Conventional wisdom, anyone?
I have got into trouble so many times, dissing conventional wisdom as promulgated by various sets of top neddies. Of course said neddies usually up sticks and are away well before the Vigoro reaches the ventilator, but never mind that... And here, conventional wisdom has been that there is nothing seriously wrong in the Delta. Well, nothing a few hand-outs couldn't fix.
I don't want to do much stirring on this one. It would be kind of like pointing out the mistakes made by a certain AK-wielding little crim who either forgot to account for or never learned about 'muzzle rise.' Most of the bullet holes ended up in the wrong place. Boy, what a big stupid HE was! I really meant to tell him that but just couldn't find the time in my busy Monday morning program there. Maybe better I just keep some of what we are all now thinking to myself here.
I remember a certain friend of the Magyar persuasion telling me about his time in a guest house 'somewhere in the Niger Delta.' He said his hosts spent their time 'wrestling, smoking ganja and cleaning their weapons.' The first two sounded about right but the 'cleaning their weapons' bit sent a chill down my spine. When was the last time you saw the offical soldiery with clean weapons? Some of them look so filthy they might explode when fired.
You don't suppose some of those thug militias might be running out of control on their own agendas? Instead of loyally serving various 'big men' perhaps some have decided to cut out the middle men and go for the big prize.
I once had a very obnoxious know-it-all sharing my table at the 'Red Fox' in Bethesda. He was bending my ear about how he was off to Iran to make his fortune remodelling the logistics of the Imperial Iranian Army or whatever it was called. I finally got so fed up with him that I predicted the fall of the Shah in gruesome detail, even though Nixon's (remember him?) conventional wisdom was that the weedy little jerk was a bulwark of strength and our very bestest and most dependable friend in the Middle East ever. Less than a year later the whole rotten edifice came crashing down, when I wondered what had become of Mr Know-it-all.