U.S. Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment unload a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter in Now Zad, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10, 2008. The Marines are assigned to a reinforced light infantry battalion. DoD photo by Cpl. Jason T. Guiliano, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released)From State Failure Blog:
It was long ago now when I first read David Axe's dispatches from somewhere. At the time he was in Uruzgan, and I was interested in reading anything coming from there in those days. He created a bit of a storm when he once claimed that Dutch soldiers were successfully attacked by a VBIED in Tarin Kowt last June because a vehicle's crew from their convoy stopped beside a tree to pick some berries (in actuality the vehicle's antenna was stuck in the branches of the tree). So even though I found his dispatches interesting, I didn't develop much of a liking for his analysis.
Nowadays he's covering the piracy in Somali seas. You HAVE TO read Axe's article at the World Politics Review to understand more of the phenomenon. He isn't shy to talk about the real roots of piracy, which go back to the times when Somali fish stocks were plundered by all sorts of countries' ships that thought they had a free ride in Somali seas. But, as you would expect from a war reporter, his narrative is of course not a naive, popular-history version. He portrays the ongoing piracy in detail, its increasing sophistication, seen, for instance, in the use of "motherships," that make it possible for pirates to get closer to even protected shipping lanes and within striking range of desirable targets.
Read more ....
My Comment: This is a good post from My State Failure Blog. He provides a slightly different perspective on the Somali pirate situation (by using a post from David Axe), and extrapolates it to Afghanistan. This is a good read and summary ..... (I know because I read a lot, and I know a lot) .... but I learned a few things from this post.