Remind me why anyone, anywhere, including the people who work for him, would think that this pendejo isn’t basically a 300-pound parakeet entranced by his own reflection?
• Trump Undercuts John Bolton on North Korea and Iran
• Japan Rolled Out the Red Carpet. Trump Veered Off Into Personal Fixations
• Miffed at Fox News, Trump Flirts With an Even More Fawning News Network
Remember the war in Afghanistan?
Some folks would prefer that you didn’t. Or at least remained blissfully ignorant about its purpose and progress.
As Tom Udall and Rand Paul noted in an essay for The Atlantic, starting this fall American soldiers will begin deploying to fight in a war “that began before they were born.”
They, along with their friends, family and neighbors, may not understand just what they’re getting into, because the U.S. military command in Afghanistan has gone all tight-lipped on just what — if anything — it is accomplishing there.
This concerns the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John F. Sopko, who told The New York Times that while he and many members of Congress had access to illuminating classified information, the rest of us were being treated like a cash crop of mushrooms, being kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of bullshit.
“The only people who don’t know what’s going on and how good or bad a job we’re doing are the people paying for it — the American taxpayers,” he said.
The brass hats seem happy to gin up some numbers to keep the easily distracted President Beelzebonespur in the game. In January 2018, according to the Times, the military began announcing Vietnam-style body counts “as part of an apparent strategy to rally White House support for remaining in the conflict.”
The practice ended abruptly when the Times started asking questions about it.
There’s a certain irony in using a dubious metric from a war dodged by the present commander in chief to hold his wavering interest in this one. Especially since shortly after his inauguration, according to the Times, a special-ops unit was told to prepare for a number of missions deemed too risky by the previous administration.
Again, the Times: “The commander of the unit, according to one American commando who was at the briefing, said the operations were meant to show Mr. Trump what they were capable of achieving in Afghanistan.”
This took me back to “Dispatches,” by the late Michael Herr, who recalled an encounter with a publicity-hungry commander when the Esquire correspondent, Sean Flynn and Tim Page choppered into a landing zone in Vietnam.
Wrote Herr: “(H)e wanted to throw a spontaneous operation for us, crank up his whole brigade and get some people killed. We had to get out on the next chopper to keep him from going ahead with it, amazing what some of them would do for a little ink.”
And the sales pitch continues. We still owe on this beat-to-shit 2001 Afghanistan — $45 billion per year, according to the Pentagon — and now they’re trying to get us into a brand-new 2019 Iran. We can give the ’01 to the kids, I guess.
Aw, who are we kidding? The kids will get both of them. And the rest of us will stick plastic flags in our planters, fire up the grill, and wonder idly if there’s anything good on TV. Hey, there’s a 24-hour Memorial Day tribute on TCM! Score!
• Mad Dog Media thinks the best way to honor those who serve is to equip them with top-shelf civilian leadership and bring them home.
I have been behind the 8-ball, and I have been in front of the 8-ball — more than once, too. And after a few too many taps on the glass I usually wound up looking about like this fellow here.
Our preposterous and apparently endless allergy season has me feeling as though someone stepped a little too hard on my Peruvian marching powder — say, with Drano, kitty litter or aluminum oxide — and so instead of riding the bikey bike I have been riding the couch, which is not nearly as fun because it never goes anywhere.
Dr. Mark Schuyler, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology for the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, said back in April that we could expect this season to run through mid- to late May, and he did not lie.
Or at least I hope he didn’t. If I watch much more TV, put on a few kilos, and shed a few I.Q. points, I’m liable to wind up president.
There’s a new bike in the house: a Masi Speciale Randonneur.
It’s one of them there newfangled “sport touring all-road bikes,” but you don’t gotta plug it in at night. 650b x 47 rubber. Columbus Cromor tubes. Three sets of bottle bosses and the usual rack and fender mounts, plus fenders to go with ’em.
If I can beat back these allergies its maiden voyage will be tomorrow. Yesterday I felt like I’d been tear-gassed. Today I squeezed about eight hours out of a Claritin-D 12 Hour, which if my math is correct falls about four hours short of getting ’er done.
And here you thought “Game of Thrones” was over.
