This seems like good news. The “foreign guests” seem to have worn out their welcome among the Taliban in Waziristan. Here’s hoping that they kill each other in copious quantities, since the prospect of them becoming peaceful democrats seems dim.

The War on (some) Drugs, that is. In the real war. In Afghanistan:

We are winning in Afghanistan – that is the clear view on the ground. In contrast to Iraq, the Taliban are heavily on the back foot. Continued success, however, will be hampered by attempts to eradicate opium poppies…We are winning precisely because we are fighting the Taliban with “hearts and minds”, not just militarily might. Success hinges on not driving the locals into supporting the enemy. Yet this is precisely what poppy eradication is starting to do. Farmers grow poppies in Helmand for the same reason farmers decide what to grow the world over – because it is the rational thing to do. It is not part of a cunning scheme to flood the infidel West with cheap heroin. To a Pashtun farmer, poppies mean an instant cash-crop. Advocates of poppy eradication like to argue that narcotics fuel the insurgency. The truth is the precise opposite. Farmers carry a financial risk when they grow poppies having already been paid for their unharvested crop. Destroying their crop will make it impossible to pay their debts. As a direct consequence, they then become much more likely to accept work as hired-guns for the Taliban. Fear of poppy eradication is mobilising local farmers to side with the Taliban. In the poppy growing Sanjin valley, the locals have teamed up with the Taliban and so that is now where our troops face the fiercest fighting. As Americans say, “Go figure”.

Mario Loyola writes about the infantilization and dehumanization of the “Palestinians”–by the left.

A few months ago, I was reading Rashid Khalidi’s latest book (The Iron Cage, on the struggle for Palestinian statehood) and I was struck by his evident mission, which was not to relate the history of what happened in Palestine, but rather to explain how everything that happened in Palestine was the fault of the Zionists and their allies. The major premise of this argument is really very odd: namely, that everyone in the story has moral agency except the Palestinians, who (by virtue of their status as victims) cannot commit any crimes for which the Zionists are not ultimately responsible. This struck me as a particularly dehumanizing way to defend the Palestinians.

Maybe.

The question is, if they’re finally getting actionable intelligence, will there be any action?

Austin Bay says that we’re winning in Iraq (and really have been all along, despite the media’s body-count-driven narrative).

Jonathan Chait has some words of caution for his fellow Bush haters.

Let’s hope so:

The end of Saddam was the end of a major financer of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement. His money no longer flows through Rahman into the madrassas and terror training camps. The stress of losing Saddam and his wealth, plus being soundly defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, has caused the terrorist leaders alliance to crack. Add to that the loss of support from the UAE and Libya, and the financial cost to al Qaeda has been enormous. Not only has al Qaeda been defeated on the battlefield, funding has become a challenge for the Global Islamic Jihad Movement.

But the separation of Hekmatyar from the Taliban is not the only indication that the movement has fractured. Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad has written this week that the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban has faltered. If it is true (his reporting before has been insightful) this is one of the most significant developments in the war on terror. Divide and conquer still applies as a useful maxim.

I never fail to be amazed at people who seriously believe that it would have been a good idea to leave Saddam in power.

I’ve never been a big Ted Koppel or Nightline fan, but unlike many of his fellow Democrats (that’s an assumption, but I think a reasonable one), he understands that we are at war (it may help that he’s Jewish), and have been for a quarter century, even if many of us didn’t figure it out until five years ago. Unfortunately, many remain in denial.

Looks like we’re getting some new neighbors here in south Florida. From France:

There are no official U.S. government figures on the number of French Jews here, but officials in U.S. Jewish organizations said it could be anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 in South Florida — mostly Miami-Dade.

”I would say they’re in the thousands now,” said Mendy Levy, a rabbi at The Shul synagogue in Surfside.

”There is no question of an increase in the number of French Jews in South Florida, and there’s an expectation that that rate of increase will accelerate,” said Jacob Solomon, executive vice president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. ‘French Jews see the handwriting on the wall and say, `We’re not going to wait until it’s too late.’ ”

They’re sending in the Sioux. I wonder if they’ll count coup? I assume that taking scalps is against the Geneva Convention, though.