Only a little while ago we were in tensions with the USSR. When they disintegrated, their former wards and satellites became independent to varying degrees. In fact, Afghans became completely independent, offering cowboy excess to anyone with more friends or bullets than the other guy. None from the community of real countries recognized any government there, and their isolation was increased by their actual, technical, geographic isolation. And they had no oil. They were a pretty serious bunch before that, and they’ve always been in that hyperbaric neighborhood. But without oil, or even apparently grass, our State Department mostly ignored them, after the late ’80s when we no longer needed to use them.
Thus, Afghanistan became the year 120 bce for almost everyone, while it became summer camp for a group of pretty sophisticated and modern religious psychopaths. They would establish a Nathaniel Hawthorne-era reality show with witches stoned instead of burned, while training and planning to attack the United States of America and its evil interests from the quiet of a cave lost among millions of acres of nothing but crag. This after decades of the USSR attempting to govern them while the USA funded all insurgents- effectively training the counselors who would run the camps. Who goes to a camp without a pool?
When alumni of the training camps in geographic Afghanistan carried out the September 11, 2001 bombings, we finally broke up the power structure there. We occupied the country after several hours of conquest. Then, for some unknowable reason, the Impossible President stopped with the Afghanistan thing, and got on with the Iraq thing. We won the battle and completely forgot about the war- but somehow we also got killed, flew through Clinton’s surplus, looked like a giant idiot and re-installed the same bunch of retarded sociopaths in the Executive.
If any sane people were involved, we would have seen the power vacuum in Afghanistan immediately filled with a post office in every burg, chickens in pots, etc. After 50 years of rubble and privation, this would be the ‘awe’ part after the shock of believing your daughter may be one day allowed to learn to write her name. But nothing. Thus, nothing substantial changed and Afghanistan was again encouraged to remain a collection of flat spots between mountains, more a moon of Earth than geographic territory.
Oh, we built a government, some buildings, some stuff. But then the people ruling by fist came back, offering more carrot and more stick. Bush gave the country back to the people he took it from. Our man in Afghanistan now runs the capital city. He’s a mayor.
So when you look at the exit strategy Bush refused to offer, you’re right. Safe-ish elections in 2003, safe ones in 2006, someone charged with finding the elusive way to turn Afghanistan into something other than the angry dog chained in the backyard of someone else’s trailer, somebody in charge of siphoning money from the Food-for-Oil program (in my fantasy, amid all the other imaginary things in this list is a lack of Bush vs Iraq II)…
In the world as it should be, Afghanistan’s chief export today is young people going to Western Universities, their farmers are growing pot (and tobacco, but they’ve always smoked), their women are dominant in international goat-head soccer, and Imam Jeri is on the Billboard Top 1200.
]]>
Admit it: You like it, or you wouldn’t obsess over it.http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/11/artforarts_sake.php
The south is also redder and more paternalistic/parochial than the north. We’re regionalistic shut-ins too, but our population and development make it more difficult to ignore the world actually happening behind the preacher, talking head or other messenger a citizen may consult for news of the world and … the others. Given their narrow political pallet and paucity of populace, the debate about health care may come down to a nation of assent stymied by shouts from one cantankerous double-wide.
They fought the railroads, emancipation, resented the civilizing influence American capital and talent brought after their primitive cave dwellers lost the battle to preserve their ‘way of life’ to our Union. What we know up here involves a lot of back story, including our long tradition of trying to make sure we all fit. They just didn’t want it, for some reason. The reason? It involved changes, the changes were alien, and the changes made it possible for the government to establish a way for southern products (100% agriculture) to be moved to places where people could buy them. Did they want to keep all that barley?
I want to see a poll map, one of those interactive jobs like CNN and Jon Stewart uses, to show ‘do you support a fact-based, technological and egalitarian reform of the health industry?’ answers drilled down to zip code or county. Is health attitude like general Republicanism, where the more space between people makes them less interested in knowin’ stuff and in the general welfare, or is it even more regionalistic, with the Jesus and other cults in the midwest and Texas reporting enough data points to show up in the homogenized national polls? Can we tell whether they’re afraid the government will ration sugar and grease? Step in and clean up Atlanta’s air traffic? Ban NASCAR?
They don’t necessarily have to be getting information along with their positions, but they’re listening to someone who doesn’t want the federal government to have the resources to contain or definitively end something like a swine flu epidemic. Who the hell would advise that? Exactly: they’re either stupid, desperate for armageddon, or on a different page altogether.
]]>I believe the White House knew something was coming, neglected to mobilize anything since they needed a rationale for their pre-ordained war in Iraq, and that they underestimated what those people could actually pull off. If you trusted them, then you probably shouldn't be trusted either. Today Republicans want to smear everything good, and refuse to be held accountable for what they've done. "Let's not look at the past, we'd rather move forward to an imaginary 1950s.
Clinton could never have been impeached without the thick vein of hatred expressed in the RNC, which operates back-channel dialog with its constituency via the hateful talking heads they bankroll. They aggressively undermined the Presidency immediately, apparently threatened by such a successful and popular President. That was a threat to their grandiose worldview, where opposing opinions are pointless distractions. They know it all, and that's that. Never mind that they're always wrong these days, and they want to rule the world, globalize, and keep such a parochial perspective despite their Grandiose Ossified Perspective which would deny any value in the rest of the world aside from the OPEC industry, which is the only thing they protect. Even privacy, on which their do-it-yourself (or go-fuck-yourself) philosophy depends, is negotiable.
Now they're denegrating the Presidency again, but the party has shrunk to the dregs. Bigots, weridos and glassy-eyed armageddonists. Tax cheats, philanderers, drug addicts, gamblers, liars, morons. Will we tolerate this? How do they dominate the news? They demanded their children be 'protected' from the President's message. They live in a fantasy world where they can sustain denial of his American Birth.
I'm raising my son to be skeptical of authority, but especially of crowds and conventional wisdom. Common sense is not common, entertainment is not the same as art, and the Republican Party is not the one my grandfather believed in. Can't be. He was sane, practical, concerned with the common good.
I would like some lawyers to prepare an injunction, a very general one, to be used whenever the RNC attempts anything. No meetings should be allowed without a censor for bullshit. And if they're so angry, let's send them to Afghanistan to complete the work they failed to do when it was their call.
]]>But that crime has a stronger smell over here, where despite all those years of fear mongering and paranoia, the two ingredients other than Cheney fumes that kept the Bush administration steamroller going for so long, the same thing will happen hundreds more times as the United States fails to bring any of these fools to court.
The Bush administration's sole purpose was to keep us busy while his boys ruined as much of the country as possible. They undermined our ideals, thwarted even their own goals, and made off with Clinton's half-trillion dollar surplus. And now we come to understand that the 'legal' black hole in Guantanamo is really, really black. None of those bastards, as dangerous as the liars say they are, can be prosecuted. No confessions are going to stand, even if charges can be brought.
These thieves and liars were so bad at justice and law that the 'worst of the worst' are now nothing more than props in their wierdo apocalyptic pantomime. And we still own it. Jeez- what will the Republicans saddle us with next (if the Old Irritated People Bloc stays together) time they get the top gubmint job?
That they claimed to be so bent on catching and bringing justice to the bad guys (guilty of punching back at them?) without ever giving a thought to anything, let alone how justice would be applied, is a crime of tragic and expensive proportion. Is 7 years of torture enough? Call it even? Do these guys go back to a quiet, normal life, or will they capitalize on their stay at Club Fed ?
Stupid, stupid. So now it's going to fall on the soldiers who carried out their nefarious and illegal designs? I hope the Holder investigation is thorough, and I hope some spooks get hurt for being assholes. But if it doesn't lead to the leadership it's a sham.
Our culture is pretty permissive and forgiving of executives who ski to the lodge while their former employees attempt to stretch their severence after their horrible performance ruins a company. I hope the patriots among us hold their President and his Secretaries to a higher standard than some money whore, as if that 'President' were anything more.
]]>