The ABC has, maybe, accidentally published some anti-vaxxer material, however the US internet based new source The Huffington Post is full of it. I have never ben a fan of it, always finding it a bit two much of the soft-left types.

But they do manage to exceed themselves with this piece: don’t take vaccines but rather take homeopathic remedies. Idiots.

HT: PZ Myers

The ABC joined the ranks of woomeisters by reporting on the views of the “Australian Vaccination Network”:

The Australian Vaccination Network lobby group says more testing of the swine flu vaccine needs to be done before it is given to the public. The Federal Government has ordered 21 million doses of the vaccine developed by CSL.

Unfortunately giving air time to these woomiesters just encourages them and that is not something our nationally-funded broadcaster should be doing.

The Australian Vaccination Network, despite its harmless sounding name, is a full blown Anti-vaxxer organisation.

If you look at their website, all pictures of babies and wildflowers, they just appear to be one of those mushy alternative medicine types, but when you read what they say in detail:

We believe it is a parent’s right to choose what’s best for their child…some would say that this is one of the most basic rules of any civilised society.

Vaccines have never been tested

The gold standard of medical science is the double blind crossover placebo study. This test has never been performed on any vaccine currently licensed in Australia. In an astounding leap of logic, contrary to all rules of science, vaccines are assumed to be safe and effective and therefore, it is considered to be unethical to withhold vaccinations for the purposes of testing them.

Vaccines can cause serious long-term side effects

According to medical reports, children are now less healthy than they have ever been before. More than 40% of all children now suffer from chronic conditions, something that was unheard of prior to mass vaccination.

Vaccines do not necessarily protect against infectious diseases

For the very real risk of both short and long-term side effects from vaccines, parents are asked to allow their children to be given vaccines that at best, will provide a temporary sensitisation to illnesses and at worst, can make their children more susceptible to both opportunistic and infectious illness. As evidenced by the recent whooping cough outbreak in SA, the only Australian state which actually records vaccination status in cases of infectious illness, 87% of all those who contracted whooping cough and whose vaccination status was known were fully and appropriately vaccinated.

Pharmaceutical companies have paid for almost all vaccine research to date

Just as the tobacco companies paid for corrupt and incorrect research which purported to show that tobacco and tobacco products were safe for human consumption, so too the pharmaceutical companies have paid for and produced almost all of the research into vaccines.

Some childhood illnesses have beneficial aspects and therefore, prevention may not necessarily be in the best interests of the child

Measles, for example, has been used in Scandinavian countries to successfully treat such autoimmune conditions as eczema and many studies have performed which show that children who do not contract measles naturally as a child are more likely to suffer from certain cancers later in life.

With lists like this it is not even clear where to start:

There is ample evidence vaccines are effective, mass vaccination helped eradicate smallpox, which once killed as many as every seventh child in Europe.

While claiming the need for serious testing of vaccines, AVN can make wild assertions that children are less healthy than every before (tell that to families of the 19th century with their child mortality rates) and that chronic conditions are associated with the rise of vaccinations.

Pretty much all drugs produced by Pharmaceutical companies are tested by those companies, are AVN suggesting that all pharmaceuticals be avoided?

The measles is good for you!

They just link misinformation together in a long line of false assertions. As the Australian Sceptics report they:

…ignores the fact that this is an open debate rather than the back-room conspiracy which it claims vaccine production and distribution to be. It is happy to quote scientists claiming this vaccine is not safe enough, while it usually claims that scientists are silent on the risks of vaccines. It provides publically-available statistics and information on side-effects while at the same time claiming that such information is not available.

This double standard is also shown in the AVN demanding a full scientific investigation of vaccine safety and efficacy while promoting homeopathic treatments that have been scientifically proven to have no efficacy beyond a placebo effect and no effective ingredients whatsoever.

The ABC reporting this rubbish is no different to them reporting the anti-psychiatrist viewpoints of the Scientologists.

I have always had mixed feelings about Australian movies; there have been some great Australian movies made, but…

First, reviewers have a tendency to always give positive reviews to Australian films (out of some sense of loyalty I assume) but this means that the review loses its primary function – distinguishing between good and bad films. If I can no longer rely on reviewers to give a pointer to the quality of a whole class of films, then it is easier to just avoid that class in its entirety.

Second, and I don’t know if it is a function of the funding system, but it seems sometimes like only two types of films get made in Australia, films set in the outback, or films set in the grimy streets of western Sydney/Melbourne.

Take, for example, this recently release film, Cedar Boys, reviewed on the Movie Show:

In CEDAR BOYS, Tarek, LES CHANTERY, a Lebanese-Australian, lives with his parents and little sister in Sydney’s western suburbs…

And I stopped reading there.

You may have seen the reports that the PM swore at someone once, but I didn’t realise how serious it was until I read the report in the SMH:

The PM said in the presence of three female MPs: “I don’t care what you f***ers think,” News Limited has reported.

Three female MPs! Three! Blokes might be able to take that tough language stuff, but surely not female MPs?

The firepower story continues to drag along. Dan’s article updates us on the latest outcomes in the case. It has been an amazing case of lies and deception and gullibility and greed. Everything that is wrong in humanity is summed up in this case.

I was watching the new episode of “City Homicide”* and the photographer who is killed at the beginning of the show is using a Mac, which is not surprising for a creative type, but the cop uses one as well! I can tell you that I have absolutely no doubt that that is completely unlikely.

It now seems that every single show or movie I watch has macs in it** which makes it appear if makes are the only kinds of computers in the world.

I actually find this a little annoying and am wondering if all the movie and TV studios have tied up some kind of contract with Apple.

Notes:
* Which despite being obviously# set in Melbourne, seems to have signage for a ‘State Police” rather than Victoria Police, in some attempt to make the show cityless and stateless. this is either just petty Australian parochialism or an attempt to sell the show on the world market.
# to me
** Bones, they show that I watched last night also had Macs. the other interesting thing about Bones (another forensic pathologist show) is that it appears that forensic pathologist have little programs for providing nifty animations of almost any process they undertake in the lab.

This article is about a company making beer using a yeast recovered from amber 45 million years old.

Well it looks like the honeymoon for Barack Obama may be coming to an end. The Economist Magazine, it is lead this week, said:

If the opinion polls are to be believed, Barack Obama is now, six months into his presidency, no more popular than George Bush or Richard Nixon were at the same stage in theirs. His ratings are sagging particularly badly with electorally vital independent voters: two-thirds of them think he wants to spend too much of their money. Two of the most specific pledges he made to the electorate—to reform health care and to produce a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—are in trouble. And an impression is being formed in Washington of a presidency that is far too ready to hand over the direction of domestic policy to Congress; that is drifting either deliberately or lethargically leftwards; and that is more comfortable with lofty visions than details.

Of course this doesn’t mean anything. All politicians and parties go through a honeymoon period where they can do no wrong. This period inevitably end when suddenly the electorate (and the media) realise that the politician is actually only a normal human being and they have to deal with emerging issues in the normal, human, frail way.

But for Obama, the issue is not whether the media have declared his honeymoon over, it is whether he can deliver on the reforms his presidency set out to do. And despite setbacks and compromises there are bills now on the congress floor to implement a greenhouse gas emission trading scheme and reforms to healthcare to extend insurance. If he can get these through to the presidential signing then he really will have achieved something.

Of course there will be sniping and complaining the the bills do not do enough, they do not punish the coal producers enough, they cost too much, not enough people get insurance, they don’t control health cost enough. Many of these criticisms are true, but politics, of all places is where, as Voltaire said, the perfect is the enemy of the the good. Ultimately achieving something is better than achieving nothing, and these issues are long term issues, we will be debating and regulating greenhouse gas emissions for the next hundred years, the regulations can be improved over time.

Obama is pushing forward with an ambitious policy agenda in a political system with so many ‘checks and balances’ that getting anything done is almost a miracle itself. He is doing fine.

I didn’t grow up in a religious family and never had any real knowledge of religion as a child. As a young adult I would have described myself as an agnostic, not saying one way or the other whether there was a god. On one hand there was nothing to say there wasn’t, on the other it was hard to see much evidence in the positive either. There is no real evidence as far as I could see. There have been no miracles or other events in millennium (I know that the Catholic Church still uses miracles to prove sainthood, but that just seems to be people with diseases who recover and say it was prayer, but could just as easily be random recovery). And the bible and other books are stories from a iron age culture, I don’t see how anyone could take them at face value.

Over time I came to see that this position I was taking was weak and I was avoiding the issue, not addressing it. Because in fact it was obvious that there was no god. Having spent more time reading up on science, on physics, chemistry and biology it was clear that science had discovered all kind of explanation for previously unexplained phenomena. There was a really well established theory about how we evolved over time, about how the earth was formed, about the nature of the real material world. You didn’t need god to explain these things. In fact god made little sense in explaining these things, evolution fit much better. Of course people often say that well, science doesn’t explain this little thing or that – this is the basis of the intelligent Design movement. But it is a “God of the Gaps’ argument – wherever there is a gap in sciences explanation, people insert god. But is that a rational approach? Science always has gaps, but over time it fills in those gaps. The existence of gaps in knowledge is not a good basis for god.

So in the end I decided that, given the lack of evidence, I had to be an atheist. Of course, the annoying thing about religion/atheist debate is the varying nature of religious conceptions. So if the 6000 year old earth, no evolution, Abraham on the mountain god is not true, what about a more etherial god? A god who accepts science but is still there in the background, one who is about spirituality and morality? I must admit I have always found this kind of god even more annoying, because it kind of has no strong basis or evidence, so why even begin to believe?

Is it a god who doesn’t effect the evolution of the universe, but created the big bang? But no one knows where the big bang came from, why invent a god to create it? The obvious next question is who created god? And no amount of he is universal and omnipotent etc does anything more than avoid the question by quickly changing the topic.

Can there be no morality without god? Of course there can, morality comes from the same place as all other human values, from humans. Human invented human rights, and they invent all kinds of new moral rights all the time. Should it just be that we should say that the human values that were invented in the iron age are not human but god given? I don’t see the logic in that.

In the end I don’t see a place for god or a need. The history of religion is one of massacre and genocide (gee that old testament!) and inquisitions. But I don’t blame religion for that, for religion is a human construct. It was an attempt to understand the world in a time before science, when the world was dangerous and random. The history of religion is the history of human institutions, no more no less. The catholic church was an outgrowth of the Roman Empire, Islam is generally an outgrowth of Arab nationalism. Structured religion was just human constructs, and non-structured, spiritualist religion was just a blancmange pretending to fill in the gaps of science, but offering no more explanation.

In the end, we have naturalist explanation of the way the world works with all kinds of human institutions built on that, but no god. and that is why I am an Atheist. I realise that people seek meaning in all kind of places and some choose religion, and as long as they dont try and push it down other peoples throats I am fine with that (which is why I like the Anglican church but not the Catholic). But I am happy with my world view.

Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling makes a provocative post of seven reasons why he doesn’t like women. I can’t really agree with, since some of my best friends are women, but I got a good laugh out of his first reason:

1. They have “feelings.” It would be futile to decry so widespread a human failing, but women – more than men – compound this shortcoming. They think their feelings matter. Worse, they are prone to mistake them for thoughts.

Carl Zimmer, the science journalist has an article up at Corante (whatever that is), which takes an interesting look at Toxoplasma gondii. This is the parasite that cats have that is the reason pregnant women are not allowed to handle kitty litter.

The toxoplasma parasites live in the gut of cats, producing eggs which are excreted and are picked up by other animals in their surrounds, like rats. But to complete the life cycle the toxoplasma must return to the host, the cat. For this to happen the rat must be eaten by the cat. But generally rats have a fear of cats, which Carl Zimmer reports has been shown by experimentation:

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat’s nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety.

But when the rats were infected with the toxoplasma (which gets into their brains) their behaviour was different:

The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn’t make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The toxoplasma actually infected the rats brain to make them less scared of cats, so that they are more likely to be eaten by cats, allowing the toxoplasma to return to the cat-host and reproduce in its gut.

Now this toxoplasma also infects humans, and half of all people are estimated to be infected. We also know that half of all people are dog people, and half are cat people. How did that half become cat people? I think we know now. They are all infected with toxoplasma gondii.

In related news, there are lots of these parasites that effect animal behaviour, for example, so as to make ants climb high to release their spores:

Reading the weekend paper a few weeks ago, I came across this “advertisement”:

They are always interesting, these notes put in national newspapers, that are not adverts or job ads, indicating that some section of the community has some (at least what they perceive as) interesting information for the rest of us.

It is surprising that the ad does not really give you much information at all about the organisation. The only description is that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood is “dedicated to understanding and ameliorating the human condition”. This unfortunately could be used to describe half the organisations in the world! The “human condition”, at least on plain reading, could cover most human traits: love, hate, addiction, depression, religion. They only other real pointer is the description of the defamation case that the article is about, one where the SMH apparently implied that the Foundation “placed demands on its members which tore families apart”. From that one could infer that it might be a religious organisation or other such organisation (although on closer inspection it is not, see below).

Nonetheless a visit to the organisation’s website does not really help to clarify matters. It mentions the court case above, a book called “Freedom”, and an interestingly a link to a discussion forum post that makes positive comments about someone called “Griffith”. This stood out a bit for a foundation website, this Griffith must somehow be central to the foundation.

The description of the FHA page adds little, although it does mention a Foundation Director, Jeremy Griffith. More information on him is available on wikipedia:

The FHA promotes and provides a forum for Griffith’s theory of human nature. Between the years 1975 and 1988 Griffith developed a theory which claims to explain human nature, good and evil and provide a way to a better life. Griffith’s theory developed from reflections on the nature of human beings as both loving and hateful, a state of being he refers to as the human condition. He also wished to develop an explanation for humanity’s destructive effect on the natural environment. In 1988 he established the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood as an organization to promote, support and discuss his theory.

The organisation has about 50 members who support the program of FHA, which seem to be based around the philosophical like writing of Jeremy Griffith.

The understanding of the human condition explains the difference between our instincts and intellect and the effect that difference has had on our behaviour. It describes how the anger and selfishness felt by humans is the result of these two factions within ourselves—the gene-based instinctive learning system struggling against the nerve-based intellect’s capacity to understand.

This conflict, which started some two million years ago when consciousness emerged, causes humans to live with an undeserved sense of guilt that is characterised by competition and aggression. Once guilt is removed by being explained—which the FHA says is now possible—the competition and aggression in humans naturally subsides.

He appear to use some aspect of biology to construct a theory around our instincts and intellect on how that can improve our understanding of our condition – and maybe provide guidance to future actions.

Without going into it deeper I am not sure how far this advances us. Dualism has been around for a long time.

There was a case a few months ago regarding a 9-year old girl in Brazil who was raped by her step-father and subsequently had a abortion. At that time the Catholic Church in Brazil excommunicated the family of the girl as well as the doctors who performed the operation (original story).

As you could imagine there was some consternation over these action. But it was just the church in Brazil. But now the Catholic Church Hierarchy has made its position clear. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) has made it clear that the actions of the Brazilian Church was no mistake but rather official Church policy. The National Catholic reporter:

The doctrinal congregation said the statements from church leaders led to some confusion about the position of the church, “taking into account the dramatic situation of the child — who, it turns out — was accompanied with pastoral delicacy by the then-archbishop.”
“In this regard, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirms that the doctrine of the church on procured abortion has not and cannot change,” the statement said.
To deliberately abort a fetus is to kill an innocent human being, it said.
“Regarding procured abortions in certain difficult and complex situations,” the doctrinal congregation said that “the clear and precise teaching” of Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), remains valid.

The Catholic Church continues to hold one of the most conservative positions on abortion, not providing even a exemption for children who are raped.

One of the interesting things I have found on youtube is the music videos that fans make for their favourite musicians. For example, Sufjan Stevens is a popular artist nowdays, but his earlier works came out with no music videos for them. In this case, fans of the musician have put time and effort into making their own music video versions. And these are surprising well done. Have a look and judge for yourself.

I came across an example of Poe’s Law in practice today. as described on RationalWiki:

Poe’s Law relates to fundamentalism, and the difficulty of identifying actual parodies thereof. It suggests that, in general, it is hard to tell fake fundamentalism from the real thing, since they may both espouse equally extreme beliefs. Poe’s law also works in reverse: real fundamentalism can also be indistinguishable from parody fundamentalism.

PZ Myers link to this post on the discussion forums of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry:

So moms are everywhere in nature. Females often go to great lengths to feed, save, and protect their young. Many construct homes and shelters…(all without knowing/understanding she’s even pregnant) and do so with great care and attention to detail.

So I’ve got two questions about this:

1) What is the evolutionary advantage of mothers doing everything they can to feed/protect their young? And remember, mothers often give food to their young that they might otherwise eat. And going out into the world to look for food is often dangerous — she could be killed looking for food. Wouldn’t there be an advantage to her personally just to forget about the kid and go about her own business of eating and finding a mate? Why the unnecessary risk? Why go to the trouble of building a nest to protect the young? Wouldn’t it be easier just to skip all that? I thought evolution was all about being selfish……….so why do so many animals put others’ needs before themselves? What’s the advantage to that?

2) Why wouldn’t it be an evolutionary advantage for mothers to eat their young? I know it sometimes happens in nature…..but not as a general rule. As a general rule, mothers and fathers very rarely eat their young…even when they’re hungry. But wouldn’t an animal be more likely to breed if it didn’t starve? Mothers should be consuming their offspring everywhere in nature — afterall, it would advantageous getting that extra nourishment.

How do the evolutionists here get around this? Where does this “love” or devotion for child come from? Got a gene you can show me? What’s the evolutionary advantage for all this? And remember — evolution cannot plan ahead.

Now the answer is fairly obvious just through think about how natural selection works, the mothers who look after her child will be more likely to have their children survive, and thus will more likely pass on their genes. That is why it is called natural selection. As PZ says “Wouldn’t an animal be more likely to breed if it ate its own babies?”.

But the interesting thing is that this is a great example of Poe’s Law. For there were a number of responses to the post. Including:

Ur…survival of life….?

Oh wait—you just posted this to get a rise out of scarlets! He thinks you’re serious!!

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Well done, sporty!!!11!!1!11!

You can’t know if the post is true or a parody of the truth, hence poe’s law!

The Big Picture Has a series of beautiful photos from the Cassini mission as it passes Jupiter.

My favourite picture is of the storms on saturn:

But check them all out!

In a recent article in the Spectator, journalist Melanie Phillips criticizes Richard Dawkins for sloppy quoting during a discussion on the case for deistic god.

In essence the article argues that there had been a bit of a gotcha moment when Dawkins, in a debate with John Lennox, had said: “…you can make a respectable case for deism – not a case that I would accept but I think it is a serious discussion that you could have.” Dawkins then subsequently claimed that he had been misquoted by Lennox later on when Lennox only quoted the first part and not the following qualification.

Melanie Phillips then accuses Dawkins of misquoting her, of using text from a website that discussed her, rather than her actual quote, and that by doing so he does not acknowledge that she had acknowledged the second part of his point about deism as well as the first. This appears to be the substance of her argument in the article. It should be noted that the thrust of the text Dawkins quoted and Phillips own argument are pretty much the same.

Now, as described it does look like an error on Dawkins part, I am not sure it warrants a whole article. But some people have got hot under the collar about it, including the author who Dawkins actually quoted:

Indeed, we are left with only two possible explanations for all this. He is either incompetent as a writer and researcher, or he has deliberately set out to misinform and deceive his audience. Either option is not very pretty. Considering that this guy actually calls himself a “Bright”, he does not seem so bright after all. He is either quite a dolt who cannot even do the most basic of quotations and referencing, or he has deliberately and maliciously made these gross misrepresentations and distortions in order to promote himself while he seeks to demonise Phillips.

In the end it was an error and Dawkins apologised in this post:

In my Atlanta talk, I briefly quoted the journalist Melanie Phillips, as a possible source of John Lennox’s ‘stunning revelation’. Unfortunately, I also attributed another, similar quotation to her, which was in fact from another blogger who had referred to her. This was inexplicably slipshod on my part. I apologise, and have asked Josh to remove the brief section of my talk where I spoke about Melanie Phillips. Richard

Of course Melanie Phillips is not quite, well, I would say accurate, in her article. For a start she states that:

In a lecture earlier this month to the American Atheists’ Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Dawkins chose to attack Lennox …describing Lennox belittlingly as a ‘Christian apologist’ and an ‘Irish mathematician’

It is not quite clear why these are belittling comments. He is a Christian apologist, and this is not a term of derision, this is the term Christians use themselves. See for example the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry.

As for being called an Irish Mathematician, well I guess it could be a racial slur, but I suspect, given that he is, in fact, Irish and a mathematician, that is just a description of him.

And to some extent Phillips put words in the mouth of Dawkins, for example saying:

…given his previous absolutism in stating that anything unsupported by evidence is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes that matter must have had an original creator is a cretin…

Now I know from Reading him that Richard Dawkins does not have great respect for religious belief, but I don’t think he has described all religious people as cretins.

She also subtly changes Dawkins argument. So while Dawkins is quoted as saying “…you can make a respectable case for deism”, a few paragraphs down it is changed to “a respectable scientific case could be made for deism”. This is a completely different proposition, and one I am sure Richard Dawkins would disavow.

And this gets to the the actual core of the issue, one that the article dances around – there can be made a respectable case for deism. I saying this I mean deism of the most general kind, that behind everything thing there might be some god, or creator, or mystical force (which is a quite different proposition that any earthly religion puts forward, which is for a much more involved deity).

I have no problem with that proposition, that accepting all the scientific evidence for the big bang, for evolution, for the universe as we understand it, behind it might be some, well supernatural force. It is not an argument I would make or would accept, but I can see how a reasonable argument for it might be made, as there really are mysteries as to why the big bang occurred.

Of course this is of no use to any christian or creationist argument, since that is not the case that any of them put forward. There proposition is for theism, for a much more invovled supreme being.

But it is an interesting proposition, and one worth discussing, and while I think Melanie Phillips has the right to defend her position, I don’t think the article moved the debate forward.

It has not be pleasant writing this, these kind of nit-picking arguments are not really enjoyable. Despite that I definitely support Richard Dawkins, his forthright approach is needed. Atheism has often been a silent voice drowned out by religious views and I appreciate that there are individuals out there taking the debate into the public sphere.

This is certainly necessarily when you have individuals, such as Cormac Murphy-O’Connor claiming atheists are “not quite human”.

Another bombing in Afghanistan has lead to civilian deaths.

Western air strikes sparked fresh controversy in Afghanistan on Wednesday as NATO said a bombing killed eight civilians and the US military estimated that up to 30 villagers died in an attack this month.

NATO soldiers on patrol in the southern province of Helmand on Tuesday came under attack from about 25 insurgents, the alliance’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

“Finding it difficult to extract themselves from this dangerous situation, ISAF troops resorted to calling for close air support,” it said. A plane dropped a bomb. “Tragically, it is believed that eight civilians were killed as a result of the air strike,” it said.

ISAF accused the attackers of sheltering among the civilian population.
The soldiers “were not aware that the insurgents were once again using civilians as human shields,” the statement said. “If this information had been known by ISAF troops, no ordnance would have been used.”

The ongoing war in Afghanistan has been in progress for many years nows and it is not clear when it will end, partially because it is not clear what the end goals is. The initial invasion was to overthrow the Taliban Government which was providing refuge for Al-Qaida. Since then there doesn’t appear to be clarity over the aims of the war. Is it to ensure Afghanistan women can attend schools? To create a functioning liberal democracy in Afghanistan? To eradicate poppy growing?

It is sometimes difficult to evaluate actions in Afghanistan because all the battles seem to be against the ‘Taliban’, yet one gets the sense that the term Taliban is used to describe any forces fighting western troops, even when they are simply Pashtun fighters opposing forces invading their homeland.

The border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan are home to millions of ethnic Pashtun who have traditional fought any foreign forces invading their homeland, whether they be British, Soviet or US forces. What is the war aim regarding the Pashtun tribes? Can they be subdued by force? If the desire is to bring them around to a more pro-western, or at least neutral position, then using force seems to be the wrong way of going about it.

It is this lack of clarity that makes assessing the war in Afghanistan so difficult. However, Graham Fuller, a former CIA chief in Kabul has written evaluated the situation with admirable clarity in an article for the Huffington Post. His main points are:

– Military force will not win the day in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint.

– The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban — like them or not — as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.

– It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The “Durand Line” is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already inflamed Pakistan’s 28 million Pashtuns.

– India is the primary geopolitical threat to Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Pakistan must therefore always maintain Afghanistan as a friendly state. India furthermore is intent upon gaining a serious foothold in Afghanistan — in the intelligence, economic and political arenas — that chills Islamabad.

– Pakistan will therefore never rupture ties or abandon the Pashtuns, in either country, whether radical Islamist or not. Pakistan can never afford to have Pashtuns hostile to Islamabad in control of Kabul, or at home.

– Occupation everywhere creates hatred, as the U.S. is learning. Yet Pashtuns remarkably have not been part of the jihadi movement at the international level, although many are indeed quick to ally themselves at home with al-Qaida against the U.S. military.

– The U.S. had every reason to strike back at the al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan after the outrage of 9/11. The Taliban were furthermore poster children for an incompetent and harsh regime. But the Taliban retreated from, rather than lost, the war in 2001, in order to fight another day. Indeed, one can debate whether it might have been possible — with sustained pressure from Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and almost all other Muslim countries that viewed the Taliban as primitives — to force the Taliban to yield up al-Qaida over time without war. That debate is in any case now moot. But the consequences of that war are baleful, debilitating and still spreading.

– The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse as a direct consequence of the U.S. war raging on the Afghan border. U.S. policy has now carried the Afghan war over the border into Pakistan with its incursions, drone bombings and assassinations — the classic response to a failure to deal with insurgency in one country. Remember the invasion of Cambodia to save Vietnam?

– The deeply entrenched Islamic and tribal character of Pashtun rule in the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan will not be transformed by invasion or war. The task requires probably several generations to start to change the deeply embedded social and psychological character of the area. War induces visceral and atavistic response.

– Pakistan is indeed now beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the U.S. Anti-American impulses in Pakistan are at high pitch, strengthening Islamic radicalism and forcing reluctant acquiescence to it even by non-Islamists.

From this it is not clear that there is an easy way forward with Afghanistan. All these aspects of the situation mean that it may not be possible to impose a liberal democracy in Afghanistan.

However the one tool the US does have is a powerful military, and they are using that in Afghanistan. But that does not mean it is the right tool. The way forward should be to recognise the cultural and political situation in Afghanistan and realise that we will not create a democracy by bombing villages. We must accept more limited aims, work work with the local culture, not against it, and find a way forward that involves more humanitarian work and less bombing of civilians.