The ultimate simplicity of Afghanistan

These instances aren't nearly as rare as we'd all like them to be, but sometimes the childlike simplicity of the neoconservative mind prompts a grimacing double-take -- one of those 'Did he really say that?' moments, such as last Sunday morning, when Sen. John McCain sat as a guest on CNN's "State of the Union," presenting in living color the world in black-and-white analysis.

"The corruption has got to stop," said McCain at one point about Afghanistan's Karzai government and in partial answer to the unbounded question, "What is the United States doing wrong when it comes to the fundamental challenge of getting the Afghans ready to [protect] themselves?"

Corruption. Bad. Stop. Just stop. Seemingly as simple as that. Just say it -- and really mean it -- and maybe thousands of years of regional culture will slam on the brakes and then veer like Ottumwa, Iowa. Nay, not maybe; they will, but first we must really, really mean it.

Say, to fix Afghanistan's corruption and settle on a goo-goo establishment, how about a presidential-election run-off? Yes, that's the ticket, said McCain. "If there is a finding and it's that the election was corrupted to the point where a run-off would have been called for, have a run-off" -- repeating, for emphasis, that "corruption in the government is a huge problem," while never associating the lack of the first two conditions with the interfering presence of the third.

Finally, erase all that, I guess, because what we really need, continued McCain, is "to have the Karzai government show us that we -- it is going to truly reform." That would be the people who stole the election. Generally, when an organized group of political cutthroats steals an election, its reputation of yearning for "true reform" takes a bit of a hit. But for Mr. McCain there remains hope, simply because the neoconservative mind's simplistic analyses demand it. Reality is rude.

Or comically framed, such as when McCain offered this: "The Afghan soldiers are very good. They're the most highly respected in -- in their country" -- and other than the American soldiers and Taliban soldiers, that's probably true, except when the very good Afghan soldiers are busy extorting the local population.

McCain's principal purpose in his CNN appearance, however, was to apply domestic political pressure on President Obama through neoconservatism's characteristic means of propagandistic pounding: "We already have a strategy from last March," he iterated -- and reiterated, and reiterated, and, yes, reiterated -- with something akin to glee, suggesting that anything less than the fixed strategy would indicate that old bugaboo of Democratic weakness.

And McCain was hardly alone, because appearing elsewhere on Sunday morning were other characteristic voices of 2002-like jingoism all over again. There, in one place, was McCain's inseparable sidekick, Lindsey Graham, talking up more military action, and over there, in another place, was Saxby Chambliss doing the same, and sitting across from Chambliss, just to balance out the partisan insanity, was Dianne Feinstein, echoing it all.

As I listened to some of this déjà vu buffoonery I otherwise occupied myself with readings into the real world, such as a NY Times Sunday story, which opened: "the United States is falling far short of [Obama's] goals to fight the country’s endemic corruption, create a functioning government and legal system and train a police force currently riddled with incompetence." Indeed, even following the "deployment of 17,000 additional American troops, many civil institutions are deteriorating as much as the country’s security."

That's pretty broad and impossible to top. Right? That's what I thought until I read this collection of specifics: "Afghanistan is now so dangerous ... that many aid workers cannot travel outside the capital, Kabul, to advise farmers on crops.... [Still,]Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in a telephone interview last week that 50 to 65 civilian agricultural workers would soon be helping farmers in Afghanistan, up from the current 11."

After eight years -- eight years -- we have 11 agricultural aid workers there for a mostly rural population of 33 million. Eight years. Eleven. And "the overwhelming majority [of all aid workers] never leave their compounds," confirmed a former CIA and State Department official.

Ah, but we can turn this all around in a mere 24 months, say Gen. McChrystal and John McCain and Lindsay Graham and Saxby Chambliss and Dianne Feinstein -- all of whom, it would seem, have been too busy shouting neocon slogans to have noticed this Defense Department conclusion, from January: "building a fully competent and independent Afghan government will be a lengthy process that will last, at a minimum, decades."

The clash of sloganeering and reality leaves one speechless. Here we are, losing American lives in a decades-long Afghanistan mission at an accelerating rate, while drowning in debt at home (etc., etc., etc.), yet on any given Sunday one hears American politicians calling for more, and more.

If they really ache for simplicity, they should try some of its undeniable strain: This is absolutely nuts.