Three Sigma Systems

When it comes to Waterloos, Obama’s cup runneth over. According to the media, his star is falling at a precipitous rate. Among the big three star killers, Afghanistan is looming large, along with healthcare and the budget deficit. I’ve made my position clear regarding healthcare. Obama is right. As for the budget, I say spend more, but stop giving it to the Fat Cats. Which brings me to the subject of Afghanistan and the Tom Cruise solution.

I know a bit about Afghanistan because I lived and traveled in that godforsaken place many years ago. If you want to know why I was there, you’d have to see a picture of the backpacking, India-bound, red-headed girl, I took a fancy to while in Istanbul. But I don’t have a picture of her and anyway, that’s another story.

Obama’s problem in Afghanistan is really quite simple. You can’t beat an enemy into submission when you can’t figure out who or where the enemy is. Sure, you could reduce Kabul to ashes, but that would have no effect, Kabul is little more than an urban outpost in a vast, untamed wilderness of borderless deserts and mountains. Afghanistan is not like our country, or the nations of Europe, and even most of Asia. There are no political or economic linchpins. It is a vast region of tribes consisting of stoic people hardened by harsh conditions of perpetual scarcity. It is a great many-headed beast. Cut off one head, and it grows another. Even more importantly, on the whole, the many peoples of Afghanistan take pride in their difficult lifestyle. They don’t envy or aspire to our consumeristic addictions. Big houses, cars, and flat screen TVs are nice, but the bottom line for these peoples are tribal allegiance, honor, and never-ending vendetta against those who wrong them.

So Obama is stuck in a very bad situation. He made his bed during the presidential election campaign, when he substituted Afghanistan for Iraq in order to prove that he was as tough as his rivals. This was good politics but a bad idea. Now he is saddled with an impossible mission, which is why I have been thinking that Tom Cruise, the star of the “Mission Impossible” movie series is the answer.

Sure, I thought about Mel Gibson of “The Patriot” and “Braveheart” , but after some careful consideration I realized that he is too frontal. Face painting, intense facial expressions, cheering crowds, and masses of peasantry charging into the face of certain death just won’t cut it. His being a somewhat Crusader-like, militant Christian wouldn’t help either, even if he does share with Afghans a thing about Jews.

But think about it. Who could understand an impossible mission better than Tom Cruise?  He understands that rule one for impossible missions is the art of deception. If Obama could get Tom working for him, he could withdraw our troops immediately. True, it would take some time to recover the higher fees command by Tom, but the added cost would be worth it in lives saved.

Tom would begin by recruiting a team of skilled professionals, sort of like a green, “small is beautiful”, Blackwater. Among his team members would be an attractive female partner. He would then use his disarmingly charming smile to insert himself into, into,… , well among other things, Afghan tribes. The Afghans would come to love and respect  him just like the natives did in “The Last Samurai” because Afghan fighters are sort of like Samurai — sticks and stones against cruise missiles and predator drones, etc.

The genius of Tom’s plan would not be in the pyrotechnics of bombing craters in the desert sands. As I have said, stealth would be his method. Instead, Tom’s team would insert themselves into tribal tents and caves while Tom was distracting the Afghan fighters with his smile. His team would accomplish this by lowering themselves from silent black helicopters, using very cool gadgets. Once inside, the team would find all the Koran’s lying around, and replace the Koranic verses inside with the text of L. Ron Hubbard’s “Dianetics”.

While all of this book modification was going on, Tom’s atractive female team member would get her throat slit (this is an impossible mission) and then Tom would bed the tribal warlord’s daughter. In the climatic scene, amidst cheering Afghans, Tom rides off into the dessert. (Cut to close-up: tears running down cheeks of Warlord and daughter.)

Of course, all of Tom’s charm was deception. In the epilogue we learn the rest of the story. Throughout the land the Afghan warriors and madarasaa students have turned to their Korans, as they have done for ages, but the words they are reciting are those of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

Tribe by tribe, the warriors lay down their weapons in reverent awe. Their stoic countenances are replaced by broad, broken-toothed smiles. Afghanistan becomes a nation of the Diantetically “clear”. And on Ramadan, the game of chasing goat heads on horseback is replaced throughout the land with ecstatic couch jumping.

Gotcha, Bin Laden!