Ease up in Afghanistan??

We're not in Kansas anymore...and that ain't wheat

Had I encountered this article any way other than a recommended link from Michael Yon, I would have dismissed it out of hand.

Yon vouchsafes:

"I’ve mentioned Mr. Holloway in my 2006 dispatches on Afghanistan, after having met him on a remote airfield in Afghanistan. He’s a very smart man with an eye for truth about the war: good, bad and the ugly. In Afghanistan it’s mostly the bad and ugly."

Michael Yon is no appeaser, coward or liberal scribbler. If he says this guy knows what he's talking about, he pretty much knows what he's talking about. And what he's talking about is emphasizing the "speak softly" part of T.R.'s "big stick" model of diplomacy. (With the big stick yet an integral part of the equation.)

But the other reason this rings true? Read Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell's 'Lone Survivor' and you'll get the same sense of the situation along the non-existent border between Pashtun Afghanistan and Pakistan -- an intransigent cultural situation to make Iraq's tribal realities look positively new-millennium by comparison.

Though for the record, my blood still simmers to a rolling boil at the "cash up front" attitude of these tribal folk.

Finally, slightly off topic, check out these shots of Prince Harry in Afghanistan. Most of those in the press at the time seemed selected to make him look like a rich-kid wannabe, but these are a little different. Note the American flag on his hat in the first one.