Per comment from
The Vile Scribbler and now
this, perhaps when the
betting kiosk hits 6,000 and the unemployed are rioting in the streets, we may reconsider the economic (if not the practical) wisdom of our, um, "secret" efforts in
VietnamPakistan.
This must be the "first as tragedy, then as farce" stage of declining hegemon.
I don't know, dude - I think Afghanistan is Vietnam here, so that would make Pakistan...Laos? Cambodia?
ReplyDeleteBut man, rioting in the streets...what I wouldn't give to see heads belonging to people like that Santelli fuckface stuck on the ends of pikes and pitchforks. For once, I would be so proud of my countrymen.
Good point, the real Big Muddy is on the other side of the Durand Line there. So yeah, I guess Pakistan would actually be Laos or Cambodia, but with a lot more people and nukes.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather spend $20bn building roads and schools in Afghanistan, and working them toward some regional trade deals for non-opium crops, than drop another dime in this exercise in futility. It's just not gonna work; as Oliver Stone once said of the Vietnamese, these people are bad losers, and it's their house. Winning is not even definable anymore, much less a viable option. And there's not even an economic benefit this time around.
I think at some point there will be something more severe than the usual protest marches, which do nothing whatsoever and are cordoned off into "free speech zones" to begin with. Carlin's adage about us being bought off cheap is coming undone, with people losing all those nifty toys, as well as the essentials.
They might just get pissed enough to make sure Bernie Madoff leaves his penthouse feet first. Some sort of catalyzing event will come along, as it always does. People are coming to the realization that we're throwing good money after bad to prop up failures and grifters, rather than a necessary retooling of the system. It's a start.