The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
From 1979 onwards there is no doubt that America funded the Taliban and bin Laden's boys in order to drain away the strength of the Soviet Union (who were in Afghanistan, it must be remembered, fighting fundamentalism that threatened, directly, its borders). Part of a long series of such events, designed to bankrupt the Soviet state, cripple its army, destroy the other world super power and prevent there being any model but capitalism when other countries considered how best to run their economies, how to vote.
It is also said that the Star Wars initiative was designed to administer the coup de grace to the Soviet state. The long 'arms race', deliberately prolonged by the US, was based on the idea that while America could, just, afford both guns and butter, the USSR could not, and would be too frightened not to keep up with the ever increasing costs of armaments. The incredibly expensive Star Wars however was one step too far.
The combination of these kinds of pressures was eventually too much, even for Gorbachev, one of the great world leaders of the twentieth century, the economy couldn't cope with the demands placed on it, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Reagan had achieved his aim of destroying the only rival to American power. Many unintended consequences of course, not least being the rise of the Taliban, and we all know how that worked out.
I wonder, just between you and me, whether bin Laden saw this success and decided to copy the tactic. Pulling America into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan was one thing, pulling her into Iraq must have been beyond his wildest dreams. What was the most recent figure I heard for the costs of the war? Two trillion dollars? Can America keep on affording guns and butter at that rate?
But there is a bigger question. Not only is the war draining money down a dry oil well, but it has distracted attention, as well as money, away from climate change. Reagan brought the Soviet Union crashing down, bin Laden may succeed in bringing the whole world crashing down. The signs are all around us now, just as they must have been for Gorbachev as the Soviet Union crumbled. Ice melting, storms increasing, droughts devastating, seas sterilizing, water rising, all while the White House twists and turns, hanging in the desert breeze in Iraq. America may be able to afford both guns and butter, but not guns, butter and climate change.
What an achievement for one evil man in a cave in Pakistan - destroy not just America but the whole world. Unintended consequences with a vengeance.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)