How Did Kabul Become Our Dunkirk?
Is it just coincidence that the same week we are bringing thousands of our Afghan ‘allies’ out of Kabul, that a full-length movie, Dunkirk, is playing on Showtime? And to make the coincidence even more complete, yesterday CNN had a story about how airplanes owned by American Airlines and Delta were seen landing at our Ramstein airbase in Germany disgorging more Afghan ‘allies’ who are already being transported to the United States.
The Battle of Dunkirk may have been the greatest military defeat for the British in any war they ever fought which turned out to be a victory. At least that’s the way it’s being portrayed in the new movie and that’s the way it’s always been described. Now how the complete rout of the entire British Army, which left more than 800 field guns, 700 tanks, 20,000 armored vehicles and 11,000 machine guns on the battlefield, can be considered anything other than a complete and total military collapse, is beyond me.
In fact, there wouldn’t have been any British troops to bring back home in their little fishing boats if the German Army had not decided to change course after their unanticipated attack through the Ardennes and shift some of their armored columns back towards Paris rather than continuing down the coast to bottle up the entire Allied force.
And by the way, the Brits and the French had been fighting the German Army since the beginning of May 1940, and the Battle of Dunkirk began at the end of the month. Know how much they knew about where and when the Wehrmacht was going to attack their front lines? About as much as we knew about where and when the Taliban were going to attack Kabul.
But now it’s not just the Taliban. The latest reports are that ‘elements’ of both ISIS and Al Qaeda are also getting involved in military actions against our ‘ally’ and our troops.
I love how the Pentagon uses the word ‘element’ and how the media repeats it without question, as if the word has any real strategic or tactical meaning at all. When I was a kid, the word ‘element’ meant that some good-for-nothings (read: Blacks) were moving into ‘our’ neighborhood. At least back then we all knew how the word ‘element’ was supposed to be used.
And let’s not overlook the fact that in our attempt to take a complete mess and turn it into some kind of heroic event, we have also completely obliterated the way that the word ‘ally’ has always been used.
Yesterday there was an interview on the NBC Nightly News with some poor, beleaguered Afghan guy standing in the airport surrounded by his four kids and his wife who was, of course, wrapping her arms around Kid Number 5. And the man, who was described as an ‘ally,’ was complaining about how it took him four years to get the documentation he needed in order to leave Kabul and go to God knows where.
That’s an ‘ally?’ I always thought an ‘ally’ was someone who picked up a gun and fought alongside your troops in some kind of joint military exercise. Now the term appears to be used for some guy who maybe had a shop selling high-heeled, women’s shoes which will no longer be allowed in a country that will operate under Sharia law.
You see, our legal system allows women to wear any kind of shoe style they want to wear. Which is why we have ‘freedom’ and the poor bastards who will remain in Afghanistan after we and our ‘allies’ pull out aren’t free. Get it? We’re good — they’re bad.
I have now watched the movie Dunkirk two times. And I am increasingly convinced that when the Pentagon planners sit down with the State Department planners and the National Intelligence Planners and all the other goddamn planners, they come up with a plan to turn our defeat in Afghanistan into a heroic military win by watching the same movie at least once that I watched twice.
So, will Kabul become another Dunkirk, or will it end the way things ended at the Little Big Horn?
If you stand in front of the monument that marks the spot where Custer and his troops were killed, you can see a bright, new casino right down the road.
