This is basically a re-post of some of my comments on this subject in the post at The Argus, written after reading Glenn and Arthur's posts.

Both the Chrenkoff and the Hippercritical pieces fisk The Independent's article which "gleefully" focuses on MSF's criticism's of the US. But reading this New York Times piece, one finds more nuanced reasoning. And indeed, reading the statement at the MSF site, one gets a fuller impression of the reasons for the pullout. It's not great, still implying responsibility for the US, but on the whole it provides much more balance than indicated by The Independent's headline. The Independent basically took the one paragraph they found convenient and wrote their story around it. No surprise. I'll get back that a little later.

MSF [Medicins sans Frontieres] says that "a Taliban spokesperson claimed responsibility for the murders and stated later that organizations like MSF work for American interests," and calls this, in its concluding paragraph a "false allegation." But it's not a false allegation. Any group that endeavors to make the living standard of average Afghans better without the Taliban is, in fact, working for American interests - whether they intend to or not.

Besides, the bad guys have been targeting all sorts of aid workers for a long time there. Nothing new, and nothing having to do with anyone mistaking MSF people for combatants. Remember? These are the worst of the worst bad-guys. They don't care. In fact, aid workers are tempting soft targets for them. They're killing people who are helping to set up the vote.

As many commenters have mentioned, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for the US. Always has been. Stay to the military mission and you're blamed for that (failing to bring Afghanistan out of the Middle Ages fast enough), risk your lives on humanitarian work as well and they still find a way to damn you - rather than the real murderers. And since when are army medics and aid workers any more legitimate targets than non-military? That's why they wear Red Crosses right? "Don't shoot me, I'm a medic." Nathan at the Argus is right to relate this to the Iraq/UN situation - the first thing I thought of. The UN refuses security and then blames the US when some fellows who didn't have the respect for the mission they thought they were due blew them to hell. Someone needs to remind these guys that the rules they think they operate under aren't as universal and respected as they seem to fantasize they are. That's a problem with the "Internationalist" mind-set. The rules only last as long as everyone agrees to them. As soon as they don't, then the only way to enforce them is with the gun.

Would groups like MSF complain less if the US were pacifying Afghanistan more forcefully? I doubt it. Somehow I feel that those on the Left who criticize the Administration's actions in Afghanistan aren't doing it because the Administration hasn't been forceful enough. I don't recall that Afghanistan was much of a haven for international aid organizations under the Taliban - and they were only suffered in so far as they were acceptable to THEM. Can we say that MSF was serving Taliban interests at that time? The US is doing what it can, also under difficult circumstances.

Oh, and may I point out that among all the carping in papers, especially Euro-Left papers like The Independent, about US actions in Afghanistan, that this was supposed to be the invasion that *didn't* squander all that so-called international good will we had after 9/11. You'll forgive me if I'm less than impressed with complaints about the Administration and their mishandling of all that pity.

There's a funny thing about pity. The strong and the proud aren't generally deemed worthy of it.

Where would you rather live? A nation which is capable and willing to separate out friend from foe, bringing destruction to the latter and a hand-up to the former, that is, somewhere strong and proud...or somewhere incapable or unwilling to respond to an attack - somewhere pitiful?

"International Good-Will." patooie