Biden and the dunces who would be king

 By now, everyone is starting to have a pretty good handle on what is going on over in Afghanistan. That is to say, they really have no idea, but if you sound pensive enough and throw some names and video clips around, you'll look smart enough to fool people. Maybe, except that people have been told how great things have been going over there since 2002, but it's a little hard to hide the reality now. People hanging onto the sides of a C-17 until the airflow is strong enough to blow them off to their deaths is a little hard to sugarcoat as success. But, when you're in the media, you have a job to do. It's called anesthetizing the public.

The upside is that we're finally catching up to Saddam's Iraq. We have our own legion of Baghdad Bobs, trotting out to state that things are proceeding to plan in Kabul, that things will be fine, that everyone who wants out will get out, and that the Afghan Army is to blame for all this after we were told how strong it was. Unfortunately, our president is the leader of that merry band, working on his steely-eyed stare (think "Blue Steel" from Zoolander) that his staff thinks passes for gravitas. No, Joe, everyone gets that you screwed up yugely. Obviously, all the "experience" he touted last year dealt was with something besides actually running something important. Clearly, spending fifty years in politics prepares you for...absolutely nothing.

Clueless and senile as Joe is, he only owns the tail end of this mess that began not too long after 9/11. Everyone has written lately how things went completely off the rails, like that hadn't started about the same time the first American soldier set foot on that blasted land. Maybe getting in, killing a few terrists and getting out would have been fine. You can't lose 3000 people without letting someone know that it wasn't cool. But trying to convince a land full of people who look at fighting as their day job and herding goats as their hobby that they want to take up gender studies and build McDonalds every three miles was a losing proposition.

Remaking the world in your own image is great...if you can do it. You would think that after Vietnam, people would be a little more shy about it. I guess it takes a generation or two not to learn the lessons of the past. George Bush the Lesser probably never bothered to pick up a book and read about how trying to take on Afghanistan turned out for the Tommies and the Russkies. Never fight a land war in Afghanistan.

Of course, all the neocons pushed this idea and wanted to hitch their starts to success there. Quick aside, the definition of a neocon is someone who makes the talk show rounds looking for someone to listen to their zany schemes about bringing American-style democracy to people who already have their own take on the world. The neocons, ever optimistic, believe that advocating so will launch more book sales and talk show appearances, and maybe even a cabinet spot.

But the real bottom line here is that things like that just don't work anymore. The "White Man's Burden" felt out of fashion once the anti-colonial movement got rolling. The natives now also have the Maxim Gun and have mastered the art of bleeding an occupier dry. There are no lands left full of friendly, naked brown people to enslave. No more undiscovered resource deposits for the taking, once the pesky Indians are driven far away.

People still cling to that idea, though. Build up the military, but don't bother to actually think about discarding the model of conquest that the cavemen first invented. Brag about the newest planes and ships while ignoring that whole new frontiers exists above the sky and below the surface of the ocean. Speak in thinly-veiled threats instead of figuring out how to actually get along with neighboring countries. Not to single out America, though - everyone does it.

That brings us round circle again - the days of free and easy conquests peaked a long time ago, but everyone still keeps it as an option in the back pocket even though they know it won't work. Holding on to dumb ideas is peak civilization in a nutshell. Too bad it comes at such a cost for everyone involved.

(the title is a reference to Rudyard Kipling's novella and the movies based on it, where two British adventurers scam the locals in some remote Afghan valley into treating them as gods, much like the people who were trying their hand at "nation building" seemed to expect as well)