Bad enough we have to fend off the worst of the worst that Islam has to offer, people who kill in the name of God, but now we’re camped in their backyard for years trying to talk ourselves into believing that they will see the light and decide to adopt our form of government, one they do not relate to, approve of, or understand. Who’s more delusional here, killers who think they speak for God or those of us who think we can talk them out of it? Extreme religion of any persuasion is a product worse than any hell men can imagine, as even the briefest examination of the bloody mess we call history tells us. See, we’ve written this all down for as long as we’ve been writing stuff down, instance after instance of all of our various religions trying to impose themselves on others by bloodshed, and have kept very meticulous records.
Which begs the question: Have any of our leaders bothered to read any of these detailed accounts and eye-witness reports? They have all gone to good schools and have demonstrated at least some capacity for understanding the greater world around us. When they seek elective office they make speeches that indicate that they seem to grasp the current realities and show a decent command of the issues confronting America. If they sound reasonable enough they find themselves holding important and responsible jobs. Then, for some unfathomable reason, they start acting quite irrationally. They cease operating under the normal assumptions shared by normal people and frankly start acting pretty crazy. Scary crazy.
And the rest of us are supposed to understand this irrational behavior, that these are great people elevated to great responsibility and therefore begin seeing things the rest of us don’t, what with us, you know, not being great people and all. So they tell us some ridiculous nonsense over and over again until some of us by the sheer repetition of it begin to think that maybe this exalted personage has better a handle on the problems of the world than we do, even though we have access to exactly the same information as they do. And if they wake up one day and declare the sky is green when the rest of us are fairly certain it’s still as blue as it was yesterday, well, we’re not in charge of the color of the sky, are we? These are our leaders, right? They know best, or at the very least we hope against hope that they do and that their burgeoning insanity is merely a manifestation of their greatness.
Be that as it may, one day we found ourselves dealing with Islamo-Fascists who had attacked us a number of times, culminating in the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001. So naturally we immediately attack Afghanistan, the nation who was harboring the terrorists responsible for all these attacks. Now, Afghanistan at the time was Religious Nut Central, with a government of women-enslaving, music and movie banning, hand-chopping-off, stoning-to-death Neanderthals that took over the country in the vacuum of power after the Soviet Union abandoned the place in 1989 after laying waste to what was already a vast wasteland for 10 long years.
Granted, the country was traumatized after having a million people murdered by the Soviets, but that was not our problem on September 12, 2001. Our problem was finding, killing or capturing Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda henchman who toppled our twin towers and attacked our nation’s military headquarters, killing almost 3,000 Americans. The Taliban leaders were reluctant to surrender their guests even though they knew it meant more war for their battered nation. Pretty nuts, eh? Anyway, the United States military was sent in, and they immediately defeated the Afghani army and toppled the government. That was the relatively easy part. Finding bin Laden wasn’t so easy in the mountainous and cave-riddled expanses of Afghanistan and our government soon got distracted.
Distracted? Without completing the only mission we had when we got there? Impossible! That’s the normal reaction to abandoning the biggest manhunt since the one for Hitler before his burnt carcass was discovered. One would never think that our government would just give up on finding our biggest enemy since Hitler so soon, but that’s exactly what happened. In a stunningly stupid and insane move, our nation attacked (!) Iraq, a nation exactly no one thought had anything to do with 9/11 until the great men with great responsibilities repeated irrational accusations so loud and so often that our Congress lost their minds too and told them to go right ahead, lay waste to an innocent nation just for the hell of it. And that’s just what they did, leaving the job in Afghanistan in limbo.
And so in Afghanistan somebody had the brainstorm to make a mini-America out of the backward tribes of competing religious whack jobs who have yet to embrace the 16th century. Very little mention was made of Osama bin Laden after that and he currently enjoys a successful career making inspirational “Death To America” videos. The insanity of bin Laden, the Taliban and a place called Afghanistan infected our own leaders and they decided to go about nation-building in the nation we attacked for harboring our enemies!?! They picked out the least offensive Afghani they could find (no easy task) and had him elected president of this New Shangrila. Meanwhile the remaining Taliban started a civil war to get rid of the American armies and to regain power so they could ban music and movies and start chopping off hands again.
The rest of Afghanistan pretty much ignored the Kabul government and gave their allegiance to their tribal warlords just as they had done for uncounted centuries. Little by little the great people we elected came to believe that America’s worst enemy is really the Taliban, an organization of illiterate religious murderers who travel the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan by mule and have no ambitions beyond torturing their local fellow Muslims, and not al Qaeda with their proven global reach. Madness personified! Finally a new American president gets elected, seemingly a rational, intelligent and reasonable fellow that sane Americans were hoping could sort out this escalating insanity. But what does he do? Sends in 20,000 more American troops into this House of Wax! No, no, he’s crazy too! Then another Afghani election comes around and the American puppet president “wins” again with a lot of electoral shenanigans as the Taliban continue to terrorize everybody and kill lots of people while Osama bin Laden gets ready for another close up, Mr. DeMille. This is not fiction! To be continued, and continued, and continued….