Escaping, Explaining, and Still Not Getting It

Boy, America has a short memory. 

A scant year ago, We, the People, were watching a century of diplomacy unravel before our very eyes. We read the GOP's laughable platform on Afghanistan, and witnessed the dismantling of the emergency visa program. We groaned in unison at the expectation of chaos should a timetable be set for withdrawal from Afghanistan even though we pretty much had majority agreement that withdrawal had to happen. Anyone who thought this was going to be a happy, fun-filled event was already living deep in LaLaLand. Anyone with half an ounce of both memory and forethought knew this was going to be a chaotic shit-storm when it rolled out. 

Seven months ago, Joe Biden inherited that shit-storm along with an attempted coup d'etat and the lowest international esteem American has had since the 19th century. Gee, I wonder why that is.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The withdrawal is routinely panned as a debacle. It is chaotic, to be sure, badly executed, and near as I can tell, horribly planned. Can't disagree with any of that, other than to wonder: What was plan B? Was there a plan B? Or C? D? E? Or even F? I have no idea and neither does anyone else.  A year ago, Feckless Leader would've been blaming Nancy Pelosi for the plan gone wrong. Or Chuck Schumer. Or Antifa. 

This year, we have a president who points out that the Afghan government discouraged beginning the evacuation sooner, and that the government and armed forces basically allowed the Taliban to enter Kabul unopposed. But he goes on to say:

I am deeply saddened by the facts we now face, but I do not regret my decision.

MY DECISION. These are the two most important words said to the American People this week. We have a president who OWNS his actions. Indeed, the buck does stop with him.  Does anyone think Feckless could've done better? That if he was in charge,  the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan would be any less chaotic? Is anyone stupid enough to believe Feckless Leader had a workable plan...or did Ivanka eat this homework, too? It must've been in the same notebook with his plan for affordable health care that wasn't Obamacare. 

No, President Biden isn't perfect, and his performance isn't flawless, but for G-d's sake! Look what he's been handed. You cannot clean up a mess four years in the making in just seven months. You can make inroads. You can improve relations with our allies, but it's neither clean nor easy. There is a whole lotta make-up work to be done. 

I'm not delusional about our government, and I'm certainly not expecting Biden to be a miracle president. All I want is a guy who understands how a country is supposed to work and works toward that end. You would think after 4 years of non-stop drama bullshit, the armchair quarterbacks in the press would say, "Hey, he's cleaning up the mess. Let's see how this goes." 

I am so tired of all the complaining because it makes We, the People, look petty and small. I really want to wait a year to see how much is quick-fix and how much requires the long haul. It's like the vaccine approval granted to Pfizer today: we knew it was coming, it doesn't change the efficacy of the vaccine, but maybe now that there's a new stamp-of-approval some of the troglodytes will go get vaccinated instead of trying to get veterinary grade Invermectin. 

Yeah, yeah, you can't fix stupid and you can't convince whole swaths of people that science is real. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

...manscaping has been an endless source of amusement. A number of people came forward to express their preference for my original definition of men escaping responsibility.  I've also been told by a member of the clergy that manscaping is "an important part of a man's personal hygiene and good grooming." Too Much Information!!!!!!!!! The senior son is getting endless laughs outta how I asked him about it. Who knew this was such a hot button issue?  

Ultimately, what really surprised me was the even split between people who knew what it was and who didn't know what it was. Sure, that made me feel less like a naïf, but it also brought forth the idea that language is changing more rapidly these days. I got into a discussion about manscaping and mansplaining with several women, all of whom felt there was a certain artifice in both words, that neither captured the essence of the thought. Which, in turn, made me think about all those other new-fangled words and pronounceable acronyms that are basically meaningless to me sans Google search. 

And oddly enough, that brought me right back to Afghanistan and President Biden. The Taliban  has long suppressed all modernity for the masses. Leadership might get internet et al, but unless you are in an elevated position, you are back to fire pits and mud huts. Women will lose even more standing under Taliban repression. The knowledge they acquired during the brief "freedom" years will be obliterated by non-use. The subjugation of women is practiced; it is not a theory.  An entire population will be denied the right to think. The odds of the Taliban stepping into enlightenment are slim to none. President Biden knows that. Where he screwed up was reading Feckless Leader's assessment of Taliban leadership. They sold him a bill of shoddy goods, and, like every other one of his endeavors, it was worthless. 

In an interview with CNN, former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, said:

...My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement, which is why in the fall when he was calling for a return of US forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him, a memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further -- that we not reduce below 4,500 troops unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban. Otherwise, we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways."

If you get the chance, read the transcript of the interview with Christiane Amanpour. Epser continued to blame President Biden, but read what he says...outta both sides of his mouth. Talk about mansplaining. Are the billions spent on training Afghan troops worth it? Apparently not. Trained in western tactics, they were never trained to their strengths. It should come as no surprise to anyone that they walked away from Kabul. 

Nor should it be a surprise that the people of Afghanistan got the government they ostensibly wanted. Will a movement rise up to throw off the shackles of fundamentalism in favor of modernity? Who knows. 

But here's the thing: it's not very different in many Muslim states. Saudi Arabia claims to be moving in the direction of equality for woman, but when your starting point is fundamentalist sexist slavery, the journey is long. Wanna talk about Yemen? How about Iran? Iraq, Syria? How about Gaza? 

Googling just about anything I want, is not a right, human or civil. I can do it because I live in a country that does not routinely subjugate women and cut off access to the outside world. Sometimes, I forget that. Sometimes, I think we forgot that not every country is western, full of tablets, laptops, smartphones accessing the vast ocean of information on a whim. 

Yes, Afghanistan is chaotic at the moment, but flights are leaving and people are getting out. I suppose the real issue will be what they do with the new freedom. Someone should tell them they won't be the first group to establish a government-in-absentia. Maybe that's how they begin the fight for themselves. 

Or not.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

The lead-up to the Jewish High Holy Days has begun.

The shofar is sounded at morning minyan

Be aware, gentle readers, Rosh HaShanna and the Sukkot holy days all start on 

Monday nights, which mean I won't be publishing on Monday nights. 

Look for a revised WP schedule next week.

Manscaping, Mansplaining...Apparently Not.

I learned a new word this week: manscaping.

When I first heard it, I thought it was what men did when they didn’t want to take responsibility for something...kinda like man-escaping. My naive little mind classified it alongside mansplaining. Made sense to me. 

Apparently not. 

This is about waxing and unsightly hair removal for men. Buck Naked Waxing, a gentleman's waxing service in Ventura, California offers a variety of services, including but not limited to:

• Baseball Wax (bat, balls & dugout), 
• Dugout Wax (just inside the crack), 
• Full Monty Wax (butt cheeks & dugout)

I mean, I knew about Brazilians and lady parts, but this???? This was news to me. Thankfully, no one tried to mansplain it to me. 

But, as usual, I digress; I actually want to talk about the news today, oh boy.

Real love beads

Much of my misspent youth was spent protesting a variety of things: bras, the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, civil rights for all Americans,  but mostly, the war in Vietnam. Yeah, I still have my love beads...all three strings...and a few other mementoes of those bell-bottomed days gone by. I passionately believed we had no business in Southeast Asia, the US needed not to be fighting a lose/lose war that had nothing to do with the United States. And in the end, when the troops were removed and Saigon fell to Hanoi, I fervently believed the movement had prevailed and we learned our lesson. The chants, the marches, the strikes, the free-press newsletters were the social media of our day. We believed if we were loud enough, we would be heard. If we persisted enough, we could change our country. For a while, we almost believed that we had. Sorta. 

We were the by-blows of World War II and the Holocaust and we were not going to permit another war to go unchallenged. We were too young to protest Korea, but not too young to take on LBJ, Nixon, and Vietnam. We changed the course of history as we stormed the streets and public spaces of America. We were determined to be different, to not allow senseless brutality to take the day. They shot us, we put flowers in their gun barrels. The war ended. The draft ended. We were beginning to elect our own to congress. We were coming of age and we believed we were a force for good, a new wave to upend the status quo.

Apparently not.

When President Bush I began the Gulf War, we, the protest generation, were eerily silent in the streets, Many of us were railing at home, but the protest movement was slow in taking this on. 

President Dubya Bush's foray into the morass of the Middle East after 911 was an exercise in self-aggrandizement run amok. War in Syria and Iraq was pointless, expensive, and did nothing to vindicate Daddy's misspent tax dollars in Gulf War while the real bolt-hole danger zones of Afghanistan and Pakistan were ignored for far too long. And when the US and her allies went into that region, it was clear from the beginning this was not a winnable war. Hell, even the USSR gave up trying to control Afghanistan in 1989, ten years after they invaded the country. What in G-d's name was Bush thinking? What, we were gonna do better than another totalitarian regime? Seriously?

Apparently not. 

When President Obama took out Bin Laden, he should've taken us right the hell outta Afghanistan. If I have any major criticism of his administration it is foreign policy in South Central Asia. We had no business being in there for the long haul. Sure, to break up Al Qaeda, sure. But beyond that, we had no mission there, we had no right to be there, and staying there was an exercise in futility. 

Ziggy was still alive when Obama was elected, which meant he was alive when the US was screwing around the Levant and South Central Asia. If he went nuts with Dubya's first dick-waving extravaganza in Iraq, which he did, he was winding up to make protest signs as Afghanistan was winding up. He would rail at the television, hollering, "DIDN'T YOU LEARN ANYTHING THE FIRST TIME?" 

Apparently not.

I went back to read GOP's statement (which has since been pulled but exists in the archive) on his fabulous Nobel-worthy peace initiatives. Talk about mansplaining! This is the section was not to be believed:

PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS CONTINUED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN PEACE TALKS AS HE SIGNED A HISTORIC PEACE AGREEMENT WITH THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN, WHICH WOULD END AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR

• On February 2, 2020, the Trump Administration signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Taliban that sets the stage to end America's longest war.
  • Under the agreement, the U.S. will withdraw nearly 5,000 troops from the country in 135 days in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism.
    • Time Magazine reported that other components of the agreement included an agreement that U.S. counterterrorism forces stay in the country, permissions for the CIA to operate in Taliban-held areas, and details of how the Taliban's promises to reduce violence will be monitored and verified.
  • The deal has been called the " best chance to end this conflict ," a " decisive move " towards peace, and " the best path " for the United States.
  • The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history, a conflict that has killed more than 3,500 U.S. and NATO troops and cost U.S. taxpayers nearly 900 billion dollars.
  • As part of the peace agreement, the Taliban and the Afghan government recently began historic peace, talks which would end decades of war that Afghanistan has consumed.
    • The negotiations will cover the terms of a " permanent ceasefire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarmament of the country's many militia groups ."

Sure. Like any of this could ever have happened. (I left the links in just in case you want to look deeper into that morass for bull-oney.)

The images in the media were, for me, like watching updated instant replays. I didn't see the plane at Kabul airport, I saw the embassy in Saigon with a helicopter on top. The line, the bodies, the panic...all instant replay of those horrifying scenes from 1975. 46 years ago telescopes into an instant because I was cognizant enough to sit in front of a tiny black-and-white television in my dorm room watching the culmination of all those protests, all those chants, all those signs. And while I was glad to see it was finally coming to a close, my heart, like all the others around me, wept for those betrayed by our government...once again. It wasn't enough we could not live up to any of the promises that were made, we left our allies to face a hostile regime change. The bottom line in Afghanistan is, however, that no outside force can prop up a government indefinitely. 

And yeah, we just did it again. And the same thought ran rampant through my brain as I watched NBC Nightly News followed by PBS Newshour reporting on the abandonment of Kabul. One of the reporters, I'm not sure which one, said the Taliban was going door-to-door in Kabul looking for young girls and unmarried women. 

I wanted to vomit. As should the rest of the world. But it won't.

One might think the more moderate Islamic states would be intimately involved in saving their community from tyranny. That they would have been actively involved with keeping the oppressors at bay, whether they are Chinese, Taliban, or Caliphate. One would think it was in their own best interest to see a free, modern state emerge from the morass that was the last decade in South Central Asia. 

Apparently not.

Once again, the entire Islamic world remains silent in the face of inhuman behavior toward other Muslims, most especially women. As they are silent about Chinese cultural destruction of the Muslim Uyghurs, the Islamic world remains silent on the women of Afghanistan. Would they be silent if it was their mothers, wives, and daughters being abducted? Maybe. I can only guess. 

To be sure, there is a moral imperative that should come into play. The West embraced that moral imperative and attempted to help the Afghan people lay the foundation for the emergence. Not that it worked. In all honesty, we were misguided in the belief that world outrage funneled into humanitarian aid would make a difference. Instead, we gave lots of glimpses into what might be, but no way to do much more than dash dreams. 

Listening to Mitch McConnell and every other Republican blaming President Biden for today's debacle was stunning. Sure, there are things he coulda, woulda, shoulda done differently. He stands by his decision to finish pulling troops out, a deadline set by his predecessor, and as painful as it is, I am on the side that says it was long overdue and needed to be done. This was a yank-the-band-aid kinda moment. But what really got to me is how these assholes were all supporting this war with one side of their mouths while decrying increased government spending with the other. Truth was, it didn't matter what President Biden did or wanted to do: he's a Democrat therefore he is demonized. 

For the record, President Biden doesn't own this debacle, he's just ending it. And as such he takes responsibility for the mess on the ground....something his predecessor would never have done. He would've blamed someone else. As painful as all this is, leaving Afghanistan is necessary. At some point, the Afghans must use the tools provided. At some point, they must take control of their own national destiny. That is not the responsibility of the US.

But have we learned anything from the experience?

Apparently not.

 A wise man named Vizzini once said"

I guess Dubya didn't see the movie. Nor did any of his successors. More's the pity, y'know. The entire government coulda learned something.

The WP's Tip o'the Week

Complacency is the mother of inertia.

Inertia is not your friend.