Had enough yet

[Lee Chowaniec]

Mark:

We share similar but different views on withdrawal objective!

This is not 1968 or any other event in America’s history where either a Trump or Biden plan encompasses leaving an allied country while surrendering said country to a terrorist organization working with said terrorist organization, and thereby giving it legitimacy in running that country’s operation – a sworn enemy that as recently as two months ago we were bombing.

When Trump lost the election in November 2020 did his administration take any steps to prepare for a possible evacuation, preparing necessary visa documents in case the need arose or was he so certain the Taliban would honor his conditions. Trust the ‘reformed’ Taliban, really? How’s that worked out for the U.S. in the past?

I have had enough of the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ or given the choice of ‘lesser of two evils’. We have no interest in Afghanistan, says Biden. Really? Where are the clowns the song asks? In Washington!

We leave no one behind? Really, we just left a country behind. 170,000 American troops in 170 countries but we leave an allied country to terrorists – a country that is surrounded by terrorist countries. 20 years, no interest, time to leave. We have troops stationed in countries longer than that with much less interest or national threat. Afghanistan is an asset!

Biden sat on his hands since May 1st and is culpable for the disaster at hand. He owns it but his administration and media lackeys by spinning his resoluteness and handling of the crisis (he created,) and coordinating the greatest air lift in American history is deserving of any credit is ridiculous. Horse**** to the max!

We leave a country, surrender it to terrorists, create a humanitarian crisis, evacuate over 100,000 and bring a great number to the U.S. without proper vetting / visa issuing documents and Covid status affords no measures to assuage security and Covid concerns. While American citizens are being mask and vaccine mandated our borders are open to those who can do us harm!

And along with the humiliation of surrender, we build up the terrorist military by surrendering $85 billion in sophisticated military equipment, give the Taliban a list of Afghans who supported the U.S., surrender Bagram airfield, etc. The U.S. did all this while telling us stupid Americans the Taliban are our friends helping us to leave the country, hate Al Qaeda and Isis-K, but they don’t trust them. DUH!

WE ARE SO SCREWED!

[mark blazejewski]

When Trump lost the election in November 2020 did his administration take any steps to prepare for a possible evacuation, preparing necessary visa documents in case the need arose or was he so certain the Taliban would honor his conditions.

To that specific comment, I will just convey that outside of his purported deceptive negotiating tactic concerning Special Ops, and his Presidential temperament which lent itself to the use of force, not that I am aware of.

Reference: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/20...f-says/184660/

However, if I understand this comment correctly...

The U.S. did all this while telling us stupid Americans the Taliban are our friends helping us to leave the country, hate Al Qaeda and Isis-K, but they don’t trust them. DUH!

...it is an insightful and loaded one.

More to come...

[mark blazejewski]

The U.S. did all this while telling us stupid Americans the Taliban are our friends helping us to leave the country, hate Al Qaeda and Isis-K, but they don’t trust them. DUH!

Are you suggesting that our government and a propagandized press are lying to the American people, Lee?

Unasked, my response: So, what else is new, because deception appears to be the trademark of the United States government and a less-than professional press for over the last 100 years?

Here are just some questions regarding the appearance of past U.S. government and press deception(s):

(1) Is it not true that while the United States held a hostile public position toward the newly installed Communist government in Russia, it was President Woodrow Wilson himself who granted Leon Trotsky a wartime passport so that Trotsky could return to Russia in order to assist Lenin in his Communist revolution?

"WOODROW WILSON AND A PASSPORT FOR TROTSKY President Woodrow Wilson was the fairy godmother who provided Trotsky with a passport to return to Russia to "carry forward" the revolution."

Reference: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/...volution-5.pdf

Moreover, was it not President Wilson's confidant Colonel House, who intervened in 1917 on Trotsky's behalf when the latter was detained by Canadian authorities while enroute to Russia?

Reference: https://www.heritage-history.com/ind...story=bankroll

(2) Further, is it not true that American financiers such as J..P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller helped to finance the Bolsheviks?

Reference: https://www.heritage-history.com/ind...story=bankroll

(3) Equally, is it not true that some American financial houses, Brown Brothers Harriman and the Union Banking Corporation of New York specifically, helped to finance the Hitler Nazi regime by funneling money through their Nazi contact in Germany, steel and coal magnate Fritz Thyssen?

Reference: https://leftlooking.blogspot.com/201...-profited.html

(4) Is it not true that the actors specified in three (3) above included Senator-to-be Prescott Bush, future CIA Director Allen Dulles, future High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy, and the future Ambassador to the USSR Averill Harriman?

(I note parenthetically that both Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy served as Commissioners on the Warren Commission.)

Reference: https://leftlooking.blogspot.com/201...-profited.html

(5) Is it not true that certain business assets of Prescott Bush were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act?

Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...secondworldwar

(6) Lee and readers, are you entirely satisfied with seeming contradictory versions of the events which led-up to the events surrounding the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack?

References:

https://archive.org/details/TruthAbo...+Pearl+Harbor+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUjE4lw2s9c

(7) Why has no high-profile actor ever been held accountable for the vast intelligence failures which preceded the December, 1944 German Ardennes offensive?

(8) Is it not true that only until recently did the United States government release significant files attesting to the activities of the OSS and other covert American groups regarding the facilitation of the "Rat Lines " and the "cleansing" of the records of former high-profile Nazi actors?

Those who bit the bait included future CIA director Allen Dulles, who became Gehlen’s biggest supporter among American policy wonks.

Reference: https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-ke...on_with_nazis/

(9) Why is that nearly 60 years after the Kennedy assassination, the U.S. government still holds nearly 16,000 classified documents, including I understand, Oswald's Income Tax records, concerning the events of November 22, 1963?

Reference: https://www.justsecurity.org/75795/f...ret-jfk-files/

In light of Gerald Ford's 1997 admission regarding his suggestion to re-diagram the pathologist's original sketch, in order to reflect an entry wound to the President's neck, rather than the originally noted entry point which located the wound much lower in the President's upper back...

Mr. Ford's change strengthened the commission's conclusion that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and wounded Gov. John B. Connally, -- a crucial element in the commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.

Mr. Ford, who was a member of the commission, wanted a change to show that the bullet entered Kennedy ''at the back of his neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission originally wrote.

Mr. Ford said today that the change was intended to clarify meaning, not alter history.

''My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,'' he said in a telephone interview.

But his editing was seized upon by conspiracy theorists who reject the commission's conclusion that Mr. Oswald had acted alone.

''This is the most significant lie...

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/03/u...th-report.html

https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ford.htm

...is it not fair to consider the possibility that only full disclosure of all classified documents will lend significant "clarity," if not closure, to two (2) contradictory U.S. government-generated versions of the assassination:

Warren Commission Findings, 1964:

"Based upon the investigation reviewed in this chapter, the Commission concluded that there is no credible evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy."

Reference: https://www.archives.gov/research/jf...tml#conclusion

House Select Committee On Assassinations, 1978:

B. Scientific Acoustical Evidence Establishes a High Probability That Two Gunmen Fired at President John F. Kennedy; Other Scientific Evidence does not Preclude the Possibility of Two Gunmen Firing at the President; Scientific Evidence Negates Some Specific Conspiracy Allegations

Reference: https://www.archives.gov/research/jf...t/part-1b.html

At the time of the reconstruction in August 1978, the committee was extremely conscious of the significance of Barger's preliminary work, realizing, as it did, that his analysis indicated that there possibly were too many shots, spaced too closely together, for Lee Harvey Oswald to have fired all of them, and that one of the shots came from" the grassy knoll, not the Texas School Book Depository.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jf...t/part-1b.html

C. The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.

Reference: https://www.archives.gov/research/jf...t/part-1c.html

(10) Why is it that it took nearly decades for former Johnson Administration officials, such as Robert McNamara, to admit that there simply were no verified attacks on the U.S.S. C. Turner Joy and U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964, shortly before the Congress granted President Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam?

The real deception on that day was that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s misled LBJ by withholding from him the information that the U.S. commander in the Gulf who had initially reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships had now expressed serous doubts about the initial report and was calling for a full investigation by daylight.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08...ulf-deception/

Reference, 2:45 minutes into this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YirrocPJpRE

To Lee and all readers, please do not view the aforementioned as irrelevant history. Rather, I urge you to view it through the prism of a lawyer who attempts to impeach the credibility of a testifying defendant based on its cumulative record of prior behavior.

To former President Ford I respectfully say, "To Hell with clarity, how about the truth Jerry?"

[Lee Chowaniec]

Mark:

Yes, I am suggesting that our government and a propagandized press are lying to the American people.

Regarding Afghanistan: Others (politicos, military, pundits, and media) are finally openly espousing a position I have maintained all along – withdrawing from Afghanistan emboldened our enemies and weakened America’s national security.

What is happening today and will bring an increased future security threat is the direct result of decisions made by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Where both dealt directly with Taliban and trusted them, the war is not over. The Taliban and the radical violent jihadists in the world haven't stopped fighting. They're going to continue to fight us. we should have stayed in Afghanistan to make sure they couldn't reconstitute to attack us again. They will continue in their effort to regroup and come after America again.

Senator Graham said today that the U.S. has not ended the war and has never been more worried about an attack on our homeland than right now.

Former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster said today that "we all share responsibility" for the war in Afghanistan.

"It hasn't been a 20-year war. It's been a one-year war fought 20 times over with ineffective strategies based on flawed assumptions — flawed assumptions about the nature of the enemy, flawed assumptions about what was necessary to achieve a sustainable outcome there," McMaster told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press."

"And of course, what's sad about it, is that this war ended in self-defeat, Chuck," he added. "I mean, we had a sustainable effort in place several years ago, that if we had sustained it, we could have prevented what's happening now. But instead, what we did, Chuck, is actually we surrendered to a jihadist organization and assumed there would be no consequences for that. And we're seeing the consequences today."

Some, including the current military leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted that keeping a relatively modest force of 3,000 to 4,500 troops along with the extensive use of drones and close air support could have enabled Afghan security forces to continue holding off the Taliban without putting Americans at much risk.

“There was an alternative that could have prevented further erosion and likely enabled us to roll back some of the Taliban gains in recent years,” said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the retired commander of American forces in Afghanistan and former C.I.A. director who argued the mission was making progress while serving alongside Mr. Biden under President Barack Obama.

“With the Afghans doing the fighting on the front lines and the U.S. providing assistance from the air,” he added, “such a force posture would have been quite sustainable in terms of the expenditure of blood and treasure.”

Trump and Biden had no options but to withdraw? BS! They both trusted the Taliban to work with us and ensure no American soldier was killed in the transition. Well, how did that work?

We surrender to a terrorist organization with a military force of 75,000, which ‘supposedly’ hates Al Qaeda and ISIS, lose strategic air bases, strategic logistical intelligence capabilities, $85 billion in military equipment and we are supposed to believe the government is acting in our best interests. Did these guys ever hear of ‘risk / benefit analysis’? I guess that’s not in the “Lying and doing dumb things to get votes’ political handbook!.

We are so screwed!

[mark blazejewski]

Some, including the current military leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted that keeping a relatively modest force of 3,000 to 4,500 troops along with the extensive use of drones and close air support could have enabled Afghan security forces to continue holding off the Taliban without putting Americans at much risk.

Someone is lying again, eh Lee?

There has been complete unanimity from every commander on the objectives of this mission and the best way to achieve those objectives.

Reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...ional-airport/

In any event, Milley, if he is truly above partisan politics, needs to make the big stink that he made last year...

Milley Apologizes for Role in Trump Photo Op: ‘I Should Not Have Been There’

President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square, current and former military leaders say, has started a moment of reckoning in the military.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/u...te-square.html

Top US general got into shouting match with Trump over race protests – report

Book claims Gen Mark Milley yelled at Trump, prompting former president to yell back: ‘You can’t ****ing talk to me like that!’

Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...shouting-match

Trump or the Troops? Why 2 Top Military Leaders May Be Forced to Choose

Reference: https://time.com/5860398/esper-milley-trump-loyalty/

[mark blazejewski]

Some, including the current military leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted that keeping a relatively modest force of 3,000 to 4,500 troops along with the extensive use of drones and close air support could have enabled Afghan security forces to continue holding off the Taliban without putting Americans at much risk.

In light of his comments which suggest that Bagram Air Force Base is of no value to the evacuation mission, how can Generalissimo Milley expect optimum results from "close air support?"

Reference: 20:00 minutes into this link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRyerSRZ1Qw&t=2630s

[mark blazejewski]

Regarding Afghanistan: Others (politicos, military, pundits, and media) are finally openly espousing a position I have maintained all along – withdrawing from Afghanistan emboldened our enemies and weakened America’s national security.

Indeed, the Afghanistan calamity was weakened America's national security and threatens its position as the preeminent World super power.

With that said, given the chaos, cancel culture, along with the "Great Reset" and "New Normal" phraseology which the Left has applied over the last four years generally, and the last sixteen months specifically, has it occurred to anyone that such a weakening may have been intentionally sought?

Again, from Laura Logan...

"So now we're all talking about the corruption and the ‘this' and the 'that’ and that there's all these complex parts — but at its heart, every single thing in the world, in your personal life, professionally, on the global stage, at its heart, it's very simple. It always comes down to one thing, one or two things. And in this case, in Afghanistan, this comes down to the fact that the United States wants this outcome," she continued.

"Whoever is in power right now, whoever is really pulling the strings – and I don't know that – they could do anything they want to change this. And they're not."

Reference: https://www.foxnews.com/media/lara-l...-can-change-it

My opinion only, but the Biden withdrawal plan from Afghanistan was flawed from the start and was doomed to failure. If a more thoughtful plan would have been applied, America could have disengaged its twenty-year commitment with honor, and left the Afghan armed forces in a much stronger position to maintain a position superior to that of the Taliban.

Is it not fair to ask why was such a reckless plan adopted?

Just a thought, but Afghanistan holds 3 trillion dollars of rare earth minerals.

Reference: https://tfipost.com/2020/07/afghanis...depends-on-it/

Perhaps with a Chinese-compromised President Biden in office, this New York Post headline may suggest a reason?:

China reportedly prepares to recognize Taliban if they oust Afghan government

Reference: https://nypost.com/2021/08/13/china-...l-1S-DQKoAvBrQ

The surrender of a nation rich in mineral wealth to the Chinese would be a nice down payment on the mortgage that President Xi Jinping holds on the Biden Presidency, eh?

China’s ties to Taliban warm ahead of US leaving Afghanistan

July 28, 2021

BEIJING (AP) — China’s foreign minister met Wednesday with a delegation of high-level Taliban officials as ties between them warm ahead of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.

A photo posted on the ministry’s website showed Wang Yi posing with senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and his delegation in the city of Tianjin, then sitting down to talks. The highly conspicuous show of friendliness had the appearance of a diplomatic mission at a time when the Taliban are craving legitimacy.

Wang said China respects Afghan sovereign independence and territorial integrity and always adheres to non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

He said the hasty withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO “reveals the failure of America’s policies and offers the Afghan people an important opportunity to stabilize and develop their own country.”

While no agenda was announced for the meeting, China has an interest in pushing the Taliban to deliver on peace talks or at least reduce the level of violence as they gobble up territory from Afghan government forces.

Reference: https://apnews.com/article/china-tal...7b2e05c3a9b0cc

Just sayin'.

[Lee Chowaniec]

Biden calls withdrawal ‘extraordinary success’

Biden took a victory lap during his address to the nation, calling the withdrawal an "extraordinary success" despite maintaining an angry tone throughout the speech, making the speech about himself and his son, and repeatedly blaming everyone but himself for the debacle.

Biden blamed his predecessor, former President Trump, for striking a deal with the Taliban, the Afghan military and just about everyone but himself for a withdrawal that cost 180 lives, billions in military equipment surrendered to the Taliban, and an outcry from members within his own party that the withdrawal was a disaster.

While most everyone else saw it as an unmitigated disaster, where nearly 90 retired generals and admirals have called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley to resign after overseeing the debacle, Biden declares the withdrawal couldn’t have been accomplished with greater success.

American and supporting Afghans left behind (possible future hostages), the Taliban calling the shots, 180+ deaths, billions in military equipment surrendered to the Taliban, disrespect to Gold Star families, declaration that America has leverage with the Taliban (a reformed Taliban), this is considered a successful withdrawal? This is a humiliation that adversely impacted allied relationships and will take some time to build world trust again.

It is still disturbing to hear Biden repeatedly declare the U.S. has no interest in Afghanistan. Remember that should Afghanistan once again become a base for another 9-11 terrorist attack. The Taliban has promised to mot allow that to happen. We can trust the reformed Taliban, right? The same organization that promised no American would die under their watch during the withdrawal – where 13 Americans were killed.

Scared what’s going to come from all this? Yeah, me too!

[mark blazejewski]

On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda killed almost 3,000 Americans, and did so operating from caves and sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

At that time, the al Qaeda terrorists were armed only with 19 boxcutters.

In October, 2001, the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to destroy its Taliban government, and did so in order to ensure that Afghanistan would never again be a safe haven for terrorist groups and operational planning.

Yesterday, President Biden spoke these words:

As we close 20 years of war and strife and pain and sacrifice, it’s time to look to the future, not the past — to a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure, to a future that honors those who served and all those who gave what President Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion.”

Reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...n-afghanistan/

A "safer" and "more secure" future, seriously?

The FAILED and DISASTEROUR Biden policies expanded the terrorist arsenal from 19 boxcutters to:

4 UH-60A Black Hawk helicopters

10 MD 530F attack helicopters

11 Mi-17 transport helicopters

13 Mi-24/Mi-35 attack helicopters

22,174 Humvee vehicles

1,000 armored vehicles

64,363 machine guns

42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs

358,530 assault rifles

126,295 pistols

200 artillery units

The above-list does not include the lost C-130 aircraft and drones

(Kind of reminds me of the opening scene to the movie "Patton," which shows General Bradley's aide Captain Hanson as the Captain reads to Bradley a list of destroyed equipment and human casualties lost at the Kasserine Pass-not one of American's finest hours.)

References:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamand...h=470bef8841db

https://nationalpost.com/news/heres-...of-the-taliban

https://www.newsweek.com/us-military...aliban-1624678

https://fee.org/articles/here-s-the-...r-the-taliban/

A "safer" and "more secure future," WTF is Biden talking about?

If some computers located in caves and 19 boxcutters could kill 3,000 American on 911, I cringe at the thought of the possible destruction that this new Taliban arsenal can do.

BTW, where has Biden been all these years?:

...to a future that honors those who served and all those who gave what President Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion.”

Most people I know have always honored our fallen military. For us, such behavior has always been, is, and always will be present. It will never be a mere contemplated consideration for the future.

[mark blazejewski]

It seems like it is all optics with Biden, and I understand Milley, who is said to have been a party to this conversation, does it not?:

Biden pressed Afghan president to change 'perception' that Taliban was winning, 'whether true or not'

Biden pressured Ghani to 'project a different picture'

References:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...aliban-winning

https://www.reuters.com/world/exclus...on-2021-08-31/

[shortstuff]

The past few weeks have been the most complex time, IMO, in my life time. But, the past few days have been heartbreaking. Resident Biden needs to step down, period. WTF - his audacity to yell at the Nation last night after receiving 13 dead hero's - what was he thinking? Oh wait, it was his ego that spoke last night which is still there inside a shadow of a person. He literally makes me sick to my stomach. His State Department and his military leaders again - WTF...do they really think the American people are that stupid? Oh wait, yes we are. Our only hope right now, is a win in 2022.

They say the equipment in Afghanistan was dismantled? Really, ok ... they leave 51 dogs behind? Well, they left 200 Americans behind, what's a few animals as far as the White House is concerned...

I cannot even ascertain what will happen next in this glorious administration....and then there is Harris, where is she now?????

[mark blazejewski]

The past few weeks have been the most complex time, IMO, in my life time... His State Department and his military leaders again - WTF...do they really think the American people are that stupid?

To you and I it may seem complex, if not convoluted shortstuff, but perhaps if we step back and assess this Afghanistan debacle within the context of the last four years, we may come to realize that the State Department bureaucracy and the military leadership may have been, and remain, just some of the willing participants in what may be an ongoing, pre-planned, deliberate effort, specifically designed to destroy the America that we have heretofore known.

Perhaps if we view it through such a prism, we will understand that the perceived bungled Afghan policy was not resultant of bizarre incompetence; it was the outcome of a skillfully constructed plan, with a simple, non-complex objective, which has now been realized?

"Reimagine" this or that, the "Great Reset" and the "New Normal" may not just be vague and intangible words. I think that those terms may be labels, previously developed to simply caption what they hope will be the realized post-Globalist/Socialist/Marxist revolution era.

[Lee Chowaniec]

They still don’t understand Afghanistan

Anyone that does any research on Afghanistan’s history and culture will find the following dissertation by Daniel Greenfield enlightening and credible. Shillman is a Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Lengthy, but a worthy read:


"Afghanistan's collapse: Did US intelligence get it wrong?" ABC News asks. "Afghanistan Is Your Fault," barks Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. “Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms,” Politico ponders. The one thing that the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan is good for is more media hot takes.

Afghanistan didn't fall because it never existed. The Afghan army laid down its arms because it also never existed. And not just because many of the 300,000 soldiers were imaginary. Its Pashtun members surrendered to their fellow Taliban Pashtuns, or fled to Iran or Uzbekistan, depending on their tribal or religious affiliations which, unlike Afghanistan, are very real.

The Afghan army was there because we spent $90 billion on it. Much like Afghanistan with its president, its constitution, and its elections existed because we spent a fortune on it. When we left, the president fled, the army collapsed, and Afghanistan: The Musical closed in Kabul.

Afghanistan isn’t a country. It’s a stone age Brigadoon of quarreling tribes, ethnic groups, Islamic denominations, and warlords manned by young men with old Russian and American rifles. Unlike the fiction of a democratic Afghanistan, that is something they will die for.

And in the coming years you will see some of those same soldiers who laid down their guns fighting and dying for tribes and warlords, even fighting the Taliban, in the real endless war.

The forever war isn’t something we invented after 9/11: Afghanistan has always been at war.

Americans are impressed that the Taliban held out for 20 years. They shouldn’t be. There’s no time in Afghanistan. Two decades of war are horrifyingly incomprehensible to Americans. To Afghans, it’s the way things have always been. We stepped into a place that has been a war zone for centuries, took sides, supplied weapons, and then left as everyone knew we would. The British and the Russians came and went. After us, the Chinese will come and go.

And the forever war will go on endlessly.

Before us, the Russians wanted the Afghans to pretend to be Communists. We wanted them to pretend that they were Democrats. But the Afghans aren’t ‘Afghans’, they’re Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Balochs, Hazaras, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, everything else is just a temporary costume.

The Taliban, another Pashtun bid to seize power, will be met with resistance, not by the proponents of a free and democratic Afghanistan, but by rival tribes and warlords.

We’ll probably end up funding some of them. And maybe this time we won’t be stupid enough to ask them to hold elections or any of the other nation-building nonsense from Foggy Bottom.

Our Afghanistan campaign after September 11 was fast, clever, and ruthless. The men who conducted it understood the society. They worked together with warlords to crush the Taliban. Their goal was a quick and dirty victory that would make an example out of the Taliban.

Our allies were anyone whose current factional interests in the endless power struggle aligned with ours. As the years went on, some of our allies became enemies, and some enemies became allies. The Taliban were the bad guys, but just like in Syria, so was everyone else. There were plenty of innocents caught in the crossfire, but innocents have no power.

The average Afghan rural villager doesn’t think of being a citizen of some country called Afghanistan. He cares little for elections and his elders confuse Americans with the Russians and sometimes even the British. The elites in Kabul are happy to dress up their power grabs in presidential titles and constitutions that no one else in the country cares about. USAID pays girls in Kabul to play at feminism and college graduates to talk about international relations.

None of it mattered a damn in the vast majority of the country as we are now finding out.

But, Afghanistan didn’t become a complete disaster for us. Until Obama. American forces peaked at 25,000 under Bush. Obama quadrupled them to 100,000. That’s the year more American soldiers were wounded than during the entire Bush administration. 1,200 Americans died during Obama's Afghanistan surge, not just because he quadrupled the number of soldiers, but because the military was told to stop trying to defeat the Taliban.

Our soldiers became community organizers with guns who were told not to fight. No hearts and minds were won. But cemeteries filled up with boys from Texas and West Virginia who weren’t allowed to shoot back because Obama wanted to win Muslim hearts and minds.

The military brass who embraced Obama’s strategy buried and crippled a generation of young men. Countless men and women came home wounded inside. They overdosed or killed themselves.

The surge receded. The military brass pulled back to secure the cities while the Taliban secured the rural areas that we spent so many lives on. All they had to do was wait for us to leave.

The speed with which the Taliban took the country only seems magical to CNN viewers. The country was theirs for the taking. The Taliban fought few battles. The various warlords and leaders began switching sides when Biden announced his withdrawal to join the winning team. That’s the Islamic team backed by Pakistan, China, Turkey who are the big boys still standing.

But that doesn’t mean that they won’t switch sides next month or next year.

The hated government in Kabul was backed by our money and our air power. We’re out, so are they. But the locals will hate the Taliban too. And as the Chinese come in to set up mines, run roads, and offend the locals, they’ll find out what we, the British, and the Russians learned.

Afghanistan doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s its own forever war of quarreling tribes.

The forever war will continue whether or not we’re there. But we’ll probably be there in one form or another. We never really understood Afghanistan or Iraq. And so we can’t escape them. Al Qaeda and ISIS will operate out of Afghanistan. So will countless other Jihadi fighters.

Americans didn’t invent the forever war. It’s been going on in the Islamic parts of the world for over a thousand years. It’s unfashionable and politically incorrect to mention it. That’s why the media carefully describes the Taliban as “religious students” without naming the religion. It’ll refer to Sunni and Shiite infighting in Iraq while leaving off the “Islam” part of the group.

We came to defeat the Jihadists behind September 11 and we stayed behind to reform Afghanistan. But what were we reforming it from? We couldn’t name the problem. And when you can’t name a problem, you never come up with a solution.

Having failed to fix Afghanistan, the process is now underway to bring as many Afghans as possible to America. The old plan to bring 100,000 “interpreters” and their family members has been vastly expanded to make any Afghan who did any work for American organizations, from aid groups to the media, eligible to come to America. By the time they’re done, we may end up with a million Afghan refugees in America. Some of them will become Islamic terrorists. The final act of fighting terrorism is bringing the terrorists to America to create more terror.

The real tragedy of Afghanistan isn’t just that we lost so many of our best and brightest in the dust, it’s that we learned nothing from the experience. Nothing except to blame ourselves.

We didn’t fail Afghanistan. Nor did we lose Afghanistan. It was never ours or anyone’s.

Afghanistan wasn’t our forever war. It’s the forever war of the warlords and tribesmen who will keep on fighting it until the water dries up, the cattle die, and they all move to Fremont where 25,000 Afghans already live. Our mistake was not recognizing what Afghanistan was.

Americans like to believe that everyone is like us. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Wherever we go, the people speak English, listen to our music, and wear Nike shirts. They have opinions about our presidents and want to know how easy it is to move to Fremont. And we cheerfully supply them with more Nike shirts, bad music, worse movies, and try to persuade them to create a United States of Iraq or a United States of Afghanistan. Then when it doesn’t work out, they move to Fremont, Minnesota, or New York City, run for Congress, and tell us they hate us.

If we learn anything from Afghanistan, from Iraq, and from September 11, let it be this. There have to be boundaries, physical and conceptual borders, between us and the rest of the world. American exceptionalism can’t be a narcissistic belief that everyone ought to be like us. If everyone could become us, there would be nothing exceptional about us. Our exceptionalism is that the rest of the world isn’t like us and never will be. And that if we want to protect ourselves, we have to stop trying to define the world or allowing the rest of the world to redefine America.

We could have won in Afghanistan, swiftly and decisively, and left, if we hadn’t been seduced into believing that Afghanistan could be America and that Afghans deserved to be Americans. Likewise, Iraq.

Victories became defeats and cemeteries filled with the dead because we lost sight of the truth about Afghanistan and about ourselves. The more we think about Afghanistan or any place in terms of ourselves, the less we see it for what it is. And that can be a deadly illusion.

Americans have spent the last century trying to turn the world into America. Let’s spend this century making America what it was always intended to be: a refuge from the rest of the world.

We won’t win wars anymore because we can no longer remember what we’re fighting for. Unable to draw boundaries between the enemy and ourselves, between our nation and the world, we’ve lost touch with the fundamental purpose and even the concept of what a war is.

To win a war, we have to remember what we’re fighting for. Ourselves. The Afghans understand that concept. Perhaps they understand it too well. But it’s time we learned it too. If we can’t go to war for ourselves, not for democracy, human rights, or so that Afghan girls can go to school, then we will lose soldiers, lose wars, and lose our nation.

All wars are endless and forever when you don’t understand what it takes to win

[shortstuff]

To you and I it may seem complex, if not convoluted shortstuff, but perhaps if we step back and assess this Afghanistan debacle within the context of the last four years, we may come to realize that the State Department bureaucracy and the military leadership may have been, and remain, just some of the willing participants in what may be an ongoing, pre-planned, deliberate effort, specifically designed to destroy the America that we have heretofore known.

Perhaps if we view it through such a prism, we will understand that the perceived bungled Afghan policy was not resultant of bizarre incompetence; it was the outcome of a skillfully constructed plan, with a simple, non-complex objective, which has now been realized?

"Reimagine" this or that, the "Great Reset" and the "New Normal" may not just be vague and intangible words. I think that those terms may be labels, previously developed to simply caption what they hope will be the realized post-Globalist/Socialist/Marxist revolution era.

Mark & Lee,

I am not surprised in learning about yet another leaked piece of information from the White House. Biden's perception and General Milley's interpretation(s) to push a narrative of what the perception is or will be in the events surrounding Afghanistan's exit plan to the world. Guys, is this treasonous?

[mark blazejewski]

Mark & Lee,

I am not surprised in learning about yet another leaked piece of information from the White House. Biden's perception and General Milley's interpretation(s) to push a narrative of what the perception is or will be in the events surrounding Afghanistan's exit plan to the world. Guys, is this treasonous?

If you are referring to this shortstuff...

Excerpts of call between Joe Biden and Ashraf Ghani July 23



WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani spoke by phone July 23. Here are excerpts from that call, based on a transcript and recording reviewed by Reuters:

BIDEN: Mr. President. Joe Biden.

GHANI: Of course, Mr. President, such a pleasure to hear your voice.

BIDEN: You know, I am a moment late. But I mean it sincerely. Hey look, I want to make it clear that I am not a military man any more than you are, but I have been meeting with our Pentagon folks, and our national security people, as you have with ours and yours, and as you know and I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.

And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.

…..

BIDEN: If you empower Bismillah [Defense Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi] to execute a strategy focused on key parts of the population centers, and I’m not a military guy, so I’m not telling you what that plan should precisely look like, you’re going to get not only more help, but you’re going to get a perception that is going to change in terms of how , um…[unclear].. our allies and folks here in the States and other places think you’re doing.

You clearly have the best military, you have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well, we will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is and what we are doing. And all the way through the end of August, and who knows what after that.

We are also going to continue to make sure your air force is capable of continuing to fly and provide air support. In addition to that we are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows because it is clearly in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, that you succeed and you lead. And though I know this is presumptuous of me on one hand to say such things so directly to you, I have known you for a long while, I find you a brilliant and honorable man.

But I really think, I don’t know whether you’re aware, just how much the perception around the world is that this is looking like a losing proposition, which it is not, not that it necessarily is that, but so the conclusion I’m asking you to consider is to bring together everyone from [Former Vice President Abdul Rashid] Dostum, to [Former President Hamid] Karzai and in between, if they stand there and say they back the strategy you put together, and put a warrior in charge, you know a military man, [Defense Minister Bismillah] Khan in charge of executing that strategy, and that will change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think.

…

GHANI: Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this, so that dimension needs to be taken account of.

Second, what is crucial is, close air support, and if I could make a request, you have been very generous, if your assistance, particularly to our air force be front loaded, because what we need at this moment, there was a very heavily reliance on air power, and we have prioritized that if it could be at all front-loaded, we will greatly appreciate it.

And third, regarding procedure for the rest of the assistance, for instance, military pay is not increased for over a decade. We need to make some gestures to rally everybody together so if you could assign the national security advisor or the Pentagon, anyone you wish to work with us on the details, so our expectations particularly regarding your close air support. There are agreements with the Taliban that we [or “you” this is unclear] are not previously aware of, and because of your air force was extremely cautious in attacking them.

And the last point, I just spoke again to Dr. Abdullah earlier, he went to negotiate with the Taliban, the Taliban showed no inclination. We can get to peace only if we rebalance the military situation. And I can assure you…

BIDEN: [crosstalk]

GHANI: And I can assure you I have been to four of our key cities, I’m constantly traveling with the vice president and others, we will be able to rally. Your assurance of support goes a very long way to enable us, to really mobilize in earnest. The urban resistance, Mr. President is been extraordinary, there are cities that have taken a siege of 55 days and that have not surrendered. Again, I thank you and I’m always just a phone call away. This is what a friend tells a friend, so please don’t feel that you’re imposing on me.

BIDEN: No, well, look, I, thank you. Look, close air support works only if there is a military strategy on the ground to support.

Reporting by Aram Roston and Nandita Bose

Reference: https://www.reuters.com/world/excerp...23-2021-08-31/

...I understand that the White House will not confirm or deny the call...

Psaki dodges questions about Biden pressing Afghan president to change 'perception' of Taliban dominance

White House press secretary refuses to 'go into the details of a private conversation'

Reference: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psa...eption-taliban

In that sorry connection, I simply do not know if the substance of the call, or the refusal of the White House to confirm the accuracy of the released transcript, rises to the level of treason or not. I am inclined to think most probably not.

Just my opinion, but I think that it is the President's responsibility to develop and conduct its administration's foreign policy, no matter how flawed that policy is.