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Afghanistan Will Get Our Goat
for release 01-26-09
Dallas, Texas
by Lightning Rod

The first argument that I have with Barack Obama is his focus on Afghanistan as the main target in the war on terror. I gag whenever I say that phrase, 'war on terror' as if it is a real thing.

Even a cursory glance at history should give us a clue about the folly of trying to conquer or stabilize Afghanistan. Attempts at this enterprise have frustrated everyone from Alexander the Great to Kubla Khan to the Ottoman Turks to the English to the Soviets to the coalition of the nearly willing. It's the wild west of the middle east.

Years ago I had friends in the hashish business and they would travel to Afghanistan to procure the product. Once I was given a gift of a little pewter hash coffin with a mother of pearl inlay on the top. On the inlay was painted a scene of a game that is traditional in Afghanistan. called buzkashi It's sort of like a combination of polo and rugby, only the ball is a goat. It starts out as a live goat but these guys play rough, and they don't like to be occupied.

Perhaps the prospective conquerers in succession realized that the conquest was not worth the cost. Afghanistan has no valuable natural resources unless you value opium and some of the world's tastiest hashish. Our ostensible interest in the region was to eliminate 'terrorist sanctuaries.'

With our satellite technology we can see a nickel in the Sahara Desert and tell you what date it was minted. We could easily spot every set of monkey bars in Afghanistan and destroy them. Anybody who has been watching the propaganda for the past eight years knows that you can't train Al Qaeda terrorists without monkey bars and ski masks. That's textbook terrorism.

Afghanistan is in a strategic position in the Middle East. It has historically been a crossroad for trade routes and now it is a crossroad for oil pipelines. This is probably what made it an attractive target for the Halliburton Administration. There were disputes with the locals about their rights of eminent domain. Therefore, under the ever useful guise of the 'war on terror' we went in with our missile-shooting drones and destroyed all the Al Qaeda monkey bars and incidentally took control of the country.

But as history has proven, Afghanistan is a slippery fish to hold. This is a tribal society. You can't just kill the Fuhrer or topple the statue, decapitate the state and the rest of the body will perish. There are many chiefs and many tribes. Any void in leadership will quickly be filled.

The Poet's Eye can visualize a productive relationship with Afghanistan. Development is the only weapon that will work. Instead of creating rancor by trying to eradicate their crops of opium and hashish, we should buy them. We should redirect the funds we are spending on military equipment and conquest to building hospitals and schools. We should encourage democracy and equality but we should not enforce them. We should let the Afghan culture find its own equilibrium. If they want to settle their disputes by playing polo with goats, that's their business. Let's don't let them get ours.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
---Tennyson

OK so this is funny: "We could easily spot every set of monkey bars in Afghanistan and destroy them. Anybody who has been watching the propaganda for the past eight years knows that you can't train Al Qaeda terrorists without monkey bars and ski masks. That's textbook terrorism." And sadly carries some truth.

Interesting solution you propose: Let's just buy all their dope!

I agree that development is the only real solution in Afghanistan, but not sure that we'll ever get Congress or even this new Administration, no matter how hip Obama is perceived to be, to buy off on this solution.

But what a scene that would be ... Opium dens in all the Congressional offices & in the White House. Maybe the President could even have his own private opium den just off the oval office to entertain heads of state. In which case, I guess they really would be "heads" of state. , Maybe then all the hot air & "smoke" rising from Capitol Hill might at least serve some useful purpose ... we could even change our national motto from "In God We Trust" to "In Hash We Trust." And just think of all the creative ways the government could sell the stuff to raise money to pay for the war & eliminate the staggering national debt.

Oh, but we can dream .... now, back to reality.

Love ya,
Beth[/i]

eLRod, I hope you watch the clip I posted on Culture on the Pakistan gun markets... it adds to this post.

That reply, roxybeast, was really good. Thanks for the smiles...

cecil,
this is a perfect illumination of this column. Thank you.

(here it is)
http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=DGF ... sc=1363196

beth,

What I've never understood is.....we identify anything that looks like a jungle jim or monkey bars as a terrorist trainng camp and bomb the shit out of it.
So how do we tell a terrorist trainng camp from a grade school playground?
Bush's war on terror is a bitch.