[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
I’m not going to attempt a unique perspective on a story this morning, but instead repeat and magnify critical and great work by a blogger on Southeast Asia. The vital ideals of the piece are greatly worthy of repetition, true, but one of the primary(if unsaid) missions of blogtopia is to provide historical memory and perspective to the weave of American political life, which is very much out of the corporate television reality alignment of selling and oligarchy. 1
Dday of Hullabaloo instantly earned a unique Mozilla tab for masterfully using these techniques on Afghanistan Friday, and sure enough got rescued by the extremely discerning Rangers of peerless service at Daily Kos. To employ writer’s discretion in the matter, Mr. David Axelrod will be brought forth, Jedi Political Wizard to the Big Man, it’s never personal, sir, and you’ve been very quiet lately anyway.
Mr. Axelrod, after duly noting our sincere deep gratitude for reading Dday’s piece and being here, let me introduce two immutable, implacable, inevitable as the Earth is round facts of life in American 21st century political life: we are not stupid. We want some fucking answers. Did you think in that is this great swirl of political election and governance not getting them was a new experience for us?
Silence might be a political ploy or tactic, it might be the result of perfectly understandable confusion or strategic elements of normal political life, whatever, the reason we never go away is because it’s not about us, it’s about the political choices being made for Afghanistan that directly affect our people, and if giving blogtopia the finger by not answering questions is our path, fine, we still understand reality forces our people are going to live with those policy choices, explicitly stated or not.
Our people. The story always ends at policy and ideas and tactics and petty mind games, but it isn’t difficult in the least to hypothetically flesh out with decent realism. She’s thin, tough, okay pretty’n plenty smart, fourth child in a family of six from the South, a hundred demographic variables whacked out a path of Army service for her in a viciously downward spiral of American opportunity. No one ever thought she could possibly wear boots, but she knew how to keep a secret for two years to keep the sneering discouragement at bay, endlessly doing calisthenics every night in the attic. Eternally grateful for a family friend who went with her to get on the pill, teaching her that although sex was a perfectly valid choice, where she was going and trying to do meant a dick in your hand was often the quickest gearshift available to a life going nowhere.
She’s out there with a rifle in her hands, right now. Showed those sniffing doubting sonzabtiches, didn’t she? A haircut, E-2, bulky grey urban cammo, 20 pounds of equipment and armor, peering through a Kabul haze on a mission that laughably isn’t classified as combat, serving for us.
There’s a theory of physics I can very dimly understand of parallel universes, where somehow different but similar paths of reality flow around us in a dimension we can’t see. The idea is interesting because one can use it in a freeze frame, put a snapshot of stopped reality on that tough Kabul Corporal and wonder what parallel but distinctly different universes could flow into her reality from Obama Administration policy choices.
She could end up a broken, tragically dead corpse from a roadside bomb, return home without a limb, return home but horribly burdened in mind and soul, stay healthy and happy in Army, exit the Army relatively whole and sane to bust out in a righteous path of education and accomplishment, come home to just as righteously raise her own family, all these parallel realities are waiting right there for this Corporal, Mr. Axelrod, any which could instantly flow into an implacable life path of no return. Theory is very nice but reality only gives us one shot and universe slot, you know?
That’s what makes me angry in all this non-debate and silence about Afghanistan, it seems very much to me that the human dreams and experiences of our people in service never get enough weight, what in the hell is this? Our people are only given one shot at life, one chance, they’ve given up almost everything in service to the Republic for their one precious path, and by God and physics and good political science we owe them everything to make sure we’re doing the best thing possible for them and America’s mission, these are our people!
Please have a great weekend, Mr. Axelrod. Sorry reality can be so rude at times.
[1] Steve The Machine Benen is correct, Ezra Klein did a masterful historical essay craft recently with Nixon and Bush, and then completely blew my bloggers slaying the evil corporate writers motif by publishing the work in...the Los Angeles Times. [shakes head] Good luck and go get ‘em, handsome talented one, seriously.