Sometimes you have to laugh

Sometimes the world is so absurd that you just have to laugh.

Taliban slick propaganda confronts US from the BBC.

The second front in the conflict between the Taliban and their enemies in government is the war of words - and in recent months that battle has intensified.

The Taliban have a sophisticated public relations machine which is making it harder for governments and their international allies to win the ever-important propaganda war.

The insurgents are keen to exploit a sense of alienation among people, fostered by "bad governance" and "mistakes" made during military operations.

Civilian casualties in American air strikes and the violation of local traditions including house and personal searches create an atmosphere where Taliban propaganda can take root.

Wow. The only possible response is laughter. The sort of laughter that is a roll on the floor clutching your gut because you are laughing so hard kind of laughter. Are they kidding?

Of course, to get the joke, you have to realize what a giant, slick propaganda machine that the Pentagon has had running for the past eight years. Swarms of PR officers, entire units designed to manipulate public opinion, outside contractors paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to run PR campaigns. Heck, in Fox News they've got an entire TV network creating and broadcasting propaganda. And since CNN always seems to try to out-Fox Fox, there's more like two major 24 hour worldwide networks doing nothing but creating slick propaganda to support the continuation of the US killing people in Afghanistan.

Then, if you weren't laughing already, that last sentence has to set you off. You see, according to the propaganda of the west, its not the fact that we keep setting off bombs in their country that kill innocent civilians that turns the people against us. Instead, according to the British propaganda broadcasting company, its the slick propaganda of the Taliban that turns people against us.

Yep, it couldn't be the fact that they had to dig into the rubble of a blown up building to find the bits and pieces of what was left of their loved ones.

Oops, I think I mis-spoke. From this piece, it looks like you can add the BBC to the list and say there are three 24 hour worldwide 'news' networks creating slick propaganda to support the war in Afghanistan.

Note: I haven't searched, but this seems like a fairly common story. If there is ever any sympathy in the world for the victims of American and British bombs, its pretty normal for the propagandists of the west to try to explain this away by saying those poor deluded folk are misguided by effective enemy propaganda. Sounds very familiar to me.