As if willed by nature, President Bush spoke to the Lebanese people through the favored American format of television; Bush bade Syria leave its old conquest and promised international funds to help Lebanon repair the land and credit abused by Damascus masters. He spoke of hope, liberty and peace. Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, made a very Soviet gesture in offering Syria, a brutal dictatorship, an anti-aircraft deterrent to punitive flyovers by aircraft from Israel, a liberal democracy. He spoke of the former country's military superiority and the apparently specious assurance that the missiles could not be kitbashed for terrorist use.

In the latter-20th Century few tyrants and thugs could find a better friend in the provision of war machinery than the Soviet Union. The Kalashnikov automatic rifle has become something of an unbounded symbol for rule by force, found in the goosestepping ranks of tinpot despot armies, equatorial street gangs and terrorist groups of all banner and size. Every major enemy the United States has faced in combat since the Second World War wielded Red Army hardware, including Afghanistan's Taliban and Iraq's Ba'athists. As a consequence, Washington's new allies in the Afghan National Army and the Iraqi Security Forces walk alongside their mutinational colleagues with the same weapons as both the old dictatorship and their terrorist enemies. Iraq has received small infusions of American technology. Afghanistan, too:

The Afghan National Army is getting a new look over the next few months. As a result of a recent equipment donation, they will appear a little less Soviet and a little more like their Coalition partners. The ANA recently took delivery of 10 M113A2 armored personnel carriers from the United States at Camp Pol-e-Charkhi, on the outskirts of Kabul. This was the first shipment of vehicles with more to follow.

Lt. Col. David Braxton, logistics operations chief at the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan, said, "Based on the force structure designed for Afghanistan's internal threat, armored personnel carriers were identified as a requirement for the Afghanistan National Army. The U.S. M113A2s are an excess defense article, which allows them to be donated. Given the performance and popularity of the M113s around the world, it is an excellent match for the ANA's APC requirement."

Most American weapons are fired in the name of liberty — the fit is perfect.