News Coverage Misleads American on the Bergdahl Swap

In national-security matters, the news media couldn’t do a better job misinforming the public if they tried. The latest example is their portrayal of the five Taliban officials traded for Bowe Bergdahl.

The media of course have an incentive to accentuate controversy. In the Bergdahl deal, this includes portraying the five Taliban prisoners as, in Sen. John McCain’s words, “hard-core jihadis responsible for 9/11.” McCain is wrong, but the major news outlets don’t care. Over and over, the five are identified as terrorists. Facts take a back seat to drama and conflict.

The full article is here.

Bumbling Intervention

Interesting reporting via Fred Kaplan of Slate:

David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. Petraeus and author of Counterinsurgency, among other highly regarded books and essays on the subject, thinks that what the Afghan people want—and what the Taliban are doing a much better job at supplying than the Afghan government—is justice.

Where the Taliban have strongholds, they've set up courts, they issue property deeds, they even have ombudsman's offices where people can file complaints and get responses.

"There's nothing like that in the official Afghan system," Kilcullen says. "If you show up at an Afghan police station with a complaint, they'll beat you up for bothering them. If you take someone to an official court, it takes months to get a judgment, and it will go to the guy who pays the biggest bribe. The Taliban courts take a half-hour, they're free, and the Taliban locals enforce the agreement."