The 51st State?
Guest correspondent Joe Pyloric here.
While JD has been getting the site back up and operating efficiently, I have been sitting back stewing as usual over things that make no sense and generally piss me off, along with remodeling the house and entertaining some house guests.
I see in the news tonight that Precedent Barack Obama is going to schedule a press conference “soon” to tell us why we are in Afghanistan and how he plans on “finishing the job” there. All this tells me is that still, as of this moment, after nine years, no one, not even his bowing highness, knows why we are there, what the job really is, or how he plans on finishing it. Seriously.
His presidentialness threw a weak stone at the former administration saying that perhaps they just didn’t understand why we were there, nor did they have a good strategy, but he promised to let everyone know all of that – soon.
The fact that no one knows is blatantly obvious. I would wager that if you asked a random ten people a) where Afghanistan is; and b) why we are fighting a war there, you would probably get ten reactions similar to speaking to a comatose patient, which is what the general American public acts like on this matter.
Here we are, in a war, American kids getting killed, wounded, and filling the impotent VA hospitals with yet more PTSD victims to deny claims to, and the public is asleep. So is Congress, but that is more normal.
Afghanistan. A Stone-Age rock pit where they have fun having their children fight in pits like dogs as they wager on the winner. Where towns in West Virginia look like paragons of dental health in comparison to. Where they have fair elections. Whoops, I felt my nose growing on that one, and you might have even noticed the problem with that statement as well.
So now the Prez has a week or two to come up with a well-scripted reason why the hell we are there to begin with and how to get out of there and convince all of you that his is an honest and sincere speech meant to inspire your support. Is anyone that stupid? Please admit it if you are.
I’m sure that there will be comments to the tune of Al-Queda using ‘Stan as a training area, and maybe even that they have (un)intelligence that Bin-Laden is lurking in some cave over there waiting to be caught.
But that song has been played and grows weary on my ears, although many still seem to be deaf to it. My guess is that he will embark on an Iraq-like diatribe about how power needs to be restored to the Afghan people so that they can manage their own affairs, just like they did before we went over there trying out new weapons, and trying to prop up a corrupt regime little different from what they had before. He will probably avoid mention of the fact that it lies on the eastern border of Iran, another country we would like to invade.
No, boys and girls, it isn’t about self-government – the U.S. certainly wouldn’t want to wish that on another country while they can continue to pull all the strings. And it’s not about power for the people – it would be nice if the government would give power to the people in the U.S., but that just ain’t going to happen, so you can bet your negative equity it won’t happen in Afghanistan any time soon.
It will be a good speech, to be sure, and you can be equally sure that the font on the teleprompter will be large enough that no mistakes will be made in reading it.
In my own self-delusions and fantasies, I picture this Nobel Prize winner getting up there and going a few sentences into the prepared speech, then pausing, throwing down his notes, and saying, “Fuck it. This is bull shit. How can I, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, sit here and blow smoke up the collective ass of the entire world, blathering on about restoring power to the people of Afghanistan when that is not what it is all about? Let me tell you, my fellow Americans, this is little more than back-room politics like they have back in Illinois, a buddy system beyond anything you have ever imagined. This is where the Afghan people get financially and socially bung-holed so that the U.S. defense contractors, the World Bank, and the natural gas companies can self-flagellate themselves to financial orgasms while the Afghan people get screwed over and the U.S. taxpayers finance it for them. I have tried for the past two weeks to imagine or even fabricate a reason to shed American blood in this godforsaken shithole, and I just can’t do it. I’m outa here. Find someone else to do your dirty work.”
But that will happen when the tooth fairy grows a beard. It will be a cautious speech, with moments that many will actually believe, but it will say little that hasn’t been said before. Because everything that can be said about Afghanistan has already been said. Except the truth.
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