Tag Archives: Afghanistan war disaster

Afghanistan: A Tragically Stupid War Comes to a Tragic End, by Ron Paul

Posted on August 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Ron Paul is too polite to say, “I told you so,” but he did warn Washington about what it was getting into. From Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Sunday’s news reports that the Biden Administration mistakenly killed nine members of one Afghan family, including six children, in “retaliation” for last week’s suicide attack which killed 13 US servicemembers, is a sad and sick epitaph on the 20 year Afghanistan war.

Promising to “get tough” on ISIS, which suddenly re-emerged to take responsibility for the suicide attack, the most expensive military and intelligence apparatus on earth appears to have gotten it wrong. Again.

Interventionists love to pretend they care about girls and women in Afghanistan, but it is in reality a desperate attempt to continue the 20-year US occupation. If we leave, they say, girls and women will be discriminated against by the Taliban.

It’s hard to imagine a discrimination worse than being incinerated by a drone strike, but these “collateral damage” attacks over the past 20 years have killed scores of civilians. Just like on Sunday.

That’s the worst part of this whole terrible war: day-after-day for twenty years civilians were killed because of the “noble” effort to re-make Afghanistan in the image of the United States. But the media and the warmongers who call the shots in government – and the “private” military-industrial sector – could not have cared less. Who recalls a single report on how many civilians were just “collateral damage” in the futile US war?

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , ,

The Afghanistan Rout and American Glasnost’, by Dmitry Orlov

Posted on August 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Are we reaching the point where the American establishment is running out of lies? We can only hope. From Dmitry Orlov at cluborlov.wordpress.com:

Recent events have forced me to interrupt regular programming to bring you a report on the developments in Afghanistan and what I believe they portend for both US. The US and NATO have finally left Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation. At this point, they are still retaining a toehold at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, from which they are attempting to repatriate their nationals along with those Afghanis who served the occupation. These collaborators now fear for their lives from the Taliban, who have swiftly taken over almost the entire country in what was probably the most bloodless regime change operation that part of the world has ever experienced.

The US occupation of Afghanistan was rationalized based on an entire edifice of lies. At its foundation lay the lie of Nineleven. Above it towered the lie of fighting terrorism (while training and equipping the terrorists). Somewhere along the way the lie of aiding Afghanistan’s development into a vibrant, modern democracy with gender equality and other bells and whistles was added to this already stupendous structure (while the only actual development was that of the heroin trade). And, of course, overlaying all of the above was a truly staggering amount of corruption and theft.

If you believe the official narrative, Osama bin Laden was a sort of latter-day Jesus who repeated the miracle of loaves and fishes except with skyscrapers, knocking down three of them (WTC 1, 2 and 7) using just two airplanes. Another of his miracles was to make an entire passenger jet, piloted by an amateur, pull some truly stunning aerobatics that no passenger jet has pulled before or since, then ascend unto heaven through a wall of the Pentagon, engines, seats, luggage, bodies and all, leaving behind a small charred opening plus a part of a cruise missile that apparently had been hidden on board and that was subsequently carried away wrapped in a tarp on the shoulders of some very nervous and displeased-looking gentlemen in office attire. Another plane full of passengers left a smallish charred pit in the ground and recordings of rather scripted-sounding cell phone conversations held while the supposed plane was in an area lacking cell phone coverage. Bin Laden orchestrated all this mayhem by satellite phone, or by telepathy, without ever leaving the comfort of his cave in Afghanistan. I encourage you to believe this narrative because believing the alternative may cause you to lose your mind. Many people already have.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , , , , ,

Will Afghanistan Turn Out to be US Imperialism’s “Last Gleaming”? by The Saker

Posted on August 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Afghanistan may be the beginning of the end of American empire. From The Saker at unz.com:

In October of last year I wrote a column entitled “When Exactly Did The AngloZionist Empire Collapse” in which I presented my thesis that the Empire died on 8 January 2020 when the Iranians attacked US bases with missiles and the US did absolutely nothing. Yes, this was the correct decision, but also one which, at least to me, marked the death of the Empire as we knew it.

In that article I made reference to a brilliant book by J.M. Greer’s “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” which I later reviewed here. The main plot of the book is that the US will collapse following a completely unpredictable external military defeat (read the book, it is very well written!).

So my question today is whether the debacle in Afghanistan (not only Kabul!) is such an event or not. Afghanistan is often called the graveyard of empires, but might it even become the graveyard of the last empire?

I will try to answer it below.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Law, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , ,

Swamp Beasts of the Potomac, by Tim Hartnett

Posted on August 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Tim Hartnett proves you can’t be too cynical or too savagely honest about our rulers. From Harnett at lewrockwell.com:

“You don’t need to be a brilliant geopolitical strategist to understand that the United States should be the best friend –and the worst enemy – any nation could have” — says the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in an August 18, 2021 Washington Times op-ed. Truthfully, I haven’t got a clue who would qualify as a “brilliant geopolitical strategist” – but maintain absolute certainty that Clifford May doesn’t rule himself out as one. The evidence of that will be presented in due course.

He goes on: “Following the events of recent days, the U.S. will be perceived differently: “harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”” Who is cited inside those quote marks isn’t said. But, since May bragged about dining with Afghan president Ghani in a column a week before that, the lamming ex-chief exec sounds like one source. A sap that gets swindled on schedule for years on end is always called a double-crosser for finally wising up. Afghan grifters probably felt they deserved the take just for putting up with the wind blowing from both ends of American bagmen.

The US has poured money, ordnance and American lives into a country of 40 million — that is up against an army of 80,000 – for 20 years. Leaving aside any credentials the FDD prez proffers in the strategery department – his nose for treachery is sniffing at the hind quarters of the wrong dogs — that pungent Pashtun cuisine must have overwhelmed his fragile senses. Continued funding of tribal chieftains pretending to defend the peasants in their fiefdoms, who use the loot instead on bacha bazi boys and feathering their own nests, is what’s treacherous — to American taxpayers. That’s a kind of betrayal people who feed at the same troughs May does call “patriotism.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, History, Horseshit, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , ,

The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on August 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

Are those who push for and implement disastrous wars that kill thousands or millions ever called to account? Do they ever bear consequences, or do they just end up on the board of directors of some defense contractor? From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

How about some accountability for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen?

If you want to know how the United States wound up with “government by stupid” one need only look no farther than some of the recent propaganda put out by members of Congress, senior military officers and a certain former president. President George W. Bush, who started the whole sequence of events that have culminated in the disaster that is Afghanistan, is not yet in prison, but one can always hope.

Regarding the current crisis, former FBI special agent and 9/11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley cited Richard W. Behan who mused over “How perverse we have become. We chastise President Biden for a messy ending of the war in Afghanistan and fail to indict George Bush for its illegal beginning.” She then observed, in her own words on Facebook, “So Rehabilitated War Criminal Bush can maintain his legacy as stalwart statesman as he cutely dances with Ellen DeGeneris and Michelle Obama on television screens. Washington is just a big fact-free political show where the blame game winners are the best manipulators.”

I would add to that the hubris of the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the tower of an aircraft carrier as Bush, wearing a flight suit, inaccurately announced victory and an end of combat in Afghanistan, presumably so he could focus on his new war in Iraq. As the Taliban had not attacked or threatened America, had no means of doing so, and were even willing to turn over “their guest” Osama bin Laden to US justice after the bombing of the USS Cole in late 2000, they were hardly a formidable foe. The Bush Administration refused the offer to surrender bin Laden on four occasions before 9/11 and once more five days after the attack because it wanted a war. Given all of that backstory, what Bush and his posse of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Tenet, Feith, Powell and Libby did was indisputably a war crime. And they followed up with fake intelligence to justify a second war against Saddam Hussein, who had also sought to avoid war by offering to go into voluntary exile. The Nuremberg tribunals considered aggressive war against an unthreatening nation to be the ultimate war crime. That would make it an ultimate war crime times two, not to mention the killing of civilians and torture that went along with it. And President Barack Obama added to that toll by subsequently destroying an unthreatening Libya. Unfortunately, many of those war criminals from the Bush and Obama cliques who are still alive are sitting fat and pretty in retirement or in lucrative private sector positions while the only ones who have been punished are the whistleblowers who tried to stop the madness.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , , ,

Exploitative Viral PR Photos Of Military Invaders With Afghan Kids, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on August 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

War is . . . day care. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Mainstream news and social media cannot get enough photos of imperial invaders posing for photographs with small children in Afghanistan.

Mass media narrative managers and military agencies alike have been spamming these images everywhere, as quickly and enthusiastically as possible. 

That’s right. Invade a nation, kill hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants, stay for decades, accomplish nothing besides making war profiteers wealthy, drop everything and leave, then have your armed goon squad take PR photos with local infants so everyone thinks your military is awesome.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, History, Horseshit, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , ,

In Massive Propaganda Onslaught, Media Ignores The Real “Catastrophe” Of Afghanistan, by Michael Tracey

Posted on August 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

Lots of people in Washington knew the Afghanistan war was not going well and would end in disaster. They did nothing. From Michael Tracey at mtracey.substack.com:
Afghan National Army on patrol in 2020. Photo by HOSHANG HASHIMI/AFP via Getty Images

In September of 2017, an obscure government official stood before a small audience at an obscure think tank and described a catastrophe that was unfolding. “Obscure” to the average citizen, that is — but not at all obscure to the “insiders” and journalists who attend these sorts of gatherings in DC, or sign up for the pertinent email lists, or read acronym-filled trade publications.

It was only a few weeks earlier that a president, his first year in office, had been persuaded by “the adults in the room” — those sagely Generals again — to authorize yet another escalation in a war these “insiders” largely knew was unwinnable. Curiously, the “adult” decision always seems to entail prolonging fatally doomed military interventions, as though that were the obviously sober and mature course of action. This same ritual had also occurred with the previous president his first year in office, albeit with even more catastrophic consequences.

The obscure government official, reserved in his manner but about as candid could be expected under the circumstances, relayed a few anecdotes:

“One US officer,” he said, “watched TV shows like COPS and NCIS to learn what he should teach Afghan police recruits.”

That would be a reference to the Afghan National Police, one of the country’s US-subsidized security forces which just evaporated this week.

The official continued:

“We heard horrible stories about the widows. Of Afghan soldiers. Who have to give sexual favors in order to get the pension benefits.”

That would be a reference to the Afghan National Army, another one of the country’s US-subsidized security forces which just evaporated this week.

“Would any American put up with that?” the official asked. “So we’re trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. We first got to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan security forces.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged ,

A ‘Strategic Apocalypse’ in Afghanistan: A Seismic Shift, Years in the Making, by Alasdair Crooke

Posted on August 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Taliban are going to turn America’s loss in Afghanistan into China, Russia, and Iran’s gain. From Alasdair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

China is more determined to shape the region than many analysts realise, Alastair Crooke writes.

A huge geo-political event has just occurred in Afghanistan: The implosion of a key western strategy for managing what Mackinder, in the 19th century, called the Asian heartland. That it was accomplished, without fighting, and in few days, is almost unprecedented.

It has been a shock. Not just one of those ephemeral shocks that is soon forgotten, but a deeply traumatic one. Unlike the psychological impact of 9/11, the western world is treating the experience as mourning for the loss of ‘a loved one’. There have been ministerial tears, chest beating and an entry into the first three stages of grief simultaneously: Firstly, shock and denial (a state of disbelief and numbed feelings); then, pain and guilt (for those allies of ours huddled at Kabul airport), and finally, anger. The fourth stage is already in sight in the U.S.: Depression – as the polls show America already swinging towards deep pessimism about the pandemic, economic and prospects, as well as the course on which the American Republic is set.

Here we have a clear statement from the editors of The New York Times of who that ‘loved one’ was:

[The Afghan debacle is] “tragic because the American Dream of being the ‘indispensable nation’ in a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule – proved to be just a dream”.

Michael Rubin representing the hawkish AEI pronounced an eulogy over ‘the corpse’:

Biden, Blinken, and Jake Sullivan might craft statements about the mistakes of earlier NATO overreach, “and the need for Washington to focus on its core interests further West. And Pentagon officials and diplomats might contest any lessening of America’s commitment with indignation, yet the reality is NATO is a Dead Man Walking”.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , ,

Throwdowns and Showdowns, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on August 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Deep State is running into some rough sledding. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

Notice, there are two sets of hostages in this phase of what looks like an engineered US collapse: the thousands of stranded Americans who can’t get out of Afghanistan thanks to the history-rockin’ ineptitude of “Joe Biden,” Tony Blinken, and General Mark Milley, and the millions of We-the-People back home whose minds are hostage to the narratives concocted in a shadowland of sinister governance. Welcome to a week of throwdowns and showdowns, a force majeure of mind change.

A strange paralysis in the Pentagon has prevented the use of US power to clear an escape corridor to Kabul’s airport and establish order in the facility — this, after the tactically mystifying decision to abandon the US Bagram military airfield, a good twenty miles outside of festering Kabul, and surrounded by more easily-securable empty desert. Britain and France managed to get their nationals out last week, only to be rebuked by American brass for “making us look bad.” That helped, I’m sure.

And then how long can the stranded Americans even stay hidden and alive? They have to eat. Either they come out of their hidey-holes and get to some market, or they would (theoretically) have to send some Afghani servants to fetch them supplies, But, what Afghani in his right mind would want to be caught in service to the Americans by the Taliban? That quandary must have a pretty short time-horizon on it. Standing by to see how it works out….

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Crime, Economy, Government, Media, Medicine, Politics, Tyranny

Tagged , ,

The Sheer Joy of Afghanistan, by Israel Shamir

Posted on August 22, 2021 | 2 comments

The Taliban remind us that we are not powerless against the people who presume to rule us. From Israel Shamir at unz.com:

My congratulations, friends and readers! The Taliban’s victory is our victory, yours and mine. We, non-Muslim and non-Pashtun folk, in the US and Europe, may rejoice, for in Afghanistan, virile (not “toxic”) masculinity defeated gender-diversity, believers defeated those weak of faith, the morals of our fathers overcome the morals of our sons. This is the sheer joy of the Afghan victory; this victory of bearded men with arms over a gender-diversified butch-run hosts and their feminist NGOs is our victory, too. Do not be ashamed of being a manly man; stand tall! It is a breath of fresh air, this manly victory in the far-away mountains trod by Alexander the Great’s phalanxes; and it is much nicer to write about than usual stuff, especially after this time of being drip-fed by hypochondriac news of another elder succumbing to the dreadful virus, of green passports, of medical advice on how to live longer, of atoning for the misdeeds of our forefathers, of being of the wrong race and how to avoid microaggressions lest somebody will feel hurt. If we, men, would like to hurt somebody, we won’t stop at a joke, we’ll reach for an RPG.

The RPG rocket launcher, of the kind preferred by the Talibs, really hurts. It is not an imaginary feeling of discomfort, but a real hole in the armour. Or a torn-off head. There is nothing micro in its delivery. You do not need a mask on the battlefield for the mask won’t stop the launched rocket. You won’t worry about the virus when you encounter real bullets. On the battlefield, the problem of gender-neutral toilets does not arise. Twitter can’t ban a machinegun, but a machinegun can banish Twitter and the whole Twitter gang. The Taliban defeated Wokery; they aren’t afraid of being politically incorrect as we are. The Taliban aren’t afraid to worship God and to call upon Him, as we are. They aren’t afraid to stand for family values – they don’t even understand how it could be different.

The Taliban is a harbinger of real muscular democracy and freedom from Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi who all enslave us. They wouldn’t submit to this bunch; they would mete out revolutionary justice to those who want to deprive us of heating, who would blot out the Sun and suffocate us with their masks. A Trumper watches with envy as these rebels actually take the president palace instead of being accused of doing it on January 6.

Continue reading→

2 Comments

Posted in Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Insurrection, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

Tagged ,