Well. We got hurricanes Harvey and Irma wreaking havoc in the South. A monster earthquake turns lower Mexico into Shakedown Street. Wildfires are raging in Washington, Oregon, Montana and California. It’s quite the Apocalypso we have going this September in the Western Hemisphere. So is this the cue for the Bugs? Like, say, three trillion Mormon crickets going on the march, just to make sure we don’t get too smug up here in the high desert? It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen those nasty little bastards!
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Afghanistan. What can you say? It’s as though the place is the greatest of all Imperialist Rat Traps, the place where the high and mighty go to get a couple of teeth knocked out. It befuddled the Brits, bamboozled the Russians, and now, we’re the new chumps. The Western fools who dare to think that we can—well, what? What are we even thinking about doing now in Afghanistan? Trying to get a government of semi-reasonable Muslims installed who don’t hate our fucking guts so we can drag our asses home with at least a teeny tiny bit of face? Is that our goal? Nice one. Nice plan. I mean, who even remembers what face is after all this?
We’ve been there 16 years now, and we are close to—what? As far as I can tell, we’re just as bewitched, bothered and bewildered as the Brits and the Russians ever were, pouring blood and money into the Queen of All Quagmires in order to achieve—what? Why do I keep ending sentences with what? You have noticed by now that every time we try to get a country to whip up an army of locals so they can go kill the guys that we want killed, it don’t work out too good. (“We will depart as soon as the Slobbovians learn to fight for themselves and declare their love for Ben Franklin!”) You’d think we’d have picked up on this by now. The Vietnamese army wasn’t exactly oozing with shock and awe, and they didn’t want anything to do with those scrappy Viet Cong. The Iraqis had a time where if they went into battle and didn’t flat out flee, leaving all the American weapons on the ground for Al-Qaida to scoop up. it was considered “real progress.” And now, we’re trying to whip up a crack unit of Afghan dudes whom we want to go kill all these Taliban guys they grew up with throwing rocks at the Russians. Breath holding, as always, is not advised.