Tragedy Farce Malfeasance Corruption

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” and, “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.” (The Upheaval)

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

Texas Massacre

Texas is rocked by the worst mass shooting in the Lone Star State's history. By now we all know the details, how Devin Kelley fired five magazines of 5.56 into a small church in Sutherland Springs, killing at least 26 people and wounding 20 more.

Thank God  for the plumber who had the bravery and skill to shoot and chase the deranged Kelley, putting an end to his killing. Kelley's motive? Apparently domestic conflict with his in-laws was the motive and doubtless his aggressive atheism made shooting up a church all the more appealing. 

How could this catastrophe have been prevented? By the Airforce reporting domestic abuse Kelley to the FBI on his dishonorable discharge, which might have stopped him from buying a firearm. Or, as a noted art philosopher commented, "By everyone qualified to carry a weapon actually carrying one." 

Good point. If everyone had been carrying their pistols Kelley wouldn't have got so far. That he did, and that such a thing occurred at all is a tragedy.

Pray for the victims of this atrocity and their families.

LSP