printThe title for this blog post comes from a 2014 column, “Don’t Know Shiite From Shinola,” in which I write that America is “a mulish military power which doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola.” The original expression is 100% American: “Doesn’t know shit from Shinola“:
Shinola was a brand of shoe polish previously manufactured in the USA. The alliteration of the expression ‘doesn’t know shit from Shinola’ partly explains the derivation. Also, without putting too fine a point on it, the two things named in the expression could possibly be confused. However, only one of them would be good to apply to your shoes and only particularly dim people could be expected to muddle them up.
To continue the theme of the previous blog post, “Afghanistan And Its Neighbors; China And Those Uyghurs,” you’re not considered properly American unless you’re carping about “Iran, Iran, Iran.” The John McCain version is, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”
For merely asking, “When last did Iran commit terrorism against the US?,” Tucker Carlson was attacked viciously by Mark Levin. Carlson, however, was on the money. As I chronicled in this 2017 blog post: “Iranians Killed ZERO Americans In Terrorist Attacks In U.S. Between 1975 -2015.”
Iran is neighbor to Afghanistan, sharing a long border with it. And, “Iran … has a more tortured relationship with the Taliban. Its leaders are certainly delighted to see the Great Satan, America, abandon its bases next door.”
As always, The Economist offers informed analysis in, “Afghanistan’s neighbours are preparing for life with the Taliban”:
“Shia Muslims … view their own Islamic revolution as a modernising movement.” After all, “Women can study, work and hold office in Iran, so long as they veil.” Yes, Iranians “look askance at the Taliban’s hidebound Sunni fanaticism.”
Swamped for decades with destitute refugees and cheap heroin from Afghanistan, Iran is also worried about a new influx, particularly of Hazaras, a Shia ethnic minority that the Taliban have viciously persecuted in the past.
“With little leverage over the Taliban and no liking for the tottering government in Kabul, Iran is likely instead to lend support to local Afghan militias in the border region, which recently beat off a Taliban assault on the city of Herat.”
What do you know? When compared with the Sunni Islam (Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism), a faction of Islam with whose practitioners the West feels much more simpatico—Shia Islam (Iran’s poison of choice) is more enlightened. Yet America and Israel side with Saudi Arabia, the epitome of Sunni insanity. Go figure. And the title says it all:
America Doesn’t Know Shiite From Shinola.
Thoughts from Twitter:
We invade and then centralize:
#Afghanistan occupation: "The #Pashtun population we patronize happens to disdain the central government we hope to strengthen. We help local groups we believe to be patriotic, at the same time, end up establishing an authoritarian protectorate."©2008 https://t.co/iIayE9farF
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 16, 2021
Totally tribal: This would sound like a brand name to our idiots, but it’s how Afghans think and feel.
#Afghanistan: Given the tribal, familial focus of their societies; Arabs are unlikely to abandon their particularism in favor of American statism. Federalism or
greater regional autonomy is what tribal societies want. The US is always looking to empower a puppet central power.— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 16, 2021
#Afghanistan: Another dynamic at play is between the forces of centralization and the forces of decentralization. As a rule, the U.S. sides with centralization; the Arab people with whom we meddle generally side with decentralization. #Kabul https://t.co/41s0Qih6Wy
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 16, 2021
Our fight for democracy is not necessarily theirs.
#Afghanistan: Why they won't fight: Many in the Arab world see the battle with the #Taliban (or ISIS) not as an Arab but as a U.S.-European war. We force our worldview/values on the nations we invade. Then we expect them to fight for values not their own. https://t.co/41s0Qih6Wy
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 16, 2021
Memories from ‘Liberated’ Afghanistan: Religious Freedom: Say What? https://t.co/1cOw1bW2Hl
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 17, 2021