Saturday, April 10, 2010

Killing Your Way Out of Chaos

My commiserations to those poor sods waiting for spiteful Double Negative commentary, here is a paltry belated offering from the New York Times :

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=576859&f=110

Such are the dim bulbs calling the shots on reconciliation/reintegration and counterinsurgency in places like Afghanistan and Uganda; negatively reinforcing the trauma and violent tendencies of the very people who have taken the crucial step of walking away from the fight. By plunging them back into chaos, the strategic effect of such approaches is akin to a dog chasing its own tail. The utter confusion and violence of the fixers' will always have the unintended consequence of precipitating increasingly complex permutations of conflict and fracturing of civil society.

The message this sends out to all other active and demobilized combatants is that you can never get out, never get ahead.

As if crimson hues of the butcher's apron was the new black, Human Rights Watch reckons foreign troops and former rebels traipsing through the jungle in hot pusuit is a good thing.

Depressing stuff.

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