Afghanistan

As part of my job here at LI, I watch a lot of videos. A lot of videos. Generally, when it comes to partisan ads, I just keep seeing the same lame thing over and over, be it from the left or the right. The cacophony of [insert party/wing] screeching hysterically and/or darkly intoning about how dangerous and threatening the other side is just sort of blends together and fades into the background after a while.

It sort of feels like that “nose-blind” commercial: a particular ad may stink to high heaven, but when all you see is stinky, nasty ads, you go “propaganda blind,” they are invisible to you, their stench is just part of the political scene and fades into nothingness. When everyone is ‘just like’ or (fake swoon, gasp!) ‘worse than’ Hitler or Stalin or Mao, no one is. This applies equally to both sides.

So I admit to being more than a little surprised when I watched the GOP’s recent ad featuring former Obama-Biden admin officials lambasting feckless and incompetent Joe Biden for the absolute, and “completely preventable,” horror show that has so far transpired—and that is far from over—in Afghanistan.

It’s jaw-dropping and a great ad.

Twenty years ago when the United States was sucked into the Afghan cesspool, pundits were divided about the ultimate aim of intervention. President George W Bush talked of GWOT (remember the acronym?) or Global War on Terror. His critics argued that, unless it led to nation-building in Afghanistan, the intervention would make no sense.

Two decades later, the intervention has not advanced GWOT, as Islamist terrorism has spread to two dozen countries in Asia and Africa, with sleeper cells in Latin America. As for nation-building, the US has instead ended up with a travel agency based in Kabul airport under an astonishingly incompetent management.