Blame Brigade

So now Afghanistan has reverted back to the stone age, Kabul is lost, and the nation again becomes a  backwater of venomous internecine killing fields.  The trillion dollar trained national army turned  and ran for the hills, leaving behind priceless military equipment, the moment the ragged savages appeared.  At which point the highly trained and equipped national armed forces seemingly pissed in their pants and ran screaming in terror.  According to an Afghan General, the problem was due to government corruption, a failure to deliver food, ammunition, pay, air cover and coordination.  The troops lost faith in their leadership, felt abandoned, and abandoned their posts.  Bloody Fucking Hell!  And unbelievably we sent in the helicopters, again, to evacuate the Embassy while terrified personnel frantically shredded piles and piles of paper and wacked hard drives with hammers.  Primitive, very sadly primitive!  I can just hear Betty Davis cynically saying, "WHAT a fuckup!"

OH the finger pointing is in high gear with shrill Republicans screeching their heads off trying to blame Democrats for pissing in their morning coffee.  (Now there's an idea).  But seriously, if your country was about to be taken over by the boogeymen, wouldn't you stand and fight fiercely like an Israeli?  Or would you abandon your brand new Humvee, rip off your uniform, and run half naked to the Iranian border?  WHAT kind of  pusillanimous poltroons were our hero warriors risking their lives training?

And the historically repetitive scene unfolded yet again, just as it had in Shanghai in December of 1941, as millions ran through the streets in terror, flooding the port desperately looking for a way out.  And Saigon in 75, and Rwanda, and Phnom Penh, Warsaw, an endless list.  And now Kabul airport where hordes of totally crazed people clung to the outside of an Air Force cargo plane as it took off, falling to their deaths from the sky, or getting crushed in the wheel wells.  And rushing a commercial jet, ticketless, climbing over each other until it was so overloaded it couldn't take off and they refused to debark. Seriously!  What the Hell?  The insurgent forces were so freaked out by the panic that they actually tried to be nice!

Of course, this does not happen everywhere.  I saw the Philippine Revolution that ousted Marcos on TV.  There was no panic, no guns, no thunder of helicopters and no explosive thuds of mortars.  Instead, a million peaceful people surrounded a huge military base, set up a gigantic sound system and blasted Neal Sedaca songs into the base.  Entire brigades of sentimental soldiers burst into tears, threw down their weapons and emerged from the base to embrace and hug the protestors.  Seeing that, the Marcos family fled to the airport with suitcases stuffed with money; and that was that.  Sure, it was nuts and made no sense; but it was a helova lot better that a highly trained army tearing off their uniforms and running half naked in terror to the Iranian border.  The new petit  Philippine President, Corazon Aquino, spent her first night on the balcony of the Presidential Palace throwing thousands of elegant shoes into the darkness, shouting in disgust, "size 9, size 9, size 9...."

Meanwhile, the treasonous Republicans, foaming at the mouth with glee, could not have celebrated the Afghan debacle with greater joy than if they had planned the whole thing in cahoots with the enemy.  Moscow Mitch nearly broke his fat neck rushing in front of the TV cameras to harrumph in apoplectic ecstasy.

And of course, their Messiah is to blame.  He was the one who signed an idiotic peace treaty with the terrorists because he loves to let his ego imagine that he has made every madman dictator love him.  In fact it is he who loves them; they just think he's a fucking imbecile.

It all began with W -George Bush- on September 11th, 2001 realizing he'd just been betrayed by his Saudi friends.  Some time later there was a newspaper headline reading something like, "Bush's celebrate first wartime Christmas in Crawford."  What shithead little public relations jerk in the White House wrote that fake fluff story?  Imagine Bush pretending to be Franklyn Delano Roosevelt fighting the second world war!  Talk about an inflated ego!  Twenty years and two trillion dollars later we arrived at today's debacle.  There was plenty more fake news after that to justify billions in bombings, death, and destruction; followed by lucrative 'nation building business deals' for corporate war profiteers.

A tragic side story is the horrific abandonment of translators and other legions of those who helped our warriors, journalists, and aid agencies over twenty years of lost salvation.  The blame for this lies squarely on the soulless bureaucratic martinets who live their lives on the alter of pointless process.  They cannot wash the blood off their hands.  Sure, everyone wants to blame the President, it happened on his watch, he's in charge, etc. etc.  NO.  This was thought of some time ago, a bureaucracy was set up, and tin pot functionaries put their butts in comfy office chairs and set to work delaying paperwork as much as possible, counting dotted Ts and crossed Is.  The timing was way off, but the bureaucrats didn't care, process had to be followed slavishly.  And so our friends are screwed, trapped, and awaiting bullets in their heads.  Simple as that.  Same damn thing happened to the Vietnamese.  Phucked by the bureaucrats.

OK one can argue all of the above till we are all blue in the face, still disagreeing until we drop dead of old age.  But, none of it matters to the 250,000 or more Afghan loyal heroes who served alongside our warriors risking their lives, who are now refugees in their own country, with their families, wives and children and relatives in mortal danger of vengeful genocide.  Its easy enough to sit safe and sound at home in America and say, "oh well, sorry we ran out of time, no worries, you'll manage somehow...."  NO, these folks are on the run, desperate to save their children's lives.  It hits home for me.  I was born and raised as a refugee.  I know what it feels like to be hunted, to never feel safe.  I was very lucky; my family made it out after desperate life and death journeys.  I was born here, safe in America, afterwards.  But, I grew up in  refugee community where every adult was traumatized by the brutal death of everyone they loved in their families, and by heart thumping escapes from genocide.  English was not my first language.  My toddler years featured real horror stories of what had happened before I was born.  We children weren't supposed to know, but we did.  Our homes were shared with Concentration Camp survivors who lived in the rooms next to mine; gaunt bent over men with sunken eyes who never spoke, never laughed and could no longer cry, whose own children's ashes were buried in the mass graves beneath the barbed wire and snow far away in the killing fields of Eastern Europe.  As a toddler, I could see the gas chamber cremation fires burning behind their eyes.  I had refugee nightmares of people screaming in agony, starving, and beyond hope.  I was born a stranger in my own country.  I had to assimilate along with my parents.  Anyway, I was a refugee child, I know what it feels like.  And so when I hear that we are going to leave all those families behind, I want to scream, "WHAT, WHAT!  What the hell do you mean!!!  All those children left in hell?

Its all I can say.