The Afghan Army did not refuse to defend its country, It refused to die as traitors who collaborated with the invaders. As for the many who did collaborate for money such as the translators, we do not need them in our country after they helped the invaders murder and torture their countrymen. They will no more loyal and useful to America than they were to their own kith and kin.
I wouldn't blame this on the American people and the political parties that are putatively, but in no real sense, theirs. Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation wrote this: “The American system of representative government was overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government. The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics." https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/nullify-government-tyranny/, cited by https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/politics-wont-fix-a-system-which
I don't see any of the guilty parties doing any of the honorable things that you propose, in fact, I think they'll get another layer of ribbons and medals - and promotions and pay raises.
And I don't think there is any way of voting our way out of this.
We should have been out of Afghanistan in 2002, when the original mission, to capture bin Laden, failed. Instead, our ruling Military Industrial Complex / ”National Security State” poured trillions of taxpayer dollars, present and future, into the waiting hands of crooks and grifters, some of whom still wear fancy uniforms. Those people should be forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and sent in chains to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, where they can live out their lives in the tropical sunshine, subsisting on a diet of hardtack and water. I’m sure there are some barrels of hardtack left over from the Civil War, they could be put to good use. I don’t usually use stuff from Hannity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KMj5lrPMpk), but this points up the cluelessness of the “intel community”- it was obvious years ago that the Afghan National Army would collapse like a cheap tent in a rainstorm as soon as the US started to pull out - and that’s precisely what they did - they surrendered without firing a shot and gave their weapons to the Taliban, unit after unit, province after province. It could have happened in 2003, and it did happen 18 years later - after trillions of dollars went down various rat holes and bank accounts. What's funny is that the US bankrolled the Taliban at its inception 40 years ago - they were the Afghan Freedom Fighters - and they visited Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s White House. And nobody had any idea that the Taliban were serious Muslims who hated infidels. Religious nationalists can’t be bought off. And now they have their country back, which is what should have happened in 2002.
There’s a Constitutional process for getting into wars - it requires a vote of Congress to declare war - and it hasn’t been observed since the US declared war on Romania in 1942. All of the subsequent wars and “police actions” and “nation building” were, and are, unconstitutional and illegal. All of the drafts since then have been illegal, and the Selective Service Act is equally unconstitutional - it’s a violation of Constitutional Federalism. And I could go on… It’s about time we got back to the rule of law, rather than the rule of decree and mandate.
Everything you say is true. Unfortunately, not one of those involved in this disaster has any conception of honor, let alone the character necessary to actually have honor. Even those in the military, at the rank of at least 0-6 and above (the point at which politics become unavoidable in promotion), have no honor.
The West has come a long, long way from “Death before Dishonor” or “Come back with you shield or on it”.
Many voices (including mine) have been warning for decades now - at least since the Clinton administrations - that the veneer of civilization is very thin, humans remain capable of incredible barbarism, and the values of the West are truly an invaluable exception to that barbarism that requires strength of character and will, as much as arms, to defend it and enable those within its metaphorical walls to live in relative liberty.
We were right, but that is no consolation as our elites have ignored these truths and our electorates throughout the West have cheerfully gone along with those who either hate the West or are too corrupt to care.
Our elites in the West seem to be trying to emulate the Soviet nomenklatura rather than the men (yes, almost all men) who built the modern world.
Observation from 40+ years in uniform and government service, including a couple of hundred disaster responses: If I had a nickel for every “Integrated Planning” chart that exists I could buy Afghanistan. The fact that these charts have to be made over and over again illustrates how uncooperative and stove-piped we actually are in practice. Plans are chiefly developed with the usual suspects and in the traditional way (based on the exercise of directive control). Government D&As are wary about making commitments, and often bristle at taskings (speaking from NSC experience here). In many instances, plans lack clear delineation of expectations and roles — governmental, nonprofit, and, most importantly, the informal organizations that invariably pop up. Many of the latter are local in nature, and have had little or no interaction with the “Integrated Planning” participants. That means gaps and overlaps in effort, compromised efficiency in delivery of resources, and, at worst, contention or mistrust between organizations and their leaders. Our planning processes have difficulty accounting for the “pop up’s” unanticipated and ingenious contributions. In the really complex events, formal plans often break down in unexpected ways, and authority structures and communications react in unforeseen ways. IMHO, the plan is a starting set of guard rails in order to achieve shared situational awareness (we see the same battlefield), agree on shared ends (this is why we’re all here), and then have the confidence to loosen control and unleash self-organizing simultaneity (integration). Easy to say, deuced hard to accomplish.
These people (the brass and higher-up muckety-mucks) are incapable of humiliation. I'm surprised you haven't recognized this yet.
Why would any of them resign? No one will actually hold them accountable. Milley might get axed, if only to sate the ADHD-afflicted corporate propaganda corps, but he'll rotate right into a cushy Raytheon/LockMart/Boeing/Northrup board job.
The empire is collapsing. Just stand back a little further and put on your eye-pro.
The United States of America has met its enemy, itself! I truly wonder that in 500 or 1,000 years anyone will remember us, except as an obscure academic footnote written in Mandarin.
February 19th: "Biden declares ‘America is back’"
… lies incur a debt …
Brilliant, shared
Bravo!
The Afghan Army did not refuse to defend its country, It refused to die as traitors who collaborated with the invaders. As for the many who did collaborate for money such as the translators, we do not need them in our country after they helped the invaders murder and torture their countrymen. They will no more loyal and useful to America than they were to their own kith and kin.
I wouldn't blame this on the American people and the political parties that are putatively, but in no real sense, theirs. Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation wrote this: “The American system of representative government was overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government. The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics." https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/nullify-government-tyranny/, cited by https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/politics-wont-fix-a-system-which
I don't see any of the guilty parties doing any of the honorable things that you propose, in fact, I think they'll get another layer of ribbons and medals - and promotions and pay raises.
And I don't think there is any way of voting our way out of this.
We should have been out of Afghanistan in 2002, when the original mission, to capture bin Laden, failed. Instead, our ruling Military Industrial Complex / ”National Security State” poured trillions of taxpayer dollars, present and future, into the waiting hands of crooks and grifters, some of whom still wear fancy uniforms. Those people should be forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and sent in chains to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, where they can live out their lives in the tropical sunshine, subsisting on a diet of hardtack and water. I’m sure there are some barrels of hardtack left over from the Civil War, they could be put to good use. I don’t usually use stuff from Hannity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KMj5lrPMpk), but this points up the cluelessness of the “intel community”- it was obvious years ago that the Afghan National Army would collapse like a cheap tent in a rainstorm as soon as the US started to pull out - and that’s precisely what they did - they surrendered without firing a shot and gave their weapons to the Taliban, unit after unit, province after province. It could have happened in 2003, and it did happen 18 years later - after trillions of dollars went down various rat holes and bank accounts. What's funny is that the US bankrolled the Taliban at its inception 40 years ago - they were the Afghan Freedom Fighters - and they visited Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s White House. And nobody had any idea that the Taliban were serious Muslims who hated infidels. Religious nationalists can’t be bought off. And now they have their country back, which is what should have happened in 2002.
There’s a Constitutional process for getting into wars - it requires a vote of Congress to declare war - and it hasn’t been observed since the US declared war on Romania in 1942. All of the subsequent wars and “police actions” and “nation building” were, and are, unconstitutional and illegal. All of the drafts since then have been illegal, and the Selective Service Act is equally unconstitutional - it’s a violation of Constitutional Federalism. And I could go on… It’s about time we got back to the rule of law, rather than the rule of decree and mandate.
This is, fundamentally, what a failed state looks like in action.
Everything you say is true. Unfortunately, not one of those involved in this disaster has any conception of honor, let alone the character necessary to actually have honor. Even those in the military, at the rank of at least 0-6 and above (the point at which politics become unavoidable in promotion), have no honor.
The West has come a long, long way from “Death before Dishonor” or “Come back with you shield or on it”.
Many voices (including mine) have been warning for decades now - at least since the Clinton administrations - that the veneer of civilization is very thin, humans remain capable of incredible barbarism, and the values of the West are truly an invaluable exception to that barbarism that requires strength of character and will, as much as arms, to defend it and enable those within its metaphorical walls to live in relative liberty.
We were right, but that is no consolation as our elites have ignored these truths and our electorates throughout the West have cheerfully gone along with those who either hate the West or are too corrupt to care.
Our elites in the West seem to be trying to emulate the Soviet nomenklatura rather than the men (yes, almost all men) who built the modern world.
Observation from 40+ years in uniform and government service, including a couple of hundred disaster responses: If I had a nickel for every “Integrated Planning” chart that exists I could buy Afghanistan. The fact that these charts have to be made over and over again illustrates how uncooperative and stove-piped we actually are in practice. Plans are chiefly developed with the usual suspects and in the traditional way (based on the exercise of directive control). Government D&As are wary about making commitments, and often bristle at taskings (speaking from NSC experience here). In many instances, plans lack clear delineation of expectations and roles — governmental, nonprofit, and, most importantly, the informal organizations that invariably pop up. Many of the latter are local in nature, and have had little or no interaction with the “Integrated Planning” participants. That means gaps and overlaps in effort, compromised efficiency in delivery of resources, and, at worst, contention or mistrust between organizations and their leaders. Our planning processes have difficulty accounting for the “pop up’s” unanticipated and ingenious contributions. In the really complex events, formal plans often break down in unexpected ways, and authority structures and communications react in unforeseen ways. IMHO, the plan is a starting set of guard rails in order to achieve shared situational awareness (we see the same battlefield), agree on shared ends (this is why we’re all here), and then have the confidence to loosen control and unleash self-organizing simultaneity (integration). Easy to say, deuced hard to accomplish.
One of the unpleasant features of our decadence is a near complete lack of accountability for government elites.
These people (the brass and higher-up muckety-mucks) are incapable of humiliation. I'm surprised you haven't recognized this yet.
Why would any of them resign? No one will actually hold them accountable. Milley might get axed, if only to sate the ADHD-afflicted corporate propaganda corps, but he'll rotate right into a cushy Raytheon/LockMart/Boeing/Northrup board job.
The empire is collapsing. Just stand back a little further and put on your eye-pro.
When was the last time senior leadership was ever held accountable, or took responsibility for failure?
The United States of America has met its enemy, itself! I truly wonder that in 500 or 1,000 years anyone will remember us, except as an obscure academic footnote written in Mandarin.