The suicide bombing at the American military base in Afghanistan hosting the vice president on Tuesday, and killing two dozen, reminded me of the "Godfather II" scene in rebel-torn Havana, in which a revolutionary blew himself up, taking one of Batista's soldiers with him. The lesson fast-learner Michael drew from this? "They" -- the rebels -- "can win." With that, he took his bribe-stuffed briefcase and fled.
Reasonable people can debate with growing legitimacy the merits of fleeing Afghanistan -- it may be too far gone, it's an intolerable drain on the already overstretched U.S. military, our continued presence will only breed more terrorists -- but the Bush administration's public reaction to the bombing once again demonstrated something beyond debate: its head remains firmly stuck in the sand.
In a recent news analysis, here was the administration's official take on this deadly bombing at the front door of U.S. military base in a country we subdued, reputedly, years ago and have controlled, reputedly, ever since:
"American officials insisted that the importance of the attack ... was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney."
However when combined with the Taliban's real spring offensive that is about to grab more headlines and fill television screens with more scenes of real carnage, and combined as well with the Bush administration's real negligence of all things Afghan really going downhill, the suicide-bombing's "symbolism" takes on a bit more substance. In fact, it seems just as downright real as the coming blood and past neglect -- a tangible citation of just how foolishly distracted the administration has been by all things Iraqi, at Afghanistan's expense.
The bomb's shock waves must have exacerbated Mr. Cheney's dysfunctional brain waves, because all he could come up with in the way of explanatory symbolism was that the attack indicated the terrorists "question the authority of the central government." They "question" it. Let's see, did they do that with hands raised?
He also, in the reportage's paraphrase, "argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort." Would that be a tangible effort? In response to mere symbolism?
Some poor schmuck of a U.S. sergeant in Afghanistan got assigned -- excuse me, "tasked" -- with the job of explaining the symbolic bomb to the press, in which he giddily reported that its symbolic explosion "did not penetrate the outer ring of security." The news report concluded that that "account suggested that the security around the base had kept the bloodshed of an Afghanistan under attack by both Taliban and Qaeda forces outside the high walls of the base, the hub of American military activity in the country."
Which means -- you guessed it -- that, after five years, we've effectively conquered and are holding roughly one square mile in Afghanistan, the very rats' nest that precipitated our five years of responsive haplessness and resulting decline.
Unhappily we can't take a cue from the Bush administration and simply file the consequences under "Symbolic." Our decline is real.