"... no one can spell out a good reason...."

"Why no one can spell out a good reason [for the neocomrades to occupy Afghanistan] beats me."

With so many rear-colonels, and so many electronic armchairs for them to play Hannibal from, a lack of consensus amongst the Commentariat and the Weekly Standardisers could be guessed at two different ways within the first millionth of your average analytical centimetre:

(1) Wingnut City and Tel Avîv lack any STRONG reasons for muckin’ about in Afghanistan, let the quality and quantity of their weak reasons be what it may. [1]

(2) WC and TA (the savin’ remnant, I mean, not out-and-out amateurs) have adequate reasons, but prefer not to disclose them. The reasons might even be such that public disclosure would render them inoperative.


The second guess there comes a little nearer conspiracy-mongering than is pleasing, but on the other hand, Afghanistan and Pakistan are still more or less the neo-Levant, are they not? In light of occupational therapy applied to the former al-‘Iráq, however, it would not hurt to stipulate that "war for oil" is quite impossible, and "war for poppies" extremely improbable. If the neocomrades are in possession of good secret reasons for this branch of their colonial policy, the student can safely assume that these unmentionable reasons will not be economic. [2]

Without venturing into profundity, one may also mention the null hypothesis:

(0) The chief reason why WC and TA insist on their forces stayin’ in Afghanistan has no connection with local conditions but is simply a matter of the neocomrades provin’ that nobody can push them out. If the self-prestige of Narcissus Dexter were to be shaken by an irresponsible withdrawal, why, really dreadful things would eventuate!!! But not necessarily in the vacuum withdrawn from or even its immediate vicinity.


There is a certain affinity between (0) and (2), in the sense that Master Narky would almost certainly not make a good impression on decent political adults by formulatin’ and promulgatin’ the claim that his own self-esteem is chiefly what compels him to create the neo-happiness of Afghanistan.

Despite its stiflin’ subjectivity and hot-house atmosphere, guess (0) does have the --thoroughly objective--merit of explaining why Master Narky abstains from marchin’ on Mogadishu and a long list of other world capitals. Pushin’ oneself in where one is not wanted (but also not present in force already) is, after all, an advanced topic that could easily be omitted from the introductory undergraduate course. [3]

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Now as to profundity, or new business at any rate, it appears to the present keyboard that none of the above guesses really captures the essence of the neocomrades’ colonial proceedin’s. Each is worthy of being guessed, but even taken together, they fall short analytically.

Rear-Colonel Contender #4, who raised the issue of why there has been no proper spellin’-out, leaves one puzzled as to whether he takes his implicit question to be rhetorical (_sc._ implyin’ that no such spell-out is possible) or real. I take it to be a perfectly genuine question, myself, although some of the answers considered above may seem to #4 to be located at the wrong level. He may not be willin’ to accept accounts of neocomradely behaviour that are not likely to be consciously entertained and advanced by the neocomrades themselves. All three of my own coarse and illiterate guesses are of that type in varying degrees. A strict scrutiniser could complain, fairly enough, that these are (causal) explanations of why Wingnut City and Tel Avîv cannot leave Afghanistan alone without being (argumentative or ‘rational’) reasons for their policy of invasionism and occupational therapy. [4]

In the particular case at hand, and as regards the Kiddie Krusade more broadly, the plot is thickened by the fact that neocomradely violence pros and geopolitical perps insist on puttin’ out various nominal reasons for their invasionism that can only have been designed as boob bait. The gold medal or booby prize in that competition goes, _me judice_, to those factional spinsters who can actually manage to say with a straight face that Qandahár and Quetta and the like are especially good places to conspire against Western Sieve (and/or against Jewish Statism) from. A child of ten could work out that Montreal or ‘Ammán or Mogadishu or Des Moines would be far more comfy and convenient, not to mention safer from detection.

I am tempted to make the Ultimate Guess at this point, namely that even the neocomrades themselves have no idea at all what they are doin’.

Indeed, that is what I actually guess, though it needs to be glossed a little, as follows: their pros and their perps have indeed no idea *in detail* what they are doin’, but the vast mass of unknown and even unknowable details can be comprehended in a summary verbal formula without much difficulty:

(666) In the modern age, nobody can be safe unless the Party of Wisdom and Virtue and Moderation™ (the neocomradely community) possess a veto power over all troublesome natives and non-Zionist locals without exception.

Exactly what things the lesser breeds without must be prevented from doing is unpredictable in advance even in principle. Nevertheless, the Greater Breeds With™ (the neocomradely community) will know wickedness and stop it whenever they encounter a particular instance, even as Mr. Justice Stewart used to do with nonpolitical pornography.

Of course provisional intermediate formulations of native-local misbehaviour that the PWVM / GBW will probably or certainly have to veto and invade against and treat with occupational therapy are not impossible at all, the trouble is only that such formulae look suspiciously verbal and tautological. Should the neocomrades classify acts A through Z as ‘terrorism’, for example, it is at least a plausible hypothesis that the real connectin’ link among the twenty-six different abominations would be rather Narky Dexter’s experienced psychological itch to veto rather than any common and ‘objective’ terroristical character that one could explain to a Martian -- and then sanely expect her to get the right results by application of the announced shibboleth to future cases. But God knows best.

Happy days.



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[1] This is to look at ‘our’ _libido dominandi_ crew from the outside essentially the same way that Señorito Ottolenghi looks at the evil Qommies: any schoolboy can discover or invent justifications for Iranian gamesmanship both for or against the existin’ neorégime at Kábúl. But none of them can be very plausibly represented as URGENT.

Knowing that they are not in the slightest danger of being hanged in a week, the geopolitical perps feel free to relax and disconcentrate their minds, with the natural (as it were) consequence that all sorts of feebly warranted proposals get offerred and none commands significant support, let alone a majority or consensus.


[2] I see that is worded so as to bring the Huntin’tonian Clashism™ product to mind at once. Though Uncle Sam Jr. and I agree in pooh-poohing economic factors, Harvard Yard Brand ‘civilizational’ neo-baloney is itself useless and worthless.


[3] The Commentariat gentry are sufficiently paracademic / pseudacademic to spot the difficulty with the analogy: obviously Narky Dexter would not be sittin’ at Kábúl or in the Postinternational Zone of the former al-‘Iráq refusin’ to be dislodged unless he had already mastered the contents of Invasionism 3410, the graduate seminar. Or learned how to impose himself on natives and locals from scratch by a course of private study.


[4] Guess (1) is slightly peculiar from this point of view: neocomradely violence pros and geopolitical perps would, as I have conceived their case, be aware of their own secret reasons. The fact that it would be counterproductive for WC and TA to be frank in public has no tendency to demote their rational reasons to causal factors. However, everybody outside the charmed circle of Secret Sharers can have no reliable basis from which to evaluate invasionistical reasons _quâ_ reasons.

Byzantine and neo-Levantine conspiratorialism once again easily seeps in, I fear, should the student attempt to do anything with Guess (1) beyond barely entertain it. Any attempt to speculate _ab externo_ and in detail what Secret Sharers are up to is positively asking for trouble, yet to suppose the SS to be secretly sharin’ some Rumsfeld-worthy "known unknown" that is in effect predestined to remain a known unknowable _in saecula saeculorum amen_ . . . . --well, it is not difficult to see the analytical unsatisfactoriness of that plan!