Unlike the armchair quarterbacks fighting for airtime on cable news networks of all political stripes, I don't pretend to know much about military history or, frankly, what's been going on in Afghanistan for the past few years, if not more. The news of the past week or two has forced me to learn more, with the added benefit, of course, of piling on to my sense of despair.
By all accounts, this could have been handled better. Like that's something new here. I wish everybody could just get along, but I know just enough about history to know that's not going to happen.
The comparisons to the fall of Saigon were inevitable, with side by side pictures of the last helicopter leaving Vietnam and desperate Afghanis hanging on to the wing of an American airplane flooding social media and the airwaves. A permanent stain on Biden't legacy, this is, or so I've heard. Good presidents before him have made horrible mistakes (FDR sending a shipload of Jews escaping Nazi Germany back to their deaths in Europe comes to mind), but legacies are far more complicated than we make them out to be each time we think we have crossed the line.
So back to our own house. Cleaning up after four years of the worst president ever -- and I say that not so much as an expert in anything other than being a human for 61 years -- is like cleaning a bathroom with a toothbrush. A large bathroom; a travel sized toothbrush. Half our country buys into the concept that personal "liberty" trumps (pardon the term) public health. Our outgoing president incited a riot and watched with glee as his angry mob beat police officers with flags bearing his name, broke windows, stormed through the Capitol, chanted murderous intentions, and erected a gallows for the Vice President. The pictures from Kabul, for me, called to mind those still fresh images of lawless Americans attacking their own country, my country. Don't even get me started on voter suppression and an entire political party that can, with a straight face, decry the invasiveness of a mask but litigate uteruses they've never met.
Might I suggest we focus less on finger-pointing and more on figuring out what to do now? The Republicans will do their best to avail themselves of the horrors of the past week to wound Democrats in general, President Biden in particular. Democrats will help, because we just love to eat our own while our impotent center falls prey to recalcitrant wings. Sensationalist photographs get our attention, until the next shocking images make us forget. Journalists and social media influencers will manipulate our focus according to the market and our appetites, and Afghanistan will be the stain du jour until the next telegenic atrocity catches our eye. My guess it will be a homegrown atrocity. Just going with the odds on that one.
