The Ghost in the Machine possible connection.
Kash also misspelling gaurd.
PresidentT mentioned Jonathan Steele at the SAS rally yesterday!
Afghanistan, Jonathan Steele writes in his new book, is full of ghosts. There are the ghosts of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and their numerous successors – invaders who were able to conquer the place, but could not hold it. "Ghosts" is the word the Russians used for the mujahideen guerrillas who merged with the peaceful population during the day and struck during the night – who fought the Russians in the 1980s and are fighting us today.
Steele has covered events in Afghanistan for many years, and he skewers with palpable glee the myths and half-truths that are peddled by politicians, generals, official spokesmen, and too many commentators. Perhaps the most damaging in his eyes is the myth that the destruction of the Taliban would eliminate the threat from the Arab terrorists who felled the twin towers in New York. That myth has made it all but impossible for us to construct a sensible strategy for Afghanistan.
And so he now writes with increasing despair about the failing efforts of the United States and its allies to build a viable Afghan state out of the physical, institutional and human rubble left behind by three decades of civil war and foreign intervention. A central theme is "the similarity of the Soviet and US interventions and the lessons that ought to be learned". In spite of failing to defeat the mujahideen, Steele writes, the Soviet leadership "had the sense to change course".
When the Russians invaded, Afghanistan had a fairly coherent state apparatus, built up since the end of the 19th century, and an economy which, though very backward, was beginning to develop thanks to American and above all Soviet aid. Most modern Afghan leaders were reformers, but their attempts to change Afghan society, especially when it came to the treatment of women, often met with bloody resistance.
Guardian Reporter Johnathan Steele
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/25/ghosts-of-afghanistan-jonathan-steele