Here’s a basic rule to think about before joining a poker game. If after looking around the table you haven’t spotted the “fish,” the person almost certain to be the big loser, you’re the fish. And in case you haven’t noticed it yet, in the great game of Afghan Poker now being played in that benighted land, the United States has become the table’s big, really big, fish.
The other major players at this table are al Qeada, the Taliban, the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) and the Karzai clan, with drop-by players that include NATO, Russia, India and Iran. The game almost ended shortly after it began with a huge shock-and-awe play by the U.S. Virtually every chip on the table was scooped up in this opening gambit, and if we had then cashed in and left the table, leaving others to fight over the few remaining chips, sitting in again only occasionally to keep the losers at each others throats, it would have been a major victory play for the U.S.
Alas, we opted to stick around and go after those few remaining chips. The others at the table gradually took our measure. They spotted our “tells,” weaknesses they could exploit, and bit by bit commenced to take away our winnings.
The Taliban’s comeback has been the most dramatic to date. It probably could have eeked out a few of the chips it lost in any case over time. Merely by staying at a table that we were too foolish to leave, however, it’s been able to win the traditional Afghan national mantel of defender of the faith against foreign infidels.
The ISI, which passes chips to the Taliban under the table and gets these same chips from the US, has now also become a winner for the simple reason that the other players can’t afford to let it lose. The Karzai clan, the happy recipient of chip contributions from all the other players, has emerged as the slickest shark a the table. And al Quaeda, which has moved its own gaming to other tables in recent years, remains at this one not to win more but just to keep he U.S. from dropping out.
The deep thinkers who set America’s foreign policies are now obsessed with becoming more sophisticated in dealing with places like Afghanistan. They are desperately working to learn the games being played there, to master them so that at some future date we won’t be endlessly shaken down, outfoxed, or outright diddled.
I have a different notion. I don’t think we should focus on learning the subtle plays of Afghan Poker, because immersing our nation in a game best left exclusively to religious nutcakes and slimy bazaar rip-off artists is really kind of stupid when you think about it.
The better way for us to play Afghan Poker is to simply turn this hottentot rabble against one another, let them dissipate their energies in internecine feuding, occasionally sending in the drones to take out any group that gets strong enough to present a genuine threat to our actual national interests.
We’ve played the fish here far, far too long. The longer we play at this alien table with its incomprehensible rules, the more we lose.
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