With the Taliban finally lowering the Talibanner and evacuating their last and best bastion (smile when you call them that) of Kandahar after three weeks of claims by the Northern Alliance and local Pashtuns that they were about to do so and claims by them that they would never do so, it looks as if the U.S. has shown once again that getting it angry is a very bad idea. The President declared V-A Day and sailors kissed nurses in Times Square (only this time they got kneed in the groin for it. Oh, and the sailors were female and the nurses male. Well, some of each were. Mix and match. It's New York.)

"It's definitely a victory for the U.S. and a confirmation of the validity of our principles," said a defense analyst as defense lay on his couch free associating about his childhood. "For a while, they kept announcing that Kandahar was about to fall the way that Saturday Night Live would announce week after week that Francisco Franco was still dead. But it finally has, so eat that, cynical liberal media. Concentrating on the high-tech bombing part, while we outsource the actual fighting to a loosely organized, morally dubious, and politically unreliable local ground force that can fight for remuneration and under conditions that Americans would never accept -- it definitely works. Call it sweatshop warfare." The U.S. has also been outsourcing to its Afghan allies such tasks as executing non-citizen prisoners after quick military "trials". "If two out of three Northern Alliance fighters think a guy is a foreign Taliban or Al Qaeda member, they shoot him without a lot of fuss or rules of evidence or danger to themselves. But soon, we'll be set up to do that, too," said a military spokesman.

But the U.S. was also sending in ground troops of its own. In a scene reminiscent of classic amphibious operations of the past, U.S. Marines splashed ashore at a beachhead in Afghanistan, after two months of special duty guarding the Interstate Highways of Hawaii, and with the support of ships from the Luxembourg and Swiss Navy. Inevitably, worries increased about possibility of U.S. casualties, which the Pentagon dismissed just as casually. Said one Pentagon source, "When [Secretary of Defense] Rumsfeld gleefully predicted that 'lots and lots of people will get killed', he didn't mean by the Taliban. They're basically finished and can't hurt us. No, all of our casualties will come from our own weapons. The U.S. is so strong that only WE can hurt ourselves, just as new statistics show that we got OURSELVES into recession six months before the terrorists tried to cripple us on September 11." The source noted that inflicting "friendly fire" deaths and injuries on our own troops would help undercut the complaints of carnage among civilians from U.S. bombs both errant and properly directed, and show how fair and evenhanded the U.S. really is.

The war definitely seems to be winding down. Deserters are coming back out of the desert, hoping to get their desserts (or at least a bit of the main course.) Some prisoners in an old fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, no doubt inspired by the recent film The Last Castle, rebelled against their guards; others prepared for their military trials by practicing shouting "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" (Whereas some of the troops to whom they had surrendered, who had been exposed to a better class of movies, decided to shoot their captives in order to get to act out Breaker Morant.) The political operatives of Al Qaeda, with an affinity for bearded leaders defeated by George W. Bush, sought jobs with Al Gore; others decided to continue the fight against all that is human as guerrillas (though their new bearded leader, Thade, appears to be a chimpanzee.) Meanwhile, the various anti-Taliban groups, the more modern of whose leaders look like members of the Beatles circa 1967, celebrated the return of television, banned as blasphemous by the Taliban, to Kabul with continuous broadcasts of new shows like "Faction Feud" and "Tribal Tribunal". Diplomats returned to Kabul as well, with various countries all trying to be the first to show the flag and claim the glory; but when Russian personnel, racing in like Marchand to Fashoda or their grandfathers to Berlin, came back to their former embassy, they found it occupied by thousands of Afghans. The Russians promptly declared themselves "holy warriors" and called on former Communists of the world to help them liberate their territory. And in newly surrendered Kandahar, the jubilant victors sang with minor phonetic alterations that song by Bill Harley that now you won't be able to get out of your head either any more than Stoler can.

In a welcome end to another long-running and costly conflict where one side, though taken prisoner, vowed it would never surrender, teachers and the Board of Education settled their strike in Freehold, Monmouth County, New Jersey.

However, in the midst of their joy, Americans began to realize that victory in Afghanistan is not black and white. U.S. leaders and pundits have started to notice that "defeated" Afghans tend not to go home disarmed, but to integrate themselves into the forces they were fighting the day before. (This way everyone gets to be on the winning side. It builds self-esteem.) But if they sense an opportunity, they're glad to turn on their allies, whether new or ancient. No one is particularly devoted to any cause other than staying alive, and you really can't count on anyone doing what he says he'll do if it doesn't turn out to be in his interest, and you can't know that until you've actually risked trusting him and gone into battle and seen whether he'll stand beside you, turn his back, or stab yours. It's a sort of Hobbesian "state of nature", or law of the jungle, where force is the only ruler and the evolutionary imperatives of staying alive and reproducing the only goals. But in that respect, it's much more in keeping with the analog nature of the Universe in which we live. Because, being smaller than and subsets of the Universe, we can't process information faster than it does, we can never actually predict what is going to happen, until it does happen. We can't step in the same river twice, and everything is constantly changing, including the way things change. We try to digitize, quantize, classify, hierarchize, the infinitely long real numbers and totally unique matrices that really describe things, but to the extent these approximations are useful, they are also inaccurate. We expect things to stay what they are when, as Churchill said about war, everything is always on the move everywhere. Why should things stay where they are when there might be someplace better? Doesn't everything seek to improve its advantage at the risk of worsening it? For years, as we went from Revolutionary underdogs to status-quo superpower, America has played by digital rules and expected its enemies to do the same. Those defeated according to these rules are supposed to accept defeat and stay defeated. But the North Vietnamese and Vietcong didn't, and eventually won, and we'll see what happens with the Afghans. Welcome to the age of analog warfare.

As the hunt on the ground for terrorist leader Usama bin Laden intensifies, all indications are that he is far above it, or under it. Intelligence reports place him and his cave and tunnel crowd deep within a high mountain at Tora Bora. "I don't know where they get these names," said a U.S. spokesman. "Rhyming words really sound silly, Dr. Seussian. 'Tora tora' would be OK, like 'Walla Walla', or that movie about the Pearl Harbor attack. But we're pretty sure he's there, in his cave."

Bin Laden would not confirm that he is in a cave, but complained, "What would be wrong with that? You Americans keep harping on this cave thing. But after all, Dick Cheney is being kept in an underground cave. Why can't you say that I, USAMA, am at an undisclosed secure location? Bears live in caves. It's not like working in a coal mine. It's an adventure, like tunnelling through space and time. I like to think of ours as a grotto. (And not a grotty one.) In fact, it's a lot like that of Hugh Hefner, another aging rich self-styled revolutionary who wears a robe and has several female partners at once. And we've even got a wall map of the world just like the one on Weekend Update.

Bin Laden seems oddly unconcerned about the apparent turning of the tide against him. Fed by his and his associates' unproved claims, rumors abound that he possesses chemical or even nuclear weapons. Some people dismiss such tales. After all, they argue, every indication is that Bin Laden has no conscience, or fear either of world opinion or of dying himself from backfiring or backlash, so if he really wants to destroy us, he wouldn't hesitate to use whatever he has; his supporters would probably applaud him all the more. And why tip his hand to us by mentioning his weapons without using them, thus losing the element of surprise? Unless he thinks the terror will do more damage than the attack? Or that they will really have some deterrent value against U.S. use of unconventional arms? But the U.S. has no apparent intention of using anything but ordinary explosives and guns. You want to hear Stoler's theory? Bin Laden has the Ring, the One Ring to Rule Them All. He sits in his cave like Gollum, magically invisible, slobbering over and doting on "the Precious". Which would explain the presence in the region of U.S. Special Forces with rather small builds and extremely hairy bare feet.

For instance, they started growing heroin poppies again after all the years they were Talibanned. When Stoler wants to cultivate a heroine, he talks to brave women like Beth and Oshi (maybe the Afghans could clone them?) But at least boys can resume their traditional pastime of kite fighting, and after a long time during which the the expression "Go fly a kite" had, as for us, an unpleasant connotation, it now means "Have some outdoor fun!" instead of "Go do something that will get you beaten and put in prison by the religious authorities!" And the women could finally throw off their colorful, distinctive burqas and dress completely in uniform black like stylish free females in San Francisco, London, and Paris! Even their beds threw off their spreads to proclaim their liberation.

However, as a special service to our readers, STOLERN MOMENTS presents:

In a move that should give Ken Starr enough to keep him occupied and fascinating the country for the rest of his life, Justice Department investigators have "invited", in much the same way, and with as appreciative a reception, as the Selective Service System would "invite" eighteen-year olds in the 60's to join the big party over in Southeast Asia, some five thousand young men of Middle Eastern origin to tell the government whatever they might happen to know about terrorism. Since the overwhelming majority of these people probably know nothing about terrorism, it is to be hoped that they will at least add to the Administration's practically negligible knowledge of the non-terroristic aspects of the Muslim world, and maybe a few will even volunteer to be the translators so desperately needed by the CIA and armed forces. One would hope the ones who really are involved with terrorism or considering it will at least realize that they are being watched and desist from their plots and or leave this country, which will help with terrorism prevention but hurt the investigation of the Sept. 11 acts. How often the short and long terms are in opposition. It's not clear if the government will insist on the principle of Information Retrieval Charges, as in the movie Brazil, with those asked to help the government obtain information also being invited to help pay the cost of worming it out of them.

Meanwhile, Attorney Generalissimo John Ashcroft also learned what it was like to be "invited" to participate in a government probe, as he was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning some of the Administration's more Constitutionally worrisome measures to combat terrorism. Some of his former colleagues, while gloating that they had not lost elections to dead people, were apparently unaware that the "general" in Ashcroft's title is an adjective modifying the noun "attorney" (though, unusually for English, placed behind it), not the noun itself, modified by attributive nouns such as "brigadier" or "lieutenant", and insisted on addressing him by it alone as if he were indeed a military officer in charge of martial law. Others engaged in mutual clubby congratulatory ego-fondling with the witness, and exchanged jokes and laughter with him, so much so that Stoler began resentfully to wonder why they could get away with such silliness yet be taken somewhat seriously when he himself can't seem to. (That damn Shakespeare gets away with it too. But for George Lucas, it becomes a problem.) Still, there were a few good clashes; when liberal Democrats kept asking why, despite evidence of purchases by terrorists, the A.G. was so intent on preserving the sacrosanct privacy of gun sale records when he was willing to weaken other provisions of the Bill of Rights, you could almost hear him screaming, "Because this Administration is in the pocket of the NRA, you idiot! Charlton Heston elected us -- you think we're going to annoy him even in the slightest, most reasonable way? Forget it!" Far too much was heard from the Ranking Member, and not enough from a (Jeannette) Rankin member (though Maria Cantwell came close with her grown-up, real-world puncturing of one of Ashcroft's attempts at humor), or, for that matter, from English Beat member Ranking Roger.

Of course, Ashcroft continued to make no secret of his estimation that any critic of Administration policies might as well pick up an AK-47 (or a box cutter) and stand with the terrorists. Others, such as Second Lady Lynn Cheney, have compiled reports basically accusing academic dissidents of treason on the order of Guy Fawkes's. One professor singled out, for his comments on the sexual imagery of the Sept. 11 attacks, was George Lakoff of UC Berkeley, who Stoler hopes will, because of his greater fame take the heat off Stoler for expressing rather similar views. But not to worry; at this point, most of the true patriots' negative attention is going to Indian writer Arundhati Roy.

In a related development, plans for creating a brand new force of airport security guards are moving ahead apace. Well, actually, rather slowly, according to Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta. One problem is that it's so hard to rate the performance of defensive personnel. If they don't actually foil any plots by finding weapons in bags, and yet nothing bad happens, is it because of the guards? Guards don't actually produce anything, or generate income in any way. But then, as Adam Smith pointed out, armed forces in general are a "non-productive" drain on state resources. Unless we send them on raids to gather booty, though as is pointed out in the movie Erik the Viking, such activity can be so expensive, in equipment, for example, as not even to be self sustaining. Perhaps our security guards should start confiscating valuables to pay for their employment. Another use for the armed forces is to build roads, as in the Roman Empire, or operate factories, as in China today. Stoler doesn't yet have a solution to this problem, but he's hard at work answering the Defense Department's call for suggestions for terror fighting gadgets, and is fairly bursting with pride for the 1,047 letters he's already received in reply, each reading, "Aaaaaah...we'll keep this on file and get back to you on it."

As the war on terrorism moves into a new phase, the American news media are waging a war of their own, on language. Commented Stoler, "I'm no prescriptivist. I think it's beautiful that English constantly changes, by no plan. But I also think it's important to preserve the cause and effect principle in language, the mapping between signs and meanings that makes comprehension possible. And I can't stand repetition." He went on to cite some examples. "Every day, the news people say that our planes POUNDED Taliban positions. I guess they think this is more evocative than BOMBED, but just as you can get away with wearing the same thing day after day if it's ordinary, like a t-shirt and jeans, but if it's flashy, like a sequined dress, people will start to notice, you could use the word BOMBED repeatedly and it wouldn't be noticed, it would just be the default, but start repeating a fancier word, and you sound silly. (The same thing happened in 1999, when during the bombing of Serbia, we seemed to STEP UP our attacks every day.) If we really want varied words, why not ask the guys doing the TV sports roundup who come up with twenty different words for BEAT?"

Stoler also has problems with other media tropes. "Why are Afghans with guns always FIGHTERS, never SOLDIERS? Why were they still the REBELS, or the OPPOSITION, when they had taken away most of the country from a group no one but Pakistan recognized as legitimate anyway? Why are situations FRAUGHT, but not WITH anything, like peril or danger? Are the Uzbeks and Pashtuns TRIBES, or ethnic groups DIVIDED INTO TRIBES AND CLANS? Why is this still AMERICA'S NEW WAR when it's pretty familiar by now? Why is Sheikh Abdul Omar Rahman, who is imprisoned in the U.S. for plotting the 1993 World Trade Center attack and whose son was recently captured in Afghanistan, always referred to as a 'BLIND Egyptian cleric'? They don't always refer to the leader of Hamas as PARALYZED. Now, I've basically come to accept NINE-ELEVEN as a fast phrase that covers the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania. But NINE-ONE-ONE is what you dial. You would never say 'SEPTEMBER ONE-ONE', would you?"

"And those announcers never get their emphatic contrasting stress right! If one side had five hundred wounded and the other, two hundred, you don't say, 'FIVE hundred on one side, and two HUNDRED on the other', because the hundred part stays the same and the contrast is how many hundreds! You say, FIVE hundred, and TWO hundred! Okay? AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?" he continued, using a lot of emphasis.

Finally, as a service to pop historians everywhere, Stoler has conveniently divided up the years of the last century into meaningful decades by natural boundaries. "Of course, time is totally analog, and each year slips smoothly into the next with no catastrophic breaks," he said. "Each year has as much in common with the previous as the next, and there are so many possible criteria for grouping. In music, for instance, the Eighties began in 1977 and ended in 1985. But historically, they began with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and the release of the hostages in 1981, and ended with the stock market crash and the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, or maybe the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Nineties ran from then to Sept. 11. The Sixties actually ran from the Kennedy assassination to Altamount and Kent State, at which point the Seventies began. The Forties actually ran until the Eisenhower Administration and the end of the Korean War. See the accompanying chart," he concluded, snapping his pen closed and pushing the napkin across the table.

Hey! George Bush! Ariel Sharon! If there's a problem you want to solve, don't send a message! Do something about it! And if you think you are sending a message by doing something, don't announce that that's what you are doing, because then the people you're trying to send a message to know you are just trying to send a message and not actually doing anything so they ignore your message! The anthrax letters weren't messages that whoever sent them could send anthrax. They were actually attempts to kill people! Don't send a message to Bin Laden that he has nowhere to hide by dropping bombs NEAR him! That's a waste! If he has nowhere to hide, find him and drop bombs ON him! If you just want to send a message, use the Information Superhighway as I'm doing!

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