I Won't Delete This One Bam

Sometimes I feel a bit like Austin Powers in that scene after Vanessa yells at him and he sits around all night watching the life he’s missed. I feel like I’m always catching up. How is not like that for everyone? Life is but a series of events where you just learn new things that seem commonplace for everyone else. Mama Cass, dead, ham sandwich.

Haven’t seen that movie in a while. In fact, I think I’ll watch it after I post this. And, completely unrelated, I watched Apocalypse Now Redux in its 218 minute entirety last night (the French family scene was completely unnecessary, and Coppola was right in excluding it), and I think that’s what got me going on this things I didn’t know that everyone else does mantra. What an epic movie that is, they really don’t make them like that anymore, and I know that Brando was famously overweight and drunk for the role, but he is brutal and sensational. Brando, for all his flaws, is arguably the greatest actor to have ever lived. He has the ability to convey something sinister with the weight of his eyebrows, and he lulls you into this sense that he doesn’t give a shit about the role he’s playing, but then, miraculously, conveys some emotion or thought, visually, that makes you question your entire stance on his ability. Martin Sheen says but fifteen full sentences the entire fucking movie (sans the narrator), but that’s all he needs (and little did I know, but Kurt Russell was simply doing an impression of him in Solider).

Another thing, Martin Sheen in that movie looks just like a hybrid of Charlie and Emilo Estevez, and watching the film is a bit like breaking out the old family movies. Which leads me to Obama and his AfPak decision (or as Biden would like it known, per this weeks incredibly well done NYT Magazine feature on him, the PakAf decision), and its ramifications. Which are deep.

Here’s the main points I’d like to point out. One, this was in no means a political decision, because he’s taken bullshit from both sides over it (and plenty of it). And how could he not? Afghanistan is one of, say, three of four nations on the planet that we just, flat, would be better off if they didn’t exist. It offers no redeeming value, its literacy rate is reportedly 15%, and it shows only the fortitude to cause pain to the rest of the planet. But, it’s not going anywhere. I’ve heard the sociopath argument (that you just make a glass sheet out of the place, killing any being that is in the path and leaving no room for speculation) and the hippy-spacey argument (just Let Them Be, they’ll sort this thing out), and neither of them offer any pure justification. And the sociopath argument is particularly disturbing in that it literally believes in fighting fire with fire.

But either way, the rogue ability of middle eastern religious fanatics is undoubtedly the danger of our time. Consolidated countries won’t attack us as we all realize it’s a draw. In all reality, the rogue nature of any type of fanatic is the danger of all our times. Whether it be the sniper who blasts us indiscriminately in Baltimore or the rebel who kills a café of us in Kirkuk: violent insanity of any variation will be the difference between human regression and progression. And actually, if we’re all keeping tabs, our reaction to this insanity will surely spell our fate. At least in the now, in the present, in the cycle, in the Jake Busey version of Contact, in this pale blue dot, and in all we’ve ever known.

So, we reach Afghanistan, which is just this god-awful place that even animals won’t live in (quick quiz, think of every animal you know to live in Afghanistan, and my count: scorpions, side-winder snakes, probably crabs, and in the 15th century, tigers), and we have to think of something to do with it. Now, I’ve read a lot about the country, and I think anyone with any knowledge of the place would say the same thing: it’s an insane hell-hole populated by religious fanatics, people who want to kill everyone and tribal leaders (and their tribes) who we are morally obligated to protect. But, there’s a lot of people worldwide who we should be protecting, and we can’t do it for them all (although there are a few African countries who we simply should have had planes in the air for, and damn the political consequences). These people, however, we are fatefully bound to.

We have two awful choices in Afghanistan, and both are doomed to fail. That’s why Obama is getting sniped from both sides: it’s too easy. Any policy in that country is due to find some critics, even if you fucked it with a crystal dick, and Obama has inherited the most complicated foreign policy situation of the last 60 years (FDR and Truman certainly had trouble a brewin’). So his choices were to pull out completely, and let that place turn into a training ground for Insane Random Bomber & Co. (and please, don't let The Nation or your English Literature girlfriend convince you otherwise), or to commit fully and allow a wide range of American volunteer services to be slaughtered randomly over the next decade for reasons that would be difficult to define other then the vague notion I’ve vomited above.

Obama took the North Korea path, and to me the only one, and decided to hold the ground. 30,000 troops may seem eye-catching, but that many rednecks attend UCF home games every week. We’re basically holding the ground. We’re making sure that nothing truly sinister overruns the nation, or more accurately, collection of cults, and we are doing just enough to keep Pakistan from becoming a nation that we actually have to destroy (to the, again, sociopath delight of many). Is this is a good solution? No. But when your choices are buying Baltic or Mediterranean, at some point you just have to grab them both and put two big pointless hotels on both of those motherfuckers.

We live in a time where, whether we realize it or not, and we don’t, the 12th century is meeting the 23rd century. And we just need to minimize the damage. We just need to limp to the sidelines. Is it a pretty catch-phrase? Does it make you feel more at ease? No. But god damn it, let Jean Luc-Picard figure this all out.