Unintentionally (I guess) funny piece by Max Boot, published by those cut-ups at the Weekly Standard. Max explains, and I would say that there’s at least a 57% chance that he’s right, that our “alliance” with Pakistan isn’t worth the pain: it would be better to have them outside the tent pissing in than inside the tent pissing out, because, as it is, about 58% of their piss stays in the tent.
As Max also explains, even though Pakistan significantly assists our operations in Afghanistan, “Pakistan’s leverage is not as great as it once was. The death of Osama bin Laden and most of his senior lieutenants has badly hurt the capabilities of al Qaeda central, putting ‘the defeat of al Qaeda’s leadership and dismantlement of its operational capabilities in the region . . . within reach,’ as [Admiral Lewis] Mullen told the Senate.”
What’s (presumably unintentionally) amusing about that quote is that Max is almost saying that we really don’t need to be in Afghanistan any more, and haven’t needed to be there since Osama bought the farm, back in, you know, 2011. Not so amusing is the thousands of lives that have been lost on all sides fighting an entirely pointless war, which will surely continue until at least 2021, when, with only a little luck, the president, whether it’s El Donaldo or some damn Democrat, will be able to “forget” about Afghanistan.1
But wait, there’s more. Max has a plan whereby we can get out of Pakistan and stay in Afghanistan! Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? Well, it almost is! “In recent years NATO has made a concerted effort to redirect supplies via the Northern Distribution Network running through Russia and Central Asia. This forces us to rely on some morally dubious regimes, but, bad as Vladimir Putin and the rest are, at least they’re not actively killing Americans, as Pakistan’s proxies are.” Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, after all, and who wants to die in a beautiful pose, sword in hand?2 Politics makes strange bedfellows, you know, which is a polite way of saying that sometimes it’s necessary to let Vladimir Putin fuck you in the ass. If you want to continue to pointlessly waste American lives in Afghanistan, that is.
- People will go on TV and say things like “I never understood why we were there in the first place,” and all the sage chin-strokers will stroke their chins and nod sagely. ↩︎
- Vladimir Lenin’s famous gibe, directed at those who preferred ideological purity (aka “honor”) to winning. I’m being sarcastic here. ↩︎
