Remora

We should supplement yesterday's rattled post. Although it is good news that the Taliban is collapsing, it is good news with the smell of a corpse. In today's NYT,
David Rohde has written a grim account of the victory over the Taliban.

lede grafs:

"Near an abandoned Taliban bunker, Northern Alliance soldiers dragged a wounded Taliban soldier out of a ditch today. As the terrified man begged for his life, the alliance soldiers pulled him to his feet.

They searched him and emptied his pockets. Then, one soldier fired two bursts from his rifle into the man's chest. A second soldier beat the lifeless body with his rifle butt. A third repeatedly smashed a rocket- propelled-grenade launcher into the man's head."

Later on, Rohde goes for that small but telling little foreign correspondant flourish: in the abandoned Taliban encampment, there's a cooked goat's head on a wooden plate that's been hastily left behind. Shades of Scoop, E. Waugh's scathing novel about journalists on exotic binges.

So -- is the N.A. going to be as brutal as the Taliban? They are certainly going to be less organized. It would be easy to forecast, from the squabbling of their commanders right now, that civil broils loom. Still, the Taliban was a malign force, and we are happy they are dissolving.