A higher employment rate is a lot more effective of a weapon to combat terrorism than using drones to bomb every suspected militant's home. The military solution towards battling terrorism therefore must be followed by a civilian solution to rebuild the country and confidence.

The problem of course is that the military solution is dismantling any good will which the civilian solution has generated.

Actually it is 30 years, not 10 years, that we've been intervening and fighting in Afghanistan. And a good book for understanding the first 20+ years is Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars".

I take away two things from the 30 years of experience:

1. Our global imperial ambitions now coincide with a huge establishment for which war is very profitable, regardless of win or lose, whatever those terms may mean. And as typical imperialists, we have disdain for those whom we claim to be helping.

2. Our leadership in Washington is fragmented, with high turnover, and in many cases does not want to operate on the basis of facts, but prefers various comfortable fictions.

"Osama bin Laden and his followers, of course, deserve no mercy," is the sort of thinking that creates war criminals. The Americans didn't charge into Germany and shoot every Nazi they could find, because to do so would have been evil.

Mercy is a fundamental human virtue. the practice of mercy, which in this context means treating people in accordance with international law, defines who we are. It isn't about what they are, it is about what we are. No cause must be allowed to degrade the morality of good men, because if it does, they are no longer good. If America doesn't follow those rules, it becomes evil itself.

Of course casualties from terrorism are acceptable, given the alternatives. The harsh truth is that in the context of all the killing that has occurred in history, one 9/11 in the US every year would be quite a low casualty rate per capita. It would also be around one tenth of the number of people killed on America's roads each year.

The UK took casualties from Northern Ireland for decades without going crazy and shooting everything that moved in Ulster, or invading the Republic of Ireland. How would America have reacted to the same sort of problem? Probably in a way that would have produced at least ten times the total casualties. Of course at the time, as a non-participant that supposedly loathes terrorism, it reacted by sympathising with the IRA, and allowing them to raise funds in America.

The problem is that America's experience of history is so limited, that it has no ability to put things into context. Is is an adolescent nation, and assumes that everything that happens to it is unique and incredibly important. In the context of history, three thousand deaths is no excuse for destabilising the world. 9/11 took place in the middle of a war (the second Congo War) which killed over a thousand times as many people, but which America and most of the rest of the world managed to ignore almost entirely.

I'm currently reading Bergen's "The Osama I Know" and find it quite interesting and well researched. I look forward to this book too.

The solution to indefinate detention requires no new law. All it needs is a determination that folks are POWs. We don't have to release them until the "war" is over and even then we don't have to turn them loose in the US, we repatriate them to their home country. Plenty of case law on that, follows UCMJ and totally within the Geneva Conventions, etc. The Bush admin had avoided the term so that they could torture these people. Now that we are not doing that we don't need to avoid the POW label.

My sense is that Holbrooke's mission was doomed as soon as they pulled the Indo-Pak conflict out of his portfolio. If that conflict were to be settled, to which a reasonable agreement seems very doable (a dual soverenty arangment of the Kashmiri region or some sort of nominal independence) that would take away the desire of the Pak military & ISI to support Islamic militancy. I think everything in that region revolves around the Pakistanis fearing the Indians and doing all sorts of ultimately self-destructive things as a result of that fear.

Peter Begen has a serious conflict of interest. 9/11 made his career. He is, like so many of the other talking heads and spokespersons for the 'Establishmnet,' profiting from the continuing charade known as the 'War on Terror.' I am sick of it.

As of last year, current US spending related to the 'War on Terror' including future commitments, is now over 3 Trillion Dollars! (3 000 000 000 000). See the zeroes? How in God's name has chasing a few hundred Al Queda 'terrorists' resulted in the spending of so much money? Money that's being borrowed from China?!

The response to terrorism has the unique characteristic of feuling the problem it pruports to address. It's a perfect circle, generating massive benefits for a few people while the rest of us must pick up the tab.

Get your heads out of your asses America! Between this out of control expenditure and the bailout of Wall Street and other corporate crooks, you are guaranteed 50 years of massive tax increases that will be paid for by cutting the spending NECESSARY to sustain a middle class. Healthcare? HA! Social Security? Don't make me laugh. Proper treatment of returning soldiers? I will promise you, that spending is going, going, gone!

So the next time you see a homeless Veteran begging for change, think about Peter Bergen's boyish face as he delivers the message: Be Afraid! Be VERY affraid!

Either you are an Establisment wolf or a mindless, dumbed down, unemployed and terrified sheep.

You decide.

Yup, I'm angry. Didn't do much for my letter. Correction is to the 4th paragraph.

Get your heads out of your asses America! Between this out of control expenditure and the bailout of Wall Street and other corporate crooks, you are guaranteed 50 years of massive tax increases to cover a staggering debt while the spending NECESSARY to sustain a middle class disappears.Healthcare? HA! Social Security? Don't make me laugh. Proper treatment of returning soldiers? I will promise you, that spending is going, going, gone!

I don't mind restating the point.

US lost in Afghanistan the day Bush allowed Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

US deliberately ignored Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

As Afghan President Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/2010 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

Even Afghanistan’s national security advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta has asked a similar question in a Washington Post article on 8/23/2010: “While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor (Pakistan) continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified? Despite facing a growing domestic terror threat, Pakistan “continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and Al Qaeda. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure “requires confronting the state of Pakistan that still sees terrorism as a strategic asset and foreign policy tool”.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

For some diabolical reason, Gates, Mullen, Petraeus & Company has split the Taliban into the Afghan and Pakistani parts even though they are two peas of the same pod. The US military is going after the Pakistani Taliban, while it encourages the Pakistani intelligence to continue to shelter the entire top Afghan Taliban leadership in Baluchistan province. Mullah Muhammad Omar and other members of the Taliban's inner shura (council) have been ensconced for years in the Quetta area.

As General McChrystal reported in his assessment of August, 2009 to the President: ‘The Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.

However US drones have targeted militants in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), but not the Afghan Taliban leadership operating with impunity from Baluchistan. US ground-commando raids also have spared the Afghan Taliban's command-and-control network in Baluchistan.

For ignoring Pakistani duplicity, US deserves to be duped by Pakistan.

With an ally like Pakistan, US Afghan war was doomed to fail from the very beginning.

I've read everything I could print out of Bergen's from the New America Foundation and I don't think he would have much to to say in a book, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, there are a lot more reliable "experts" whose decades long intimate knowledge is far more reliable, in my opinion and I choose reading their works rather than Bergen's. Bergen's claim to fame is an interview with binLaden. I suggest people watch how "informative" it really was. As to the value of everything else of his I read I think it can all be summed up best in his performance in debate format supported by another non-substantive "expert" from the Petraeus Peanut Gallery of lovers of all wars on Muslims, Max Boot, debating against Mathew Hoh and Nir Rosen, two who really sought to know Afghanistan beyond the Petraeus military domestic psyops dribble. Watch the video, it speaks for itself:

http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/afghanistan/#dm-col-a

The following text:

"I happened to talk to the British official who interviewed absolutely everyone in the British Pakistani community about their co-religionists' role in the 7/7 London bombings. His bottom-line conclusion of their main motivation: "teenage rebellion gone ballistic." "

Would be funny if it wasn't maddeningly obtuse. A man who doesn't want to blame Islam for anything, talks to a man who represents an establishment incapable of admitting that Islam is to blame for anything, and gets a response which, while preposterous, is a version of what he wants to hear. He presents it as independent evidence.

Teenagers of all faiths and none rebel. 3% of young rebels in the UK not Muslim, but 100% of the young rebels who let off bombs are Muslim. Their religion has to have something to do with it.

ECONOMY can grow better in PEACE than in WAR. If this nine word sentence can be grasped by the LOVERS of good ECONOMY then everywhere everything will be just fine. So simple BUT so difficult to grasp and act on.

Bottom line is Taliban survived to fight another day because Bush allowed Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

And US military is continuing that Bush fallacy by allowing Mullah Omar to mount a successful Taliban insurgency from their hideouts previously located in Quetta, Baluchistan but now moved by Pakistani ISI to Karachi to escape possible US drone attacks on Quetta.

Tom Ricks issues a challenge for questions: I have one for him and Peter Bergen. It relates to US motivations for the Iraq war.

Reporting from Baghdad prior to the invasion for the news pages Wall Street Journal, I was acutely conscious that my efforts were completely overwhelmed by articles on the op-ed pages urging the US to go to war against Iraq. These were very often by leading Israelis: Ariel Sharon, Natan Sharansky, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert and so on. Indeed, Israel is one of the very few states in the world that actually shared the Bush administration idea that removing Saddam Hussein was a strategic priority.

As a motive for the Iraq war, Bergen primarily suggests, undoubtedly correctly, that President Bush wanted to do Iraq for the supposed "demonstration effect" it would have against terrorists everywhere (chiefly because of the supposed alliance between Saddam and Bin Laden, and the supposed Iraqi WMD). This is the ‘beat them and they’ll back off’ approach, well exemplified in that apparently home-grown and utterly implausible film, ‘The Hurt Locker’.

Bergen also cites Wolfowitz's claim as the tanks rolled towards Baghdad that the Iraq war would pay for itself, but doesn't mention any U.S. ambition to seize or control Iraqi oil interests. I think it may have played a role: one of my contacts tells friends he was escorted out of Cheney’s office for daring to suggest that an assault on Iraq would trigger civil war and would minimize any oil-field winning benefit for the U.S.; another listened to Chief of Staff Tommy Franks tell a New York business big shots’ dinner that he saw his mission in invading Iraq as clearing the way for them to come in as a second, profit-spinning wave.

But when I remember the atmosphere in 2002, I can’t forget the pressure from Israeli leaders, and Israel’s close allies in the US, for an Iraq war. So, Washington experts, please tell us: compared to the domestic dynamics, did Israeli thinking have any weight?

What I remember was Israelis saying that Iran was the long-term threat in the region, not Iraq.

But at any rate, I don't think Israel loomed that large in the Washington discussion. It was a screwy, panicky time. And once the vice president said there was "no doubt" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the discussion was pretty much over.

Best,
Tom

You can only "win" a war if the enemy is readily identifiable. War is a profitable business for the MIC - as DDE warned everyone about in his last speech. While 9/11 rightfully angered the American public and created a blood lust for revenge, anyone who thinks the war in Afghanistan is really about fin din bin Laden and beating the Taliban has their head firmly planted where the sun don't shine. Just like Iraq where the war was really about oil (and GWB one-upping his old man) Afghanistan is all about strategic resources and keeping them out of the hands of China. In the case of Afghanistan, aside from the trillion dollar mineral surprise suddenly "discovered" late last year, there's the need for transporting Caspian see natural gas (say hello to BP) across Afghanistan and into Pakistan then India, keeping it out of the control of China and Russia. When the Taliban didn't play ball with the western oil companies 9/11 provided the necessary cover for ousting them and starting the deal over again. Read about the TAPI (trans-Afghanistan pipeline) project's history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

let's also not forget that a terrorist is anyone the current government says it is.

Consider the affect Command exerts on the intel product it wants delivered. Not only is the intel collector required to structure the raw data into a framework Command can digest, the intel collector is pressured into providing Command with a product that pleases Command enough to consider promoting the intel collector up the food chain. The consequence is Command understands a conflict only through a mythology woven with nuggets of truth, nuggets that can be independently verified through other channels. The story has to ring true, providing explanations for the variables in question, but the intel is disconnected from reality. [Think Zeus and other explanations for natural phenomenon.]

Now consider the Afghan Conflict: Bergen has his story, the Pentagon has their story, and a Pashtun teenager has his. Whose story provides a better explanation for the day-to-day engagements? Whose myth has a better chance of influencing in-theater actors? A typical serviceman barely knows why he is fighting in the first place. The pashtun teenager is probably more confident with his myth even if he has been lied to by his elders with a story unsupported in empirical fact.

Our myth has to not only be compatible with the enemy's myth, our myth has to subvert the enemy's myth, deconstruct the enemy's myth, and replace the narrative with a truth that allows the enemy to put down his weapon. Terrorism is completely alien to the people we are engaging. A sovereign Afghanistan without terrorist actors is possible but it must be coded in a language that can be understood. This is not Psy-ops, it is engaging with what makes a human being do what he does, fear what he does, and live the way he lives.

Peter, I don't think 2008 is the right time to judge the "catch and release" question for it is an exceptional period. The crux of my point in my essay was that the prisoner releases finally were OK after the Sunni Awakening because the tribes had turned against Al-Qaida. So the released fighters, largely nationalists anyway, laid down their arms when they got out. Certainly General Stone should be credited for recognizing this shift and for accelerating the prisoner releases in 2008.

Having said that, before the Sunni Awakening, the revolving door into and out of the prison system resulted in more American deaths. The points you raised, to me, are failures to properly vet detainees and run the detention system which is what I was getting after. And, I would note, it doesn't matter as much if detainees are radicalized if they are prisoners of war and kept in jail.

If the Sons of Iraq didn't do our dirty work, we would not have achieved what we have in Iraq. Moving forward to Afghanistan, I think that if we kept all the jihadists in jail, then we could make headway with the security situation, potentially broker deals with the tribes, decouple Al-Qaida from the Taliban, and only then release prisoners once the tribes are ready to receive them.

My $.02

First,

A return of the Taliban to power would prove a disastrous event for Afghans. Yet I'm at a loss to explain how Americans as yet unborn are responsible for preventing this. I say as yet unborn because the current generation of American adults is unwilling to pay for these wars. If Afghans are unwilling to defend themselves against the Taliban, I don't know why the world community is obliged to provide them with defense, in many cases against their own kinsmen. Inexcusable amounts of money have been siphoned off from foreign aid by corrupt Westerners and Afghans. That said, societies in far worse straights, with far less help, have, in the past, defended themselves and fought for their own rights. I must agree with Mr. Pope, to what extent do the goals of rural, male Pashtuns differ from the Taliban? Are we fighting a bunch of Islamist maoists on the behalf of a more traditional, but almost as oppressive, gerontocratic, patriarchal system? All this tea-drinking with maliks, somehow, doesn't quite jive with talk of female empowerment.

Regarding a victory for radical Islamists, the US has little to complain about that post Afghan-Soviet War and the Balkans, we certainly aided and abetted Osma et al. But a victory for radical Islam would not prove an existential threat to the US.

The biggest issue is the blow to US prestige, and, potentially, the status quo. That's really what matters for most thinkers and policy makers. Ideology, institutional loyalties, Afghan women, national mythos, careers, and investments, in no certain order, all stand to suffer if the Taliban would come back to power. But I ask, could they control the country? Really?

There are some quotes which I am not sure belongs to whom but are perfectly relevant to USA policy matrix:
"Ideologies can never be defeated by use of physical force."
"Don't fight an ideological enemy if you don't have a superior ideology."
Probably Toynbee said a very interesting thing which I would slightly rephrase in my own words: "The on lesson which we learnt from history is that we never learn from history."
All these quotes perfectly applies to USA. USA is fighting a force which although has not a very superior ideology but its ideology is superior to that of US. US perceives itself to be the liberator of Kuwait but most Muslim see US as a crusading force occupying gulf for oil and protection of Israel. With the same liberating sentiments USA invaded Iraq and the result is in front of us Al-qaeda has very intelligently (although at a great cost of Muslim blood transformed America into an imperialistic power obsessed with insecurity and becoming a sort of Nazi state). The measures adopted by USA in the name of security and terror threat are in sharp contrast with the liberal values preached by the west. America is no more a land of free but terror hyped state. USA has to only blame itself and its policies for this type of a situation. Due to the arrogance of power Americans see only a military solution for most of the problems. A-Qaeda is no more an Osama bin laden organization rather it has transformed into a much wider concept including sentiments of hate against the west especially USA, coupled with religious sentiments and a motivation of revenge. I recall a video seeing an eleven years Iraqi child weeping and saying "look USA has destroyed our country and when we grow we would God willing destroy America". So you don't have to blame Osama bin Laden because George Bush has done a much better job than him for recruiting a complete new generation . That is the reason I cannot agree at all with Blake Hall quoting Bergen: "Al-Qaeda todays faces an existential threat."
Blake also says:
"But it leaves me with the aching realizations that maybe we did not need to suffer as much as we have and that more suffering is ahead." I think he is wrong because the seeds of hate and revenge which were sowed by Bush have still to show up the complete "benefits" or consequences.
I don't agree with Bergen assertion that coming back of Taliban would be a complete fiasco. I think Afghanistan would be in a much better state under Taliban, than what it is today.
Another point which is wrongly quoted by Bergen is bringing all the militant organizations under al-Qaeda like LET. He must know that LET is a Salfi inspired militant organization while Taliban are from Deoband school of thought who are not comfortable with each other. According to one of my source even LET had offered to fight the TTP in tribal areas once the wave of suicide bombing were sweeping across Pakistan but was turned down due to fear that the tribal areas could become a lot messier in such a scenario. So it is wrong to group all militant organisations under the banner of Al-Qaeda. They are different and share different ideologies.
I almost agree with Hugh Pope on all the points except for one. Some how I am addicted to Bernard Lewis because while sharing a totally different ideology, I completely respect him. I think he is honest and straight forward. I rarely misses his book on the shelf.
Shams Zaman Pakistan - smszmn72@yahoo.com

One invariably wonders if it’s that much fun reading a story whose end you know because the author constantly repeats it. And then is it worth reading the writings of someone who went from media to propaganda?

I'm reading Scheuer's study of binLaden because this CIA specialist studied binLaden through intel and has provided his superiors with analysis constantly as a living. So, I’ll either learn something about binLaden or, if it’s that bad a book, I’ll see why we never got him

Now, hearing Bergen ONCE AGAIN introduced as having "interviewed binLaden," I can't help wondering how serious he is given that such an interview was useless, except for Bergen’s CNN career. Media people usually have a lot of experiences that are unique: Kunno Knobel's long stay with Viet Cong units, for example, was invaluable to mine. But that's not what Bergen did. It is what Nir Rosen did, yet Rosen was not asked to review the book. Why?

Then Bergen tells us what an encyclopedic tome he wrote until he realized that it's like reading Schopenhauer to us geese so he cut it down to fit our cerebral limits. Now that makes me suspect that Bergen is telling me: if you don't like my book it is because you're all birdbrains. Usually, only geniuses or birdbrains tell you that and he’s clearly no genius!

Well, after some re-thinking, I concluded that I must shell out the cash and time for the book. But I must admit that Bergen is his own worse enemy for he acts more like a professing professor talking down in affectation than a discussant trying to come to terms with an inscrutable reality perplexing us all. Koll also wrote a doorstopper book on Afghanistan and, compiling +s and -s one definitely get his money's worth from it. Koll never hawked his book as did Bergen. So I would suggest that rather than line up the confederates from his shop to ballyhoo his book, Bergen would do well to engage in more substantive discourse so people can conclude: clearly this guy's got no more answers than anyone else…but his style-- like Koll's-- could well make him a storehouse of perceptions and cognitions worth struggling with. After all, even if he had published his "door stop" book I would have read it, for we are losing this war and any perspective that's still positive in the end for sound reasons (as opposed to the BS of the Petraeus Peanut Gallery) is worth reading. It’s the least we could do given what our kids are doing out there convinced that they're doing it for us.

Next time, Mr. Bergen, don't come on like you're the Messiah. Be more of a journalist like Koll instead of the chief of a gang of hawkers and we who deeply care will take you far more seriously. So, I will indeed buy and read your book and WILL INDEED confront you with my impressions, Mr. Bergen, if it’s clear that you really tried to be helpful. The reason is simple: I'm trying to find a way out of defeat, destruction and exsanguinations for our nation. Having survived 9/11, I’d rather not see a repeat of Vietnam blunders right to our running out. I pray you make a good case, not just a Petraeus Peanut Gallery one.

One should never judge a book by its cover, nor a writer by his/her affectations. Bergen may be a rather non-substantive debater but today I saw him interviewed by Travis Smiley and he struck me as a man who is genuinely concerned and who devoted his life to this issue. The book is clearly a struggle rather than a harangue-- as, alas, are many of his performances. Truth is he is trying to see this nightmare for what it is and to take the reader on his strenuous journey.

I cannot agree with him on much, but can say with certainty from reading parts of his book, that he is as honorable a searcher for truth as is Scheuer. Both men are Americans struggling with the issue of terrorism and how America MUST deal with it. As a survivor of 9/11, this book, unlike Bergen's previous works, makes me feel that, like us incidentally caught up in a horrible historic even, he seeks to understand it and then set things right. As I said, I disagree with much of what he wrote; yet, HIS BOOK NEVER DID ANYTHING BUT PROVOKE ME TO REVISIT MY VIEWS AND RETHINK THEM. Such men are rare, their sincerity and determination to understand contagious.

I retired from healthcare to meet the obligation I felt to write a history of the Vietnam War-- from the perspective of both Vietnamese sides as I got to see them…in a way that is fair to all the dead and forever maimed. On 9/11 I was on my way to pick up an order of books from the WTC Borders' bookstore that had just arrived. Obviously, my Vietnam obsession had to be laid aside in deference for all those who died in the WTC while I escaped (even though on crutches). I've developed, I think, a sixth sense for fellow travelers who are on the same quest to understand a tragedy they lived through and to pass on that understanding. Unlike Mr. Bergen, I suffer the extra rage that I despise Americans for disconnecting from the concern that obsesses both Mr. Bergen and me on grounds that "ain't my kid going to war," That, of course is not a productive emotional block. But when you see a shameless repeat of errors you suffered through, one generation later, you get enraged. As a result, I sought at the very least the teach-ins’ MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE at universities that we had during the Vietnam War. But now THERE IS NO DRAFT AS THEN so academics don't give a damn, only asking, as usual: what's in it for me?

Bergen is clearly not of that genre and I must beg his forgiveness for suspecting him. How a person writes usually makes obvious what drives him. Bergen is clearly an obsessive seeking both dialogue and the best answer. It remains for the rest of s not to confuse intensity with exhibitionism. He is very obviously not a Petraeus Peanut Gallery "expert" but rather a true searcher of truth. I can only hope he forgives me for misjudging him, should my past criticism have ever bothered him.