AFGHANISTAN BANANASTAND

There was a 1972 movie starring Robert Redford called “The Hot Rock”, and in an elevator scene, a hypnotist hypnotizes a banker to enter a trance at the words “Afghanistan bananastand”. This comes to mind now because there’s still 1500 American citizens stranded in Afghanistan and I have to wonder if they were all in a trance because they stayed there long after they should have gotten out of the country.

They must have been in a trance to go there in the first place, with the war against the Taliban continuing, the certain knowledge that all the American military was leaving and not coming back and the fact that much of the military had already left and that the Taliban would kill them on sight if they were caught there.

So now these people aren’t likely to escape and the Taliban will hunt them down and kill them all, and speaking personally, we have enough stupid people in this country now without taking these idiots back in. Besides, they’re all Muslims and the very last thing any nation needs is more Muslims.

If we’d carried on an intensive war against the Taliban we would have won it. It was several years ago that they were nearly defeated, and then for reasons beyond my ken, we backed off and allowed them to re-group and become stronger again. Even now, in our act of leaving, we could have wiped them out because they finally all came out of their caves and massed together. All we had to do was wait for their leaders to move into the halls of government in Kabul and bomb the hell out of the area. There were 75,000 Taliban concentrated there, it would have killed off all their leaders and most of their fighters.

It would also have killed off a lot of civilians, but that happens in war. Winning wars isn’t for nice guys. Now, we could still do it. One small nuclear bomb big enough to flatten Kabul would end the Taliban forever. Of course, they still occupy a lot of other Afghan “cities”, but they’d have no leaders and a rapid, ruthless military sweep across the country would fix that.

Ending the Taliban is important for the world because they export terrorism on a grand scale. Now the only hope is that the Russians and Chinese can exploit whatever is their level of greed, to convince them to become rich and lazy and peaceful by selling out their natural resources. It might work, it’s hard to enjoy wealth when you’re being attacked.