Riding my Bike as the World Burns

Two events in the news recently came together to remind me of the tragedy of 9/11. The first happened on May 11 when a Cessna flying out of Pennsylvania went off course and flew within three miles of Whitehouse airspace, causing panic and disorder for hundreds of Caucasian residents of our Nation’s Capital. The other was the visit to the US of our Unocal-fist-puppet and oil-drenched “leader” of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.

The former was a reminder because like our vaunted leader George W. Bush, I too was riding my bicycle and unaware that our freedom was under attack. I may as well have been sitting in a classroom reading a crappy kid’s book to a roomful of school children.

Like Dubya, I was happily pedaling through the sunshine and blissfully unaware. He was in Maryland riding his bicycle with his platoon of armed guards, and wasn’t told of the small plane which became lost in DC air space because the pilot relied on outdated maps. Of course unlike 9/11, F-16s were scrambled and Donnie Rumsfeld even authorized the planes to shoot if necessary.

The situation was deemed important enough to evacuate several buildings full of people and it was splashed all over the news ala Michael Jackson or the Runaway Bride. That filthy Liberal Media. I didn’t watch it, but I’m sure they managed to put their lefty spin on it. Poor Tom DeLay may have even been accused of causing the terror.

The joy of a bicycle cannot be overestimated here. For me the pre-9/11 world, the world where my government didn’t use fear tactics in order to try to keep me in line and steal my tax dollars, lasted for a few extra un-terrorized, sunny moments. For our vaunted “Wartime President,” the guy who weaseled his way out of Vietnam, an extra forty minutes of bliss while the “process,” aka Dick Cheney, took control of the situation

Likewise, I watched the recent visit of Hamid Karzai with a kind of cynical bemusement. Well honestly I look at everything political these days with cynical bemusement, when it’s not horror. It was sadly funny to watch our oily puppet from Afghanistan come to the U.S. and expect the Cheney Administration to give him more control of the country that he “leads.” If Afghanistan is the Bush bar of success, it’s a pretty low bar. Poppy production is up and 70% of the world’s opium is coming out of the fields of that country. Of course, when our main allies are thugs and we spend billions of dollars on graft and corruption instead of creating economic stability in a country that has been ravaged by war for centuries, we shouldn’t be surprised when oppressed and brutalized peasants do whatever they have to do to survive.

Karzai came to visit Dubya in hopes of gaining authority over U.S. troops so that he can get control of a country that is sliding into civil war. We never found Osama “dead” or “alive.” Now we are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars away on a failing foreign adventure in Iraq that has looked like Vietnam from the outset, and our brilliant civilian leaders have forgotten about Afghanistan, except when randon embarrassing facts come out about the occupation. Prisoner abuse and the Pat Tillman episode jump to mind.

Watching Bush bitch-slap Karzai reminded me of my initial opposition to the war in Afghanistan. I know, I know, “they” attacked us on 9/11. Those fifteen Saudis had something to do with Afghanistan… Oh yeah, our allies from Al Qaeda and Karzai’s Taliban trained there with Bush family friend Osama Bin Laden. Of course, they wouldn’t have had a foothold there if it weren’t for our brilliant Cold War policy of pouring money into training resistance fighters to fight the “Evil Empire,” the Soviet Union.

Funny how in order for Democracy to thrive on our shores, there must be an Evil (fill in the blank) over the horizon just waiting for us let down our guard, so that they can come to our malls and rape our navel-pierced children.

I don’t buy the argument that Afghanistan was a “justified” war. Terrorism is not an act of war. It is a crime and the only way to fight it is through police work. Police work does not mean creating a police state at home. There are many reasons that invading Afghanistan was a big mistake, not the least of which is that it is a place where empires go to die. Just ask our “coalition” friends the Brits, or our former enemies the Soviets. Better yet, read books about history. The Soviet Union spent ten years fighting U.S. funded Afghan nationalists, which contributed to its fall.

The country is on the verge of civil war, and all the positive Fox News spin about nascent women’s rights and “fair” elections will not change that. Afghanistan has been decimated by war for many, many years and has been bombed further back into the Stone Age by what they view as a hostile civilization. They have nothing to lose and will do anything in their power to get us out.

Invading Afghanistan perpetuated a cycle of violence and revenge, and revenge is not good foreign policy. It also softened public opinion to the invasion of Iraq to the shame of the American people. Have we learned nothing at all from our observations of history?

Our children and our National Guard units are stumbling around blind in a country they know nothing about, in a culture that is diametrically opposed to ours. We offend their sensibilities on a daily basis merely by being there. Anyone who does not think that our current policy in the Middle East isn’t exactly like Vietnam is not paying attention. The Domino Theory is doomed to fail once again.

So I’ll just keep riding my bike and hope that as the world falls down and burns around my ears, I’ll have that extra forty minutes of blissful indifference. Just like George W. Bush.