Rule No. 1: Stop digging.

One of the stalwarts of the Free Press gave Raila Odinga sage advise the other day: when in a hole, stop digging. It seems that he took the advise and slow-rolled back his "Dialogue-or-else" stance that had so driven certain special members of the Jubilee to apoplectic rage. Now he has a set of "thirteen demands" and no timeframe within which they must be met. If Raila Amolo Odinga can revise his targets and the means of hitting them, surely even the epically thin-skinned security establishment can do so, never mind the wailing-louder-than-the-bereaved by some of the I-will-shout-you-down-brigade in the Senate and national Assembly.

Lamu County, especially the zone around Mpeketoni, is a war zone in all but name. It takes a special kind of boldness for the attackers to keep hitting the same area for three weeks in row, especially as there are police stations, GSU camps, KDF camps and, allegedly, secret US special forces camps too. The boldness of the brigands was demonstrated when they struck on the same nights that the Cabinet Secretary of the Interior and the Deputy President visited the zone. This is cocking a snook at the government with impunity.

After each Lamu atrocity, the President, representatives of the National Executive and know-it-alls from Parliament have promised to "leave no stone unturned" and "to pursue the killers until they are caught." But after insinuating that rather than the incompetence of the security establishment it is the dastardly evil genius of the opposition that is to blame, we know that we have reached the end of all reasonable and rational consideration of facts. It is time that the court jesters in the Jubilee court did what court jesters of old would have done - whisper in the king's ear that he got it spectacularly wrong.

There are some Senators who will make witty debators, though spectacularly uninformed and unintelligent. Kenyans are not idiots and of course they remember that Raila Odinga, James Orengo, Dalmas Otieno, Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, Otieno Kajwang and Amos Wako were key members of the Grand Coalition and that they were responsible for some of the decisions that have come to bite us in the us: the appointment of Mr Kimaiyo as Inspector-General, Mr Muhoro as Director of Criminal Investigations and Mutea Iringo as Principal Secretary in charge of internal security. But that is not reason to say that the buck does not stop with the Commander-in-Chief; he has the power to say that his predecessors were wrong and that a new strategy is needed. In this Lamu war, the President is in a hole; it is time he told his most bootlicking-ish acolytes to stop digging.

Even if Mr Kenyatta does not dismiss Mr Kimaiyo, Mr Muhoro or Mr Iringo, he must admit to himself that the current strategy is not working if for three weeks despite the attention of all security agencies in Mpeketoni, Kenyans continue to be murdered in the dead of night. I have no doubt that if the Commander-in-Chief wanted something to get done, he would not need to lift his voice. Anyone who defied him would feel the full force f the weight of the Presidency bearing down on them and they would either crumble, or leave. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga are alike in many respects; but Kenyatta the Younger could learn a think or two about bootleg turns and confound the enemies of the peoples of Mpeketoni.