Newsletter #8: Pfizer, Freedom, and Despair (or, the Fucking Taliban)
Well, I have very little to report this week. In fact, I might have to retire this feature since I’ll likely be leading a fairly quiet life for the foreseeable.
Still, life hasn’t been entirely bereft of developments. For one, I received my second jab of the Pfizer vaccine on Friday. Once more, I can report no side effects apart from a slightly sore arm (so far, though I’m still in the danger period apparently). So that’s me completely safe from Covid. Now, where is all that sex and boozing I’ve been missing? It’s only because of the pandemic that I’ve been missing them, surely? Yes? Well, I can’t see any handsome men lining up as yet, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? No, let them take their time…
Never mind. Let me reiterate my unbounded admiration for the science that has gone into the vaccine. As I said on the occasion of my first jab:
… the mRNA [vaccines] are fearsome pieces of technology, really astonishing feats of ingenuity, ones built atop years of pure research.
So next time you wonder why some scientists are spending time and taxpayer money on arcane pursuits, first, don’t be such a philistine, and second, they might just save the world one day. I recommend Jerry Coyne’s essay from last December which does a nice job of explaining how mRNA vaccines work and celebrating the genius of science that went into their development. So, in a rather odd way, I’m glad I didn’t get the AZ [Astra Zeneca vaccine]: blood clots be damned, I just wanted that awesome mRNA tech inside me (I use the word ‘awesome’ not in its debased sense but in its proper meaning, viz., ‘inspiring awe’).
In other news, I’m settling in back home in Fife. It’s a quiet street and I have to admit I’d like to return to the city one day. I’d like a place of my own. But being back home avec ma mère is also nice, for her and for me. I’m comfortable with the meagre amount I’m earning so long as I’m here, so I should be staying for a while.
Now that Scotland is ‘free’ once more, with pubs and clubs reopening fully, I’m slightly disappointed in myself that I haven’t been a part of it. I’ve mostly been in the house. Earlier, as I was sitting outside having a smoke, I heard distant noises from the pub at the bottom of the hill: singing and cheering. I wish I’d been there, but I wasn’t. Oh well. Time enough, Daniel, time enough.
On the bigger picture: Afghanistan, as I have predicted and moaned about several times in several forums, is a mess. A heartbreaking mess. A wholly unavoidable mess. Why is the US pulling out? The mission there was relatively small, a few thousand troops to prevent catastrophe. Why not stay on a while longer at least? Is it really such a high price to pay for the safety of the Afghan people, the women and girls in particular? Yes, the mission has been a litany of idiocies and failures, but a small presence there was the only thing between relative stability and theocratic chaos. It is shameful, simply shameful.
And to those who say, ‘why bother about the Afghans? Let them get on with it’, I remind them that the Taliban is still in bed with al-Qaeda, and the last time al-Qaeda had the backing of a nation-state and all the resources that come with that, however poor, it killed thousands in a matter of hours in the most secure and powerful nation the world has ever seen. ‘It could never happen again’? Dream on. After all, not many believed the Taliban would be this quick to subjugate Afghanistan again. My main concern is internationalist: it is just better to have a small presence there to protect the people (and, in dreamland, I’d like to see much more effective democratic nation-building so that, one day, a free Afghanistan can stand on its own), but putting that aside for those who don’t care for such utopianism, the self-interested reasons for staying are compelling. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when al-Qaeda comes to call again.
As I put it in Areo Magazine last June:
Whether or not you think that the US and its allies should have ousted Saddam in the first place (a decision I defend elsewhere in this magazine), the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq was, in part, responsible for the rise of IS [Islamic State]. This is a lesson we should heed as the already disintegrating 2020 peace deal with the Taliban may open the door for a renewal of that organisation. Without a strong and committed anti-Taliban force to assist the reasonably democratic Afghan government, we risk a resurgence of the theocrats- and can anyone honestly say they would trust the fucking Taliban to keep to any half-decent deal?
The fucking Taliban, indeed. I have made many silly predictions and will no doubt continue to do so, but on this I was and am right. We will pay dearly for this withdrawal.1 More, the people of Afghanistan will suffer for it, the courageous feminist activists and the secular nonbelievers above all others. I really can’t bear watching the news right now: I feel nauseous every time I hear of the Taliban’s latest victory. It’s difficult to express here how utterly despondent I feel right now. Kabul is about to fall, and so are the hopes of the Afghans—and the vaunted ideals of the so-called Free World.
Until next week, and in despair,
DJS
I see people constantly bitching about Joe Biden’s responsibility for the fiasco. Well, he’s the President, so fair enough. But why has it become a completely partisan issue, with the likes of Donald Trump fils acting as though it wasn’t his fucking father who originally made the ‘peace deal’ (which involved pulling out in May this year, months earlier, if you don’t recall)? Does anyone seriously think that if Donald Trump was in charge right now, the situation would be any less desperate? If so, I repeat: dream on.