The Indigestible

This is an important question — because depending on how well we remember the run-up to Iraq in 2002, we’re going to be facing a pretty stupid reflection in, say, 2012.

The latest news is that Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State, is claiming a link between Iran and the Taliban, in the form of intercepted Iranian arms shipments to Afghanistan.

“There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN.

The problem is that he then goes on to try to form a link between the Iranian government and Taliban support.

Why is that a problem? For one thing, it’s an unfounded accusation, and we’re currently living with* the effects of believing the last series of unfounded accusations to come from Washington. I realize that the Moron in Chief is setting a piss-poor example of speaking only when certain, not shooting off at the lips, being humble and avoiding idiotically-childish posturing bravado, but I don’t think Bush’s drunken frat-boy behavior constitutes an excuse for the rest of DC to act like it’s had a brain extraction.

The other problem with Burns’s claim, though, is that it’s implausible. Iran is in fact an Islamic nation, but it’s not exactly a theocracy, and it is considerably more democratic than many nations in the region. There are even protest groups there which wouldn’t be permitted to exist in, say, a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. So what purpose would be served by the Iranian government deliberately supporting a militant group which would, if empowered in Iran, overthrow the very government supporting it?

Now the obverse of this is: Why would US officials lie or stretch the truth in order to get us embroiled in another stupid pointless war?

The answer is obvious to anyone who’s familiar with apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist nonsense: The damned fools want to bring about their mythical Battle of Armageddon so their little god can descend from heaven.

Crazy, right?

Okay, so please suggest another explanation for the behavior of Bush and his underlings. What other sensible explanation is there for this apparently irrational and frankly lunatic behavior? This incessant, belligerent need to verbally and literally assault the ways of life in other, sovereign nations?

The very best, most sensible thing that could have happened would have been to simply remain in Afghanistan after it was bombed, to spend several years rebuilding it, possibly occupying it — as we did with both Germany and Japan after WWII — to help it become a bastion of democracy and freedom, to turn it into a showpiece of the Middle East, a nation rich with technology, industry, healthy and happy citizens, and a voter base absolutely fervently in love with the US and its allies — a base which would be committed to giving the Taliban no foothold whatsoever.

Instead we destabilized the nation, allowed the Taliban plenty of places to pop up once more and have made opium Afghanistan’s principal export crop. And, for an encore, we continue to ignore the problems in Afghanistan — which we might still be able to fix, if we ask the rest of the world, politely, to please help — and instead try to prepare our nation to go to war on a third front.

A third front.

In all the years I’ve paid attention to world politics, all the years I’ve been concerned about some dimwit, backward fuckass country starting World War Three, I never in my life imagined it might be the United States which would cause it.

Against what do we think we’re fighting?

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* Or, in the case of 3,000+ of our boys and girls, dying with.