Bagram’s New Management Meets an Old Owner

Imagine this: The Taliban have settled into Bagram like squatters who found the deed in a ditch—stringing wire, stapling signs, and reading the news at the gate as if time punched out with the last C-17. It’s a strip-mall version of empire: bored sentries, chipped concrete, and the nagging sense that the big show left town with the popcorn machine. Then the sky growls. Somewhere above the razor wire, a fat, lightning-veined hand lowers from the stormbank like a collection agency from the Old Testament, and every loose bolt in Parwan starts to hum the same name.

Trump…Trump…Trump!

It’s like the hand of God, only slightly less humble.

The Hand That Rumbles

For those who may have missed the subtlety of the humming, our letters here spell it out in block capitals—TRUMP—like thunder carving graffiti into the clouds. Say what you want about the man, he knows how to haunt a skyline and how to make an entrance.

But the thing about providence is that it never knocks; it reaches. Bob Lang’s cartoon nails that feeling: he presents us with a palm the size of a runway reaching back for the lease.

To our president, Bagram isn’t a base here; it’s a bar tab, and the bartender remembers who ordered the expensive rounds.

The Taliban can keep tapping the “Under Taliban Mgmt” sign with their newspaper, but the rumble says the White House might have other plans.

Complacency Has a Shelf Life

You see, complacency is a hammock until it’s a snare. The fighters at the gate don’t hear the approaching chorus because comfort makes lousy sentries; it dulls the ear and slows the reflexes.

The great hand in the clouds promises turbulence—policy, pressure, or something with jet fuel on its breath—and Bagram is the pressure point everyone knows by heart.

If that hand keeps dropping, the Taliban’s quiet reading hour ends, and the old time punch-card clock slams down. Time for the US to get back to work.