The Empire gives up

C-3PO: He made a fair move. Screaming about it can't help you.

Han Solo: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.

C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.

Han Solo: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.

Chewbacca: Grrf.

C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.

At last our political class has its victory in Afghanistan.

I don’t mean the surrender or deaths of the last Taliban terrorists after the recent Sri Lanka Tamil fashion – or even the on the Malayan Emergency model or like the suppression of the Mau Mau.

No: our crypto-pacifist Foreign Office, with its long history of Arabism and appeasement and its worship of internationalism above national interest with its anti-Semitic assumptions amongst some of its senior staff; plus our grovelling rulers with their acceptance of radical Islamists as long as they are not directly physically attacking British subjects on the mainland and a media and intellectual class that accepts most of the assumptions of our country’s enemies, is right up there along with the brilliant idea that they have long clearly desired, to talk to and offer generous terms to the enemies of civilisation.

Joining none of the dots: having not understood the meaning and the deep, permanent relevance of the imperialist demands of the Koran to orthodox faithful Muslims; and having failed to recognise what allowing these most extreme of Muslim terrorists and woman-haters into some share of power and international funding will mean to what’s left of freedom in the post-Taliban country; let alone what lesson the rest of the world’s Islamic supremacists will draw from this lack of resolve and surrender by the Western powers, it looks like they’re going for the good old-fashioned surrender disguised as political wisdom and diplomatic savvy. They’ve clearly always wanted to throw the towel in, and only Tony Blair and his shrinking heritage plus also some small support for our side of the war from the Tories and some voters have delayed this short-sighted betrayal for so long.

They’re condemning yet another generation of Afghanistan’s children to the rule of bearded, abusive crazies who are sure to send their teenage suicide bombers abroad to wreak havoc wherever they can…and prolonging our side of the war because if you think that ‘moderate Taliban’ - like ‘moderate Islamists’ - means anything other than prepared to delay for a while in order to regroup and rearm, and by trusting them at all you’d have to be mad yourself.

Typical.

Picture from here.

Sorry about scarcity of posting lately. I’ve been: A) spending some time with my invisible (and quite possibly imaginary) new friend, and therefore B) spending extra with several of my flesh-and-blood friends who need cheering up, and C) starting a late winter holiday and having a recharge. I hope to return to my usual diet of knuckle-dragging and clinically insane Right-wingery, invective and spite from now on, Insha'Allah, but now with added mercy and forgiveness in short, economical bursts.

My ten cents

Via the blessed Cranmer, we learn just why the Great President Barack Hussein Obama: Beloved Leader; Heavenly Orator; Mighty Poet; Paramount Scholar; Supreme Architect; Engineer of Nations and King of Kings was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the brief 14 days between his inauguration and the closing date for nominations.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Here's what I guess 'the majority of the world's population' might have as attitudes, above and beyond the Nobel Committee and President Obama's:

I prefer my family's welfare to that of strangers; I prefer the company of my own kind over that of outsiders (exotic though they may be); you should work to support yourself; spare the rod and spoil the child; that's my stuff - leave it alone; criminals should be punished; the devil makes work for idle hands; don't tread on me; I like the way I live so don’t make me change it; keep the bad people down and out and away from me and mine because I don’t trust them and they’ve been known to kill folk without referring their plans to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee first.

Orinoco The Impaler

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

It didn’t turn out like that here after the Cold War. Yet.

This little gem is from the Jewish Chronicle, and concerns our old pal Michael Jackson, RIP.

Jackson: I could have changed Hitler

Michael Jackson spoke of his admiration and love for Hitler the showman, newly discovered recordings have revealed.

Jackson, who died in June aged 50, recorded over 30 hours of conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach eight years ago.

He spoke of his belief that he could have rehabilitated Hitler and said: Hitler was a genius orator. To make that many people turn and change and hate he had to be a showman and he was.

Rabbi Boteach replies: "You believe that if you had an hour with Hitler you could somehow touch something inside of him?".

The singer replied: responded: "Absolutely. I know I could."

Rabbi Boteach has now made the recordings into a book The Michael Jackson Tapes.

He said of Jackson: He yearned so deeply to do good with his life but was ultimately consumed by indescribable loneliness and pain.

Amongst the recordings, Jackson also revealed his wish to date Princess Diana, and how he wanted to hug Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of two-year-old James Bulger.

I don't think that the Jewish Chronicle can have missed anything significant out of this account: except the obvious that Rabbi Boteach clearly A) has the patience of a saint, and B) is an excellent businessman.

Anybody want to argue that Michael Jackson was in any way a conservative?

(Life isnt fair #2817. Can you imagine just how big this story would be if a serving British soldier, any white mainstream Christian clergyman or any businessman who was not a political class supporter had spoken of his admiration and love for Hitler the showman? The end of it we would never hear.)

Jackson wasn’t powerless; after his death many thousands of people proclaimed their admiration and love for the man, and he received acres of press stating how he inspired entire generations, etc. He had influence, and in this case, he added a great deal of candy floss to the thinking of thousands, and maybe millions of fans.

He sang and danced well. He sold soppy records. He was an eccentric and talented entertainer for the same millions reasons that he wasn’t a child abuser. He expressed daft ideas asking can’t we all be friends? and had himself filmed as some kind of musical totalitarian messiah and ambassador to the uncrowned empty heads of Europe.

He thought he could have talked Hitler round in an hour.

Get that? The notion does not seem to have occurred to him that Hitler might have been irredeemably evil: either bad to the bone and the product of centuries of European anti-Semitism or just an amoral opportunist who picked an electoral winner and ended up killing millions.

Amoral speaks to amoral, I suppose.

If it’s okay to consider redeeming and child-murderers by hugging (and even I think that those two boys could very well have improved their behaviour during their years inside the criminal justice system), then logically it isn’t so long a step to talking even the Left’s biggest all-time male hate figure into believing what Jackson seems to have thought - that were all the same and in need of love, a hug, and maybe a pair of tight trousers over white-socked pointy shoes?

Pretty much anyone outside the magic circle who even hints that they like sauerkraut is fit up by the wise for a pair of jackboots and a knapsack load of Zyklon B, but dancing boy makes Stalin-like statue videos of himself and it’s somehow just a big laugh.

But it isn’t just a laugh.

Evil: the conscienceless urge to power: to dominate, oppress or destroy whole populations doesn’t really exist in this one subset of the Left. As Dumb Jon often writes; if liberals ever denounce vampires as a right-wing myth, start laying in the wooden stakes.

Jackson was the liberal gestalt down to his last amino acid molecule and single-width Lego brick.

Denying the existence of evil in all its strength and its eternal appeal is the liberal Trojan Horse to real totalitarianism. This pose, when translated into votes and media messages and hopeful editorials helps to let totalitarianism creep in sometimes with a bang and sometimes with a whimper. Filmed as a science fiction special effects blockbuster this idea would probably be the shortest space horror movie of all time and over in about two minutes: Aliens versus Wombles.

This is how millions of people productive, intelligent people can decide to ignore Barack Obama’s lifelong associations with people hostile to the US military, any use of force by the democracies at all, and who, to this very day, ignore or tolerate his cosying up with the Honduran would-be president for life, and Hugo Chavez the democracy hater, the Castros, the ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’, and resetting US foreign policy with Putin’s Tsarist/Soviet Russia the year after it invaded Georgia. This attitude and belief system – call it three monkeys optimism - comes from somewhere: it sure as hell doesn’t come from any even halfway clear reading of history or knowledge of human nature – even the often instructive playground level. It comes from the culture. Which is where Michael comes in.

So a man who had all his melanin removed and then migrated to live in the sun-scorched Middle East pronounced that 60 minutes of his goodwill could convert a colossal psychopath into pursuing fluffy liberalism, and we’re not all outraged as well as laughing about it?

Our Left and the American Left huff and puff about the allegedly apocalyptic and war-generating fantasies of ‘Christian Bible Fundamentalists’, but if Obama chanelling Earth Song by offering ‘tougher sanctions on Iran’ is what stands between us and nuclear annihilation, then I’d rather stand with - and be protected by - people who know evil when they see it. So what if they happen to believe that Barney The Dinosaur is less than ten thousand years old? I'd much rather be with them than be anywhere near to, let alone have my security negotiated over by, people who happen to believe in Barney The Dinosaur’s policies.

Because as it turns out the boot stamping on the human face forever is looking an awful lot like a sandal just now.

I feel safer already

And in answer to our rolling quiz 'Just how stupid can libs get and still keep breathing?', the BBC has a foreign policy answer for us.

US 'to cut missile defence plan'

Iran has held regular tests of its long-range missiles
The US will abandon its plan to develop a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper said the controversial plan would be dropped because Iran's long-range missile programme was less advanced than predicted.

As in, 'Don't bother locking the doors tonight, Mother. T' Office of National Statistics doesn't expect the burglary rate to increase from its record low until two years' time.'


He really does want us dead, doesn't he?

No! No! The OTHER genius

Of course there’s silly: and then there's very silly, and then there’s utterly, profanely, running around outdoors and dancing in the street clad only in clingfilm, gravy and cornflakes abjectly, insultingly, ream-me-like-a-shower-block-bitch stupid.

David Miliband has called for a change of emphasis in strategy in Afghanistan, urging the country's government to talk to moderate members of the Taliban.

‘You hear that, Mo? The British Foreign Secretary wants to peel us away from our more hard-line co-religionists. Pass the wire cutters, please.’

‘It’s an interesting notion, Jawid. I myself am a moderate Taliban and wish only to stone rape victims to death on Tuesdays, Thursdays and alternate Sundays. Personally, I can’t stand the extremists in charge who just won’t lighten up. Now the masking tape, dear friend.’

Mr Miliband said the objectives of the UK's mission were clear but accepted the public "wanted to know whether and how we can succeed" in Afghanistan.

‘I’d surely like an answer to both questions myself. I’d be particularly pleased to be privy to the inner war councils of the British Government, because what they believe to be the ultimate outcome of this regrettable conflict may very well alter my actions as an AK-carrying member of the Slightly Militant Tendency. For example, if they believe that a mechanized counter-insurgency operation, led by special forces and supported by aviation assets and high-grade satellite intelligence will work in the long term, I might be inclined to move more into degrading the infidels’ tracked and wheeled vehicle fleet to force them to expensively re-equip. This strategy might also provide more time for our negotiators in the Swat Valley and representatives elsewhere Pakistan to acquire supplies of radioactives and atomic detonators – perhaps through forming part or all of the government of that moderate Muslim land. See the red fuse wire? Ah, thank you Mohammed, my expatriate friend.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, my non-extremist brother, Jawid. When I lived back in the Midlands (the historic industrial heartland of my parents’ host country my own native home of England), I only browsed to less-than Armageddon-inviting genocidal jihadist websites. And I swear by my Aston Villa tattoos that I mean to work on a massive civil reconstruction effort in a future infidel-free Afghanistan: concentrating mostly on public sanitation, street lighting, jobs training for our largely sadly unemployed youth who do not have privileged access to the opium trade, and discreetly exporting small numbers of advance technology products to England itself. I was thinking of Aldershot, Brize Norton, and a number of the South Coast ports, as well as the Faslane submarine base in Scotland. Of course, before I can achieve any of that I’ll need to moderately make sure that the women of Afghanistan and Pakistan are modestly dressed and safe from the hazards of paid employment, the rough mountain winds of this ancient but romantic place governed as it is by a loose confederacy of hill tribes and minor local potentates, and sunlight. And before that I’d like to know if the British government means to win at all. I must say I’m tempted to concentrate a bit more on killing UK servicemen for the effects on morale on the troops’ families and hence - through the system of godless politics called democracy - on the British government’s determination to see their crusade against us through.

Indeed, I would be minded to pursue such a grim but necessary course towards the greater good should Her Majesty's Government show weakened resolve or partial reservations about the justice and ultimate resolution of this regrettable conflict.

Now the main charge, please, and the casing.'

As part of this, Mr Miliband said current insurgents should be reintegrated into society and, in some cases, given a role in local and central government.

‘This too is a hopeful sign, Mohammed my friend. If I fail to find a post dealing with women's rights issues her in my native Afghanistan, I hope to receive a post somewhere in civil aviation – perhaps air traffic control or baggage handling at Heathrow Airport; provided of course that I can escape the steely net of the UK Border Agency and find such enjoyable work at a suitably low wage.’

He made a distinction between "hard-line ideologues" and Jihaddists within the Taliban and other groups who must be fought and defeated from those who could be "drawn into a political process".

I would certainly welcome a ceasefire during which I and my new brothers here in Afghanistan could remove from our countrymen those obstacles and distractions that keep them from recognising and cherishing our moderation – such inconveniences and burdens as superfluous limbs and sight organs and the pointless knowledge of their children’s exact whereabouts.

Pressure plate’s done.’

Those who had either been coerced or bribed into joining the insurgency could be engaged with if they disowned violence and respected the Afghan constitution, he said.

"These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course."

Earlier, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander compared the move to the talks that brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

‘I understand that seats in the provincial government was what the Sinn Fein leaders required, plus the deputy leadership of that country and partial control over the civilian police, education, agriculture and rural development. All of which I can foresee us and our brothers using constructively to improve everyday life here in the short term and to engage more closely with opposition parties and enter into institutions of government once the Americans and British have taken their allies and armaments and our moderate leaders’ signatures and we can once more decide who rules according to our ancient customs.’

Mr Alexander, who is in Afghanistan, conceded that it was a "challenging" message for politicians to suggest when British troops were being killed in action.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had "confidence in the good judgment of the British people".

Mr Alexander added: "I think people recognise from the experience of places like Northern Ireland that it is necessary to put military pressure on the Taliban while at the same time holding out the prospect that there can be a political process that can follow."

‘Finished here, Jawid. Shall we find a useful spot to place this example of traditional craftsmanship where Mister Milliband’s underlings can find it all unexpected-like?

I do so enjoy being moderate.’

David Miliband’s foreign policy qualifications can be see here, and Douglas Alexander’s diplomatic and military career can be seen here.