What's happening in Afghanistan is surely tragedy, it's also farce. The Upheaval nails it, and here's a snapshot:
But most of all, farce because our political leadership was somehow reportedly “stunned” by the speed with which the allegedly 350,000-strong Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), despite twenty years of training and almost $90 billion in U.S. security assistance, threw down their weapons and totally collapsed, letting the Taliban seize control of the country in less than a week, instead of the year and a half the military and intelligence establishment had assured them it would take.
But how, exactly, did this come as a shock? Why in the world did they seriously believe those estimates?
Did they somehow fail to read their own thousands of pages of government “lessons learned” reports, as obtained and published by the Washington Post in 2019 as “The Afghanistan Papers,” that described in minute detail how the vaunted ANSF was nothing more than a Potemkin paper army, inflated only by lies, corruption, and pederasty?
You must and should read the whole thing here. Again, words fail, other than "we became a self-licking ice cream cone." Exactly.
Your Pal,
LSP
16 comments:
I'd say even first graders knew this would happen.
Best line I've read so far--
"We weren't in Afghanistan for 20 years. We were there for one year, 20 times."
So history does repeat. Interesting reading to be found about LBJ and his connections to folks who made money from the Vietnam War.
A question? Who benefits, year after year and decade after decade, as we repeat the same mistakes over and over? I don't think it is an accident.
My biggest problem right now is talking people off the ledge who are ready to gear up and go back on their own to FIX this massive cluster... Especially those that lost troops/friends there. Biden, Harris, Blinken, Austin, and Milly WILL have the blood of the dead Americans and Afghan women on their hands. If ANY of them had an ounce of honor, they would resign and never be heard from again!
The WSJ had a solid article over the weekend about why the Afghani army collapsed so quickly. Evidently it had nothing to do with training or anything like that and was much more straightforward. They were built on the US Army model utilising close air support, especially to resupply the far flung bases/outposts that kept the fight to the Taliban in the hinterlands. When Sleepy Joe pulled the last US troops he also dictated that the gov't contractors that serviced said close air support had to leave too, as well as our air power. What occurred then was the Afghanis didn't have a way to keep those bases supplied/protected, morale drops, Taliban shows up and takes them over easy enough, domino effect as none of the forward bases have supplies (or were even paid) so they keep collapsing, which makes morale drop even further, and that's how you get where we are.
Key take-away, it's all on Hide'n Biden and his bone-headed decision to pull every last bit of support. There's a special place in Hell for him where there isn't even ice cream. I'm more appalled at this turn of events and Biden than anything I think I've witnessed in my life-time.
Top. Men.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/17/congressman-doug-lamborn-recently-questioned-defense-secretary-austin-and-joint-chief-chair-milley-about-afghanistan-what-they-said-should-get-them-fired-today-video/
If history repeating itself is of interest, as a follow up to LBJ's minions, look up a two part article about that rat-bassard Henry Kissinger written by Christopher Hitchens that was in the February and March 2001 issues of Harper's magazine. A warning: it is very much not safe for work because you will be spewing all sorts of profanities well before you finish it. As if current events don't have most of us doing too much of that already.
Totally with you, Bob.
RHT, LBJ was a right crook.
Now that, WSF, is a very good question. And note, they clearly didn't like 45.
NFO, I'm aghast. And, to be honest, nearly didn't post because of the jaw-dropping scandal of the thing. Dear God, imagine if it was your kid who came back without his legs so that the inner Beltway could get even richer. Blood boils.
T, I'm with you. This is UTTERLY WRONG. Even the MSM can see something isn't right.
What an EPIC TOTAL UTTER SCANDAL.
Heads should roll, but they won't.
Some need to return their stars, their pensions, their seat on the Board of General Dynamics and hang their head in shame.
Else we hang their head in shame.
RHT, at this point, we as a nation should hang our heads in shame that we've allowed this to go on. Just my thoughts.
Great link, btw.
Will check it out, WWW. But I can begin to imagine, such utter wickedness.
Sadly, the people who screwed this whole thing up will never see even the slightest bit of punishment, it is more likely that they will be promoted. Failing your way up the ladder seems to be how things work in DC, our current administration is living proof.
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