Peripatetic Rollers

I cannot recall any familiarity with the voice of Charles Krauthammer during my adolescent loyalty to the authority of Time Magazine, but his was an active media platform back in the day when reasonably intelligent readers consumed the periodical like a rich dessert with a sophistication of texture. I miss what the publication meant to me as a student, one of my Constitutional instructors snapping at the lectern, "Put that away!" when I wanted to continue with my foreign policy article, and I obediently swiped the glossy off my desk. When I first started reading Krauthammer on WaPo, it was in a state of amnesia, confronted by a hostile alien, but I reflected today, after I battled the neocon psychiatrist in the comments section, where I am becoming an inadvertent regular, studying the paper the way gnostic mystics lose themselves in the kabbalah, that Charles and John Hockenberry are the only two prominent paraplegics in national news media who have a broad based recognition. Charles actually thinks the way a disabled mind would, which is why he incites his readers (sometimes viewers) to such passions, for or against. Of course he is better educated, no argument there. I whine the night away about my colon; doubt he would be caught dead discussing ostomy tubes and any potential pressure sores, but he still thinks like I do, cutting it down to size: Obama is a wet dish rag, and Bush was tougher and had the right idea. You take the Middle East, country by country, kill the designated strongmen and fanatics, with the exception of oil wealthy magnates, and welcome to hell. I did not think Obama actually articulated anything akin to a doctrine in his Cairo address, but this is why Charles has notoriety and I have never derived any financial benefit out of being a wonk, except for the mention of John Bolton in an editorial where I was paid a pittance.

To say I am in closer alignment with Charles is inaccurate, but I have increasingly paid more attention to him, and his refusal to allow paralysis to define him is something I have realized a little late in life as a disabled writer with cerebral palsy. If I was a wonk, though, and had the influence to be taken seriously, this is what I would do, short of murdering our way out of the problem, which Bush and Obama have done, continue to do with drones. I would simply end Afghanistan and Pakistan as sovereign nations. Do a damn deal with whomever, China, Turkey, India, Iran. Turn the two countries into a protectorate by force, take away Pakistan's nuclear toys, and rule the region as empires once did. Use Turkish troops, give Iran a bit of hubris and give the Revolutionary Guard an entirely new population to terrorize.

Will it happen? No, but it is better than allowing near failed nation states to start a third global war, with more dire consequences than the second, where the bad guys were more clearly defined.

I am better, dried out my lungs in forty eight hours, but severity will only continue to be an issue.