In a Deteriorating Afghanistan, a New Breed of Terror KABUL–“In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth,” Joshua Partlow reports in The Washington Post, “Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan.” Two other cartoonists and I were a day away from heading to Faryab–a remote, rural, Uzbek-dominated province in the northwest known for its brutally entertaining matches of buzkashi–when Partlow’s piece appeared. He described a phenomenon that deploys novel tactics out of a bizarre 1970s action flick. It was years after the 2001 U.S. invasion before the Afghan national police began to take control of the country’s major highways. Now there are government-run gun nests every few kilometers. Insurgents have responded to government control of the highways by basing themselves in rugged villages far away from the freshly-paved asphalt. Riding Pamir motorcycles supplied by Pakistani intelligence–thus paid for by American taxpayers–Taliban bike gangs swoop across the desert, taking…

Nine Years Later, Afghan City is Buzzing But Still Menacing TALOQAN, AFGHANISTAN–Nine years ago, when I was using this provincial Afghan capital as a base to cover the battle of Kunduz, Taloqan was a dangerous place with medieval charm. Donkey carts and horse-drawn carriages, their steeds decked out with red pom-poms, plied muddy ruts that passed as roads. The only motorized transport belonged to Western NGOs. Commerce consisted of a few sad huts you’d recognize as primitive convenience stores and an outdoor bazaar where 90 percent of economic activity was attributable to sales of opium paste. In 2001 I wrote that good roads would change everything. And they have. Some time after 2005, when The New York Times reported that the U.S. hadn’t laid an inch of pavement in the entire country, road building happened–at least here in Takhar and in neighboring Kunduz province. It’s impressive. Based on my 2001 experience and the absence of media reports that anything had…

Chase Bank and Obama’s “Make Home Affordable” Scam SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—It isn’t surprising, what with the world falling apart and all, that the world scarcely noticed that I lost my job as an editor in April 2009. Why should it? I was one of millions of Americans who lost their job that month. But it mattered to me. It wasn’t all bad. No more early morning commutes. And no more Lisa. Lisa was my boss. My mean boss. My mean and crazy boss. In the long run, I stand to save thousands of dollars on therapy. In the meantime, however, one visit with HR cost more than half my annual income. (My ex-employer, the Scripps media conglomerate, offered just four weeks severance pay—if I agreed not to work as a journalist for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I refused.) Just like that, I was broke. The bills, of course, kept coming. Including my home mortgage. Unlike many…

It’s the Economics, [REDACTED] SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—Two months ago long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas got fired by her employer, the Hearst newspaper conglomerate, in response to her off-the-cuff slam at Israel. I criticized the firing on free speech grounds. “Free speech must be defended no matter what—even that of cranky anti-Semitic columnists (if that’s what Thomas is/was),” I wrote. “Unless we are truly free to say what we think—without fear of reprisal—free speech is not a right. It is merely a permission.” I received many letters in response. Most people disagreed with me. A letter from Joseph Just was typical, but better written than most (which is why I quote it here): “Ms. Thomas has been denied not one of her constitutional rights. She faces no fine, legal censure or criminal charges for saying what she said. Her immunity from the threat of such sanction (rather than immunity from being, shall we say, ‘asked to resign’) is what the…

Thanks to WikiLeaker, Afghan War Will End Soon MUMBAI–“An appalling irresponsible act.” That’s how General James Nattis, fresh at the helm of U.S. Central Command, characterizes the release of more than 76,000 classified Pentagon reports released by the website WikiLeaks. You may recall that the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, is the same outfit that loaded $24 billion in $100 bills onto shrinkwrapped pallets and loaded the cash onto C-130 transport planes bound for Iraq–guarded by enlisted men who earn $20,000 a year. Not one of those Benjamins has ever heard from since. Which, given that the money was supposed to be paid to corrupt tribal sheikhs, is just as well. Don’t be surprised if you see contractors installing one of those great a new Gunnite pool at the house belonging to your recently discharged veteran neighbor. So anyway, when a Pentagon biggie calls someone irresponsible, take them seriously. These guys know from irresponsibility. Speaking of behavior that…

THE IDIOCRACY FACTOR How U.S. Ignorance Helped Doom the Afghan War Americans’ lack of knowledge about Afghanistan is virtually limitless. Which matters, because the U.S. is at war there. And which explains why the American military is losing its longest war. During my 2001 trip, where I covered the Taliban defeat at the Battle of Kunduz for the Village Voice and KFI radio, I met a British reporter who offered an amusing prescription for American military action. “If the average American cannot identify three cities in a country,” he suggested, “the U.S. should not invade it.” Given that the average American doesn’t know their state capital, much less three cities in, say, Canada, this would transform us into a pacifist society overnight. More appalling than Joe and Jane Sixpack’s ignorance about Afghanistan is the doltishness of the official media. If print and broadcast journalists get the facts wrong, how can the public (or the military) be expected to do better?…

The Rise of the Tea Party Is the Tea Party racist? Democrats who play liberals on TV say it isn’t. Vice President Joe Biden says the Tea Party “is not a racist organization” per se, but allows that “at least elements that were involved in some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views.” Right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has received permission to form an official Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s official. The Tea Party matters. So: is it racist? Certainly a sizeable minority of Tea Partiers’ “take America back” rhetoric is motivated by thinly disguised resentment that a black guy is president. As for the remainder, their tacit tolerance of the intolerant speaks for itself. “Take America back” from whom? You know whom. It ain’t white CEOs. Yes. The Tea Party is racist. Obviously. But racism is only one facet of a far more sinister political strain. It’s more accurate to categorize the Tea Party…

On Economy, Pessimism Abounds Twenty years ago, in 1990, the American economy was in the third year of a deep recession. It was impossible to find a job. The 1980s housing bubble had popped; high-end housing prices in New York City dropped by 80 percent. Then, as now, the president seemed oblivious, aloof and clueless. Two years later, with no recovery in sight, angry voters turned him out of office. But help was on the way. Something called the World Wide Web appeared in 1991. Two years later, Mosaic—the first graphic web browser, which would evolve into Netscape—was introduced. The Internet boom began. It flamed out seven years later, but in the meantime tens of millions of Americans collected new, higher paychecks. They spent their windfall. Consumer spending exploded. So did government tax revenues. When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the Office of Management and Budget was projecting a $5 trillion surplus over the next ten years—enough to pay…