Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Here Come the Terrorists. Again, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

The military-industrial-intelligence complex is in search of new enemies. From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:

President Joe Biden is being praised in some circles because he finally ended the war in Afghanistan that in all likelihood should never have begun. President George W. Bush initiated the conflict on a series of lies about 9/11 and the Taliban role in that attack and what followed. After bringing about regime change, he decided to remake the country into a western style democracy. President Barack Obama subsequently allowed a “surge” which actually increased the militarization of the conflict and made things worse. The joint effort produced no free elections but delivered instead tens of thousands of deaths and a huge hole in the US Treasury. Bush and Obama were followed by President Donald Trump who actually promised to end the war but lacked the conviction and political support to do so, handing the problem over to Biden, who has bungled the end game but finally done the right thing by ending the fiasco. Biden also has been right to accede to a withdrawal of the last US combat troops from Iraq by year’s end, a move that will considerably ease tension with the Baghdad government, which has been calling for such a move since last January.

But America’s war on those parts of the world that resist following its self-defined leadership is not about to go away. An interesting recent article in the foreign policy establishment The Hill written by a former senior CIA operations and staff officer Douglas London sees an Orwellian unending war against major adversaries Russia and China. Derived from his own experience, he concludes that sustained and enhanced clandestine actions should now replace conventional military forces confrontation, which has been somewhat outdated as an option due to the development of relatively cheap missile technologies that have undermined classic conventional weapons. Some of the clandestine activity he appears to recommend would undoubtedly fall under cover of classic espionage “plausible denial,” i.e. that the White House could disavow any knowledge of what had occurred, but sabotage and cyber-attacks, particularly if implemented aggressively, would quickly be recognized for what they are and would invite commensurate or even disproportionate retaliation. This would amount to an all-out semi-covert war against powerful adversaries which could easily escalate into a shooting war.

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Glide Path Low and Dark, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

James Howard Kunstler sees ominous develops on all fronts. From Kunstler at kunstler.com:

It would only be cruel to burden readers with more opprobrious denunciation of the pathetic figure pretending to lead the nation, but it might be fair to ask: what is to be done about him? It’s looking a little bit as though “Joe Biden” is skidding toward resignation. His body language suggests defeat. When newsman Peter Doocy asked him Thursday evening on live TV about the thirteen American soldiers blown up outside the Kabul airport, he folded up in front of the cameras like a broken accordion. Poor optics, as they say in the spin business. This was after he kept the country waiting for five and a half hours to even make an appearance when news of the bombing broke.

His managers installed a “poison pill” named Kamala Harris as his vice-president, and even members of her own party get the vapors at mere fugitive thoughts of her trying to run the country, giggling from one crisis to another. Meanwhile, the veep cut short her tour of Southeast Asia, rushing to aid beleaguered California Governor Gavin Newsom at a rally to fight his recall vote… but then cut short her Newsom rescue mission to fly on to Washington. Electioneering during the greatest hostage crisis in US history probably equals more poor optics. She will presumably spend the days ahead “standing by” on developments, within reach of the Xanax vial — while a claque of party bigwigs importunes her to get rolling on the 25th amendment.

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I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Afghanistan has been a lie from beginning to end. From Lucas Kunce at kansascity.com:

Lucas Kunce in Sangin, Afghanistan, with local security forces in 2014.
Lucas Kunce in Sangin, Afghanistan, with local security forces in 2014. Courtesy of the Lucas Kunce campaign

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.

The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.

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What Can We Learn About Covid Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan? by Brandon Smith

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

They are not hiding what they have in store for us in the name of Covid-19 response: total control. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.us:

Despotic people tend to telegraph their future actions like inexperienced fighters tend to telegraph their punches; it’s not as if the intentions of totalitarians are obscured or hard to predict. In some cases they may even believe that they can be as obvious as they wish because they assume no one will ever try to stop them. They’ve been destroying lives for so long they adopt a sense of superiority, as if they are untouchable.

In my extensive study of psychopathy I find that, unfortunately, the primary catalyst for the exploitation and victimization of large populations of people is that many of them can’t wrap their heads around the idea of an organized conspiracy of human monsters. They refuse to acknowledge the existence of the evil right in front of them, so the evil is able to go unopposed for long stretches of time. There is ALWAYS a moment, though, when psychopaths push the wrong people too far. They just can’t help it, and this is when they find themselves on the business end of a noose or the barrel of a gun.

When it comes to organizations of psychopaths, the same moment also eventually arrives, it just takes longer for the public to comes to grips with the necessity of it.

In terms of the “Great Reset” agenda, medical tyranny using covid as a rationale is clearly a key ingredient to the future objectives of the power elite. At the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns last year I made several predictions and warnings. I said that the mandates and lockdowns for most people around the world would never go away, and I called this “Wave Theory”; the use of intermittent moments of limited freedom followed by increasingly more aggressive restrictions.

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Untruths and consequences, by Eric Utter

Posted on August 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

What does the populace do when those who presume to rule it (and their minions) trot out obvious and blatant lies? From Eric Utter at americanthinker.com:

To any sane person, it appears our elites and their media sycophants are engaging in an unprecedented preposterous statement tournament.  They must get up every day, snicker once or twice, and try to think of the most ridiculous, least verifiable piece of ludicrous prevarication they can attempt to pass off as truth.  And why shouldn’t they?  A significant percentage of Americans seem willing to believe anything at all.

So President Biden says there are no Americans trapped in Kabul.  All right, now tell us the one about the three bears.  His press secretary, Jen Psaki, says we need to get the military out of Afghanistan first, so we don’t risk anyone getting hurt.  Yes, forget about the thousands of American civilians trapped in Kabul.  Ignore the pictures of mothers throwing their babies over fences.  Um, Jen, we send our troops to places specifically to confront danger and instability…and often to fight the bad guys.  That’s why, unlike civilians, they are armed to the teeth and wear body armor.  That’s why they have attack helicopters, A-10 Warthogs, missiles, rocket launchers, grenades, and submachine guns.  Or used to, before the Biden administration decided to donate them to the Taliban.  But we are told we can trust the Taliban, that its members are turning over a new leaf.  (Perhaps moving from the 8th century to the 9th century?)

We are told the vaccines work wonderfully and are totally safe.  And then told we need to start wearing masks again.  And that hospitals are filling up again.  And that we need a “booster” shot.  We are virtually assured the coronavirus didn’t come from a laboratory in Wuhan.  Until we were told that it might very well have come from a laboratory in Wuhan.  But, Biden says, the Chinese are Hunter’s our friends., and Iran, too, poses no serious threat.

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John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing Nations

Posted on August 25, 2021 | Leave a comment

From 1978 until 1996, Afghanistan had a reformist government and women, in particular, made great strides. It was however, aligned with the Soviet Union, so the US funded and armed the mujahideen who rebelled against it and eventually won. From John Pilger at consortiumnews.com:

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported The New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag … the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”

The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.” Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

Under the monarchy, life expectancy was 35; 1-in-3 children died in infancy. Ninety percent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.

For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants.

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How and Why the Taliban Won, by Eric Zuesse

Posted on August 22, 2021 | 6 comments

This is the best article I’ve read so far on Afghanistan.

People fighting for their homeland have, among other advantages, a moral advantage against an occupying power. They’re fighting for what’s theirs, not to steal and dominate what isn’t. It’s a lesson America’s revolutionary ancestors knew in their bones, but one most Americans have ignored, at staggering costs in blood and treasure, through America’s string of failed invasions and occupations since World War II. It’s also a lesson that should, but won’t, make those who presume to rule us quake. While the government is part of America, it is no longer of America (our rulers now pride themselves on their separateness), just as our puppet governments in the lands we’ve occupied have been part of those countries, but not of them. In other words, the government is an occupying power in our land, and is destined to meet the fate of so many occupying powers.

From Eric Zuesse at strategic-culture.org:

Between America’s founding and the present time, America has switched from doing war against military occupiers, to doing war as military occupiers, Eric Zuesse writes.

The prominent philosopher Slavoj Zizek stated the question well at RT, on August 17th:

The Taliban’s 80,000 troops have retaken Afghanistan with cities falling like dominos while the 300,000-strong government forces, better equipped and trained, mostly melted and surrendered with no will to fight. Why did it happen?

The Western media tell us there can be several explanations for that. …

However, all these explanations seem to avoid a basic fact that is traumatic for the liberal Western view. That is the Taliban’s disregard for survival and the readiness of its fighters to assume “martyrdom,” to die not just in a battle but even in suicidal acts.

He compared this to the Marxists who were willing to risk their lives in order to conquer the ruling aristocratic regime in Russia a hundred years ago and succeeded against enormous odds. But, then, Zizek said “it is doubtful that traditional Marxism can provide a convincing account of the success of Taliban.” Philosophers (including not only the anti-Marxist philosopher Zizek but Marx himself) always have been and are accustomed to contradicting themselves like that, without even noticing that they are. Even self-contradiction is accepted by them, because — as a profession — they have no consistent epistemological standard that they’re required to meet. Instead, Zizek blithely assumed that Russia’s Revolutionists hadn’t won for the very same reason the Taliban did — they were willing to die for their cause, while the opposing soldiers were not. He simply assumed that because the Taliban fought for a different god, they didn’t win for the same reason that those Marxist ‘atheists’ did.

However, the question still remains open, and must be addressed, in the most general sense:

Why did the Taliban win against the Americans in Afghanistan?

Why did the communists win against the Americans in Vietnam?

Why did the communists win against the capitalists in the Russian Revolution?

Why did the American Revolutionists win against the British Empire?

I shall here propose an answer to all of them, because that answer applies to all such cases, as I shall explain:

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Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Morality, Philosophy, Propaganda, Tyranny, War

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What Would Temüjin Do? by Articles of Confederation

Posted on August 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US government could learn something about fighting in Asia from an historical figure who was pretty darn good at fighting in Asia. From Articles of Confederation at theburningplatform.com:

Over the past few days, I – like most of the rest of the world, I would imagine – have been riveted to news of the most epic boondoggle in American history. I couldn’t help but obsess over how a real leader would have handled not just Afghanistan, but the entire passive-aggressive, effeminate state of affairs in these “United” States since the end of World War 2. As usual, I always circle back to the most maligned (in the West) and misunderstood (in both the East and the West) leader over the last couple of millennia – Temüjin, known to most folks as Genghis Khan.

If the reader is so inclined, pick up a copy of Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It reads more like a fascinating biography than a classical history text, and I’ve made sure my elementary and middle school children have read it along with The Art of War. I wanted them to consume real history and Eastern philosophy before they get into high school and are forced to write essays on such illustrious American topics as The 1619 Project or I Have Two Daddies.

This whole train of thought started not only over Uncle Depends’ dereliction of duty in Bactria, but also the idiotic, talking head hacks in The Exceptional Nation that believe “nobody has won in Afghanistan since, like, the Dawn of Man”. Wrong, you bumbling Western maroons. I’m tired of listening to that garbage rhetoric. Here’s my take on how the Great Genghis Khan (GGK) would have handled Afghanistan.

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It’s Time To Purge The “Experts”, by Wesley Smith

Posted on August 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

How about that, experts make mistakes and are subject to the same biases and psychological influences as everyone else. From Wesley Smith at The Epoch Times, via zerohedge.com:

The United States’ military mission in Afghanistan has collapsed in chaos and ignominy. The catastrophe has many parents. But surely “the experts” upon which our leader relied bear much blame.

They were the ones who often failed to comprehend the power of religious belief and the role pride in Islam played in the Taliban’s unyielding commitment to victory. They were the ones who thought we could remake Afghanistan into a western liberal image. They were the ones who failed to comprehend the intractable tribal nature of Afghan society.

To say the least, Afghanistan has vividly exposed the utter stupidity of our vaunted foreign policy and national security experts. Our hapless Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for example, assured us that Kabul would not fall from “Friday to Monday.” He was right. It fell from Friday to Sunday.

And what are we to make of the vaunted internationalists at the United Nations? After President Biden’s godawful speech signifying nothing, the State Department held a press briefing, during which spokesman Ted Price reiterated an unintentionally hilarious United Nations Security Council statement urging the Taliban government to be “inclusive and representative—including with the full, equal and meaningful participation of women.” I’m sure the barbarians will get right to including women as soon as they are finished raping them.

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The Afghan Adventure and Other Lies From America’s Elite, by Bill Bonner

Posted on August 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

Bill Bonner keeps asking the question: What else are they lying to us about? There’s a vast array of possibilities. From Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

The Afghan army wasn’t real. The Afghan Civil Authority was never real. They never collected taxes. There were no courts outside of police robbing people. None of it ever existed… it was just a big jobs program funded by American money, and the moment it looked like the money would go away, everyone went home.

– Former U.S. soldier Graham Platner, interviewed by The Jerusalem Post

POITOU, FRANCE – What a jolly, schadenfreudian week.

The American elite have had their noses rubbed in their most precious delusions and pretensions.

They spent $2.2 trillion, equal to $55,000 for every person in the nation, building a modern, democratic Afghanistan (and coincidentally, enriching themselves).

And now, instead of receiving polite “thank you” notes, they are chased from the country in appalling scenes of disorganization and incompetence.

And this was not just the “military-industrial complex” that president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against.

If this was a “ship of fools,” the universities, think-tanks, media, liberals, conservatives… Republicans as well as Democrats… do-gooders and world improvers – all were in the first-class cabins.

They imagined that they were bringing the indisputable virtues of the American way of life – with its unlimited fake-dollar spending, Prozac, and transgender bathrooms – to the ancient lands south of the Hindu Kush.

And it was all a fraud, marked by lies and deceit over 20 years.

Meanwhile, the rest of the nation begins to wonder. If the elite could be so wrong for so long about that…

What else are they wrong about? And when will the next appalling collapse occur?

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