Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the gene pool...

I swear. I'm not making this up. Swear to God.

(kyrielle, I just love you. You find the best things.)

I'm currently doubled over with painful, gut wrenching laughter at the thought of terrorist Afghan rugs taking over planes armed with knitting needles. Or hordes of Afghan Hounds rampaging through the streets, bombs strapped to their bellies and yelping.

Terrorist on plane: "BACK OFF, MISTER, I'VE GOT A RUG AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!"

Can we line these people up and start pimp-slapping them? Please? Aw, come on. Just a little?

Afghan rugs. Afghan hounds. Afghan-named ski fucking resorts. Christ Almighty.

And you people wonder why I support retroactive abortions.

Addendum (1.00 am): On a more serious note, I understand that people may have concerns about not wanting to support the Taliban regime or providing funds to places that may be funneling them towards terrorist activity. But for the love of Christ, when you start yelling at people for walking their dogs, that's crossed over into tin-foil wearing territory. Get a grip. Or thicker tin-foil.

Here we go...

Payback.

Reactions

I know it's horrible, what is happening. It is the start of a long battle that will be costly in terms of human lives and the psychological toll it will take on the participants. A war that has been until now fought in the shadows of world scrutiny, a bastard stepchild that has been shunted aside and ignored because it wasn't our problem, has now been placed at the forefront of the international agenda.

Thank you, Osama Bin Laden, for bringing this to our attention.

And yet, part of me is pleased. Pleased because so far, the powers that be have been handling this right. It would have been easy for the United States to have struck back in an Operation Just Because, to say, "Screw the evidence, screw world opinion, you knee-capped us you bastard and now we're going to cut your balls off." It would have been so easy, and the rest of the world would have freaked out at the US going berserker.

Yet, they waited. They got on the phone to people, they gathered the evidence - they connected the dots, they went to the UN, they went to NATO, they went to every country they could and told them what they were going to do. They told the Taliban what they were going to do. And they went on to do it. And when they did it, they told everyone what they were doing, and made it absolutely clear this was a strike not against a country, this was not against a religion, this was against a network of terror. They're even dropping aid packets.

This, my friends, is how a superpower is supposed to behave.

As far as I can tell, nobody in charge is kidding themselves. This is only Phase One of Gazillion. This first operation is to get rid of Al-Qaida and help the rebels get rid of the Taliban. They are not targeting Kabul, but the camps outside it, to force the Al-Qaida into the hills where they can be mopped up subsequently. That will probably be the most problematic part of the operation, but at least they have clear goals, and goals which, at the moment, seem achievable.

It could still go wrong, of course. Once the ground troops get sent in and the first casualties come home in boxes, once the collateral damage counts come in, people will start to lose their nerve, just like Somalia in 1993. Back then it was Clinton who blinked. This time it might be Dubya ("Whatever happened to my nice, clean war?"). Worse still, it might be the American people. It is a people who have never experienced war for a generation or more that are normally the most eager to find one of their own. It happened in 1861 - it's happened here again, and the results may equally be hard to stomach.

Warning, though - don't let the evil fucks like Tony Blair and the genius who came up with the Office of Homeland Security use this as an excuse. They're going to tell you, "Give us more power to pry into your lives and we'll protect you." New Flash: these are the guys that failed to protect you in the first place, despite already intensive and intrusive intelligence networks and measures. Don't let them blame that failure on you.

As for Dubya and his Merry Men: You're doing okay so far, guys. Don't screw it up.