Lots Going On

There has been a lot going on lately, hasn't there?

In Afghanistan...
- The Taliban attack the Kabul Supreme Court building, killing 17 innocent civilians.
- America announces the opening of peace talks with the Taliban at their office in Qatar.
- The Taliban attack Bagram, killing 4 Americans.
- Karzai announces there will be no peace talks with the Taliban, not because of the attacks in Kabul or Bagram but because of the way the Americans announced the talks (not letting him take the lead) and that the Taliban tried to give its office in Qatar the name of the previous government in Afghanistan when it was under Taliban rule.

Elsewhere...
- Pres. Obama sends Marines to the Jordan-Syria border and publicly announces military support to non-jihadist rebels...but one rebel group dominates the landscape in Syria, the Al Nusra Front...who has pledged its allegiance to Al Qaeda and its global leader, al-Zawahiri. 
- Turkey has been covertly supplying arms to the Al Nusra Front for months.
- Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq announces a merger with the Al Nusra Front.
- Iran elects a new president, Hassan Rouhani, and the western media are eager to label him "moderate".  But...as Joel Rosenberg and others point out, he has already ruled out a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment program; he chaired Iran's National Security Council between '89 and '05, meaning he was at the head table when Iran masterminded the '94 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people...and the Khobar Towers in '96, killing 19 U.S. Airmen; he approved of hiding Iranian atomic work...and on and on.
- Turkey's authoritarian prime minister ordered a brutal police response to a peaceful protest in Istanbul's main square, causing things to spin out of control.  The people were protesting his plan to destroy the last green space in Istanbul and convert it into an Ottoman-style barracks as well as a new mosque.

On a more personal level...
- I am helping Afghan prosecutors convict and sentence Taliban terrorists...who may eventually be legitimized by the governments of Afghanistan and the United States...which would probably result in most being released from prison.