Crabgrass in the Sand

I’ve been deep into a war to protect and defend green grass for more years than I can recall, or want to recall. My use of the term “war” is cynical, of course. The term “war” in post WWII America seems to be applied to practically every endeavor where the path to success is illusive or unknown, and yet success is deemed inevitable. To relate it to my lawn seems reasonable, right? However, it occurred to me today while I was out on the front lawn fighting forces that seek to attack my grass that my efforts may relate more closely to war than I previously thought.

I discovered a few things over the years on how to grow and maintain a decent looking lawn, the full disclosure not worth repeating here. One thing I learned though is that a thick healthy lawn will protect itself fairly well without much input from me. It essentially crowds out its enemies. I also learned that by simply attacking botanical invaders as they pop up does a nice job of keeping them at bay. This worked particularly well with dandelions since I started a strategy of reaching down as I walked or mowed and pulling off their little yellow heads (that the mower didn’t get) before they could go to seed. Granted, I could have used a strong herbicide, but I’m just not into weapons of mass destruction (environmental sensitivities and so forth). Even without chemicals my lawn has been nearly free of that particular springtime weed for several years.

Now it is summer and the enemy isn’t weeds, but fellow members of the grass family. The first year crabgrass invaded my lawn it basically took it over in a few weeks. I chose to let the whole mess die under the summer sun, the crabgrass being the last to go. The second year was a repeat of the first, but this time I used a lawn fork to pull up the crabgrass. I was left with huge sprawling patches of naked dirt, looking like the battlefield it was. Then, over the past few years, I decided to employ Operation Dandelion to the insidious crabgrass infiltration. To my pleasure I discovered that it works…sort of.

You see, the dandelion method worked well on dandelions because it occurred in the spring, when rain is normally plentiful and the grass healthy. The crabgrass chooses its time to invade when the grass is stressed and weakened during the heat and dryness of summer. So I began to spend a few minutes each day walking about, reaching down and pulling new stalks of crabgrass from the lawn at an early stage in their development. The result was that the overall appearance of my lawn looked good…but I realized one thing. Unlike the dandelions, the crabgrass couldn’t be beaten, not entirely. It became so pervasive and entrenched in some outlying areas that it just wasn’t worth the effort to try and eliminate it completely…and so I haven’t.

It occurred to me that this country (you and me) has been conducting the War in Afghanistan in much the same way. The War was initiated, of course, as a reaction to the September 11th terrorist attack, with the legitimate goal of eradicating the precipitators, Al Qaida. Failing that, it became a war to build a government and support a social order in Afghanistan that would act as natural barrier to the ousted Taliban, and what they represent. Moreover, it is about winning - to be able to gaze upon something and call it “healthy”.

Our policy and/or strategy in Afghanistan is to walk about the country, at great expense and sacrifice, pluck out pockets of Taliban influence, and then wait for the indigenous population to grow and root deeply in freedom and democracy. What? The fact of the matter is that the Taliban will not go away, no matter how many are uprooted from this place or that, nor are there any seeds of democracy remotely close to germinating. The Taliban, radical Islamics, and endless sects of Jihadists remain covering the mountains that are part of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their seeds will continue to be carried west. They (the Taliban) were never the “enemy” in the first place. By our standards they were a socially repressive regime and international outcasts, but they weren’t our regime. The reality is that we are incapable of creating a fertile enough base by which the Afghan people will grow and flourish in our image, nor should they.

Our country is perfectly capable of obtaining the knowledge and taking proactive initiatives to attack assembled terrorist encampments as existed in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. We knew of the Al Qaida camps that were maintained in Afghanistan, but chose not to militarily enter a sovereign nation for reasons part political and part relating to international law. Given what occurred, that reluctance is not likely to happen again. There is no need, nor should we expect that a nation must be an ally of the United States in order to aggressively address sheltered terrorists. You might as well commit to clearing crabgrass from the entire neighborhood.

Obama, in an attempt to be consistent with his campaign positioning and with his debilitating pragmatism, has adopted the failed Bush strategy of nation building as the primary bulwark against terrorism (dare I say it – the War on Terrorism). The rest of the world that joined in the initial hunt for Al Qaida and Bin Laden is quickly accepting the failure of that strategy and pulling out. Obama’s participation to advance this “War” is the only Administration policy that has received unqualified support from the Republican Party. Why wouldn’t they? It’s the only Obama policy that has nothing but downside to it politically. Continued on the same course it will, in my opinion, be the only issue that will turn a decisive Obama victory in 2012 into a narrow defeat. Republicans may deride Michael Steele for his comments now, but come 2012 they will all be calling it Obama’s War.

We somehow feel the Afghan front yard should look like our front yard. We like nice tall fescue, or maybe cut short and dense…like on a putting green. Shouldn’t everybody? John Boehner would say “HELL YES”! Actually, I don’t think God or Nature singled out tall fescue as a blessed plant to contrast with an evil and sinfully hardy crabgrass. It is our growing and tragic legacy at the beginning of this century that we sacrifice our honor, our treasure, and a select group of lives in the misguided attempt to cultivate our landscape in foreign fields.

I also know that if I stop watering the lawn and stop yanking the crabgrass it will likely take over. Undoubtedly other things would begin to grow as well, crowding out some of the crabgrass, or simply living contentedly with it. I kind of like my grassy lawn, but I don’t mind the crabgrass that grows in pockets on the periphery; after all it’s still green. Sure I continue to fight back against the creeping crabgrass, but the lawn is mine, not my neighbor’s. If crabgrass grows well in distant sands…so it is. We would do better to maintain our own lawns and let the grass itself cast its seeds to the wind.