Hot Afghan Summer

by with No Comment FeaturedGlobalPolitics

Despite current events, I must start with a shameless plug and state, love is in the air! It’s lingering around me like the Delta variant. Recently, I got engaged to my girlfriend, and this has been a very joyous time for us. In addition to my engagement, I’ve been busy writing a full feature film entitled “This Thing of Ours.” It’s a romantic comedy that follows a group of 30ish people dating, marrying, or doing a little bit of everything in between today’s social world of Covid and online dating. 

Given I’ve been surrounded by so many lovey-dovey oriented things, I’ve even thought about current events in relation to dating. Specifically, Afghanistan… and thinking if Afghanistan were a person, she would be Jennifer Lopez. Like J Lo, Afghanistan has had interactions with the greatest and most powerful, yet none have been able to stay. 

And there’s a good reason for this. Afghanistan that is, not the J Lo dating history.   

Back in the summer of 2019, when the world was still innocent and free of being attached to the greatest global health crisis since the 1918 Flu pandemic, Houston-based rapper Megan Thee Stallion released, “Hot Girl Summer.” A catchy little number about… well… being a hot girl in the summer. Meg, (is that what she goes by?), stated the song is simply about “being yourself” and “having a good time.” And like “Hot Girl Summer,” messaging is for people not to follow someone else’s rules for love, but follow your way. A political “Hot Girl Summer” should be applied to Afghanistan. Given the history of the country with constant foreign power intervention, Afghanistan should just be left alone and be single for a while. Let her get a new hairdo, go out for a 60-dollar brunch, even let her post dozens of dog-eared filter pictures, just let Afghanistan be her for a while. 

Dating back to Alexander the Great in 330 BC, nations have tried to either conquer or control the Afghanistan region and people. The latest being the United States, whose involvement with the nation should have only been intelligence and law enforcement… instead, it became another decades-long terrible abusive relationship known far too well to the Afghan people. 

This must end, for there has never been a positive outcome for any nation trying to force their hand with Afghanistan. What should happen is the allowance of an organic government and making it work best for the Afghan people. That outcome might not even be a political science-worthy name for it, but it will be solely for the Afghan people. 

This is true for dating. 

Either a single person themselves or their social networks always will find the need to force a situation on someone, simply to be with someone. Other nations want to force their will on Afghanistan… it’s wrong and should be changed. Some of that “change for democracy” is laced with capitalism and exploitation of resources; however, it doesn’t change the savage nature of the Taliban. The Taliban is one of the most intolerable, hostile, violent, and unproductive governments seen in modern times. With that being said, the nation up until a few weeks ago did experience two decades of some type of freedom and democracy. I just don’t believe a country the size of Texas, with a population bigger than Texas, will simply allow the Taliban to lay rule once again without disruption or outright taking over. 

Love amongst couples is best to be left alone. No matter what you or anyone else thinks, you can’t legislate love. Because one doesn’t like another’s sexual orientation, or the look of their partner, their religion, or whatever, said couple is still going to find a way to be together. No matter how powerful a nation, their people can only be “controlled” or “managed” for so long. They yearn for independence and fate being decided solely by them is the spirit of all people. And if they have to be just “Jenny from the block to do it”, so be it. 

Afghanistan Taught Us Nothing

by with No Comment FeaturedGlobalPoliticsUncategorized

So let’s have an honest discussion…

We are at point where we can say the United States has been involved in the War on Terrorism for 20 years, at least formally named. In that time a lot has changed in opinions and it’s ok to acknowledge that. It was expected to have occurred and lessons have been learned? But what if I tell you we’ve learned absolutely nothing.

Once upon a time in the not too distant past, we had a President Trump tout his date to be out of Afghanistan and the Right loved “ending forever wars”; heck, part of Trump’s appeal as a candidate was the willingness to call out the “love of war” that existed on the Right politically (and Left too). You saw him in debates get praises from the audience as he took on the perceived (but very real) military industrial complex. It makes it all the funnier now that he and his allies critique President Biden for doing just that.

When President Trump had the U.S. to be “out” by May 31st, it was so well received that it was placed on the Republican page. Trump, even one month ago, bragged how he set the wheels in motion that even if President Biden wanted to stay, he couldn’t now. However, the day the Taliban seized Kabul, suddenly the Republican website was “routinely updated” for convenience. President Biden, who caught faux backlash for extending the May 31st deadline, suddenly “incompetently withdrew” and should have taken just a little longer. But here’s the best part, this critique isn’t just for the Right. Jake Tapper did his best to drive the point home on CNN, liberal announcers feigned tears for the possible human rights violations to come (that’s another topic that’s used only for convenience). My personal favorite is Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado though. In February, she tweeted, “We’ve been in Afghanistan for more than half my life. We need to end the endless wars.” … Only to now tweet, “Joe has a 48 year history of making bad decisions. Add this weekend’s foreign policy decision to the list.”

To his credit, then Vice President Biden advised President Obama against a surge that only delayed the inevitable. Even more to his credit, President Biden took it upon himself to be “the guy” who said no more (now his press conferences leading to this day have aged TERRIBLY in fairness with the swift fall) and no more could be done from us. He took this position when even those on the Left critiqued it finally being done.

Now why do I say we’ve learned nothing?

The answer is simple, politically for three presidents, it was convenient to run on ending wars, but two failed to follow through, and the one who finally did is abandoned by “friendly media” and the opposition media and party suddenly have pivoted. This shows in a moment’s notice, if deemed politically advantageous, they’d keep us in a “forever war” for whatever reason that could be drafted and that is a prospect that after 20 years, should scare you. Our politicians, our media, and even the public at large has not learned anything but to look for political points. Next time you read an article on how we “abandoned” Afghanistan, look closely, you may see a Lockheed Martin notice on the byline as well (yes they really do this).

One last note, President Ford was the Commander-in-Chief when Saigon fell, his approval rating went up 10% within a month, far different from the narrative we are sold today with the end of Vietnam.

Now stay tuned, and I’ll be sure to explain why Dick Cheney (of all people) has been proven right years later based on Afghanistan and Iraq… I know, I can’t believe it either.

The Life And Times of Bowe Bergdahl

by with One Comment FeaturedGlobal

Bergdahl is going home. Getting to that answer has taken the Army more than three years – after the Obama administration traded him for five of the worst terrorists in Guantanamo. There’s a lot to unpack in this.

Working backward:

Bowe Bergdahl was a dumb kid who did dumb kid things. While that’s true, sometimes dumb kid things get you killed or land you in prison in awful places of the world – just ask Otto Warmbier who went to North Korea against all advice, was imprisoned for stealing a poster from his hotel hallway and was released by the DPRK after 17 months in his final days after what seems to have been massive brain damage from torture. Neither Bergdahl nor Warmbier deserved such consequences, but that’s beside the point – sometimes the costs of bad decisions are too much to bear. I don’t fault the military judge who decided five years in the awful place Bergdahl was locked away was enough. That military judge was making a decision based on facts and circumstances and American justice. I probably would have given prison time, but that isn’t the painful issue to me. The painful issue is that we traded to get Bergdahl back at all.

The decision to trade him back fits with President Obama’s core beliefs. They are beliefs I don’t demonize, but in this application, I deeply disagree. President Obama pardoned or commuted huge numbers of people whom he believed were US citizens who were in jail beyond the bounds of justice. This fits solidly with that tenet of justice he holds dear. It’s a good concept, and while I may not have made those commutations, the decision to do so is not outrageous and is consistent with much of his world view. The decision also fits with President Obama’s longstanding view that Guantanamo should be closed. Releasing five of the worst inmates in the entire place certainly seems to reduce the level of need on many of the other members. Again – his concept of American justice is not invalid, but in practice these people were there because short of murdering them, there seemed no other way to remove them from a world of free people those individuals were determined to kill and maim. They were not in prison to serve time, but to keep them away from those they would harm. In one stroke, the president moved closer to both of those objectives which were noble in concept, consistent with good values and extremely dangerous to the long term safety of Americans and the West.

Most of those prisoners in Guantanamo were captured at great risk to American lives. By all rights, they should have died on the battlefield in Afghanistan rather than being captured. That we went to such pains to take them alive was due to an over-arching need for information about the attacks they had just unleashed on the US and a sense of fear that they had more already in planning. In trying to learn what we could from them, we did a number of things America says it doesn’t believe in – including torture and indefinite extra-judicial detention. That was misguided and horribly unfortunate, but we are at much greater risk for their release.

Also at issue is the precedent we set by trading so many high profile people for such a marginalized soldier – captured by his own criminal act of desertion for reasons that still seem either frivolous or simply disingenuous. Such actions show that the way for terrorists to engineer further releases is through further capture of American citizens. In the coming years we will likely re-learn what the hostage negotiators of the 60s and 70s learned about negotiating with terrorists: it breeds more negotiation with more terrorists.

Bowe Bergdahl didn’t deserve another term in a US prison, but he did deserve to spend whatever time was due with the Taliban until a US force could find him and mount a real rescue operation that kept those evil men we had separated from society in a place where they could do no more harm. It wasn’t the prison Bergdahl deserved, but it was the right and rational consequence of his circumstances. The “Taliban Five” are already largely back plotting death and destruction to the West – and they are among the few free, living people alive who remain from the pre-9/11 days who are really, really good and experienced at doing just that.

Additionally, we’ve set the precedent that any American traveling abroad is a living, breathing ticket to release the worst terrorists ever to speak the words “Death to America.” President Obama did truly act in a manner that’s consistent with most of what we value as Americans in making what I’m sure was a hard choice. Unfortunately for us, I fear no good deed will go unpunished.