CIA rises to occasion with free Viagra for Afghan tribal chiefs

Things are looking up in the war in Afghanistan because of a novel approach being used by the CIA .
According to The Washington Post , intelligence agents are handing out free Viagra to aging Afghan tribal chieftains to get them to rat out the Taliban.
And the trick is working. The story is that one old Afghan chief who has four younger wives told the operative who gave him four pills, "You are a great man."
The old goat must have thought it was a magic trick, and so did his young wives, I'll betcha. They probably all sat around the next morning over tea asking each other, "What got into Omar?"
Call it a method of mass seduction, if you want. But what's intriguing about the effort is that you know that to come up with an idea like this, the CIA must have held high-level meetings — with a PowerPoint presentation. What exactly they pointed at I'll leave to your imagination.
But no matter how you slice it, this sure beats the heck out of waterboarding, doesn't it? Just think how much higher the world's opinion of America would be if we had used the hanky-panky party popper technique more often.
It does point out one of life's truths, though. If you do things right and get down to basics, you can get what you want without bullets and then spend the rest of the day sitting around laughing.
Did you ever wonder about that stupid TV ad for a sexual performance drug that shows the couple sitting in separate bathtubs? How you gonna get any business done sitting in separate bathtubs? Even an Afghan warlord could tell you that ain't gonna cut it.
You're probably wondering why the CIA doesn't just buy these guys off by giving them wads of cash instead of pumping them up with dope for Mister Happy. Simple. Some previously destitute goatherd shows up with a roll of bills, and the Taliban figure out some funny business is going on, right?
On the other hand, maybe the Taliban are wondering why all these old guys are spending so much time in the tent these days. There's steam coming out from under the flap.
And isn't it a shame that Viagra wasn't around during westward expansion. If Custer had had some of this stuff to parcel out at Little Bighorn, maybe he wouldn't have ended up full of holes.
Just think of how this could have changed American history books. Instead of buying Manhattan for a handful of beads, the white man could have scored the island for a Cialis prescription.
The trouble with this is that as soon as the Taliban figure this out, they'll be buying the same drugs off the Internet. And we'll end up in something a little different from the traditional arms race.
John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.