There are a lot of sayings about idle hands, especially in religion. Apparently, the script writer’s favorite antagonist really likes them. I can tell you firsthand who has also really liked them over the last 18 months, the breweries, wineries, and seed companies in my reach.
Thirty days ago, we were all sitting around begging Fall to come, to get back to some version of normal, which for many is anchored by football, cooking, and of course, arguing about both of them. Today, we sit with a Delta variant that is surely gonna screw with our fall and a situation in Afghanistan that went from crappy (the baseline of the Afghan situation is crappy) to what-in-hell-happened.
This leads me to the purpose of this article. First, a few statements.
1 - Militaries are machines. In the US, the military is so much more than a few soldiers riding around in trucks. The defense department has asked Congress for a $715B (Yes B) budget in 2022. If any of you have ever dealt with budgets of any size, you all know what happens when departments have big budgets, especially when those big budgets pay the salaries of those who are in control of the spending. What does not usually happen is that they return the money.
2 - The US this week has taken a black eye. I have plenty of thoughts on what this means geopolitically in the future, but for now, what we can all agree on is that the execution of this Afghan pullout has been disastrous. The war was never going to end and the people in that country do not have a will to fight, so getting out was long overdue - I don’t think anyone is discounting that. However, the fact that the US army, which lays claim to the single most intelligent, powerful forces in the history of the planet, was so taken by surprise is not a good look.
3 - People in power are usually there because they are incredibly confident in their abilities. In most cases, these are people who frankly do not understand losing, or defeat, and are those friends you see tackling a 7yo at a backyard football game.
So, where does this leave us?
We have the world’s greatest military power being punched squarely in the face, and it’s staggered us a bit. It’s not nearly enough to knock us down by any stretch, but I’m pretty sure those in charge are quite angry. These are people that above all things, do not like looking bad and they really do not like it when people like Putin are taking de-facto jabs at us in press conferences. The difference between diplomacy and force can be a very thin line today.
We have a pretty large military contingent who (in theory) will suddenly have quite a bit of time on their hands. Outside of the war in Afghanistan, there isn’t a whole lot of major international conflict for us to worry about, or at least any that we will be willing to poke around in, especially after this week.
So what does the world’s largest military, whose spending is a pretty significant part of the US economy with major trickle-down effect and who has an insane annual budget, turn its attention to in order to show the world how big our muscles are?
The current administration surely is not going to throw all its might on protecting the southern border. The CDC changes its mind daily but last I checked, they have not recommended bullets and bombs to fight Covid (bombs have to be vaxxed first so are unusable). You can send a bunch of drones out there but since no one wants to really work anymore, you probably won’t see anyone. Do we send all the soldiers out to check vaccine passports or everyone’s Dogecoin wallet balances?
Of course, there are always issues out in the world, but suddenly they are a bit more precarious. I doubt we touch the Hong Kong issue right now, and probably are going to be at least a little gun shy (pun intended) on anything involving military intervention in the middle-east (fun fact on the middle east below). Africa is always full of sadness but like the middle-east, we could fight that problem for 500 years and not get anywhere. What do we do with all these soldiers, budgets, machines, and hunger to show people we are indeed the bees’ knees?
My guess is we probably turn our attention within for a while, but that could spell disaster. Remember, 20 years ago a single event created the TSA, NSA, and a completely new set of “stuff” in the name of national security, and this was all with our military full focused on one part of the world.
What do we do for 10 years, with a $750B budget? An annual budget that is so big, that it exceeds the total budget of all but about 20 countries!
When thinking about this article, the term “middle-east” got me thinking. What really is the middle east? What does that mean?
I did about 30 minutes of internet digging, and there are a few wildly different definitions. Some maps put Sudan and Egypt in the middle-east, which to me is strange because those are African countries. Most put Afghanistan in the middle east, but for a long-time that part of the world was a part of India and then controlled by the USSR, neither of which I really think of as “middle-east”. This is something I may read up on down the line.
I’m also reminded of a book I read a while back called Charlie Wilson’s War, which dealt with the previous empire (they call that region the empire killer for a reason) trying to “occupy” it. If you are from the Houston area, you will really enjoy it. I will have to find that book and re-read it.
A lot should be written on the behalf of Afghans who do care, particularly women and girls. Their situation is so sad, it’s disheartening to even write about, much less sit and watch knowing there is nothing we can do. Humanity should be ashamed of itself for many reasons. We like to consider ourselves so advanced as a species, yet we have places all over the world that still can’t simply treat people decently.