My favorite has always been General Abdul Rashid Dostum. I don’t remember why I picked him, but I began following his exploits soon after the start of the US assault on Afghanistan in 2001 and ever since then, I have found that a search for content containing his name almost invariably yields a story about something going wrong in his country.

The last time I played the game, it turned out that many people in Western diplomatic circles, which often means the US and the UK, were protesting Dostum’s reappointment to the position of chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the Afghan army because of his warlordship and status as an alleged war criminal. Western diplomatic circles were happy to have him on their side when they were overthrowing the Taliban, but not so much anymore.

Sometimes the My Favorite Warlord posts drew a fair number of comments from readers, back when I had a lot of readers, but the last episode drew just the one brief and somewhat disconcerting response. It said “Shout out” and was linked to General Dostum’s brand spanking new web site, a well-produced affair that provides the real Dostum story and dispels all those nasty myths.

I say “disconcerting” because it’s easy enough to say mean things about an influential and dangerous person when there’s no reason to think he’ll ever hear of it or care about it, but when someone affiliated with his web site drops by to give a shoutout, well, that’s a whole different story and I have to admit it gave me momentary pause. But I’m better now.

The General addresses head on the question of his reputation in general and specific allegations in particular. On the latter front, he dismisses the accusation that he had some guy tied to the tracks of one of his tanks and then had the tank driven around for a while, and the one where he packed a couple of thousand Taliban prisoners into unventilated trailers for transport, and a bunch of them died on the way.

With respect to the latter incident, he says that “I would like to offer a detailed timeline on the events described by many as the “Convoy of Death”, an alleged massacre by my men and U.S. Special Forces members during the December 2001 surrender,” but so far as I can tell he doesn’t actually do so. He does offer a general description of his role as a player in the country. Any emphasis is mine, and offered without comment.

I am often referred to in the media as “a brutal warlord.” The term brutal and warlord are not intended to be complimentary, but disparaging. I have always operated either at the behest of my constituency or with the agreement of whatever form of Afghan government existed the time. I think that in Afghanistan’s long violent history, my role of the largest single military entity has resulted in violence but my use of the military has resulted in peaceful resolution of disputes that would have continued. I will expand on these in the coming weeks to better communicate how power comes from political support not from force. I have always used political negotiations as my first line of attack, backed up with the full impact of an armed response if needed. Democratic, constitutional power will always replace the gun.

So there you have it. I recommend the site, not just for the window onto Dostum’s world but because it has some good links to other resources. We’ll be playing My Favorite Warlord again soon.

Meanwhile, a few links to other, less personally disturbing goings-on. Disturbing, yes, but not “oh, shit, I’ve drawn the attention of a brutal warlord.”

First, finally, a sensible story about why trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court really is a stupid idea, just not for all the scaredy-cat reasons advanced by hysterical Republicans. From unlikely sources in Foreign Policy magazine:

The president and the attorney general have confidently predicted the death penalty for Mohammed, while simultaneously insisting that he will receive a “fair trial.” But what does this mean? A fair trial presumes that the state will respect the outcome. While the possibility of acquittal might seem remote, Mohammed’s lawyers have significant legal grounds to challenge the evidence against him and its means of extraction. The administration is therefore obliged to make plans for this outcome.

What then are the administration’s options in the case of an acquittal? Preordained permanent incarceration and death cannot be the only possible outcomes, without respect to the jury’s decision. That would be wholly at odds with the very idea of a fair trial. Yet the risks to U.S. national security of Mohammed’s release are so compelling as to suggest that it would be inconceivable to let him go. We certainly hope it is inconceivable.

If Mohammed is not to be imprisoned indefinitely in a secure U.S. facility, he would have to be similarly incarcerated abroad. This simply revives the whole question of the United States using “offshore” jurisdictions, such as Guantánamo Bay, to avoid giving constitutional protections to prisoners. Thus, subjecting Mohammed to a civilian criminal trial suggests a cynical calculation by the attorney general that the odds of conviction are high enough that the trial will look fair after the fact. Really, the jury will have done nothing more than provide political cover for Mohammed’s execution. The question of whether Mohammed will ever be a free man has already been decided.

Indeed.

A few weeks ago, or something like that, I mentioned that I was thinking about doing a Sarah Palin/Scott Brown 2012 web site, and I just noticed that someone in the comments has already done so. It isn’t up and running yet, but you might want to bookmark ScottAndSarah2012.com and see what pops up, as it were, down the road.

And last, and speaking of Scott and Sarah, a cartoon from Mr. Fish on the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the modern Republican party.

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Murray Hill Inc. plans on spending “top dollar” to protect its investment. “It’s our democracy,” Murray Hill Inc. says, “We bought it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it.”

Murray Hill Inc., a diversifying corporation in the Washington, D.C. area, has long held an interest in politics and sees corporate candidacy as an emerging new market.

The campaign’s designated human, Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to antiquated “human only” procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork. Hensal is excited by this new opportunity. “We want to get in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store is bought by China.”

Given the business they’re in, the company is ideally positioned to run for office. Check out their first campaign video.

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I’ve been reading some of the periodic briefings about the US Southern Command’s activities in Haiti. According to General Douglas Fraser, the Southern Command chief, the military have more than 20,00 personnel in the area, with 6,000 of them physically in Haiti.

The command is operating the hospital ship USS Comfort, which Fraser says had treated 3,000 patients as of Thursday. They’re running 100 flights a day into the airport with supplies and personnel, another 90 or so helicopter flights daily, and more than 200 containers of supplies into the port daily. They’re building or repairing facilities to bump that figure up to 500 containers daily, and they’re also working with various other US government and independent agencies to set up a very large (3000-5000 beds) medical facility in Port Au Prince.

What caught my eye today was a Fraser briefing from last week in which he mentioned the distribution of 43,000 hand-cranked radios. He said that the radios can be cranked up to run for about 45 minutes, and they can be used to charge cell phones, and they have a flashlight-strength light built in. They’re similar to ones you can find on Amazon and in stores. Assuming multiple users, that’s a relatively cheap way of providing emergency information, light and cell phone communications to several hundred thousand people. That’s a pretty cool thing.

As thin as the various military services are stretched, and as deeply screwed as US finances are, it would have been easy enough for the Pentagon to request and the administration to accede to devoting less manpower, equipment and other resources, and hence less money, to the operation. It’s gratifying that the effort seems to involve about as many resources as could be assigned to it without falling over one another. And it’s further gratifying to see the military deployed in significant force to do something that involves saving lives and improving the lot of civilians rather than taking lives and degrading it.

In other military news … This should be read with the opening line of the Marine Corps Hymn playing in the background.

Vinnell Brown and Root, LLC, Herndon, Va., was awarded a $37,535,776 contract which will provide consolidated base operations and maintenance contract for base facilities located in Turkey and Spain. At this time, the entire amount has been obligated. 700 CONS, APO, AE, is the contracting activity (FA5613-10-C-5400).

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Somehow we missed it, but thanks to the [probably not safe for work and] inimitable proprietor of Swedish Meatballs Confidential, we learned that the New York Times obtained photocopies of the Eikenberry cables so that we no longer need rely on descriptions provided by Anonymous US Official.

We do, however, learn in the Times story that “[a]n American official provided a copy of the cables to The Times after a reporter requested them” because “it was important for the historical record that Mr. Eikenberry’s detailed assessments be made public, given that they were among the most important documents produced during the debate that led to the troop buildup.”

One can understand why that guy requested anonymity because even though Eikenberry has since said that the concerns he expressed in the cables have been addressed to his satisfaction, the proposed policies to which he took strong exception at the end of 2009 do not appear to be significantly different from the actual policies being enacted at the beginning of 2010.

Perhaps Eikenberry, who was the senior military commander in the country prior to his appointment as ambassador, decided that he was mistaken in concluding that the plan advanced by his military successor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and adopted by president Obama would lead the US to “become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves, short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.” Or possibly he decided to sit down and shut up and do what he can to salvage whatever he can from a plan he still believes to be doomed.

One of the objections he raised was that dramatically escalating the war would reinforce the impression held by Karzai and others in his government that “we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”

Why on earth would they think that? It’s not as though the US defense secretary has described the US plan as “a gradual process” involving “100,000 American troops and 50,000 troops from 43 other countries” that no one should expect to see “head for the exits … in July of 2011″ because we’ll maintain “a substantial presence, in my view, well beyond that period of time.”

Oh, wait.

But on to our recurring feature, My Favorite Warlord. The rules are simple—there’s only one—and it’s a game that the whole family can play at home. All you have to do is pick one of Afghanistan’s premier warlords and than at random intervals consult Teh Google to see what he’s up to in the moment.

We here at BTC News have long favored General Abdul Rashid Dostum, full-time warlord, onetime member of the Northern Alliance, sometime member of the Karzai government cabinet and alleged war criminal. Although we’ll occasionally resort to former US ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is himself much in the news of late, Dostum is our staple.

Dostum’s charm arises both from his resiliency—he’s been in and out of favor with both the US and Hamid Karzai more times than one can be reasonably expected to remember—and because he’s the only Afghan warlord to turn up in connection with a LSD distribution scheme in America’s heartland.

Upon Googling him today, we find that although he remains out of favor with the US—those niggling war crimes allegations, and his alleged criminal activities, and his refusal to completely disband his once formidable personal army—he is once again safely within the fold of the Karzai government, this time in a reprise of his role as the chief of staff to the commander of the Afghan army, such as it is. He lost the job about a year and a half ago when he attacked a former ally’s home and then refused to cooperate in the investigation of the incident.

Although the job has little real power, Western officials and Afghan human rights groups see the appointment as a sign that Karzai remains unable to shake off his ties to warlords and regional powerbrokers despite heavy international pressure for a new beginning as the U.S. and NATO ramp up the war against the Taliban.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday he would press Karzai to rescind the appointment when he meets with the Afghan leader during this week’s international conference in London aimed at building support for the weak Afghan government.

“As we have noted repeatedly in the past, the United States maintains concerns about any leadership role for Mr. Dostum in today’s Afghanistan,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

Among other objections, critics fear the appointment sends the wrong signal to the Taliban at a time when the government is preparing to offer the militants economic incentives to abandon the insurgency – a program expected to figure prominently at the London conference.

That bit about sending the wrong signal to the Taliban refers to those war crimes allegations against Dostum, which involve the mass killing of some 2,000 Taliban prisoners in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion.

As yet no word regarding Dostum’s status has emerged from the London conference. We’ll know more when next we play My Favorite Warlord.

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The Hill, which publishes from offices on K Street, describes the invited participants as stakeholders, a characterization that raises the question of what are the people who aren’t invited. The Hill clearly intends the word to mean the paper’s K Street neighbors. A search of the White House web site indicates that the administration is a bit more catholic in its definition, but not all that much.

The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.

The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.”

I had very low expectations of the Obama administration, but one thing I thought they would be better at, given all the experienced hands on board, is managing their public image. Part of their problem is the nihilistic joy the press take in repeating unfiltered even the most brain-damaged GOP memes about Obama and his agenda, but a lot of it is tone-deaf stuff like this. Not only does it look bad to the naive souls who swallowed the transformational aspirations—about the best Obama supporters can say is “c’mon, everybody does it”—but it provides yet more ammunition to a Republican party whose sole purpose is to take potshots at the administration.

If you follow the news, the results of the calls and meetings between administration officials and lobbyists stakeholders should begin to surface in a few weeks as details about the legislative agenda the president described in his speech bubble up.

And speaking of stakeholders, the ones who own shares in Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke are rejoicing today upon news of his confirmation by a Senate many members of which seem largely to despise him. He may not be much interested in creating jobs, but at least we know that all the money not being earned (and spent) by the unemployed won’t be eroded by inflation.

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