Over at Bloomberg, Pankaj Mishra gives a nice take on “The Messy Mind of Omar Mateen”, noting that, among other things,
“Mateen was mentally unstable, according to his divorced first wife. His Afghan-born father spoke of his son’s hatred of gays. Obama confirmed that the Islamic State had not directed the attack even though Mateen invoked the terrorist group in a call to a police operator. And then it emerged that Mateen had apparently used gay dating apps and frequented the gay club where he staged his mass murder.”
Yes, he does sound messy and unstable, and susceptible to notions encouraged by ISIS propaganda to do something noble and extraordinary—noble, extraordinary, and bloody. But one can also wonder if Omar would have done what he did if the U.S. did not currently have 32,000 troops in his family’s home country of Afghanistan, about the same as during George Bush’s administration, but down from a high of more than 50,000 during Obama’s first term.
U.S. military engagement has tapered significantly since Obama’s first term—U.S. combat deaths reached a high of 499 in 2010 but fell to 22 in 2015, and all U.S. combat troops (but, naturally, not all U.S. troops) are supposed to be withdrawn at the end of 2016, but I doubt if “unstable” minds like Omar’s can parse such fine differences. I have a hard time myself. In any event, Omar is probably more concerned with civilian casualties, which are (naturally) far higher than those suffered by the U.S. and which, unlike U.S. casualties, are not declining—600 killed in the first four months of 2016.
Both Omar and I, I think, also had a hard time understanding why the hell the U.S. presence has continued in Afghanistan for 13 long years, when our original goal, the ouster of the Taliban from control of the country’s government, was accomplished in a matter of months. Since then, our continued presence has done nothing more than get more people killed. Shockingly, we have failed to convert Afghanistan into “Denmark”.
I have (very frequently) expressed the opinion that we are there because important people are unwilling to admit that they didn’t, and don’t, know what they’re doing. In particular, I believe Obama continued the war in Afghanistan, after winning the presidency because he opposed the war in Iraq, largely because 1) he “knew” he couldn’t take both wars away from the Pentagon and the CIA and 2) he desperately wanted Robert Gates to continue as secretary of defense, and he knew that Gates wouldn’t take the job unless Obama agreed to support the “good war” in Afghanistan. So thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands of Afghans, died to cover Obama’s ass.
Obama makes a great point of refusing to talk about “Islamic terrorism”. He makes an even greater point of not talking about himself.
Afterwords
In his highly praised memoirs, Gates frequently tells us how much he grieved over the loss of every American soldier in Afghanistan, how much he worried about them. Bob, they wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t sent them over, sent them over to do nothing but cover your own ass.
