The International Writers Magazine - Our Tenth Year: Reality Check

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The Sins of Pakistan • James Campion How Sovereignty & Absinthe Will Defeat The Taliban Once & For All A victory in the fight against terrorism is in fact a guarantee for the security and protection of our coming generations. - Pakistani Prime Minsiter Yusuf Raza Gilani

It has been a dormant fifteen days since I emerged from the dark voodoo-drenched tanks in the black heart of the French Quarter, where now instead of begging the kitchen help for sweet absinthe, one can purchase a glass over the bar for eighteen American, complete with a tourist-seducing fire show. Traditionally, the French frown on such activities, but this has never stopped me from blazing my own goodly share of sugarcane, and as it turned out the lovely barkeep at the Old Absinthe House on the Rue de Bourbon hailing from the suburbs "just north of Paris" exhibited the right accent and deft of wrist to best apply the ice water where needed. These flashpoints from hazy days lost in New Orleans may appear random to the untrained eye, until one realizes from time to time you need companionship when summoning the Green Fairy, and I have been blessed over the years with many a hale and hearty volunteer, but on this night it happened to be an Italian accountant from Brooklyn, NY and a former member of the Israeli Defense Force by way of Manhattan.

The accountant had come less for the wormwood than the music, as did my dearest brother-in-arms, Buzz and his engagingly erudite woman, both of whom had stayed at the hotel after weird vibrations from deceased authors took hold. This could not be properly explained then and I shall respect this edict now. As for my new Israeli friend, he was happy to discuss his mandatory "three-year duty" but was not as forthcoming about the sordid details of the World's Finest Fighting Force, however we both agreed on two very important points; the drink and the company were pretty fine and the Pakistan Army will crush the Taliban and speedily make nice what the U.S. military and its befuddled intelligentsia have screwed royally in the deserts of Iraq. This, we also agreed, would bring about serious and debilitating setbacks to the misguided clusterfuck that represents the radical Islamic revolution against the Saudi Empire and its benefactors, Uncle Sam.

This may be a lot to digest in two paragraphs, but there is no sane way to quickly describe being half out of one's head on finely distilled Roquette 1797 while confronting the kind of naked truths best kept hidden from "normal" Bourbon Street revelers. Yes, my friend assured me, the Pakistani Army would not only expunge the rag-tag revolutionary horde from its Afghanistan border, but also "gut the entire operation" -- again, I reminded him, a job we failed to accomplish seven long years ago.

We agreed once more that after enjoying a three-to-one ratio of men and ten-to-one in arms and cash, the highly motivated Pakistani forces will win the day, but alas fail to find Osama bin Laden among the defeated, for he has long been slain, dismembered and carefully planted along the mountainous region to keep the terrible Western Devil from apprehending him like a common criminal; de-liced on cable television and sent to the gallows like his sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein. But they will find hundreds of acres of poppy growth and chemical plants feeding the western world its taste of the Brown Master or H or as the physicists call it, diacetylmorphine. It is better known to the rest of us as Heroin.

While Pakistan hails the United States as its most cherished ally in the pursuit of "radical militants", their enemy hails the same country as one of its best customers. It is the export of heroin that built the Taliban in the first place, not the oft-cited dedication to the Qur'an or any half-baked Jihad or parades of virgins awaiting the fallen in the afterlife. No, it's the glorious god poppy that has put them on the map and sent them foolishly into battle with a nation heretofore obsessed with the dangers of their Hindu neighbors in India.

Not surprising, our half-assed "dismantling" of the original Taliban has reared its ugly head again, but not as surprising, even with a new commander-in-chief aboard, is the U.S.'s critique of Pakistan for "not being proactive enough in battling militants who are launching attacks from a swath of tribal areas", despite, of course, the $10 billion handed over to former U.S. puppet, Pervez Musharraf to dick around like an Anglo-aristocrat for most of the last decade. Now he is gone, under suspicion of conspiracy to murder and other formally forgivable sins, as his successors are left to play the no-mercy IDF game. Musharraf predictably claims this will "backfire", but anyone on the ground with any real experience with desert fighters disagree.

I learned back on '96 to trust a member of the IDF when it came to not fucking around. This is the credo I made clear to my contacts at the Jerusalem Post in October of 2001 when I received several and varied e-mails fingering Iraq as the "bankrolling of 9/11 and the single most crucial target" in the terrorist vengeance jag we were all going to be on for the next few years. And I assured my new friend that not one of those journalists were from Texas, as he assured me that when a nation is put on alert to a gang of religious marauders breathing down its fractious democratic sovereignty, there is no use diddling around with the vagaries of an "exit strategy".

Leave it up to the Big Bad White House Chess Club to deconstruct a country defending its capitol and its nuclear arsenal. Leave it up to the Experienced Intelligence Community in the District of Columbia to wonder how a trained fighting force, familiar with the enemy -- since most of them were created by the Pakistan government to combat the ever-present threat of neighboring India -- can be properly motivated.

Just the same, New Orleans is far enough away from Washington and something resembling reality to offer a more complete view of how things will go now that people who have a real stake beyond oil and strategic allies are in charge of this War On Terror. All one has to do is ask the statue of Andrew Jackson set in a vast park at the north end of The Quarter, a testament to what a motivated fighting unit can do when its cities are on the brink.

It was, however, more than an epiphany to realize all of America's most cherished goals for most of the 21st Century's first bloody decade has centered on crushing this so-called al Qaeda by way of the Taliban, somewhat sidetracked by the Iraq War and the gory circus hatched on the Middle East. But we were stupid and naïve then, a tough combination when dealing with Naked Truths, whether hyped up on a Euro liquid dream stomper on a balmy Friday night by the mighty Mississippi or rolling out field maps for the Pentagon Press.

Turns out Commander Bush had it right before 9/11; let the damned desert people figure this thing out for themselves.
© James Campion May 22nd 2009
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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