Terrorists...hmm

Who is Calling Who, What?

Musing on one of many distasteful and openly racist postings that seem to find so much traction around social media these days.  This one the comparison between arming Islamic extremists versus efforts at gun control in this country -- another case of the logic train derailing on that frequent curve of righteous distraction.  And in these propaganda debates, history is discarded in favor of a subtle kind of perversion.  See, America invented terrorism in the semi-modern world.  We kind of broke that civilized protocol where everybody dresses up like a wealthy pimp and shoots at each other until somebody finally gives up.  Instead, we hid behind trees, assassinated officers (to disrupt command and control), stole stuff, blew things up randomly and generally refused to play fair.  Assuming that war and revolution has anything to do with fairness anyway. Conflict is about attrition -- however you can deliver it to the enemy.  And if you are a marginalized group on an uneven playing field, the rules are for the other guy.  He can afford them.  And throughout this unpleasantness, the French were more than willing to help us kill more Englishmen. All the less bodies and guns they'd have to deal with sooner or later.  Big difference?  The French remained friends and allies.

And the parallel universe:

 

 

Fast forward.  1980's or so.  The Soviet Union decides to winter in Afghanistan.  Bad idea, but one worth repeating by us.  See, nuclear weapons made it difficult for US to kill Russians so we hired, then armed the local Mujahideen.  You know these guys...uh, think we call them Taliban now.  They had been marginalized, suffering badly on that uneven playing field so we suggested that a little terrorism might be just the right medicine to send the Soviets packing.  So we kind of Fed-Xed them all kinds of fun stuff.  And we promised...well, we're not very good at that, but we did say that if you guys kill enough Russians, we'll get you schools, electricity, doctors...cable TV.  So they did.  In fact, they killed so many and so terrorized the Soviet Army that they said, "The hell with this."  And they went home.  Trouble was, so did we.  Oh, the presents?  We conveniently forgot about that.  You know, we had an election, so that meant we sent the gifts elsewhere.  So the slightly miffed Mujahideen changed their name to Taliban and overthrew the Kabul government with that nice hardware we sent them.  And they became sympathizers with all the other folks in the Islamic world that had also received those IOU promises we handed out over the 50 years or so we spent entrenched in our little Cold War with the Soviet Union.  That didn't sit well with the new guy in our White House...another case of foreign policy via Alzheimer's, so we invaded Afghanistan to make things...sorry, but it is here I get completely lost.  Win the hearts and minds?  No, we tried that once before with uneven results.  Finally build those schools and power plants?  Well, no.  Oh.  We had a grudge about that whole 9/11 thing.  The 'thing' we failed to fully understand in the first place.  Those 50 years of insincerity and unkept promises we kind of failed to live up to?  Even bother to remember or even reconcile.  Hmm.  So if they are terrorists, where exactly does that make us?