Who will control Afghanistan now, and why should we care?

The New Neo Posted on by

When we started our post-9/11 military operations in Afghanistan I think most Americans knew why we did it despite the obvious pitfalls and drawbacks. The aim was to dismantle the terrorist training camps and pursue the leaders of al Qaeda to capture or kill them, and to serve notice to other terrorists who would harm the US that their fate would be the same.

That part was the simple part, and even executing it was relatively simple (although it took many years to get Bin Laden himself). But what to do after those initial stages was hard, very hard. At first we tried to transform the country in order to stabilize it, but it became clear early on – absolutely clear after a couple of years, but at least somewhat clear even before that – that this was doomed to failure. However, I always thought we’d need to maintain some presence there for many decades – perhaps many many many decades, but it seemed as though it could be done without a huge presence, once the first couple of years had passed.

But many people wanted us totally out. Most were on the left, but some were on the right. One of those on the right was Trump. My personal opinion is that he was always going to have to keep some residual forces there, and that he was seeing that fact more and would continue to see it more and more as time passed. Whatever he would have done, he would have made every effort to protect all Americans and to give the terrorists notice that they would meet with swift and violent retaliation if they went back to attacking America or its allies. I am virtually certain he never would have come to the sort of backwards and completely counterproductive decisions the Biden administration has continually made.

But Trump was voted (or pushed) out of office before we got to see what would happen if Trump had been in charge of whatever happened in Afghanistan over time. And Trump’s successor Biden and company made sure that the withdrawal has occurred in the worst possible way.

So that’s where we stand today. We are worse off than before 9/11 or even immediately afterwards, because despite our internal divisions and disagreements back then, we were not as bitterly divided and demoralized as now. We had a government that was at least inclined to protect us, allies who might not have adored us but who at least basically trusted us, and we were willing to back up our threats with action so those threats were not seen as idle.

Now all that is gone. Every bit of it. And it was done in the same way a person is said to go bankrupt: first gradually, then suddenly. It took the present administration to effect the “suddenly” part.

Which leads us to the question in the title of this post: who will control Afghanistan now, and why should we care? My answer is that Afghanistan is now already a fertile refuge and training ground for international terrorists of the Islamic variety. It also has just become a huge symbol of American defeat, and that acts as extra motivation for those terrorists who want to be part of the glory.

So Afghanistan is quite the prize for the winner of what I assume will be an internecine war for control there among all the groups vying for position. Whichever one wins – unless by some miracle some relative “good guys” regroup and manage to take control – you can be pretty sure the results will be something awful not only for human rights in Afghanistan, but for our own safety and stability and that of the entire western world or what’s left of it.

And that was why we were there all these years.

As Stephen Green asks in this piece: “Does this mean another Afghan Civil War, this time between two factions over which can be the most horrible?”

My answer is: I believe so.

[NOTE: Please read this piece by Austin Bay discussing our engagement with Afghanistan and whether it actually was a “20-year war” as so many said.]

Terrorist attacks in Kabul

The New Neo Posted on by

I say terrorist attacks rather than “attacks by the new leaders of Afghanistan” because I think this is not the work of the Taliban, nor is it in the Taliban’s present temporary interests. The Taliban want to put a good face on things and act at least somewhat reformed for just a little while.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and the Biden administration has sucked much of the air out of Afghanistan. In addition, with the freeing of many thousands of terrorists who were imprisoned at Bagram, there are plenty of seasoned and experienced – as well as motivated – volunteers for suicide missions or other terrorist endeavors. ISIS is there, and al Qaeda (or whatever that group calls its regrouped self these days), and probably other entities whose names I don’t know.

It’s like one of those detective mysteries where so many people hated the victim that there’s a myriad of suspects from which to choose. And at the moment we also have the fog of war.

I would not be surprised if attacks happen here, too. And I have no confidence whatsoever that our government has any intention of protecting us or any westerner or western sympathizer in Afghanistan right now.

It was clear to me and a lot of other people on 9/11 that the terrorists and those supporting them meant business, and that this war would continue into the lengthy and indefinite future, and that the west needed to be resolute in fighting it. It also became apparent fairly soon that, for the most part, that resolve was spotty or missing. The war in Afghanistan was undertaken in order to send a message of strength to the radical Islamic terrorist world, but by now the message we are sending is quite the opposite. And that failure acts as blood does on a school of sharks.

[NOTE: I plan to write more on these attacks as more details become known.]

How most Democrats view the Afghanistan pullout

The New Neo Posted on by

A comment from “physicsguy”:

[After] a bit of a break from the silence from my lib/D friends on FB…The new narrative is emerging: “They’ve got 60k people out in the last few days! They are doing a wonderful job!” (Somehow that the problem was of their making never comes up), Then the expected line: “Biden is cleaning up 2 messes left to him by Trump: Covid and Afghanistan”

These people, and the rest of half the country, are beyond redemption. Not even this CF is going to open their eyes.

In my opinion, during the silence they were waiting for their talking points to guide them as to what to think and relieve any cognitive dissonance they might feel about what’s happening. Therefore the pause.

Cognitive dissonance is generally a very uncomfortable and unpleasant feeling for most people. It arises when something is observed that’s incompatible, or potentially incompatible, with a previously held belief, particularly a deeply and long-held belief, and threatens to challenge it. Rather than change their minds, people often will seize with great relief on a way to escape their cognitive dissonance, and then they will reassure each other and reinforce it by repeating it to each other. They will rid themselves of any need for guilt or the need to examine what they have enabled, and in the case of Biden and Afghanistan they will fall back with relief on the old familiar and always-available “blame Trump and the GOP.”

The more interesting question is whether all of them will go that route, or whether some will have an awakening. And if the latter, what percentage? I have no doubt it would be low, but every bit counts.

It is a depressing thing to understand how sheepish even the supposedly intelligent (or otherwise-intelligent) can be and often are. But that’s been my observation over the years.

On the other hand, about a week ago a friend of mine who’s a liberal rather than a leftist referred to the present Afghanistan situation as an “effed-up mess” and then rhetorically asked why it was happening. I answered by giving one reason: “Because a senile old man who’s also stupid was elected” and she didn’t object, despite having been a Biden voter. She may have been refraining from starting an argument with me, I suppose. But I sensed she felt some discomfort with Biden at that point. We haven’t discussed it since, so I don’t know whether she’s fallen in line. But this particular friend has long been something of an independent thinker compared to many others, and one mark of that is that she’s willing to talk to me about politics without getting particularly incensed.

Some good news from Georgia

The New Neo Posted on by

We could all use some good news, right?

Here’s some:

Former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker filed documents to run for the United States Senate in Georgia on Tuesday.

Federal Election Commission documents show that Walker, 59, is set to run as a Republican to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in 2022.

Yes, I know; it’s Georgia. But if it’s not close, cheating becomes harder.

Hey, what’s $3.5 trillion among friends?

The New Neo Posted on by

Amidst everything else, this happened yesterday:

Striking a deal with moderates, House Democratic leaders have muscled President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar budget blueprint over a key hurdle, ending a risky standoff and putting the party’s domestic infrastructure agenda back on track….

Not only are we building the physical infrastructure of America, we are building the human infrastructure of America,” Pelosi said on the House floor.

Yes, fundamental change.

It used to be that neither party would try to effect fundamental change with an extremely small, razor-thin majority. But that’s been the Democrats’ specialty in the 21st Century when they have any majority at all, no matter how small. Then, if they lose majority control of Congress in the next election cycle as a result, the enormous changes they’re pushed through already can be difficult if not impossible to reverse (with Obamacare, if you recall, one of the reasons was that they caused the old insurance system to be dismantled).

Pelosi likened the bill to some historical precedents:

Pelosi told her colleagues before the vote that the legislation would lead to a federal investment on par with the New Deal and the Great Society.

Two programs that may have done more harm than good; that question has been argued for decades. But at least both were passed when the Democrats held huge Congressional majorities rather than narrow ones (see this as well as this). And they had some bipartisan support, as well. Not so this time – not only is the majority very narrow and obviously imperiled for 2022, but in recent years it’s tended to be the opposition to these huge legislative initiatives that has been bipartisan.

More:

Republicans blasted Democrats for pursuing their priorities at a time when they said all focus should be on Afghanistan, as thousands of people including Americans are trying to flee the country as the U.S. withdraws its forces.

Good point – except the goal is to distract America from Afghanistan while at the same time that Afghanistan distracts America from this monster bill.

That familiar Senate Democrat duo, Manchin and Sinema, say they won’t vote for it. But it remains to be seen whether they mean that.

Open thread 8/25/21

The New Neo Posted on by

There are many reasons the ballet “Swan Lake” has lasted so long – nearly 150 years (the music; for the choreography, about 125). But I bet this video offers some reasons you hadn’t thought of before:

NOTE: I’m not familiar with the dancers in all the clips used in that video. But some are of Fonteyn and Nureyev, and some are of Maya Plisetskaya, perhaps the greatest Odette/Odile of all. Some are even older clips than that. I believe that in the quick cuts at the very end (not of “Swan Lake”), there is even one of Karsavina, for example, who was born in 1885.

Another entry in the “there’s no problem with mail-in ballots” sweepstakes

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s a few misplaced ballots among friends?:

Authorities are investigating why 300 unopened vote-by-mail ballots for the upcoming recall election were found – along with a gun, drugs and stolen mail – in a car parked at a Torrance convenience store.

The discovery was made Aug. 16 when Torrance police were called around 10:45 p.m. about a man sleeping in his car at a 7-Eleven parking lot.

“Inside the vehicle, the officers found a loaded handgun, some narcotics, and then they found a bunch of mail and what turned out to be over 300 election ballots in the backseat of the vehicle,” said Sgt. Mark Ponegalek with the Torrance Police Department.

“They appeared to be in a box, but they were also kind of strewn across the backseat of the vehicle and so there was just a large portion of mail in that backseat.”

Police say the man was a felon…

The man was taken into custody, but has since been released on his own recognizance. Police still don’t know how he obtained the ballots and what his intent was.

Will they ever know?

It’s likely that this man had some sort of connection at the post office. My guess is that his plan was to sell the ballots to some enterprising Democratic operative. This may be a little side business he and/or others have been running for quite some time.

Afghanistan and the Surrender-Monkey-In-Chief: what’s really going on here?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Today’s latest abomination:

President Biden on Tuesday said he will stick to an Aug. 31 deadline for removing US troops from Afghanistan after the Taliban said it would not allow him any additional time to evacuate US citizens and refugees…

He was scheduled to brief the US public with a noon speech, but his remarks were repeatedly delayed as criticism mounted.]

I have come to dread the news. I assume, and usually correctly, that it will rouse in me a very familiar sense of impotent rage. There are so many infuriating actions (or sometimes inactions) taken by the Biden administration in its precipitous surrender-retreat from Afghanistan that mentioning them all would make a lengthy list.

And that’s one of the odd things about it. It’s as though the “plan” was designed by a madman (certainly possible), an abysmally stupid person (also possible), or a saboteur (another possibility) – or a person or group of people having some combination of those characteristics (possible as well).

I have no military training or knowledge except what a person of reasonable intelligence would figure out through common sense. Certain things are so basic as to be obvious, such as the order of one’s withdrawal actions. For example, don’t leave your citizens in the country that you are abandoning to the enemy; get them out first. If you think you will have enough time to evacuate them safely because you calculate that the enemy will take a certain estimated amount of time to reach the capital city, and then you see that the enemy is advancing and taking territory ahead of your assumed schedule, beef up defenses and get those vulnerable citizens out of there, pronto. In other words, don’t leave before the task is complete, no matter how much you’d like to do so.

And don’t prematurely abandon your vital air base and leave it in the care of an armed forces you have trained to rely on your close air support, while at the same time withdrawing all that air support. Don’t expect them to be able to fly planes that they are unable to maintain, as you simultaneously withdraw maintenance crews (without telling them in advance). In other words, if you are relying on those forces to hold the line against the enemy, don’t make it impossible for them to do so.

And yet these are just some of the things the US seems to have done in Afghanistan. We have not been told why this administration has made these choices; all we hear is lying obfuscating gobbledygook, and then another heaping helping of the same.

It seems, as Paul Mirengoff wrote in this post, Biden chose to lose this war. It was stalemated prior to that with a very small force that really was more of a policing action, casualties had been very low for years, and the enemy we were keeping out of power was a particularly cruel one. So there was no special intense rush to get out and there was no obvious reason for the reckless speed other than the idea that Joe wanted to brag about the withdrawal in a speech on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

It’s one thing for us to believe that a single addled, stupid, narcissistic old man might plan something this bad. But why would so many people go along with it? Are they all merely dumb? I doubt it. Frightened of Joe? I doubt it. The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment. Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again? To get it to join the international world order chastened, its tail between its legs, a country on a par with any other, its people ready to meekly follow?

That is a sobering thought, and it’s not the sort of thing I usually believe unless there really are few alternatives that make sense. Ordinarily I do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity and/or ineptitude. And large conspiracies are difficult to control without leaks from someone.

But it’s hard to escape the thought of a planned takedown of the US from inside, as an actual working theory about the truly shocking level of seeming ineptitude and cowardice displayed here. It would explain what looks like a literally unbelievable level of destructive stupidity on the part of way too many people.

In closing, here’s someone with courage:

Question for Jen Psaki: can we at least call these Afghans “stranded” now?

The New Neo Posted on by

One of today’s many disgusting developments from our new insect overlords the Taliban:

The Taliban said Tuesday that the group will not allow Afghan nationals to leave the country and opposes any extension of evacuation flights, a development that comes one week before U.S. and coalition forces are slated to depart Afghanistan.

Actually, I was unaware that the Taliban were previously allowing Afghans to leave.

At any rate, yesterday Psaki had objected to the use of the word “stranded” to describe Americans in the country, upbraiding Fox reporter Peter Doocy for employing the expression – an expression which of course is completely appropriate, but that doesn’t stop Psaki from exhibiting her faux sense of outraged integrity. How I detest these lying self-righteous apparatchiks:

I think Doocy should have said any number of things that he didn’t say in response. One might be:

“The word ‘stranded’ has a meaning, and it is appropriately used to mean unable to leave because of some problem or impediment. Until a person is rescued or able to leave, then that person is stranded. When the Americans are out of Afghanistan, they will no longer be stranded. But till then, they are.”

Another shorter response would be:

“Have you no shame?”

Or:

“How do you live with yourself?”

[NOTE: If you look at those responses I suggested in terms of the content/process distinction I’ve discussed on this blog, the first response is a content response and the next two are process responses.

Here’s the definition, in case you want a refresher:

Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people (let’s say, a married couple) are arguing. “Did you do the dishes last night?” Process is everything else – for example, the emotion with which something is said, the type of vocabulary used, tone, repetition, body language, and the unspoken subtext.

When arguing, it’s good to be aware of the difference, and to be able to switch back and forth at times.]

Open thread 8/24/21

The New Neo Posted on by

“The Lives of Others” was an incredibly good movie. I never gave a thought to how it was filmed in terms of technique. So while this analysis may be obvious to you, it was news to me.

[NOTE: The narrator makes an error at around 0:44 to 0:46. It’s not nervousness – although of course the man is nervous. But he has been ordered to put his hands there.]

Biden’s actions in Afghanistan have been shameful and destructive…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but his excuses and blaming and lies since then have been especially vile as well.

For example, yesterday’s appearance featured quite a bit of those behaviors. And why the laughter here (sandwiched between a denial and a strawman argument)? Is this just another way of saying eff you, America?:

Has he been around Kamala too much? The laugh, and then the transparent lie?

And even though some of Biden’s foggy dreadfulness may be senility and not his fault, a great deal of it is congruent with the personality Biden has always had: inappropriate affect, mendacity, intermittent callousness, defensiveness, and just plain stupidity. Those are some of the reasons his previous campaigns for president never got anywhere.

I was looking back yesterday at some of my old writings on Biden prior to the election. In one of them I called him loathsome. That has certainly turned out to be true.

Yes, he may be suffering from dementia. But than he should resign, or the people around him should force him to resign. Hasn’t he done enough damage to this country and to the world? That’s what I’m especially angry about. He has compounded the problems and made them 1000 times more difficult to solve – not that his party seems to be interested in effectively countering that. Even some Republicans don’t seem to have that priority, either.

On the other hand, Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced articles of impeachment against Biden. It will be interesting to see whether they ever come up for a full vote, and if so (and I doubt they will) whether any Democrats will vote yes (the same people who impeached Trump for nothing). One thing I do know is that, if Biden is impeached or otherwise removed, it will be the result of the Democrats’ deciding they must do it in order to protect themselves and preserve the rest of their terrible agenda.