UNintelligent Strategy

An ex-envoy from the United Nations to Islamofascist extremists bent on turning the new democracy in Afghanistan into a regressive military autocracy has criticized the arrest of high-level Taliban figures by Afghanistan's weary and much-attacked neighbor Pakistan. The thrust of the ex-evboy's argument seems to be that with the arrested Taliban leaders out of contact with their supposed subordinates, the United Nations no longer knows whom to approach with peace overtures.

The Jaded Consumer's view on this is fairly straightforward: if the U.N.'s peace activity was worth the paper it was printed on, there wouldn't after all this time still be an evolving threat by proponents of establishing in Afghanistan a Taliban-led government through intimidating and seeking the deaths of Afghan civilians.

What exactly has the U.N. accomplished in the development of peace? Oil-for-corruption in Iraq? Teen rape, pedophilia, torture, and child sex trade by "peacekeepers"? Forced sodomy of Haitian mothers? Is this the kind of result we should hope for in Afghanistan – to the extent of leaving known killers at large?

It's fairly clear that detaining known leaders of deliberate killers is a much more likely mechanism to disrupt terror networks than allowing the U.N. to find a way to make money cooperating with them to oppress locals. Let's hear it for more such detentions.