Think Like a Peasant

Jack Layton in Fighting Form: Ignorance Personified

One more little nail in the Jack Layton reach out and cuddle a Taliban plan was pounded into place this week with the announcement by the Taliban that anyone who negotiates with the Afghan government is as good as dead. In other words, any Afghan dumb enough to follow the obtuse Jack Layton to the negotiating table will find themselves at the wrong end of an AK-47, or worse yet, looking at their own body through the eyes of a detached head. Add to this the fact that any accord struck by the Taliban isn’t worth a pinch of Afghan opium, and the “Layton Plan” starts to look as dumb as it sounds.

Negotiating truce and supposed peace has always been a method used by tyrants to dupe naïve enemies. It is in fact, the standard methodology of tyrants and is as old as the hills. Take for example the recent “peace” accord between the Taliban and the Pakistani government. The ink hasn’t even dried, and the Taliban have already violated every tenet of the accord and are using the good grace of the Pakistani government to build, plan, and prepare for this summer’s offensive in Afghanistan.

From Hitler to Saddam, from Nero to Mullah Dadullah, those bent on the subjugation of others have never shied away from using peace accords to buy time and space. Only Jack Layton and his utopian minions don’t understand this; but then again, Jack Layton types have spent all their time in the union halls and reading Noam Chomsky. They likely find reading real history icky because it deflates any utopian vision they have. Why bust up a good delusion?

Unlike Jack though, the Afghan peasant has no illusions? He’s been subjected to duplicity, war, murder, poverty, and the like for decades. He has no reason to trust anyone; and that includes the Taliban and our Canuck warriors. Why should he? The coalition aren’t the first invaders to pass through, and neither are the Taliban. The peasant knows though, from experience, that might makes right, and if he wants to live long enough to plant this spring’s poppy crop, he’s got to watch out for the biggest bad-ass in town.

Here’s how it works. The coalition comes in by day, digs him a well, builds him a school, and fixes his irrigation system. The coalition sits with him, drinks his tea, and bends over backwards to make him feel comfortable. The peasant of course likes this, he will be encouraged by it, and he may even warm to the weapon laden young men that come and try to co-opt him into their vision of a better Afghanistan. And, deep down, the peasant wishes he could make these foreigners his friends.

But, night comes and with it his worst nightmare creeps out of the murk. It comes in the form of Taliban thugs or even local zealots whose message is simple. Negotiate with the invaders, and you will die. If your children attend the school he built, they will die. If you work on the road they are building; boom. The message is simple, and if need be, the peasant is given a bit of impetus as he’s forced to witness a murder or two … you know, just in case he doesn’t get it.

So, the peasant will smile by day, smile by night, and just like the Vietnamese civilian before him, or the medieval vassal of old, he’ll try to stay alive. He may wish in his heart of hearts that the invaders would stay, that they would rid him of the night-stalking killers, but being realistic and not having been the leader of a Canadian Socialist political party, he must simply trust to logic and instinct to survive.

What this peasant needs in reality, is one hell of a hard-ass Canuck or UK or American force to scrub the land of the night-stalkers. In fact, I’d bet if the peasant knew that the foreign invaders had the will to stick it out, that they would kill or drive out the Taliban, and that they’d not be swayed by the serpent tongue of Taliban “negotiators” or wankers like Jack Layton, that he just may take a chance on the invaders. He may, just may, risk his very life by supporting them. Give him one tiny little reason to mistrust though, and he’ll be back to playing the passive role that peasants have played for eons. The role that helps them survive, and the role that ensures they eventually end up on the winning side.

As for Jack, donkey dung like him can’t comprehend how desperately the peasant needs security. He needs it more than a well, more than a school, and more than his poppy crop. Hell, Jack wets himself when 40 Canucks are killed in combat; how can he possibly comprehend the needs of the peasant. Like a recently returned Canadian soldier said on Talk Radio; “you don’t go and rebuild the house when it’s still on fire … you put out the fire first, then you rebuild ... in Afghanistan we are still putting out the fire!”

In other words, construct your heart out wherever the Taliban have been reduced via artillery, air strike, and Canuck bullets; but wherever the Taliban owns the night, you’ve got to hunt him down, kill him, or drive his sorry ass back to Pakistan. Then, and only then, will the peasant be free to be your friend.