As a peacenik, I need guidance on these things [Updated]

Um, let’s see, two helicopter crashes, a daylight assault on the UN hotel, bombing casualties up, a rigged election, the president’s brother trafficking heroin AND getting a CIA paycheck and now Marine Captain Matthew Roh resigning because NATO troops ‘provide an occupation force against which insurgency is justified’—sounds like things are going swell in Afghanistan!

I can’t wait to be reminded yet again that ‘Afghanistan is not Vietnam’, which is true, just as Peru is not Persia and my late grandmother was not Queen Elizabeth. This phrase seems to mean that the U.S. cannot lose another war, and no doubt the full explanation of why this is the case will be forthcoming soon.

Captain Roh in his resignation letter dismantled the anti-terrorist reasoning for continuing to fight a war in Afghanistan, noting that he is ‘not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love’, which is reassuring. (I was afraid we might have had another pacifist Marine combat officer on our hands—even a gay one! I breathe easier.) He says the GWOT makes no sense and never did unless you think we can invade and occupy Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and western Pakistan pretty much forever.

Now that we have someone who, in his own words, ‘was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys’ straightening us out on our priorities, we may be able to get back on track with our national security policy. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone making those decisions who was squeamish about whacking guys.

But I digress. John Kerry is back from a trip to Kabul and reminded me of the upside of the 2004 election, namely that he is not president. He carried the message to our unruly puppet, President Karzai-of-the-heroin-trafficking-sibling [left], that his blatant theft of the recent election would just not do. He then offered this Vietnam-era defense of continued military engagement there.

If we, the United States and our allies, are perceived as incapable of doing the job, it would help extremists recruit and raise doubt -not just in the region, but globally-about our resolve and effectiveness.

That is, we have to keep doing whatever it is we’re doing there because if we stopped, people would decide we were losers. A ‘paper tiger’ was the 1960s phrase, an entity that lacks the political will to ‘see a conflict through to the end’—most humiliating.

Captain Roh, on the other hand, says the extremists are recruiting just fine now precisely because the U.S. has occupied the country and pissed everyone off. Sure sounds like Kerry is sufficiently into whacking guys, but maybe he’s still wants everyone to be in love, and it’s clouding his reasoning.

Kerry also offered this curious colloquy on the arm-twist he performed on Karzai to give back the stolen ballots.

President Karzai and Dr. Abdullah’s decision last week to agree to hold a run-off election shows that both men are willing to put their country ahead of politics. But that result is not an end in itself.

Really? I thought electing someone president was all about ‘politics’ and did in fact constitute an ‘end in itself’.

I guess I just don’t understand international affairs and how to protect Americans from attack. Anyway, another $950 billion and eight more years of subsidizing the world’s principal heroin dealer seem a small price to pay. I’ll even forego the duct tape if they say it’s safe!

[Update] The bill just passed by Congress to authorize another $130 billion for continued guy-whacking in Afghanistan and Iraq also carried the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act. So if Captain Roh’s fellow soldiers use the money to hatefully whack an Afghani homosexual, they’d better watch out!