This combination of 6 undated photos provided by the U.S. Army shows from the top left, Pvt. Buddy W. McLain of Mexico, Maine; Pvt. Austin G. Staggs of Senoia, Ga.; Sgt. Barry E. Jarvis of Tell City, Ind.; and bottom from left, Spec. Matthew W. Ramsey of Quartz Hill, Calif.; Pfc. Jacob A. Gassen of Beaver Dam, Wis.; and Staff Sgt. Curtis A. Oakes of Athens, Ohio — ALL KILLED WHILE DRINKING TEA with Afghan police on Monday, November 29, 2010. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)
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Ever since the first Obama mini-surge into Afghanistan back in the summer of ’09 when 4,000 Marines entered Helmand Province, I have been, admittedly, having fits over the “strategy” of the US military command, which, in its zeal to implement COIN ideology, has ordered men into untenably dangerous positions, not least among them drinking “lots of tea,” eating (or delivering) “lots of goat,” getting to know “the people,” as the Marine commander BG Lawrence D. Nicholson put it at the time.
We now find out that it was under similar practice — “customary tea … served by an Afghan border police unit” — that these six Marines in the photos above were shot and killed by one the Afghan policemen. (Such Muslim-on-infidel violence is increasingly common in Afghanistan.) Did he shout “Allahu Akbar”? Story doesn’t say. Story does say, however, that the shooter was himself was then killed by two Americans — not by any of the Afghans.
But these are our allies — how can we can not drink tea with them?
The better, unasked question is: Are these our “allies”? Can Afghanistan ever be our “ally”?
The answer (no, no) is too much for our postmodern leadership to face. In “no” lies the abyss: All cultures are not the same, do not have similar belief systems, do not complement each other as kindred peoples. And so men, American and NATO-allied forces, go on drinking tea, shovelling for the Taliban, dying, losing legs, all for for a reality-disproven, multicultural ideology that is the driving force of the foreign policy of the USA.