LETTER

No need for brass band

Of course, never, never, never was there was there any chance of an ending for our Afghan War that was not an abject disaster.

Yet here we sit on a rectally-occulted thumb trying to blame each other and so score political points while vehemently condemning anyone base enough to score political points by blaming the other, which might be whoever got stuck acting out the final act of the Bush-Cheney-Obama-Trump Exxon-Mobile War.

And the think-tankers, whose Ph.D. student loans may be just about paid off by the time they get done justifying some fictionalized version of this criminal fiasco, those think-tankers assure us that some deft adjustment of strategy would have made all well.

Oh, yes, we've heard that lie before; it almost poisons the whole idea of learning and expertise.

The only adjustment of strategy that might work in the future is this: Stop using oil.

Then maybe you won't find yourself compelled, mysteriously and inexorably, to run an empire for oil, where you constantly make war on one nation after another, whoever is sitting on top of oil, or religiously tied to those sitting on top of oil, to get their oil.

Then maybe you won't be driven by greed, paranoia, and downright fear to conquer and then foist vicious, scuzzy dictator-lackeys on naive populations, telling them, "This is democracy." And asking them, "Aren't you grateful?" And hearing their resounding answer, "No!"

I think no other nation has done nearly so much to promote itself as the promoter of democracy while giving democracy such an evil name all over the world, wherever people are paying attention. And you are always paying attention, folks, when bombs are falling on your head. Are those the only possible voices of democracy?

So today we hear from very credible sources, that before we unearthed those hungry, desperate minions who eventually called themselves the Taliban, and wound them up to fight the Soviets, and found them just as ready and just as obdurate to fight us; before we tried that malevolent experiment on behalf of oil, fully 40% of the physicians in Afghanistan were women and the stats in other areas of Afghan life, matching.

So we helped impose 40 years of war on a country that, admittedly, has seen more years of war than peace as far back as history can look, but even in the best construal of our mission, if the role and status of Afghan women recently rose back up near to what it was before we meddled there, we can delineate some one phase of improvement, but it certainly doesn't warrant a brass band parade to congratulate ourselves.

Scott Hartley

Fairfield

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