Stand on their own?

Berlin brothel offers discount
for customers who arrive via
public transportation or bicycle.

Some general or other said the other day that we must stay in Afghanistan until “they can stand on their own.” I guess it would not occur to anyone that the Afghans have “stood on their own” for thousands of years, and very successfully too, having eventually defeated all comers who have tried to conquer them, including Alexander the Great, Britain, Russia, and now the U.S. (there is no way we will ever “win” in Afghanistan, whatever that might mean). Afghanistan is a tribal and clan-based country where various clans either dispute each other or collaborate with each other, depending upon the circumstances at the moment. In such a political system (as it is a political system that works), the one thing that will make two or more clans work together is the threat from an outside force. They may fight each other at times but they will come together and act as one when the situation requires them to do so. This is precisely what they are doing now, joining together to fight against an unwelcome invader (the U.S.). You might notice that in general both Taliban and non-Taliban want us out of their country, and they are not going to give up until we are. They don’t need a pretentious Uncle Sam to come and lead them by the hand to a form of government they don’t even understand or even necessarily want to understand. What we are doing now with respect to our unstated “empire” is in reality no different than what Christians did during the Crusades when they attempted to force Christianity on the rest of the world. After all, who are we to decide how the rest of the world should live? We don’t like al Qaida or the Taliban, it is my understanding that most of the Afghans don’t like them much either (and would quite likely get rid of them if we let them mind their own business). We don’t like the way they treat women, what about our staunch “friends” the Saudis as well as other countries that do not treat their women very well (we have not exactly been paragons of equality here in the U.S., although granted we are trying to change a bit). The best thing we could do for the Afghans is to get out of their country and leave them alone. If they want help they will eventually ask for it. I sincerely hope (and even pray to the Great Mystery) that President Obama is not going to be fool enough to send 40, 45, or 80 thousand more troops to Afghanistan. Even eighty thousand troops will not be enough, quite likely even a million wouldn’t be enough. The Taliban are not a threat to the U.S., and al Qaida is weak and apparently growing broke. Afghanistan is not worth another American life. Let’s be sensible for once and bail out as graciously as possible.

Speaking of women, Terry O’Neill, President of NOW, has been speaking out against “men behaving badly.” She cites Roman Polansky and David Letterman as examples. But whoa, wait a minute, there’s an issue here that needs some more careful consideration. I believe there is no doubt that Polansky committed a truly vile deed and deserves to be severely punished for it, but David Letterman? Yes, he confessed to having had sex with his employees, which you might say is undesirable. But no one has come forward to complain about having either been raped or otherwise coerced into having sex with the boss. It also appears that women do hold relatively high and important positions in the Letterman organization. Furthermore, there is at least one testimonial from one of them that she has never seen any instance of impropriety on the part of Letterman or anyone else in the organization. O’Neill’s assumption that “the lord of the group” has been setting the stage for improper sexual behavior is highly questionable at best, and at worst completely without foundation, and what about those women who willingly, perhaps even eagerly, had sex with the boss? How about “women behaving badly?” It would seem only fair and reasonable to me.

John McCain has urged President Obama to retroactively pardon the great black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. You may recall that Johnson was grossly discriminated against by being railroaded to jail for engaging in what was then known as “white slavery” or some such thing. That is, he openly appeared with white women, much to the horror of many citizens of that day, and I guess must have crossed a state line with one of them. I do not recall the details, nor is it necessary to go into them here. I am all in favor of Johnson being exonerated. It should probably have happened long ago. But I do wonder about retroactively pardoning people for past deeds. It seems to me there ought to be a time to stop, except, perhaps, in the most egregious cases. I recall that many years ago there was a to-do about the Catholic Church exonerating the Jews from having killed Christ. I confess I thought that was kind of unnecessary as I think by that time hardly anyone thought about it. But maybe in religious circles it was something. It certainly meant nothing at all to me. Reparations for the Japanese who were forced into camps during WWII I believe was entirely justified, even though pitifully small compared to what they lost. The case of American Indians, too, I thought was more than justified, but, again, how could their surviving remnants ever be compensated for losing the whole of the Americas? I think an excellent case can be made for the Palestinians, but the Israelis prefer to believe they do not exist or have rights of any kind. There has often been talk of reparations for American blacks because of slavery. I agree they certainly suffered, and in principle I think it might be deserved, but it does seem to me completely impractical, especially as no living blacks were involved in any way, there are so many of them, their precise circumstances and losses completely unknown, and so on. I am not suggesting that we draw the line with reparations for blacks, but only questioning if a line does not have to be drawn somewhere. Should all South American Indians be awarded reparations? How about East Indians? Africans? Tibetans? Armenians? And how about the millions upon millions of individual cases of terrible discrimination that are only known by those who suffered them? The entire history of the human species is just one instance of murder, arson, rape, theft and genocide after another. We have become so inured to this we now just fall back on the old saw, “life isn’t fair.” It ought to be.

LKBIQ:
War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
Georges Clemenceau

TILT:
Brie and Camembert are virtually identical cheeses.