11-26-01, Danny McBride, 946 words

No can do.  This was about the time I thought I’d be going back to writing about happy rabbits, possessed teddy bears, and women fighting over their masseur with peanut butter sandwiches as weapons.

But no can do.  The dang Taliban just won’t quit.  They’re still holed up in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz and still also in the south in Kandahar.  I was half listening to Meet The Press recently when I thought I heard Condoleezza Rice, our National Security Adviser, say that the Taliban were being soundly beaten by the “Northern Hawaiians”.  The Northern Hawaiians?  Who the heck are they?  Are they from Maui? Kauai?  And what are they doing in Afghanistan?

Turns out it was the “Northern ALLIANCE”.  I should pay more attention.  But it’s hard to pay attention when we are unable to envision any other outcome than our own victory.   Maybe that’s a bad approach, but as soon as the women took off their bee-keeper outfits and the men started to shave their beards, you knew we were making an oppressed people happier than they had been in several years, and, hey!!  As Martha says, “And that’s a good thing.”

But before we ride off into the sunset (Who was that masked man?  That was no masked man--that was a masked woman and she doesn’t have to wear the mask anymore!), we have to help put a few things right.  Like getting them a better movie than the one they watched when they reopened the Kabul Bijou, something about mujahedeen victories of the past.  They need Harry Potter or Monsters, Inc., or maybe The Spy Game.  And perhaps a World Cup level soccer match, and maybe a rock concert.  Anyway they need to have all the fun they can have to remember what all the fighting has been about.  And what are we doing?

We’re sending Wayne Newton.  Yup.  The USO has decided that Wayne Newton is the heir apparent to Bob Hope, headlining tours to war zones with a bevy of beauties, a comic or two and some pop music from back home.  This is going to help the troops?  We’re fighting to preserve the career of Wayne Newton?  Where do we go to surrender?  Okay- -so he’s taking Bo Derek and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, but still: Wayne Newton?
His shoe polish hair dye will come off in the wind and sand, and Elvis’ old jump suit may split at the seams.  Is this the best we can do?  We should send the rock band The Afghan Whigs.  At least they have the word “Afghan” in their name.

Most of the Taliban have thrown in the turban and realized that the game is up.  But several thousand foreign “freedom fighters” who joined with the Taliban will probably not give up, and are likely to perish fighting for their failed cause.  Saudis, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens- -all manner of sympathizers who came to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban- -will likely go down with the ship, for even if they were to surrender, they face certain death at the hands of Northern Alliance tribunals.  So they will go down fighting, rather than face the prospect of a Wayne Newton concert.

It’s hard to think of a theater of war in the twentieth century without thinking of Bob Hope.  Bob’s ninety-eight now, and he’s pretty much just hanging around the house, finally retired.  I saw Bob perform not that long ago- -perhaps in the early nineties- -his and ours.  An old man walked up the three or four stairs to the stage- -a platform really, in a large airplane hangar near where he began entertaining the troops at San Bernardino’s March Field in 1941.  But when the spotlight hit and the music came up, a young man in his mid-thirties sang, danced and told jokes for almost 90 minutes.  “…but I wanna tell ya…no, seriously…I played golf with Jerry Ford down in Palm Springs the other day…He birdied the second hole…A sparrow…Never saw the ball coming…but I wanna tell ya…”  And on and on, with all the energy you ever saw him perform with on TV or in the movies.

As we move into a new century and a new kind of warfare, it seems only fitting that Bob get to take a little time off and pass the torch to some equally sparkling talent of the next generation.  Think up your own suggestions and send them to the USO.  They obviously need a little help.  Is Wayne Newton on your list?  I didn’t think so.

In the weeks ahead we will have to stay focused on all the other work there is to be done.  As we know, getting rid of the Taliban is just step one of an unknown number of steps until the world is stabilized and resecured to something approaching the normalcy that prevailed before Osama decided to do what Hitler and Napoleon, among others, failed to do before him.  It’s too bad he doesn’t watch TV.  He’d love Pinky and the Brain, the mutated lab rats in the Warner Bros cartoon series--especially the closing line of every episode when the imbecile Pinky asks the same question to Mr Brain: “What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?” after their caper has been foiled.  And Brain responds with the classic line that bin Laden could make his own: “Same thing we do every night, Pinky- -Try and take over the world.”  Sing:  “It’s Osama, Osama and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain…” 

Okay enough.  Thanks for the memory.  Danke Schöen?  No can do.

-30-

Return to Current IPS Features

Return to Catalogue