Sort of reminds me of the Nazi Generals afraid to wake the sleeping Adolf Hitler to warn him that the D-Day invasion on the morning of June 6, 1944 was underway.
The Pentagon and the massive Defense spending cartel are going to have a tough time justifying more dollars for overseas misadventures that no longer exist. Not saying they won’t try, but rallying members of Congress to pony up more bucks for failed shitholes overseas is a tad difficult when the folks at home are fretting over the flood of illegal immigrants and soaring prices for food and fuel.
What are some of the other delights we can expect in the coming months from this fiasco:
- Increase in the production and distribution of heroin followed by more overdose deaths in the United States and Europe.
- Heightened tensions between the Sunni Taliban and Shia Iran.
- An economic decline in Pakistan as the army of truck drivers who supplied the insatiable appetites of Westerners deployed in Afghanistan with luxuries from home.
- An emboldened China will challenge the United States in Taiwan. If we won’t act to save Af-gone-a-stan, why would we lift a finger for Taipei.
The words of General George Patton still resonate:
Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.
We now know Patton was wrong. We have lost a war. Our second in forty years. And a vast majority of Americans are sick and angry about this.
Some on the left are blaming Trump for this disaster. Well the Usurper Biden was VP back in 2011 when Obama pulled our forces out of Iraq. There was no collapse of the Iraqi govt. This disaster is clearly on the IC, the Pentagon & definitely on the Usurper in chief.
Wha?!
Hadn’t they just handed it over to the Shiite’s, aka, Iranians and when the Sunni’s, aka Saudi’s, freaked out, kick-started ISIS?
Just because they actually believe their own press releases, doesn’t mean you should.
The problem this time is not that it isn’t total, abject failure, but that it can’t be papered over.
correct the double negative; is total, abject failure
If Biden wants to blame Trump for this by saying Trump set it all into motion with the ceasefire-for-evacuation-agreement to begin with, Trump can counter-blame Biden by reminding Biden that the plan called for our departure by May and Biden delayed it till September ( or whenever, in theory) out of pure spite-based not wishing to honor Trump’s exact date because . . . Trump.
If we are going to talk blame at the wider deeper cosmic scale, I like to think that Biden’s drugs are working well enough that Biden understood he would bear the blame because it happened on his watch. If he had decided to keep us there for the rest of his term or terms and then let future Presidents decide on whether or not to leave, we would be suffering that much longer in the indefinite meantime, and the final ending would be just the same anyway.
So perhaps Biden was patriotic enough in his waning days to decide to let himself be the sacrificial sin-eater who will bear the blame and the smell, so that America itself can get out of the leg-hold trap without having to gnaw its own foot all the way off.
Wait until they have to pull the plug on the markets, in order to save the dollar.
I suspect that will be on Biden’s watch, as well.
( I see I forgot to write something I was thinking . . . . that if Biden had honored the Trump Plan date for leaving, the Taliban might well have honored the ceasefire till American departure and then permitted a dignity preserving gilded fig-leaf transition to a coalition government with a decent interval before taking sole and total command. And when Biden broke the agreement as to date, the Taliban decided to counter-break the agreement as to cease-fire.)
Biden withdrew the PMC’s that were maintaining ANA helicopters & planes. That was game, set, match.
Pigs got to eat, they are sure to open a trough elsewhere for those actors.
(Looks at Taiwan/South China Sea)
Keep an eye on Iraq & Syria.
Larry,
They’ve got many more boondoggles. No worries mate! CACI, SAIC, Lockheed, Triple Canopy will continue to feed at the trough as their leaders are in the same looting fascist party that has ruled the roost in the USA for decades.
“I would not be surprised to learn that the U.S. Government was funding programs to support homosexual and transgender rights in Afghanistan.”
June 2021, US Embassy, Kabul:
“The month of June is recognized as (LGBTI) Pride Month. The United States respects the dignity & equality of LGBTI people & celebrates their contributions to the society.”
https://twitter.com/USEmbassyKabul/status/1400060130243362816
I’m sure that pesuaded many; or as they said in the old days won their “hearts and minds”.
Fred – No need to promote it. The Taliban is not only taking over the government, they are also taking over the bacha bazi boys that the warlords left behind. And adding new ones of their own. There is a reason it is called Bumf*ckistan.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/
Excerpting:
Q Mr. President, will you amplify that question, please? Will you amplify your answer, please — why you don’t trust the Taliban?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a — it’s a silly question. Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Given the amount of money that has been spent and the number of lives that have been lost, in your view, with making this decision, were the last 20 years worth it?
THE PRESIDENT: You know my record. I can tell by the way you asked the question.
The focus we had — and I strongly support it — and you may remember I physically went to Afghanistan. I was up in that pass where Osama bin Laden was — allegedly escaped or — out of harm’s way.
Q Mr. President, thank you very much. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.
Q Is it — can you please clarify what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.
Q Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —
THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken.
The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.
Q Mr. President, how serious was the corruption among the Afghanistan government to this mission failing there?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, the mission hasn’t failed, yet. There is in Afghanistan — in all parties, there’s been corruption. The question is, can there be an agreement on unity of purpose? What is the objective?
For example, it started off — there were going to be negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan government. That — that of — it didn’t come to — it didn’t come to fruition.
So the question now is, where do they go from here? That — the jury is still out. But the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.
Q Mr. President, I’m from Afghanistan. I am Afghan (inaudible) woman. Any message — good message for Afghan women in future? Because they have achievement — they are really concerned about their achievement.
THE PRESIDENT: They are very concerned, with good reason.
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: When I was in Afghanistan — I’ve been there a number of times — I remember being in a school outside and — and, by the way, the schools in Afghanistan are not fundamentally unlike schools in the West Coast, where they have, you know, a — an area in the middle that is sort of like — it looks like a playground and single-story buildings connected around it.
And I remember saying to — speaking to a group of young women — I guess they were roughly — don’t hold me to this — they look like they’d be 14, 15 years old. And they’re in school, and there’s a tiered classroom with single light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, as I know you know.
And I said, “You know, the United States came here to make sure that we got this terrorist, Osama bin Laden, and that terrorists didn’t amass again to — to go after our country. And then we’re going to have to leave.” And a young woman said, “You can’t leave. You can’t leave.” It was — it was heartbreaking. “You can’t leave,” she said. “I want to be a doctor. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a doctor. If you leave, I’ll never be able to be a doctor.” Well, that’s why we spent so much time and money training the Afghan Security Forces to do the work of defending that. If every work —
Well, anyway — so, yes, I’m aware.
***
Samantha Power please call your office!
Trump deserves a salute for negotiating the Doha Agreement. And Biden deserves a salute for following through on Doha and ordering the final pullout. We don’t need anymore forever wars whether pushed by neocon conservatives or R2P liberals. And we don’t need to be the world’s policemen. Let China and Iran step up to keep the Taliban atrocities to a minimum.
Biden re-neged on that agreement or we would have been gone already.
Plenty of blame to go around Fred. Biden should have pulled troops out of Afghanistan as soon as he was sworn in.
Trump should have pulled troops out right after Doha was signed in February 2020. He had eleven months after that when he could have pulled them out. And why the hell at Doha did Trump and Pompeo agree to the release of 5000 Taliban prisoners and strongarm Ghani into releasing them?
Obama doesn’t look good either, he should have pulled out all the troops the day after he was sworn in, or at the least the day after OBL was taken out.
And Bush should of left after the Fall of Kabul and Kandahar in late 2001 instead of getting us involved in an idiotic occupation.
Leith
I see that you are the retired marine ground guy from the air wing who lives on Long Island in Washington State. Why do you keep returning here with different names?
I was banned years ago under my real name. But I like your blog and your foreign policy positions.
I’m across the bay from Long Island. Nobody lives there but elk, black bear, and an occasional camper or clamdigger.
Don’t worry, Israel will find them a new trough soon enough. Eyes on Iran.
If 300,000 member Afghanistan army could not be bothered to defend their country.
Why should any American citizens?
Was idiotic to go there.
Even more ignorant to stay there.
American intelligence agencies make the MIC seem competent by comparison.
We knew that from the start that the Kabul regime we installed. Warlords never have an interest in a strong central government unless they themselves are the supreme ruler. They want to rule their local princedom with little interference from Kabul while getting as much money out of the government coffers as possible. Why should soldiers fight and die for that? It’s just a job.
In Iraq we saw what works. Maliki’s corrupt army collapsed in the face of IS. But then al-Sistani came out and urged Shia men to come to the defence of their community. And they turned up in their 10,000’s.
Inexperienced, but willing. Motivated by a cause. A foundation on which the defeat of IS was built.
Apocalyptic scenes on the tarmac at Kabul airport. Afghans falling from planes after takeoff. Tragic, embarrassing, undignified of a superpower. Trump would not have allowed this.
https://twitter.com/SimNasr/status/1427204599094685697
Colonel – might I submit a comment on the EU/UK side of the affair?
I’m just baffled by the spin that’s being put on this shambles of a withdrawal in the UK, and indeed by the spin I’m seeing put on what we’ve been doing in Afghanistan for the past twenty years –
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/14/have-not-betrayed-afghanistan/
And where I’m not baffled I don’t like the look of that spin the UK politicians are giving us –
“What comes next should not overshadow what we did during those 20 years. And let’s look at other failed states where we did not intervene, such as Syria.”
The UK spent hundreds of millions supporting the “moderate rebels” in Syria and that with the declared intention of overthrowing Assad. Not intervening?
According to a part BBC sponsored documentary (now no longer on the internet) we and thirteen other countries smuggled Jihadis and weapons across the Turkish frontier. When it looked as if Trump would pull out of Syria there were discussions about continuing French and UK air operations there without the Americans. Not intervening. Right.
“But nothing we do can change the fact that the deal struck by president Trump with the Taliban paved the way for our exit.”
No doubt. Does that absolve those in charge now from the failure of Intelligence and of organisation that led to the present debacle? Does it absolve us in the UK? We’re supposed to be pretty good at Intelligence. But we fumbled along with the rest of them. And what in any case, from the point of view of us living in the UK, was wrong with Trump’s desire to stop slaying dragons abroad in the name of R2P.
“When the US announced their deal and imminent withdrawal, I tried to find others who would fill their place. But to no avail.”
Big talk. And perhaps worrying if it’s not just big talk.
In the early days I, and I know for certain a great number of others in the UK, supported the interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Just a gut feeling after 9/11 that the Americans had supported us often enough and it was time to send help the other way. I think those of us old enough to have lived through the Falklands felt that the more strongly. We’re a long way from those easy simplicities now.
There’s a new factor in Western defence policy that’s perhaps been overlooked. The European factor. It’s been overlooked because European armed forces are small and poorly coordinated compared to what the Americans and Russians can field. Not so much when it comes to these “interventions”.
“European” means “EU + UK”. Forget Brexit. That didn’t happen as far as joint UK/EU defence cooperation goes. Nor as far as bilateral defence arrangements between the UK and individual EU members go. Timmermans et al have made enough statements showing they regard Africa as their back yard. And the French/UK preoccupation with MENA is well enough documented.
Forget too the wish expressed often in Brussels that the EU should be a major global player in its own right. Papers out of Brussels making grandiose statements about the EU “projecting the power of a continent” do indeed show the aspiration to become a major global player, but as far as defence goes are maybe decades removed from any fulfilment of that aspiration.
Forget also “small and poorly coordinated”. Yes, compared with the forces at the disposal of the big three. Not so, when compared with poorer countries the EU + UK might wish to intervene in.
“When the US announced their deal and imminent withdrawal, I tried to find others who would fill their place” shows another occasion when the UK displayed at the least an inclination to take over in the intervention stakes, provided it could take others along with it.
The manner of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and of ours, is deplorable, but the withdrawal itself can only be welcomed. More so if it heralds withdrawal from other interventions. They and we had no business there, no business that could lead to benefit for any of the peoples of the West no matter how it might benefit their political classes. But of what use is that American withdrawal, in Afghanistan and many other places, if the European +UK mini-neocons seek to rush in to fill their place?
Mr Johnson – apologies for addressing the above comment erroneously. Hope both you and Colonel Lang will forgive the slip.
“I suspect the earnings expectations for most, if not all, of these companies is swirling down the toilet or burning in the document destruction barrel as our “official” American residents scamper to the Kabul International Airport to await the “save-my-ass-from-the-Taliban” flight.”
Of possible interest to account traders.
DFEN and ITA short sell caondidates?
Looking like trading with lower to go into TA support on the charts?
[Not investment advice. Experienced Traders ONLY please.] 😀
shorturl.at/qCHR0