When the going is tough, stay calm and cheat
The British website Kings of War has an absolutely wizardly idea to solve the Afghan problem; peacefully phone bomb them.
Fill Afghanistan with smartphones, provided free for the recipient providing a biometric registration (so we who who has them). Since they're digital, Echelon and similar systems can automatically listen in and flag conversations with news about Bad Things and Bad People.
It plays to our strength, not our weakness (our concern for the lives of our troops) and also provides us a propaganda channel to the rest of the population, and if it helps us liberalize Afghanistan, all the better.
Fill Afghanistan with smartphones, provided free for the recipient providing a biometric registration (so we who who has them). Since they're digital, Echelon and similar systems can automatically listen in and flag conversations with news about Bad Things and Bad People.
It plays to our strength, not our weakness (our concern for the lives of our troops) and also provides us a propaganda channel to the rest of the population, and if it helps us liberalize Afghanistan, all the better.
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