Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I am not for war. In fact I don’t know anyone who is for war. War is a terrible thing.

But it is not the most terrible thing.

I have to confess to extreme nervousness at making peace treaties with the Taliban. Remember I come from a country with a long history of war with Islamic entities. For a while the river that runs through the city where I went to college was the dividing line between Christian and Moor. (And those who make high faluting stupid statements about the noble Moors haven’t seen the physical remains I’ve seen, or read first hand accounts. The Golden age of Islam was burnished with stuff stolen from the conquered and built by slave labor. Whether it was more open than it is now, I don’t know. But it was not superior to Christian Europe. It just took from many different cultures and as such served as a conduit.)

I’m afraid treaties are just time to recoup and become a REAL threat. At least that’s the lesson of history.

Now I’m not going to say Trump is making a mistake exactly. I know he had access to things we have not, including what other threats we might be facing, the REAL state of whatever the heck is going on with Kung Flu, etc. etc.

And also of course the political, economic and social will to deal with this as we must, which would be something similar to what we did in Japan. It’s the only way to deal with a totally alien and inimical culture. We particularly lack the cultural will to stay and mold them into our image. Hell, we’re not molding ourselves into our image. The despicable Howard Zinn is used as the basis of school books that convince our own children to hate their culture and their homeland.

There will be posts on this, in future, as well as posts on what real “culture” means because a batsh*t insane left posted on my xenophobia echo on facebook to insist that culture was food and clothes and festivals. (Spits.)

Faced with all that, Trump might very well be doing the right thing, or the only thing he can do. Because, yeah, you know, keeping our people bleeding and dying there for no visible result is stupid. And possibly because we might very well need them at home in the near future. At least if the Xi-disease goes nuts. There are resources and things we shouldn’t be squandering.

Presidents by definition know more than we do. They are briefed. Which is why anonymous bureaucrats shouldn’t make policy decisions (among many other reasons.) Of course our intel services are a hot mess. Heinlein said they always were. And the last president would skip briefings (he liked sports better. Who wouldn’t) and our current president seems to be actively undermined by a lot of people who are supposed to brief him, so I don’t even know if he believes anything they say. (At this point, I wouldn’t.) So for all I know, he’s making his decisions on gut feeling and various websites. Who knows?

OTOH even the WHO says Chinese figures are highly unreliable, and as for the rest, who knows? Will Iran go kablooey when the world economy wobbles?

And while on this, if it hits hard here, will we got stupid enough to vote a communist in? (I don’t like to even think about it. I wake up screaming.)

And at the same time, the student of history in me knows how it went every time Rome pulled into itself.

And I’m afraid my grand-kids, including the not yet born ones, will go bleed and die in that forsaken patch of land, that graveyard of empires.

Unless by then we recover our cultural confidence.

Teach your children well. It might not be too late.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for February 15, 2020