Will Lloyd Austin Speak Truth on Afghanistan?

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Unlike his Marine predecessor James Mattis, Austin does not preen about being a well-read monk. Comparisons can be invidious, but Austin has a family and knows a bit more about the world outside the military. His humble beginnings in black Alabama give him an unusual look into the situation of those less privileged, those considered less if they are black or brown. He may even be familiar with the Nov. 19, 1970 letter that James Baldwin sent Angela Davis when he saw her on the cover of Newsweek, captured and shackled, at the height of the Vietnam war:

"As long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness...they will allow millions of other people to be slaughtered...So long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between their own experience and the experience of others, they will never feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile to become responsible for themselves. As we once put it in our black church, they will perish in their sins -- that is, in their delusions. ..."

It may be more likely that -- given his experience in Afghanistan -- Austin has seen the following poem from Rudyard Kipling.

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;

And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East.

In any case, it may not be unrealistic to hope that Biden, Austin, Blinken, Sullivan, and CIA-director designate Burns, at long last, "get it" and get out.

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