Afghanistan

There is corruption in Afghanistan- because we're there. We are the largest corrupt entity there, so big that we suck anyone else into our corruption, but wait, there's more! Not only do our inflated salaries and imported goods corrupt Afghanistan, but our CIA and other agencies are up to their old tricks, and the contractors we employ pay protection money to use the roads.

And if, by some mischance, some religious movement, of sufficient fervor and sanctity to overcome human frailty, were to emerge as a governing body, we would "destabilize" them. Not because we want their oil, but because that is what we do. The broadest and deepest foundations of American policy are, that if money can't corrupt foreigners, we're all going to die!

This, in turn, allows Hamid Karzai to drag us around like an oversize pooch on a leash, an event that has happened regularly with tin horn dictators in every part of the world for 50 years. How bad has it been? So bad that John Foster Dulles starts to look good. That bad.

They're making out like bandits in Afghanistan, because they are bandits. Karzai is importing bandits from the UAE to help him, McChrystal is stealing from American schoolchildren and the elderly, Halliburton is there, the Afghan warlords couldn't be happier, and tv news is ready to dish us up a steady diet of "experts" who also work for the war industry.

It's a good thing the American public likes reruns, because, God knows, we've seen this one before.