So I know I promised you all some pr0n, and you’ll get it, but I am so angry right now I shouldn’t write it. Why? Because I finally had a chat with one of my more reclusive neighbors. She’s an American citizen now, but has deep roots in Afghanistan. She went back there this month, for the first time in 15 years. Everything she told me confirms my worst fears about what is happening there. And she also expressed why it is that she hardly ever comes out of her house. She’s afraid of what ’decent Americans’ will do to her if she does. And she has reason to be so.

I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to a person who is so overwhelmed by emotion that when they speak, words come out like a flood. That’s what my neighbor was like just now. She invited me in for coffee when I was out on a walk, and that hadn’t happened before, so I accepted readily. She opened up to me when I told her of my education in Middle Eastern studies, and even more so when I told her I did progressive political blogging (yeah!) I thought it would just be one of those “I like your flowers” sort of neighborly exchanges, but I was wrong.

She told me of her two dead brothers, slain by the Taliban. She told me of her cousins who have been beaten and raped by the Mujahideen. She told me of how she and other members of her family worked and struggled to be educated (she has three degrees and is going to take the American Bar exam soon), and of their desire to make Afghanistan a better place with their skills. And she told me of how all those dreams are being destroyed, and of how that is happening with your tax dollars.

Short version: “contractors” are terrorists. Yes, I said terrorists. She tells me that “there is no reconstruction going on, that’s a joke.” She says that the Western people who are there are essentially running little kingdoms of vice and corruption, and perfectly willing to kill a few innocent bystanders if they get in the way of the money changing hands over there. My neighbor’s sister is a minor member of the reconstituted government, and lives in constant fear of assassination. I almost cried when she showed me a picture of her sister sitting at a table with other government officials, she looked so brave. We didn’t get to talk about the heroin trade, but I’m going to have her over for coffee soon and we will, I promise you.

Ach, writing in anger is always a bad thing, but here’s why I’m so pissed. My neighbor, who has clearly suffered more than I can even imagine in her short life, was most upset not at the state of Afghanistan, nor even the loss of her brothers, but instead at the way she and her sons are treated here in America. Travel is a nightmare for her, she had to pay almost $1000 in unscheduled, unexpected “fees” to placate various ’security’ entities at airports on her way there and back. Her sons have been shouted at on the street and openly mocked in school, her coworkers ask her regularly if she “knows Osama,” and she (rightly) worries that the government here is spying on her. She said that this is all fairly recent, post-9/11, and of course I know why this sort of discrimination has become fashionable again. She is strong, and there were no tears in her eyes, but she asked me, why is it this nation of immigrants can hate her so, what did she ever do to deserve it? And how can she protect her sons? Will they ever be treated like “real Americans?” Because that was what all her sacrifices have been for, for their future.

I live in a nice, modest, decent middle class neighborhood with the kind of people who are the salt of the earth, who made this country great. It angers me more than I can say that one of my neighbors feels that there is no escape from terrorism for her, not here, not in a war torn country, not in Europe. I can deal with racists who are foolish enough to be so in my face, but I’m big and strong and know martial arts and how to use weapons. To think that they keep this woman, who has overcome and survived more than 99% of willfully ignorant America can imagine, trapped in her house for fear of her life and that of her sons….ok, I should stop now.

Anyway, I will post pr0n soon, and have continuing conversations with my new friend. But I’m very glad that she decided to break her silence and take a chance on me, because I am going to prove to her that not all Americans are racist, ignorant shitheads.

There is a human cost to our foreign policy, and seeing it up close will shake you, if you have any sort of conscience, soul, etc. I guess it’s been a while since that’s happened to me. The result is that I am even more unwilling to listen to the prattle of those who tell me “we don’t have the (whatever) to end this war.” I wonder, if Reid and Pelosi watched half their families get killed by drug and arms dealers’ henchmen, would they still sing that tune?