"We had to say, 'Look, you've got to step up, man,'" Biden said Thursday on CNN's "Larry King Live."
"Let me tell you, we're going to start -- Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off ... next July, so you'd better practice riding." (Source: HuffPost Article 11/19/2010)
I like the Vice President as much as anyone, but whenever I see this kind of "Daddy's going to take the training wheels off" language, I feel that Rudyard Kipling's line describing all those "new-caught sullen peoples" who are "half devil and half child" can't be far behind. It seems to me that such language might reasonably be thought to underscore the arrogance, and perhaps the futility, underlying our efforts in such far-flung regions as Afghanistan. The article referenced above says the effort in Afghanistan will now run through 2014.
See, Sport, "Daddy" is going to show you how it's done in governance and military matters, and then ask you to "step up" and give it your best try -- go on, you can do it! Atta boy!
Well, here I go trying in my simple way to serve as what I believe Nance wonderfully called "a Voice of Reason in the Wilderness of WTF" (sounds almost Blakean, doesn't it? "Dino, Dino burning bright / in the Forest of the Night"), but this is a very old, tough culture we're talking about, not a cute kid with a baseball cap who is excited about his first bike ride. To date, our efforts haven't yielded anything like what we had hoped they would, and I suspect that four years from now, the Afghan government will still be weak, and the bloodthirsty and irrational -- but savvy -- Taliban will still be waiting, ready as ever to impose their harsh, repressive world view upon a hapless people, women in particular.
I wish we could prevent such an outcome, but if its opposite is even possible, wouldn't such nation-bulding take a total effort in no way signaled by the words of American politicians who think of the Afghan people's leaders as children? I know General Petraeus is a very skilled man, but it seems to me that clever military tactics and strategy alone won't produce a lasting outcome.
But what do you think? Is there a humane and statesmanlike justification for our continued presence in Afghanistan, or do you see that presence as futile?
Addendum -- noticed that the above representation of the Afghan populace needs fleshing out: it's a "tough old culture," alright, not one foreigners like us can easily change; but at the same time the country has been battered heavily in recent decades, leaving it susceptible to the Taliban, which remains as fierce as ever, whatever its present numbers.
ReplyDeleteBiden said what?!
ReplyDeleteGeez... Our politicians sure know how to endear us to the world. I can only imagine the collective eff u! (and then some) in Afghanistan and elsewhere in response to this charming remark.
Arrogance, ignorance, and hubris -- the hallmarks of American international meddling on full display again.
The introduction of the MI Abrams tank into the Afghanistan conflict is certainly cause for optimism.
ReplyDeleteGetting it a little bit righter year by year.
Next year will put the US in Afghanistan for the same length of time the Soviets were liberating the joint.
Suggest Reading:
'Flashman' by George MacDonald Fraser, 1969.
First in a series of comic/historic novels based on the discovered 'diaries' of one Harry Paget Flashman in which the young Flashman is present at the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 in which he becomes, through cowardice, misunderstanding and dumb 'luck' a national hero in Victorian England.
http://www.stmoroky.com/reviews/books/flashman.htm
“Golly, Ward, you were awfully hard on the Beaver!”
ReplyDeleteI guess what I am trying to say is that I counted on our new leadership to bring more sophistication to our foreign affairs than we had under Bush/Cheney; instead, we are getting the same naïve, patronizing attitude that has always characterized how Washington treats other cultures. Biden’s remark has the simplicity and clarity of purpose of a 1950s Sitcom but has little relationship with the real world.
I see our presence as not only futile but as a radicalizing influence on a culture that has always been hostile to foreign powers. No matter which party controls Foggy Bottom, whether Democrat or Republican, there seems to be systemic unwillingness to learn from history.
Time to read Beaver a bedtime story.
I kind of like Joe myself but sometimes he is an idiot. This is not the kind of language a public official should use when publicly addressing national or international issues.
ReplyDeleteThese guys have been at this a long time and they all graduated college - you would think that somewhere along the line they would have picked up some common sense.
I wonder how much of the the apparent idiocy is Biden 'following orders' by saying something stupid the President can't risk saying. But yes, I think it's largely futile with respect to destroying the Taliban and replacing it with a functioning democracy. We don't have a good success record along those lines and a very bad memory regarding past idiocies and their outcomes.
ReplyDeleteOur pet Democracy isn't a democracy or our pet. Karzai is more of a cheap Chang KaiShek impersonator -- an even more corrupt warlord with delusions of leadership, mostly interested in his own pockets and his own battles.
I don't know about you, but I'm long past tired of these fluffy neo-con dreams about transforming the world by installing "democracies" as if democracy were an end in itself rather than a means of allowing a country to act in its own best interests, not ours.
We either have to invade another half dozen countries and sit there forever, or we have to give up and go home and resort to other means.
BTW, I missed it earlier, but this is just delightful:
ReplyDelete"a Voice of Reason in the Wilderness of WTF"
Thank you, Nance. I fully intend to steal it (with attribution) and hope you won't mind (too much).
Oh the winds do blow cold
ReplyDeleteThrough Kabul I'm told
So you keep a half-pint in your pocket
For there isn't a bar
North of old Kandahar
That hasn't been hit by a rocket.
Now your life can be brief
In Mazur i Sharif
And the women keep knives in their shoes
So you stay in the camp
And fight off the cramp
With your contraband bottle of booze.
They call him Shaheed
The man who brought weed
Up the mountainous slopes to our men.
For he froze off his ass
In the cold Khyber Pass
And never was heard from again.
-anon-