposedly a news organization, illustrates the story.

Currently embroiled in open-ended Kafka-esque legal jeopardy, Wilders has lived under permanent threat of death since that November day in 2004 when Theo van Gogh was assassinated in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street, his head nearly cut off and an Islamic manifesto pinned with a knife into his chest threatening Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali with a similar fate.

What better subject for state-subsidized parody?

From the story, which includes a trailer of the stomach-turning video:

Radio FunX director Willem Stegeman said that the full satirical video will be released next week. "It is an unmistakeable parody. I cannot give away the plot, but I can reveal that it will be a total anti-climax. We are exploring how far we can go, and some may find it in bad taste. But the same can be said of statements by some people in the political spectrum.

Get it, get it? "Spoofing" Wilders' death is "bad taste" just as "some people" (Wilders) discussing the Islamic institutions of jihad and dhimmitude in this crucial period of Western Islamization is in "bad taste." Watch out, mijnheer Stegeman. Your IQ is showing.

We are putting an ironic slant on the whole thing, striking a blow against all the ponderousness surrounding Mr Wilders."

I think by "ponderousness" he means the two-ton bullet-proof vest Geert must wear anytime he appears in public, and the security detail his life now depends on.

Mr Stegeman emphasised that the film makers are not after demonising the nationalist right-wing anti-Islam MP. "But the film's author is definitely drawing a connection with Pim Fortuyn," the popular outcast politician who was assassinated in 2002 following a plea for stricter immigration rules.

Not demonizing Wilders, oh no -- but "definitely" connecting Wilders to the demonized Fortuyn?

Words fail.

----

Related update from NIS:

Bloody Wilders Dummy Accepted as Art

THE HAGUE, 05/02/10 - The student who is being prosecuted for putting up a dummy of MP Geert Wilders has received a favourable assessment ...

Should Fox News Register as a Saudi Agent?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:19:00 GMT

A couple of week's ago, I blogged about Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's charm-blitz through NY, juxtaposing Fox News' Neil Cavuto's sweetheart interview with "the prince" and Charlie Rose's far more revealing conversation -- essentially, it's (everything's) all Israel's fault, and "my" 1.5 billion Muslims are all like the underpants' bomber's father.

I kept thinking about Alwaleed -- his stake in News Corp., his stakes in Georgetown and Harvard -- and realized that as a leading scion of the so-called House of Saud (q: how many countries are named for their rulers?), a totalitarian theocracy whose foundational documents -- the Koran, the Sunnah, the Hadiths -- place it in direct ideological conflict with the US Constitution, he operates not just as a billionaire businessman, but also, inevitably, by virtue of who he is, as an agent of Saudi influence.

News Corp. wants to do business with him? Fine. But shouldn't News Corp.'s Fox News thus be required to register with the State Department as a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia? That's the question posed by this week's syndicated column:

Should Fox News register with the State Department as a foreign agent -- an agent of Saudi Arabia?

First off, is that a farfetched question? Not when a leading member of the ruling family of the sharia-totalitarian "kingdom" of Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has made himself the second-largest shareholder of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Fox News' parent company.

Just as Steven Emerson believes that American universities using Saudi mega-millions (many from Alwaleed) to set up Islamic studies departments should register as Saudi agents, I believe an American news channel part-owned and part-influenced by the Saudi prince should, too.

Alwaleed's long march through U.S. institutions is a mainly post-9/11 progression greased by his purchase of about a 5.5 percent stake in News Corp. in 2005, and his purchases, I mean, gifts, of $20 million apiece to Georgetown and Harvard Universities, also in 2005.

There have been other eye-catching displays of Alwaleed's largesse -- $500,000 in 2002 to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Hamas- and Muslim-Brotherhood-linked entity, and a whopping $27 million, also in 2002, to the families of Palestinian "martyrs," aka suicide bombers. These, along with Alwaleed's self-described "very close relationship" with Murdoch son and apparent heir-apparent James, a left-wing global-warmist with virulently anti-Israel views, should only deepen Americans' concerns about Fox's ties to "the prince." Recently, Murdoch and Alwaleed have discussed expanding their business relationship through the Murdoch purchase of a substantial stake in Rotana, Alwaleed's huge Arab media company.

Before entering his Murdoch association, Alwaleed gave a remarkably candid interview in 2002 about what Arab News described as his belief that "Arabs should focus more on penetrating U.S. public opinion as a means to influencing decision-making" rather than boycotting U.S. products, an idea of the moment.

The Arab News reported: "Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making 'if they unite through economic interests, not political,' (Alwaleed) stressed. 'We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion. We (Arabs) are not so active in this sphere (public opinion). And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration but also inside U.S. society.'"

And active inside U.S. society living rooms -- even better. Alwaleed would seem to have hit on a Fox strategy some time after Rudy Giuliani refused to accept, on behalf of a 9/11-shattered New York City, his $10 million check-cum-lecture that essentially justified the al-Qaida attacks as having been a response to U.S. foreign policy.

This was "such an egregious, outrageous, unfair offense that I would have nothing to do with his money either," Sean Hannity said at the time on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes," his remarks (and those of other Fox personalities) recently re-examined by the left-wing group Media Matters. "This is a bad guy," Hannity said. "Rudy was right to decline the money." Bill Sammon called Alwaleed's check "blood money," adding, "we're better off without it."

How terribly ironic that this same "bad guy" is now a News Corp. blood-money bags, a boss who must be handled with care as, for example, Fox host Neil Cavuto did in a deferential interview with Alwaleed last month.

How does this influence Fox News coverage? It's impossible to say. Alwaleed has bragged that it only took a phone call to ensure that Fox coverage of Muslim rioting in France not be described as "Muslim" rioting in France, a boast News Corp. has never denied. This week, security analyst Joseph Trento, in light of recent negotiations between Alwaleed and Murdoch, mused online whether his own recent interview on "Fox & Friends" didn't appear in Fox's online video cache because he had told host Steve Ducey that "Saudi Arabian money was still financing al-Qaida." The doubt itself is damaging.

Meanwhile, spokesmen for terrorism-linked and Alwaleed-endowed CAIR still appear on Fox shows, for example, while Dave Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, likely Fox guests as conservative authors of the sleeper-hit book "Muslim Mafia" (an expose of CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood), get zero airtime. The more important question becomes: How does Alwaleed's stake in News Corp. affect what Fox News doesn't cover?

If they don't report, we can't decide. This, for a sharia prince, could be worth millions.

How Do You Say "Kangaroo Court" in Dutch?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:13:00 GMT

Behold (courtesy Tundra Tabloids) the very image of Dutch "justice." After today's "judicial" proceedings in Amsterdam, Holland itself is forever besmirched, its "judges" having made it clear that no semblance of fairness will enter into their proceeeding against Geert Wilders. As noted below, the "judges" slashed the roster of witnesses the Wilders defense team planned to call to the stand from eighteen to three.

John L. Work writes at Newsreal:

Even if you have never been involved in a criminal prosecution wherein your very freedom is at risk, I want you to now imagine that you and your attorney have prepared a defense that includes a list of witnesses that will provide a mountain of exculpatory evidence. Then, imagine that the Court summarily and arbitrarily decides that it will not listen to nearly ninety percent of your case.

“This court is apparently not interested in the truth." Wilders told De Telegraaph (translations from Gates of Vienna). "I cannot conclude anything but that the court does not award me a fair trial.”

“I have no respect for this,” Wilders added. He pointed out that in a typical criminal case there are often dozens of witnesses heard.

But this is not a typical trial. This is a rigged game, a fixed fight, a show trial that is premised not on Dutch law but on Islamic law. Indeed, the trial of Geert Wilders is a test case for sharia in the Netherlands, the grafting onto a free Western country the repressive cage of Islamic rule.

Discussing Muslim progress against "Islamophobia" at the 35th meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Kampala, Uganda in 2008, Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu
made the following statement:

In confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film “Fitna”, we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.

One reading doesn't convey the chilling import of these words.

As Stephen Coughlin has pointed out to me, "we," in the definition at the OIC website, are, of course, "the collective voice of the Islamic world" -- the "ummah" as represented by the heads of state and foreign ministers of the 57 Islamic nations of the OIC. In other words, as Coughlin puts it, "real state actors" using "real state power" to further real state objectives.

The objective of the ummah? Always and eternally, the greater and wider and deeper imposition of Islamic law. The ummah indeed sent its message to the West regarding "red lines that should not be crossed" -- namely, the Danish cartoons and Wilders' film "Fitna." Official protests, statements, riots, boycotts, murders, death threats, assassination attempts -- a clear Islamic message, all right. And:

As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues.

Yes, and to the craven point where "the official West and its public opinion" are paralyzed and silenced by these same "sensitivities."

They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.

When the OIC speaks about "freedom of expression," it means freedom of expression as governed by the laws of Islam -- sharia. When the OIC says we in the West have "started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility," it means we in the West have started to regard expression from the perspective of sharia -- from the perspective of the totalitarian Islamic system.

Trying Geert Wilders, a once-valiant Holland is leading the way, forsaking the freedoms of the West for the objectives of the ummah.

Wilders Trial Update

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:48:00 GMT

Photoshopped image by Baron Bodissey

---

This just in:

The second day of the Geert Wilders trial in Amsterdam ended after a short session in which the court ruled that it was competent to try the case (a real cliffhanger-not). The court-ruled "competent" court then pared down the list of 18 witnesses whom Wilders had wished to call in his defense to only three people: the Dutch Arabists Jansen and Admiraal, plus Syrian-born, all-American-heroine Wafa Sultan, author of the must-read A God Who Hates.

For extensive and unique translations of Dutch- (and other-) langauge coverage of this barely reported on but urgently significant court case, see Gates of Vienna. Geert Wilders has launched an English-language website to track trial events at Wilders on Trial.

If anyone is puzzled as to why there is so little MSM coverage of this trial that is in the shameful and historic tradition of the trial of Galileo, the reason is unspoken, possibly unconscious media cowardice and embarassment: cowardice driven by the chilling effect of the experience of Kurt Westergaard and other critics of Islam under permanent death threat; and embarassment driven by intense discomfort with frank discussion of the gross incompatibility of basic Islamic beliefs with Western society.

In other words, this code of silence is the code of dhimmitude.

Air Force Magazine: "Holding Fire Over Afghanistan"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:42:00 GMT

There is something surreal about today's featured story, an Air Force Magazine rah-rah treatement of Gen. McChrystal's ball-and-chain rules of engagement and the crackpot-zen vogue for what is known as "counterinsurgency" warfare. It is called "Holding Fire Over Afghanistan" -- which already sounds like a spoof -- and it begins with a subhead:

"Airmen adapt to the McChrystal directive."

Now, before going any further, here is a link to the McChrystal directive, the portions of which that were released to the public. (I shudder to think what the unreleased portions say.) Every American should read it and, as blood pressure levels suggest, call his representatives in Washington and demand that the good general be recalled for questioning about the role of his ROE in the battlefield deaths, for example, at Dahaneh on August 14, 2009, at Ganjgal on September 8, 2009, and on the general state of ROE-paraylsis in Helmand Province, as demonstrated in this recent report, blogged here under the headline: "US Marine: The Rules of Engagement Are Preventing Me From Doing My Job."

Back to Air Force Magazine:

SAF fighters, their lethal munitions hanging underwing, streaked down a mile of concrete and lifted off, engines glowing against the distant Hindu Kush mountains. They were en route to a battle zone where a group of US troops was pinned down under heavy enemy fire, in need of help.

These were F-16s and F-15Es, and this was Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. There, in perhaps the most complex war US forces ever have fought, one comes face to face with a sharp change in counterinsurgency airpower.

How sharp? Stand in the old Soviet-built tower at Bagram with Brig. Gen. Steven L. Kwast, commander of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing --

Oh no, not BG Kwast again ...

-- and hear him assert, “If we are near civilians and engaged with the enemy, and we can disengage, we should disengage. ... Counterinsurgency is not about killing the enemy. It’s about protecting the people.”

But not our people.

Winning the war, he went on, comes down to a simple matter of trust. “The moment the Afghan people trust us, we will win overnight,” said Kwast.

The same, exact thing he said six months ago!

How, he is asked, do you build trust through airpower?

“By making sure you are only using airpower responsibly, that you are only using airpower when there is no other way to protect civilians,” Kwast said.

No other way to protect civilians: That's the ultimate test question for the approved use of air power in this war, as pronounced by this Air Force commander in Afghanistan. Dare anyone ask, What about protecting American soldiers as they prosecute a war? Back to Kwast:

“We have to protect the people, so that every time they hear an airplane they know, ‘It’s there to protect me.’ ”

Hey Brigadier-- I hear there's an opening for script writer on "Mr Roger's Neighborhood..."

Dumb jokes aside, this is a deadly message the Air Force general is sending to the enemy, our men and their families and loved ones. American soldiers are expendable in this see-no-Islam Grand Plan to make "the people" of Afghanistan like us. It's not just that a popularity contest is a cracked concept of achieving victory. Fact is, if they don't ALREADY like us more than the Taliban, they aint gonna change their minds now, which doesn't have anything to do with them taking our stuff and asking for more.

After playing a dazzlingly successful role in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, airpower in Afghanistan has become—fairly or unfairly—associated with the problem that has had a bigger effect than anything else in undercutting that trust: civilian casualties. Civilians have been killed in operations by insurgents and coalition forces alike, of course. However, air strikes have gotten most of the bad press. US military authorities last summer issued a tactical directive tightening the rules on the use of air attacks.

The effect [of the McChrystal directive] on fighter crew members has been dramatic. It is, in fact, a fundamental shift in strategy for a fighter guy, said Col. James J. Beissner, an F-15E pilot and vice commander of the 455th.

Beissner went on, “It used to be, the ground commander requested a bomb, and a bomb he got.” Now, the ground commander requests a bomb, and the joint terminal attack controller, the aircrew, and the ground commander all talk about it, said Beissner. “ ‘Do we really need to go kinetic, or is there a better approach?’ ”

Responsibility now falls on fighter pilots and other aircrew members to work with ground forces to find, if possible, a solution other than releasing ordnance on a target.

“It’s very effective and it’s changed the way we fight—for the better,” said Beissner.

Um, how long have we been in Afghanistan?

Examples of the changed atmosphere abound.

I can hardly bear to look:

Capt. Roberto Flammia was flying his F-16 over eastern Afghanistan one night when he spied several men wearing backpacks and running along a mountain streambed toward a US position. Flammia discussed the targets with a nearby JTAC, who asked him to strafe the men with his 20 mm cannon.

“I said, No, there’s no reason to,” Flammia recalled. “We’re not gonna blow up guys who just look suspicious.”

On another nighttime mission, Beissner was cued by a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle to three men racing away from a US position. The ground commander requested a bomb, but Beissner judged the targets to be too close to civilian houses.

“The real question was, who were these guys?” said Beissner. “Do we really know?”

Heavy. Sounds as if it's time to ... drink lots of tea, eat lots of goat, really get to know these people.

Hurried conversations between aircrew, ground commander, and the JTAC didn’t bring a clear answer to those questions, so no ordnance was dropped.

“We decided it’s just not worth alienating the population,” Beissner said.

The problem of casualties and perception has been around quite a while now.

In July 2002, scores of Afghans were killed or injured when ordnance fired from an AC-130 struck a wedding party in Oruzgan province southwest of Kabul. The US command said the aircraft was responding to ground fire; the Afghan government claimed the shots were from wedding guests who, as is the custom, were firing guns into the air in celebration. The aircrew was cleared of wrongdoing, but 48 Afghans died.

From that time on, nearly every air strike has brought loud claims from the Taliban that the US is killing innocents.

Never mind that the Taliban itself has been responsible for most civilian deaths, as documented in a series of studies by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

During the first half of 2009, for example, UNAMA reported 1,013 civilian Afghan casualties, 24 percent higher than the same period in 2008. The Taliban and related insurgents caused 59 percent of the casualties, while pro-government forces (US, coalition, and Afghan security forces) were responsible for 30.5 percent.

The imbalance is unmistakable: During the six-month period, UNAMA recorded 40 air strikes, which killed 200 civilians, while 400 civilians were killed by Taliban improvised explosive devices or suicide bomb attacks.

As casualties mounted in early 2009, however, it was errant coalition air strikes that aroused international condemnation—and a stiff reaction in Washington. “I believe that the civilian casualties are doing us an enormous harm in Afghanistan, and we have got to do better,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

This is ALL a game, and the US is being played. What has emerged is a pattern by which the US is whipped and pilloried and ensnared into a perpetually defensive crouch from which it offers billions of dollars in tribute, thousands of young men in sacrifice, and endless public works projects and the like to the far-flung corners of the Islamic world ... only no one seems to realize it. Or else, sickening thought, they want to play along.

It was no surprise when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who replaced Gen. David D. McKiernan as the top commander in Afghanistan last year, moved quickly to sharply limit the use of air strikes.

“This is different from conventional combat,” McChrystal wrote in a July 2 directive. “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories—but suffering strategic defeats—by causing civilian casualties ... and thus alienating the people. ... [The] loss of popular support will be decisive to either side in this struggle.”

"THUS" alienating the people? The people are already alienated, General, because the people are alien. Or, rather, we, as putative infidels, are alien. Why is this so hard?

Air strikes would be authorized only under “very limited and prescribed conditions,” McChrystal wrote.

Ever since, US airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines have been adjusting to the new strictures.

Adjusting.

The stakes grow exponentially when American troops are taking a pummeling from the enemy and need help immediately. With additional troops pouring into Afghanistan and the Taliban and other insurgent groups broadening the fight, reports of “troops in contact” (TIC) incidents are growing—peaking at 670 for the month of August 2009, up from 485 the previous August.

The stress on aircrews and ground forces goes up exponentially as well. When a guy on the ground says he needs a bomb now, “to say, ‘Well, hold on a second,’ that’s frustrating,” said Beissner.

There is no question that TIC situations generate the greatest number of errant bombings. In a major report in fall 2008, the organization Human Rights Watch said:

“In our investigation, we found that civilian casualties rarely occur during planned air strikes on suspected Taliban targets. ... High civilian loss of life during air strikes has almost always occurred during the fluid, rapid-response strikes, often carried out in support of ground troops after they came under insurgent attack. Such unplanned strikes included situations where US special forces units—normally small numbers of lightly armed personnel—came under insurgent attack; in US-NATO attacks in pursuit of insurgent forces that had retreated to populated villages; and in air attacks where US ‘anticipatory self-defense’ rules of engagement applied.”

Changing tactics, techniques, and procedures has not been easy for crews trained to put maximum firepower on target.

Lt. Col. Timothy Gosnell, an F-16 pilot, is the commander of the 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron from Hill AFB, Utah, which arrived in Afghanistan last July. Gosnell recounted a typical event: A young man comes up on the radio net. “You hear firing in the background, and he says, ‘Good evening, Viper One,’ and a few minutes later, you can hear the fear in his voice. He’s really scared.”

For the pilot, said Gosnell, it becomes a matter of being able to interpret everything on the targeting pod and asking, “Can I really do something here?” Gosnell said, “We are put in the position of being, really, the voice of reason. That falls on us.”

US ground troops have embraced a number of procedures designed to minimize civilian casualties. To deal with the threat of a speeding car headed for a checkpoint, soldiers use a series of steps, each one an escalation of hostility. Soldiers might, in succession, make hand signals, flash lights, fire a rifle shot into the air, shoot out the car’s tires, and shoot the driver.
Similarly, airmen use such “escalation of force” tactics to try to resolve a situation on the ground without using direct and lethal force. This builds on an inherent American advantage—most insurgents do not want to engage in direct combat with US forces, preferring to strike and quickly withdraw. And insurgents have come to respect American airpower.

When called for help where troops are in contact with the enemy, for example, an F-15E or F-16 pilot will descend to 5,000 feet and rip across the combat zone “just to let them know we’re here,” said one pilot. Often, that is enough to convince insurgents to break off contact and disappear. If not, a pilot may dive to 500 feet in a simulated attack—usually enough to drive off insurgents.

Such “shows of force” make up about 10 percent of the roughly 70 close air support sorties that airmen fly every day in the Afghan battlespace.

Often, the enemy fighters will attempt to regroup. If they have moved well away from civilians and friendly forces, pilots will attack with real munitions.

“The intent is to reduce collateral damage—not to minimize effects on the enemy,” said Col. Keith McBride, deputy director of the combined air and space operations center (CAOC) in Southwest Asia.

It might seem that, after repeated nonlethal shows of force, Afghan insurgents would conclude that there is nothing to fear other than ear-splitting noise when American aircraft appear overhead. Not so, said McBride.

“It’s like the theory of deterrence,” he said. “If there is no real threat, then there is no real deterrence. And we are still bombing.”

And you will keep on bombing till Kingdom come.

Surging China

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:55:00 GMT

More evidence of massive "surge" backfire -- if, in fact, US strategic interests were the guiding concern. What was that rousing slogan: Making the world safe for sharia ... Iran ... AND China?

From the AP:

Iraq says China has agreed to write off 80 percent of its Saddam Hussein-era debt.

A statement posted on the Iraqi Finance Ministry Web site on Tuesday put Iraq's debt to China at $8.5 billion.

The statement says the promise followed a meeting between China's ambassador to Iraq and Iraq's Finance Minister Bayan Jabr.

Gee, do you think they talked about us?

It says the write-off "will enhance economic cooperation between the two friendly countries."

How friendly.

The deal could further push Chinese business interests in Iraq. The China National Petroleum Corp. has secured two lucrative oil deals that reflects China's drive to seek new energy sources for its growing economy.

Onto Afghanistan.

US Marine: "The Rules of Engagement Prevent Me From Doing My Job"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:57:00 GMT

Someday, civilian and military leaders responsible for these rules of engagement, this policy of sacrificing American troops to make the barbarians of Afghanistan "like us" should come before at the very least a Congressional hearing, but at this point an out-for-blood people's tribunal seems more appropriate. What they are doing to our military, our treasury, our power and our prestige is an unconscionable national betrayal.

The following news story describes the toll these rules, this policy is taking on our bravest young men -- amoebas in a petri dish to the mad, see-no-Islam social engineers masquerading as American statesmen and generals.

From the Telegraph:

On a base near Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand province, Marines are grieving the deaths of a sergeant and corporal killed by the remote-controlled bombs that have become the scourge of the long-running conflict.

Commanders try to keep the men's rage in check, aware that winning over an Afghan public wary of the foreign military presence and furious about civilian casualties is as important as battlefield success.

"It causes a lot of frustration. My men want revenge - that is only natural," says First Lieutenant Aaron MacLean, 2nd Platoon commander of the 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Charlie company.

This is what happens when you send in the Marines but your policy is Pure Peace Corps.

"But I keep telling them that the rules are the rules for a reason. If we simply go crazy and start shooting at everything, in the long run we will lose this war because we will lose the support of the population."

Earth to 1st Looey: You don't have the support of the population, and you aren't going to "win" it. You will serve it, "protect" it, coddle it, bribe it and sacrifice the blood of your men to appease this population -- a no-win, perpetual work in progress that more closely resembles dhimmi servitude than military action.

He too is frustrated, accusing the Taliban of manipulating the rules of engagement by using women and children as shields and shooting from hidden positions before dropping their weapons and standing out in the open.

"They know we can't shoot them if they don't carry guns or without positive identification. They are fighting us at another level now," MacLean said.

MacLean recently led his unit on a routine foot patrol near Marjah, which is expected to be the scene of a major offensive this month.

What the Marines encountered was a likely precursor of the battle to come.

They were met by fierce gunfire from Taliban gunmen who pinned them down for three hours at the expense of two of their men.

One corporal stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED). Military intelligence officials say that it is possible that 90 per cent of foreign soldiers' lives are currently being lost in this way.

The corporal's legs were blown off and he was thrown metres into the air.

The whole of Afghanistan (and you can throw in Iraq) aren't worth those two legs. Certainly not this ...

A second IED killed a sergeant who rushed to the corporal's aid as bullets flew everywhere, MacLean said.

Three others were wounded in the clash, making it one of the bloodiest days for US Marines since President Barack Obama's announcement in December of a fresh troop surge in the war to eradicate the Taliban.

The death toll of foreign soldiers fighting in Afghanistan under US and Nato command reached 44 in January - the most in a month since the war began more than eight years ago.In January 2009 the figure was 25.

The number of Americans who died last month in the conflict now in its ninth year was almost double the number for January last year, at 29 compared with 15, according to the icasualties.org website, which keeps a running tally.

The US and Nato currently deploy 113,000 troops in Afghanistan, with another 40,000 due this year as part of a renewed strategy that emphasises development and the "reconciliation" of Taliban fighters.

Most of the incoming troops will be deployed in Helmand, which along with neighbouring Kandahar province has been the hub of the insurgency since the Taliban regime was removed from power in late 2001.

MacLean's unit contains some of the first Marinesto be sent into Helmand since the surge was announced.

On the day of the ambush, Marines hunkered down in tents inside the camp as information about the encounter came in.

Some had tears in their eyes as the names of casualties were made known. Others held tightly to their weapons and yelled at their enemy on the horizon.

"We were attacked treacherously. We came under fire from everywhere, but the rules of engagement prevent me from doing my job," said Lance Corporal Mark Duzick, who was in the unit that was ambushed.

The rules of engagement prevent him from doing his job -- under attack in the midst of an ambush that lasted several hours in which two men were grievously wounded and killed. The people behind this order, this whole heinous policy should be summoned to testify in Congress today.

Outside a tent housing the Marines' unit responsible for firing mortars stands an improvised cross bearing the inscription: "Here lies the 81st, death by stand down."

Last year was the worst yet for foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan, with 520 soldiers dead, up from 295 in 2008. More troops will mean more casualties, military experts say.

For the Afghans too 2009 was the deadliest, with the UN putting civilian deaths at 2,412 for the year, compared to 2,118 in 2008.

While most are caused by the Taliban, the insurgents exploit civilian casualties to spread distrust among the public for foreign and Afghan troops.

Bogus, bogus, bogus. To quote the unlamented GWB: You're either with us, or you're against us. Period.

As the nature of the fight has changed, with the Taliban increasingly using suicide attacks and IEDs, there had been no traditional winter hiatus and General Zahir Azimi, a defence ministry spokesman, said that spring is likely to be ferocious.

"We will have the most intense clashes come the spring, and will shed the most blood this year," he said.