Sunday Drive: Early Morning Rain

I did not know till recently that this classic Peter, Paul and Mary tune was written by Gordon Lightfoot.

We had several gloomy, overcast days in a row this week, punctuated by downpours. But this morning it's bright and sunny outside, though just above freezing.

Bonus:  "The Amplitude of Love," a different kind of Christmas sermon, by the Rev. Sean Mullen at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

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History Repeats Itself

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the chaotic fall of Kabul is a monumental fuck-up?

And the blame for whatever is happening there right now is squarely on Biden's shoulders.  Though the last three presidents also bear responsibility for this long, ghastly misadventure on the other side of the world.

I am proud of our troops, who by all accounts have done an excellent job in a bad situation - but I am deeply ashamed of the waste of lives and money and goodwill in Afghanistan these twenty years.

I remember the pictures of the fall of Saigon, and today's events seem to be a rerun of that debacle.

Not that I ever wanted us to be in Vietnam OR in Afghanistan; but there's a good way to leave and a bad way.  Again we see the same lies, the same denials, the same "alternate facts" that clearly are at odds with the images on the TV screen.

I remember very clearly sending off a hot email to George Bush when he sent the troops to Afghanistan, reminding him that the Russians had tried for twenty years to pacify those people without a shred of success, ditto the British before them, and what made him think we could do any better?

Alas, my words, like many others', fell on deaf ears, apparently.  Now, for all we expended in that far-off wasteland, there is only blood and sorrow and shame to show for it.

I am completely disgusted.  Nauseated.  Mortified.  What a black day for America.  Again.

When will they ever learn? 

Update, 8/16/21:  President Biden spoke from the White House this afternoon on the situation in Afghanistan, putting the best face possible on a colossal 20-year mistake. He states plainly that it is hopeless to pour men, machines, and money into a faraway country whose own government is corrupt, divided, and unwilling to defend its own people in a civil war that the United States has no business meddling in. These are the glaringly obvious truths it took American leaders 20 long years to admit in the Vietnam debacle. 

 

At least Biden is stating them plainly here and now, saying at the 4:45 mark, "I stand squarely behind my decision." And at 6:30, "We gave [the Afghans] every opportunity to fight for their future. We could not give them the the will to fight for that future."  No, of course not - it wasn't their dream of the future, only an outsider's idea.  You simply can't live someone else's life for him - whether speaking of individuals or nations.  It goes deeply against the grain of human nature to be reduced to a mere puppet, even if it is for his own good.  That 's not liberty, is it?

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam! If I foresaw this, living in obscurity far out on the Texas prairie twenty years ago, why did no one in Washington?  What the hell is wrong with people?

When will they ever learn?

Update, 8/17/21:  Jonathan Steele has written a fine opinion piece in the Guardian on the lessons of history in Afghanistan that is worth reading.

Also noteworthy:  The Guardian's editorial on the manifest unfitness of Boris Johnson for his office:  "When events demand stature, Mr Johnson always shrinks to the occasion, and the vacuum where leadership should be diminishes Britain in the eyes of the world."  Quite.

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Sunday Drive: If I Had a Hammer

As performed by Peter, Paul and Mary at their 25th anniversary concert in 1986:

Sunday Drive: In the Early Morning Rain