RCHaynes's Open Salon Blog

Afghanistan: Nothing But A Fool's Errand

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:11:15 -0500

For anyone trying to write about Afghanistan, the war in that ornery, cantankerous and choleric nation is one of the fastest-moving targets around.

Writing about it, like fighting it, is like playing dodge-ball with a fruit fly. Like shooting minnows in the sea. Like pitting Wile E. Coyote against the road runner -- and we all know which character the U.S. military plays in that cartoon.

Anyone who thinks the Afghan people will ever just sit down and play nice with Uncle Sam would make a perfect buyer for oceanfront property in Arizona.

If they could get a mortgage.

But I digress.

No wonder the White House is entertaining so many potential strategies and can't seem to pick out one good one just yet. Obama recently announced that he will make an announcement on whether he'll announce an escalation there soon.

Any day now.

In my humble opinion, any strategy other than withdrawal is doomed to fail. Withdrawal will also fail in its own way, of course; once we pull out, the country will revert to its natural state -- a rugged land full of fierce fighters who will train their sights away from the Yankee invaders and back onto their own people.

So why should we throw more human bodies in the form of American soldiers at an effort that cannot succeed no matter how many years and devalued dollars we invest?

Common sense plus history -- especially the comical Great Game waged between Russia and Britain there in the 19th century -- will tell us to pack up our toys and leave Afghanistan now.

Russian attempts to control the country in the 1980s also led to nothing but widows and the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire. And we need only look at British efforts to tell Americans what to do 250 years ago to know that no people want foreign troops on their soil.

And I would argue that Afghani "minutemen" are a lot tougher and more numerous than our home-grown version back then.

My brief experience in Central Asia -- where I spent five months on a US-taxpayer-funded media project in the comparatively mild-mannered Kazakhstan -- tells me that what we call corruption in America is simply the cost of doing business there. And that these nations' leaders long ago learned how to tell us what we want to hear. They know just how naive Americans can be.

So, are the endless battles and skirmishes and firefights and downed helicopters in Afghanistan helping in any way? Rumor has it that we went into Afghanistan to prevent Al Qaeda from inflicting another September 11th on America. But rumor also has it that Al Qaeda has prudently moved to Pakistan and, if 9/11 or recent events are any example, most terrorist plots can just as easily be hatched in European cities or on U.S. military bases in Texas anyway.

In fact, our presence in Afghanistan is only making matters worse, especially by helping to destabilize nuclear-bomb-owning Pakistan and to recruit young Muslims who have nothing better to do. And there are lots of young Muslims with
nothing better to do.

In the meantime, we've already pumped $144 billion dollars into Afghanistan. Apparently, that works out to a million bucks per soldier per year. And we don't save money when one of them gets killed -- we just replace him or her with a new one.

It will be no cakewalk to pull out of Afghanistan and I, like many people, fear for those locals who aided our misguided efforts, and for the women who will surely suffer if the repressive Taliban return.

Similar arguments were used to keep us in Vietnam long after it was clear to most Americans that victory there was impossible. If the U.S. military had continued to believe an end was in sight, we would still be bombing rice paddies and dropping napalm on the jungle, if there were any rice paddies or jungles left.

(Maybe we should bring back the draft. That would almost guarantee an imminent withdrawal from Afghanistan and its sister war in Iraq. Once enough American boys and girls were sent over to fight -- and not just the poor and needy -- the whole thing would be over lickety-split.)

We should never have gone on this fool's errand in the first place, and should have let the Afghans work out their internal problems themselves. But that is another story, another president, and the mistake that led to all others.

In the meantime, again, we're quibbling over how much modest proposals for health care reform might cost or how much we might have to spend to fix our mediocre educational system or to clean up our inner cities or help put Americans back to work.

America is falling apart while our bright red blood and crisp greenbacks paint and litter the barren Afghan hills.

A writer for Britain's Guardian recently compared the endless war in Afghanistan with the darkly funny movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray's character must repeat the same day again and again. It is only through being forced to reexamine his life and priorities that he manages to break that vicious cycle.

Would that America would do the same. Our clock, too, is ticking.

Is That Supposed to Be a Good Thing?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:11:41 -0500

One of the downsides to being a news junkie is the occasional lack of discrimination, especially when it comes to reading the local rags, which, as we know, are so hungry for readers that they will cover just about anything to draw people in and drive up advertising revenue.

Crime -- the more horrendous the better -- plus fires, accidents, big weather events and sports rivalries are the mainstays of local news reports just about everywhere in America. Without them, reporters would have little to talk about beyond county commissioner meetings, municipal sewage problems and traffic tie-ups on the beltway.

This time of year, seasonal food and topics in education also make their way into the headlines. And if this past week is any example, I'm not sure that's always a good thing.

One of the "most popular" stories here recently was about a local guy who ate 35 local chili dogs in one sitting at his local bar -- he is now a local celebrity. The photo of him with his buddies in the bar -- his cheeks bulging with one of those "dogs" -- earned him his 15 minutes of Warhol-predicted fame.

This big story came on the heels of a bunch of food-related articles during the annual State Fair, where every year excited locals line up to try the most outrageous and, if news reports are to be believed, the most delicious grub ever invented on the face of this good Earth.

This year's favorite bite? Chocolate-covered bacon. Tip? Don't cook the bacon too much; something about its sogginess makes the semi-sweet coating taste even better.

Few local reporters waste ink or airtime asking locals if they really should be stuffing their face with such "food" every autumn, but then I'm just a spoilsport who doesn't appreciate the ingenuity that goes into combining pork and candy.

Our state agricultural commissioner was quoted as exclaiming: "Believe me, I've tasted it, and it's wonderful." Since the pork industry runs this state, I'm thinking he might have an interest in promoting this newfangled way to serve pig. Never hear him say much about eating more fruits and vegetables.

There were also candy bars dipped in funnel-cake batter, including deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers and deep-fried Ho-Hos, plus deep-fried pickles, deep-fried bananas and deep-fried macaroni and cheese.

"Anything you can fry and put on a stick, they'll buy," said one vendor proudly. (Not sure how you get mac 'n cheese on a stick but anything's possible at the State Fair.)

While October's mass gluttony is now moldy news -- though it still sticks in my craw -- a story in this morning's papers brought up the question of how to improve our school's educational standards and ensure our children get the best education money can by.

It seems that a local middle school has hit on a novel approach to raising the funds needed for digital cameras in the computer lab, especially when last year's candy sale didn't work. (Maybe they needed to deep-fry those Hershey Kisses. Just a thought.)

So, the idea is to have parents fork over 20 bucks to buy their kids an extra 20 points on their grades -- that would mean 10 extra points on two tests of the student's choosing and possibly raise a B to an A, for example, or an F to a D.

Apparently, a parent advisory group concocted the plan and the principal endorsed it, saying it wouldn't make any difference on the student's final grade.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Public Instruction said she understands that schools are struggling with the recession but questioned whether selling grades might teach students the wrong lesson.

Kids have until November 20th to get their money in. Less than a week before Thanksgiving.

Deep-fried chocolate-coated turkey legs anyone?

Late-breaking news: County school administrators just nixed the grade-selling activities in our nearby town, thanks to all of the publicity. Now that is a very good thing.

Why No Nobel Prize in Fashion?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:10:25 -0400

The Nobel Prize Committee has been handing out awards like candy this past week -- and that was quite a sugar-coated jaw breaker for Barack Obama -- but I just don't understand why there is never a recipient from the fashion world.

That said, it has been quite a year for Nobel firsts.

More women than ever took home a gold medal -- plus a sack of Swedish kroner -- in the areas of economics, chemistry, physiology, medicine and literature; one for research into economic governance, two for delving into the mysteries of chromosomal activity, another for the most in-depth description of ribosomes to date, and still another for her critical depiction of life behind the Iron Curtain. A few men in physics received Nobels for work related to optical communication and an imaging semiconductor circuit.

And then, of course, the President of our United States got the startling news that he had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for world-saving acts yet to be committed, and his opponents have been raising campaign funds on that vast left-wing Swedish conspiracy ever since.

Now, these Nobel Prize accomplishments are all well and good, and we're proud to be breathing the same air as these brilliant people, but are science experiments and fictional books the only game in town?

What about the research that goes into making sure people don't walk around naked all day? It deserves a second look.

True, fashion is not the only category that has been slighted since the awards kicked off in 1901. There has never been a Nobel for mathematics, either, an oversight that also smacks of bias -- one can only assume that Alfred, who made his fortune inventing dynamite, saw no need to recognize people who simply dabble in numbers, and maybe he felt modern civilization already knew enough about adding and subtracting and that machines would one day take over all that crunching anyway.

For those of us tortured into learning the multiplication tables as an innocent child, the fact that there is no Nobel for math makes all the sense in the world.

But I digress.

Because even if algebra and calculus get no respect, shouldn't the science of clothing? I mean, these Nobel Prize winners studied what goes on in our economies, our bodies and our dysfunctional societies, shouldn't there be some recognition for those hard-designing men and women paying attention to what hangs on the outside of our bods?

I don't know how much of any given nation's GDP goes to buying the latest shirts, skirts, dresses, pants, vests, shoes, gloves, sweaters, jackets, coats, scarves, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings, but I would think that apparel plays a serious enough role in every economy that any economist worth his or her hat would see the value in that.

And it beats spending years staring at economic charts and graphs and still getting it wrong about the recession.

Medicine also applies here -- everyone knows that the best drug for just about any human being is a new outfit with a touch of bling. A Nobel Prize in Fashion could also, of course, hook in with the physiology category since the better we look on the outside, the better we feel on the inside. Any fashion magazine can tell you that.

And then there's an application to chemistry -- putting together just the right blouse with just the right skirt would be like mixing baking soda and vinegar which, if I remember correctly from Chem 101, would turn any well-dressed woman into a walking volcano.

This is why I just don't understand why fashion designers -- from those premiering their latest creations on the runways of Paris to those knocking off those ten-thousand dollar dresses for KMart -- don't get more attention from the eggheads in Stockholm.

Much peace has been bought over the decades with the perfect pair of shoes, especially when they're running away from a fight.

Shouldn't that be the basis for the best Nobel of all?

Spring Break Part I

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 13:10:17 -0400

The only people who would think it was a good idea to let three 17-year old suburban high school girls go to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break would be other 17-year olds.

But somehow our parents -- maybe because they needed a spring break themselves -- drove us to the Greyhound station in Boston early one snowy morning in February 1974 for a 36-hour bus ride that would take us down Route 95 and into the deep south.

My school record had been so dismal, and my behavior so unruly, that my parents probably wished I would just move to Florida and stay there.

It was our final semester, a special time when many students -- at least back then -- did even less schoolwork and homework than usual. We didn't really have much to take a break from, since we were doing little more than showing up for the occasional class and waiting to see which college might accept us when the admissions letters started rolling in -- or not -- come April.

Still, escaping the boring New England snow for the fun-soaked Florida beach -- and getting a chance to play grown-up -- seemed like a "wicked good thing" to do at the time.

When Nancy, Debbie and I slipped into the tall, cushy seats of the huge bus, we felt only eagerness, excitement and pride. The only buses we had known till then were those orange school buses, which now seemed puny and even laughable by comparison.

I'm not sure why but somehow we had the brains to sit up front, near the driver, and avoid the crowd of teenagers and hippies -- mostly boys -- clustered in the back rows, even though they kept calling out to us to join them. We were hardly goody-two-shoes but I could tell they were looking for more trouble than we were interested in -- drinking, shouting, laughing and smoking under the glare of lights near the bathroom.

By the time we headed out of the station, the bus was pretty much packed, and most of the other passengers were older men in suits and ladies in dresses plus a smattering of the elderly and young mothers with children.

When we arrived at New York City's Penn Station about five hours later, a bunch of people got off the bus while a line of newcomers stood waiting by the door to get on.

That was when a middle-aged man who had been in a rush to get off the bus stepped right back on with two New York policemen in full uniform right behind him. A scuffle started up in the back with people shouting and swearing -- a bottle even smashed on the floor.

I moved from my seat on the aisle to one by the window, tucked my bag under my feet and discreetly lifted my head to see what was going on.

That's when I saw the troublemakers being led up the aisle and off the bus by the man and one of the cops -- the boys were in handcuffs and muttering under their breath. The other cop stayed behind and began going row by row, asking to look inside the bags of some of the other young people on the bus and moving his way slowly toward the front.

Debbie and Nancy and I looked at each other with our mouths wide open.

"Can you believe it?!" we said without making a sound. "Oh, my God."

I kicked my bag further under my seat and watched out of the corner of my eye as the cop led someone else off the bus.

A few minutes later, the next batch of passengers started filtering onto the bus and settling into the vacant seats.

"That guy was an undercover cop," someone said. "Those boys had pot," another one piped in. "I could smell it." "Good riddance," said a third.

I breathed a trembling sigh of relief and gave my bag a final but gentle shove under the seat. The bus rumbled out of Penn Station into the snowy sleet, making its way through Lincoln Tunnel and onto the Interstate where its big nose pointed toward the promised sun.

We giggled, curled up in our seats and took a good, long, carefree nap.

Whither the Time Goest?

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:10:45 -0400

When I was a senior in high school, the quote I used under my yearbook picture paraphrased the great English poet, John Milton:

"How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on its wing my one and seventeenth year?"

Believe me, I was no wise-before-my-time teenager -- I was a party girl who lived in the moment, as children are wont to do, thinking little of the past and nothing of the future. But I must have figured out that my life was going to change very fast once I ran out that door with my diploma. And it did.

In that vein, and for your pleasure, I've assembled a few favorite quotes from far wiser men and women than I.

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.

-- John Archibald Wheeler, American physicist
Coined the term "black hole"
Lived to be 96

***

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

-- John B. Priestly, English novelist
Authored Man and Time

***

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

-- Frank Zappa, American rock composer
Asteroid in his name: 3834 Zappafrank

***

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet
Won Nobel Prize in Literature

***

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

-- Carl Sandburg, American writer
Won three Pulitzers

***

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

-- François-René de Chateaubriand, French author
Considered the father of French Romanticism

***

I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.

-- Erma Bombeck, American humorist
Wrote popular column and umpteen best-sellers

***

The soul doesn't wear a watch.

-- Prem Rawat, Indian-born spiritual teacher
His foundation provides food and water to the poor

***

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

-- Bertrand Russell, English philosopher
History of Western Philosophy became best-seller

***

Image sources:

1. Black hole photo -- random source
2. English painting by George Morland
3. Drawing by Baron C. DeGrimm
4. Butterfly photo -- random source
5. Coins photo -- royalcoins.com
6. Painting of cats by Daniel Merlin
7. Car swerving sign -- random source
8. Melting Watch, Salvador Dali
9. Lotus painting, Amy Guion Clay -- www.amyclay.com