There is an excellent and morbidly funny article in the August issue of Harpers. (Sadly, it is not available freely on-line.) The author, David Samuels, pulls no punches in describing the grim theatricality and through-the-looking-glass mentality of Hamid Karzai’s recent house call to 1600 Pennsylvania. Amidst the usual recital of woes (massive corruption, American money being used to bribe insurgents) and official bullshit (we’re working together better than ever, we’re very mindful of the sacrifices so many have made) there is a scene that perfectly underlines the taboo reality that the only reason we’re still at war in Afghanistan is domestic American politics.
It is the day after Karzai and Obama’s surreal joint press conference:
No one shows up for breakfast at the State Department with the Afghan cabinet except for me and a guy from Mother Jones. Sitting in a windowless room in Foggy Bottom and eating bagels and cream cheese with a dozen Afghan government officials at 8 A.M. is no one’s idea of breakfast at the Ritz, to be sure, but still the turnout is a bit hard to fathom, especially for the Afghans, who can’t believe that they’ve been dragged out of bed to be asked unpleasant questions by two beardless plebs.
Recall that the official position of our government is that nothing is more important than the creation of a stable, legitimate and effective Afghan government that can keep nasty terrorists from using its territory to plan and train for nefarious deeds. The entire official reason for the war rests on the success or failure of the people in that windowless room, and yet the only reporters who showed up came from two lefty magazines with a combined circulation of less than 500,000. If the official story of why we’re at war is even a little bit true, if the Afghan government is absolutely vital to our plans, then that room should’ve been crawling with reporters.
But the room was empty because everyone of any importance, in or out of government, knows that the Afghanis are incidental to the Afghan War. At this point, the war is an American passion play, one that has almost nothing to do with whatever actually happens in that faraway land that most Americans, including Congress, probably couldn’t find on a globe. That free food and the people who are theoretically more important to the war effort than almost anyone else attracted only two journalists tells you how unimportant they really are.
The Afghan cabinet? How boring. Now, had Sarah Palin or some other American celebrity been there, then you’d have had a story that would matter to the assholes in charge.
