This morning, the people responsible for booking talent at president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural events announced (prematurely, as it turns out) that they had finally found a couple of people willing to do the job. Having failed to secure Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, or even Garth Brooks, the committee’s biggest booking to date is 55-year-old country star Toby Keith, who once co-wrote a rabidly nationalistic song about the war in Afghanistan called “The Taliban Song.”
“I’m just a middle-aged, Middle-Eastern camel-herdin’ man / I got a two-bedroom cave here in North Afghanistan,” Keith begins in “The Taliban Song,” a live version of which appears on a quadruple platinum 2003 album called—prepare to groan—Shock’n Y’all. But then the Taliban move in, and Keith’s humble Afghanis immediately begin praying for violent U.S. intervention. The Americans “drop a few bombs,” and now things are “ride, camel, ride.” And for a parting shot: “We’ll bid a fair adieu / And flip a big boner to / The Taliban.” The crowd screams as Keith describes the leaders of Iraq and Iran trembling in their boots because George W. Bush called them “sons of bitches”:
There’s even video of Keith doing “The Taliban Song” at USO gigs in Afghanistan and Iraq, always with at least one middle finger in the air:
It’s been 15 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Trump’s plans for American involvement in the country are unclear. Maybe he can ask Toby Keith for his opinion.
