The Machinery of Night

Pillock Update

Iain Murray links to this Guardian article advising anti-war types on how to contain "American fundamentalism". It's by Dan Plesch.

Cast your eyes back to my post on the consistently-egregiously-wrong "pillocks" who served the BBC as commentators in the early days of the Afghan war. Dan Plesch is Pillock-in-Chief. He was on the Beeb nearly every single day, had nothing good to say about the American military, was wrong about 80% of the time, and yet was invited back again and again without being asked to explain why he was wrong the last time. At first I didn't note his name, and kept thinking, "Isn't that the little dark-haired guy who was so totally, irredeemably wrong two days ago?" Yep.

I was disturbed, when I first saw him, that he belonged to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. I know next to nothing about this organization, but it sounded like a genuine serious organization, and not some ad hoc loony think-tank. (Apparently it is genuine and serious, and Plesch's position on it makes Murray grumpy.) There were uncomfortable days when I wondered if a senior British defense analyst might not know something I didn't know about the capabilities of the US armed forces. Whew! Guess not.

His---obstructionism, I guess might be the word for it---on the BBC seems due to his own political agenda, and not driven by whatever actual facts he studies. This wasn't obvious in his BBC interviews, but it sure looks likely, given his clear stance in this Guardian article.