Well after eleven this morning, characteristically late by nearly half an hour, Khus Dihugami Dadamizo, Special International Policy Emissary of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai for the Embassy of Afghanistan to the United States of America, stumbled in. His eyes were glazed, his pupils tiny pinpoints. He sat down in the chair in front of my desk and promptly went on the nod like William Burroughs for another ten minutes. Not that I cared – it was his two hours, and if he wanted to pay my rates to spend it in the arms of Morpheus, well, it’s his consultation, isn’t it? Frankly, I preferred him in this condition to others I had seen him in. You can buy anything you want between my office and Wyoming Avenue, Northwest, after all, and nobody knows that better than he does; and this side of the local Saudi playboys, nobody has more cash to buy it with, either. Not that he had to do anything more than dip into the latest diplomatic pouch from Kabul for what he was riding this morning, of course.
Eventually, he lifted his head off of his chest and stared around, obviously attempting to remember where he was and why he was there. After a few uncertain moments, he noticed me and smiled. “Tom,” he murmured with a grin worthy of Lenny Bruce, “what are you doing here?”
“Watching history be made,” I shot back with just a soupçon of acidity.
“Really?” Dadamizo whispered as he swayed back and forth slightly. “How’s that going?”
“Unforgettable,” I assured him.
“I’m… supposed to go visit you,” he remarked, clearly somewhat nonplussed, “what are you doing at the Embassy?”
“I stopped by to pick you up,” I joshed. “My magic carpet is parked out on the lawn. Let’s fly on over to Dumbarton Oaks and make world peace, what do you say?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled with a chuckle, “and win the Nobel Peace Prize, like Barack Obama.”
“Sure,” I replied, “and Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho.”
“Okay,” he heaved with a narcotic sigh, “now I remember – I was supposed to ask you about Abdullah Abdullah. What do you think of him?”
“I think his parents displayed a distinct lack of imagination when they named their baby,” I opined.
“No, no,” Special Emissary Dadamizo protested, “I mean, what should President Karzai do about him? He’s running around to the press, constantly complaining, like a little boy who’s been beaten black and blue. As if anybody wanted to listen to him whine. Day before yesterday, he gave an interview to NPR or something like that – public radio of some kind or another, I don’t know, it was in the memorandum, I guess. All of it full of stuff to stir the do-gooder American liberals up; fodder for next Sunday’s Unitarian and Episcopalian sermons. Tomorrow, who knows? All the time, he’s complaining that President Karzai stole the election, yakking this way and that about how that United Nations guy, Kai Eide, wasn’t on the level. What do you think? Huh? Does Tom Collins think Kai Eide helped throw the Afghani elections over to Karzai?”
“Kai Eide,” I observed, “has been a respected international diplomat since 1975. Where were you in 1975?”
Dadamizo reflected briefly, then responded, “Nowhere. I didn’t exist.”
“Right,” I affirmed, “but since 1975, Kai Eide has been the Norwegian ambassador to NATO, the Norwegian representative to the OSCE, Special Adviser on the Balkans at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Norway’s ambassador to the International Conference for the Former Yugoslavia. He’s also served as the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General in Kosovo, and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And, in your country, he’s been the UN Special Representative to Afghanistan and the Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. If that guy says elections are fair, I’m pretty sure most of the sane, civilized, erudite people in the world would probably agree with him.”
“True,” Dadamizo agreed, “but if there’s anything sane, civilized or erudite about Afghanistan, I’m sure Abdullah Abdullah would like to know what it is.”
“So,” I mused, “what you’re saying is that Abdullah Abdullah’s argument goes like this – Afghanistan is so bizarre, bumptious, bloodthirsty and barbarian that a Swedish diplomat, no matter how experienced, couldn’t tell if the elections were honest or not. On the other hand, you’re saying Eide’s…”
“Edy’s…” Dadamizo’s countenance grew even more dreamy, if that’s possible. I got Gretchen on the extension.
“Gretchen?”
“Yes, Mr. Collins?”
“Go down to Starbucks and get a Venti quad caramel macchiato and three of the sweetest pastries they have.”
“Jesus, Joseph and Mary, Mr. Collins. Would you like a side of insulin with that?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for my client.”
“You mean that rich junkie who keeps wandering in here?”
“He’s an Afghani diplomat.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Collins, but, as we both know, I’m a young, blonde, blue-eyed, buxom party girl who’s built like a brick smoke house and makes the club scene here in DC five to seven nights a week?”
“Yes, and?”
“And you’re telling me there’s a difference?”
“Madame, I stand corrected. Please get the coffee and the sweets, ASAP.”
“Back in ten, sir.”
Things were beginning to dawn on Dadamizo. Gazing around slowly, he finally arrived at what passes, among junkies, as a profound realization.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he declared with an air of sudden and intense enlightenment, “this isn’t the embassy. We’re in your office!”
“Could be,” I allowed.
Dadamizo looked around, quizzically. “So how did I get here?”
“Beats me,” I shrugged. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, ah, yeah… “ Dadamizo “that. Um, I think… right, did you tell me what we should do about Abdullah Abdullah yet?”
“Well,” I advised, “if you can’t catch him in bed with a dead woman or a live boy, I suggest you just ignore him. You guys won the election and the UN envoy blessed it, so you’re golden. Don’t legitimize Abdullah by responding to his allegations, and don’t arrest him or anything like that, either.”
“Okay,” Dadamizo nodded, and nodded, and nodded again. “Good, good; we ignore him. Then there’s something else I was supposed to ask you about…”
“Getting Obama to send more troops?” I speculated.
“Yeah, right,” Dadamizo mumbled, looking at me cross-eyed, then managing to uncross them and portray a reasonable semblance of curiosity. “How did you know?”
“Just guessing, really,” I admitted. “I figured that, right after getting credibility for winning the election, talking Uncle Sam into sending more soldiers to prop up his regime would be the next thing on President Karzai’s mind.”
“Makes sense,” Dadamizo conceded. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that was the next thing I was supposed to talk to you about. So what do you think? There’s that general McDonald’s…”
“McChrystal,” I corrected. “General Stanley McChrystal.”
“Yeah,” Dadamizo smiled, “that guy. He wants to send, what twenty, thirty…”
“Forty thousand more troops,” I interjected. “What you have to realize about that,” I continued, “is that there was another general, a fellow named MacArthur, who went public with his opinions about the Korean conflict, back when another Democrat, Harry Truman, was President.”
“So it’s… similar?” Dadamizo murmured, staring out the window at the White House down the street.
“If there weren’t some very interesting similarities,” I pressed on, “I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Such,” Dadamizo insisted, about as emphatically as he could, given his condition, “as what?”
“Both situations have a Democratic President bogged down in a foreign conflict, plus a brilliant, if somewhat pretentious and egotistical commanding general who can clearly see, on the basis of their genius qualifications in the discipline of military doctrine, how to defeat the enemy…”
“These ‘mac’ people,” Dadamizo inquired, “who are they? Where do the come from?”
“The ‘mac people,’ as you describe them,” I informed him, “are descended from the Celts, one of many cultures that has contributed to the history of England and Ireland. The ‘mac’ indicates that a person is of Scottish heritage.”
“These Scottish people,” Dadamizo followed up, “what are they like?”
“Industrious, frugal, brave, physical and very strong drinkers,” I told him. “They make excellent soldiers.”
“Like the Gurkhas?” Dadamizo was obviously thinking of the closest analogy he could. And, more significantly, thinking, which meant that the heroin was wearing off. Maybe, it occurred to me, we might actually accomplish something yet.
“Very much so,” I confirmed. “As a matter of fact, before they discovered the Gurkhas, the British used the Scots pretty much the same way.”
“Interesting,” Dadamizo whispered, thinking some more. “So, in America, these Scots, they are often soldiers, too, then?”
“Very often,” I assured him. “And they don’t like to lose, either. So, what I’m saying is, given the Scottish predilection for military triumph, it’s no surprise that General McChrystal spoke his mind in public about Afghanistan, just like General MacArthur did about Korea.”
“Good, good, good,” Dadamizo chanted, obviously pleased. “So, this Democrat President Truman, he did what the General MacArthur said, and America won a great victory, right?”
“No, actually,” I cautioned, “Truman called MacArthur back from Korea and fired him.”
“Fired him?” Dadamizo was incredulous. “How can the President, who has no gun, fire a general, who has guns, tanks, airplanes, helicopters, bombs and rockets?”
“Because,” I slowly intoned, “this country isn’t some backward, impoverished, primitive hell-hole full of ignorant, hateful, bloodthirsty tribesman who haven’t discovered soap yet, much less democracy.”
“Oh, right,” Dadamizo chortled, “you mean, someplace like Pakistan.”
“Sure I do,” I lied.
“And so,” Dadamizo wondered, “in America, the President can fire a big general?”
“They can,” I proudly told him, “and they do. So Karzai shouldn’t conclude that just because our big general wants to send more troops in to help him protect his heroin business from the Taliban…”
“But America can’t leave Afghanistan,” Dadamizo excitedly protested. “Christiane Amanpour will go back on television and tell the world how the Taliban are keeping girls out of school again! She will get more interviews with ten-year-old brides who were bought for the price of movie tickets in Georgetown! She will show more secret tapes of women being beaten for not wearing the chador, and being executed for having a boyfriend! How can you Americans even think of leaving…” Dadamizo stopped, mid-sentence, and began to shake. “Could I use your lavatory, please?”
Well, for all I could prove, the poor devil ate at Taco Bell last night and had to make a run for the border. “Of course,” I replied. He was gone in a flash.
Five minutes later, Dadamizo walked back in the room – about two inches off the floor, it seemed to me. Smiling beatifically, he resumed his seat in front of my desk and made as if to raise his right hand, index finger extended, to begin pursuit of a trenchant political point. Then, his arm poised in mid arc upward, he ceased, slumping back down for a nice, long nod. At that point, Gretchen came in, bearing Starbucks and pastries.
“Holy Toledo,” she remarked upon seeing Dadamizo, “is he totally messed up on duji or what?”
“Diplomatic immunity,” I told her, “makes up for many sins.”
“I guess so,” she sniffed as she gestured at me with the coffee and bag of sweets. “What shall I do with these?”
“Just put that stuff on my desk,” I gently directed. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it when he wakes up.”