You poor, deluded man. Afghan life is not cheap; it's absolutely
worthless from an American perspective. Do you really believe that the AvAm (short for Average American, a phrase coined by Mickey Z) cares for an instant about Afghani lives? The AvAm is terrified and repulsed by your very existence. You worship "false gods." You live in some twilight zone between the 9th and 14th
centuries.
And you completely eschew Western Culture and Values. Prior to 9/11
very few Americans could point to a map and say, "Aw shucks, that's
Afghanistan!" Perhaps a few remembered Afghanistan from the Clinton era
when he launched some cruise missiles in an effort to nail Osama
bin-Laden, but we all know it was a clever ploy to distract everyone
from The Great Presidential DNA Horrific Crisis that nearly crippled
this great land. There are even a few scholarly types, generally to be
found on the coastal regions of this nation, who will remember
Afghanistan as a very useful tool for entrapping the Evil Empire that
once was the Soviet Union. But with the Soviet Union split into its
component parts, you ceased to be useful and therefore of much interest
to us.
Corporate America couldn't give a damn about Afghanistan.
For starters, you have no money. And you have no natural resources for
us to exploit at your expense. No oil. No bananas. No diamonds. We like
all three of those things and you don't have any of them, so you're
kinda screwed in the globalization scheme of things. And you steadfastly
refuse to embrace Western Values and all the neat Consumer Culture that
comes with it. How can we possible give you one degree of respect if
you don't have at least one McDonald's, a PizzaHut or a Taco Bell. Blockbuster won't even cast a glance your way as you barely generate enough electricity annually to keep Ukiah, California lit up for a week. And you have no money.
In
case you haven't noticed there is only one segment of America paying
any attention to Afghanistan: the current administration. Now, this may
come as a surprise and I hope it's not too much of a shock, but they
don't love you. They don't respect you. They don't even really like you.
It might be helpful for Afghanistan to consult a map (if the Taliban
didn't destroy them all...otherwise request a subscription to "National
Geographic" in your next aid package-they have really keen maps). Look
who borders you to the west...yep, Iran. All this time we've been
pretending to like you and insisting we are there to help, but the truth
be known, you are nothing more than a hellish landing strip and
assembly point for our next adventure in empire.
So Mr. Karzai,
life is not cheap in Afghanistan (though I seem to recall stories from
the invasion days when the CIA paramilitary types were running around
with satchels of $100 bills paying off families every time we created
some "collateral damage"....) it's worthless.
