CELIA RIVENBARK, freelance columnist | Posted: Monday, January 12, 2009 12:00 am
You have to hand it to the CIA. When they realized they needed to earn the loyalty of elderly Afghan tribal leaders, many of whom had multiple younger wives and loads of information about Taliban operations, they used Viagra. Money and guns? That's just so 2002.
For someone like me, whose knowledge of CIA covert operations comes exclusively from "Get Smart," this was quite a revelation.
Sneaking little blue pills to exhausted old Afghan chieftains would've never occurred to me - I would've, like any properly raised daughter of the South, shown up with bribery in the form of an attractively garnished deviled egg plate and perhaps a Red Velvet Cake - but Viagra, according to a report in The Washington Post keeps the Afghans "firmly on the side" of the United States.
I'll just bet.
Turns out, when you've got a cave-full of comely young wives to go home to, the Taliban's tired old offerings of machine guns, shiny baubles and even vehicles seem, well, weak in comparison.
Before Viagra became the bartering tool of choice, the CIA had been using less inventive strategies such as trading tooth extractions for Taliban supply route information. Now to you and me, who are used to getting our teeth removed in sanitary offices by men and women with many, many boats to pay for, this doesn't seem like all that big of a deal, but you have to remember things are a bit more primitive in Afghanistan. Their oral surgeons usually only have one boat to pay for at most.
Clearly Viagra is a lot more fun than getting your teeth yanked out of your head with implements most likely involving slammed doors and long pieces of string.
Kudos to the savvy CIA agent who first noticed the flagging spirits of these old Afghan warriors as they trudged dutifully back to their caves and faced another night of nagging and, I'm fairly certain, no cable TV.
Now, thanks to American ingenuity, the Afghan bigwigs have a spring in their steps and the newly dissed Taliban is left scratching its collective turban and wondering what went wrong.
Hey! Maybe this is the way to finally lure Osama bin Laden out of the hills at long last. Just leave a trail of little blue pills like the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel and he'll follow them all the way into the waiting paddy wagon.
Mission freakin' accomplished.