AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Upon occasion, in human affairs, it becomes necessary to remind the functionaries that they are not proprietors. This observation has reference to that Euro-American mélange of colossal dummies, Fascists, who self-identify as the foreign policy establishment (FPE) and intelligence community (IC).
Most timely, Sir Winston Churchill, twenty three years of age, on Afghanistan, reads as contemporaneous, but in expressive, elegant English:
THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE
. . . my point is that Turkey/Syria is solved in principle: decisions now are in the hands of Russia, Syria, and Kurds, where they should be, must be, and can only be if they are to have force. So, that done, what next? That would be getting out of Afghanistan, which means, metaphorically speaking, cleaning psychotropics out of USA national life.
The question now is how to exit Afghanistan.
Suggestion:
1- Prevail upon Modi to call a meeting of the three (India, USA, Russia) plus two (Japan Egypt) brother nations. This hegemonic nonsense — ChiComs, Euro-American Fascists, Salafi-Shiite Jihadis — stops now.
2- At the meeting agree jointly to end Afghan drug and comms-tolling economies.
3- Arrange joint full-spectrum operations to eliminate immediately the huge drug-processing industrial complex in Northern Helmand Province, to include command and control operations between the Khash and Helmand Rivers.
4- Deprive Afghan-related, finery-bedecked dacoits use of US and related banking systems.
5- Jointly inform Afghan farmers their livelihoods are their business alone, not that of India, USA, or Russia, and it ain’t going to be poppies or any other psychotropic substance.
6- Jointly inform Haqqani squads they will not toll the circling road or any other comms in the region. Jointly give them to understand that fact’s facticity.
7- Jointly inform Afghan women and children that as they facilitate operations against Indian, US, Russian, Japanese, and Egyptian resolve, they become widows, orphans, homeless, hungry, and casualties.
8- Jointly inform Afghan politicians they can form any kind of government they want so long as Koran is neither base nor branch of its constitution or operation.
9- Deprive psychotropics-related, finery-bedecked dacoits use of US and related banking systems.
10- Convict, severe-sentence, or execute US psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, academics, politicians, NGO trustees and officers, and bureaucrats — to include IC operators — and severe-sanction the comms of overseas medicos, academics, politicians, NGO trustees and officers, and bureaucrats, who set up and protect the drug-and-human trafficking outrage. Forget the street punks and cartel bosses. They are small potatoes. Attack the guys and dolls who organize the game and shield it from sovereign national scrutiny and penalty.
It’s the drugs, Hortense, the drugs. That’s how the despisers of India, USA, and Russia are making Americans, specifically, unable to defend themselves.
Barry McCaffrey lost the war he was trained and sworn to win. He wanted to lose it because his boss wanted him to lose it.
Exiting Afghanistan and throttling the makers of the drug-and-human trafficking outrage will make it easy to concentrate American military force on USA grand national sovereignty goals rather than dispersing that force globally, thus forsaking US prestige.
Schools — primary to post-grad — are the primary conduit psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, academics, politicians, NGO trustees and officers, and bureaucrats use to drug down Americans generally so as to steal Americans’ wealth and commandeer their votes until, those control freaks think, Americans accept to forego voting altogether and simply live and produce as they are ordered to do.
This they call the values we believe in, or, our ideals, or, implementing global sustainability. Its traditional name is Socialism. James Lileks calls it, through his habitual descriptive acuity, aggressive messianic collectivism.
State-sponsored drug-and-human trafficking support ChiComs, Euro-American Fascists, and Salafi-Shiiite Jihadis. Businessmen now participate in the infamnia, but psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, academics, politicians, NGO trustees and officers, and bureaucrats organize and administrate it.
The Dons, originally, were not so cold-hearted and colossally stupid about enslaving and trafficking youth, and through them a nation, as a business interest. Don Corleone is right that narcotics in the long run destroy business and, by implication, the citizenry and their country on whom business depends:
Don Corleone: I believe this drug business is going to destroy us in the years to come. . . . . Don Zaluchi: I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don’t want it near schools. I don’t want it sold to children. That’s an infamnia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the colored. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.
Mike to David R. Graham
The way to get out of Afghanistan is just leave. The 9/11 terrorists were 19 Saudis with visas to the US. They went to flight school in Phoenix, not Kabul. A group of terrorists does not need access to a country without electricity, without running water and without sewers to plan on hijacking airliners to fly into buildings. They can do that in a house in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. The whole Afghanistan fiasco is just another example of the military industrial complex demanding the spread of the American military around the world.
The country is now over 23 trillion dollars in debt with that debt growing every day. We have our military in Europe to protect a bunch of do nothing Western European countries from a non existent Russian threat. We have troops in Japan and Korea. We have troops all over the Middle East. When is this going to stop? The American military has become like Muslims who believe that once land is conquered by Muslims, it must remain muslim forever. The Globalists in America believe that once the American military is sent to a place, they must stay forever.
The most ridiculous lines I’ve heard over the last few weeks is that not giving free stuff to Ukraine and not keeping our soldiers in Syria threatens American national security. What a ridiculous state of affairs.
Not only are we to be world cop, we are to be world nanny. I’m waiting with baited breath for these people to tell us we must provide medicare for all to all these countries.
How many Somalias are we going to create? Can anybody tell me what was achieved by sending troops to Somalia? I suppose some Hollywood guy got rich making the movie Black Hawk down, and Minnesota got it in the backside with Somalian relocation to the state, and then all of us got Ilhan Omar.
David R. Graham to Mike
I hear you, man I hear you! Preach it!
One little tweak in the analysis I offer: while the military-industrial complex is no angelic choir and does drain American wealth — enabled by politicians — the CIA/IC-industrial complex aims to own Americans’ souls as well as their wealth — and all in the black. They, civilians, are the disloyal ones working for global governance, not military personnel. Well, a few of the latter are, surely, but not as an entire organization and, I assure you, those few act disloyally with strong prejudice from peers, nearly all of whom remain loyal to our Constitution and know the reason for doing so. Long contemplation of this situation induced the eight points I suggested above.
That said, my heart shares the cry your heart makes eloquently here. Every American makes this cry, to include our loyal military personnel. You have put it well.
Paul Dueffert to David R. Graham
Perhaps, but this post concerns Turkey and Syria. One can’t just pretend them out of existence.
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
My point is that Turkey/Syria is solved in principle: decisions now are in the hands of Russia, Syria, and Kurds, where they should be, must be, and can only be if they are to have force. So, that done, what next? That would be getting out of Afghanistan, which means, metaphorically speaking, cleaning psychotropics out of USA national life.
Kenneth Felton to David R. Graham
Your ideas have no possibility of being enacted. Abstract solutions never do. Do you think the Russians have forgotten America’s support of the Afghans? Do you think any interdiction of drugs from Afghanistan will have any effect on the fentanyl coming in from China? That is a far greater danger and yet many of the political elites have no desire to put an end to it. In fact, the globalists in America support the Southern invasion and drug epidemic. It punishes Trump supporters most of all. If we can’t solve the Southern invasion, what chance do we have to solve the Afghani problem?
David R. Graham to Kenneth Felton
I think both Machiavelli and von Clausewitz would dispute your assertion that abstract solutions have no possibility of being enacted. Liddell-Hart certainly would.
Still, I take your point that it’s a mess and drugs, globalists, and borders operate at the core of that mess.
What I cannot accept — as if my acceptance means anything yea or nay; it does not, as you know — is the assumption of sequential-ism inside the assertion that if X is not done Y cannot be. The world exhibits linear operations but those are not the only kind of operations the world exhibits.
Kenneth Felton to David R. Graham
I agree, they might dispute my assertions. But Machiavelli wrote a book in hindsight. Cherry picking history that bolstered his view of the world. Machiavellian isn’t a positive sobriquet but of someone underhanded and scheming.
As for Clausewitz, “Clausewitz was a professional combat soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war, utilizing the campaigns of Frederick the Great and Napoleon as frames of reference for his work”. What did Clausewitz achieve that was positive and long lasting? Bonaparte certainly proved it was possible to win the majority of your battles while killing more people than ever before him.
This is the reality. We are in an unCivil war and the opposition wants to remove Trump from office and destroy America. Those attacking Trump are not patriots or have America’s best interests at heart.
. . . . . . . . .
Paul Dueffert
Is anyone with a lifetime of military experience advising Mr. Trump on his dealings with Turkey? Who?
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
Petulant, rhetorical question. You know the answer.
Paul Dueffert to David R. Graham
No, I very much hope my guess is wrong. If not, do you find it at all alarming that the nation is proceeding on matters of war without first carefully weighing the considered input of men most experienced in the field
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
I cannot accept your premise because it is counter-factual. The GOs have rendered sound tactical service. JSOC, for example, is exceptionally competent at killing, and nothing is wrong with that per se.
But the GOs have been derelict in their duty to define, to justify why it is that they should be executing lethal tactics. Are you in favor of killing for killing’s sake? I am sure you are not if put to it, but the drift of your gaslighting, faux reverence for military experience in current conditions is to justify exactly that.
Killing by instruments of national sovereignty is justified only if it serves to augment national sovereignty. This is called statecraft. The GOs have not identified how their remarkable lethality in MENA augments USA national sovereignty. They have renounced their primary duty: to advise POTUS on strategic opportunities for augmenting and for diminishing USA national sovereignty. If you do not know that, it is because you coil up in ideology rather than open your eyes to reality streaming before them every second.
DesertFlower to Paul Dueffert
We don’t know that such opinions aren’t being considered. We don’t know with whom Trump may be consulting.
Paul Dueffert to DesertFlower
Well, we know that Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis are no longer in the White House, and that the Department of Defense is being run by a guy from Boeing with a background in procurement, and that the President is not identifying any experienced military man as his go-to source for advice these days on issues concerning the Middle East. But other than that you are correct.
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
… is being run by a guy from Boeing …. . Unusual for you to make a chronology mistake such as that one is, Paul. Also unusual mistake for your picky packer: your eliding the roles — and proximity to POTUS — of CJCS and COCOMs.
Beyond that, your backgrounds would be expected to make you self-aware of arguing for a praetorian influence control of POTUS. And your years of existence, sitz im leben, and simple powers of observation would be expected to make you aware that it is CIA/IC who aspire to praetorian guard status vis-a-vis POTUS, not DOD.
Kenneth Felton to Paul Dueffert
Always too stupid to do your own work? Why don’t you check out the web? I’ve heard it is a marvelous resource. Or maybe you’ve never heard of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Do you think you’re smarter? Or all their experts in the chain of command? Trump makes you look like a bug. He knows more than you ever will and unlike you he puts America first. Whatever you don’t know, you should know this, The last thirty years, led by the four globalist presidents, has been a disaster for the ME and NA.
lydia to Paul Dueffert
Maybe that’s been the problem for the
last 30 years. Like the definition of insanity. doing the same things over and over expecting a different result.
Paul Dueffert to lydia
Lydia, can you answer my question? Can anyone?
DesertFlower to Paul Dueffert
I can. And did above. Trump may be consulting (perhaps quietly) with a host of people with a broad range of experience & viewpoints. The fact that he isn’t trotting them out onto the North Portico doesn’t mean he isn’t talking to them.
lydia to Paul Dueffert
It’s not a real question. It’s a reframing of the narrative to try and pull a gotcha. My point above is that if you listen to only military you might end up in Syria for 18 years, too. The same thing we have been doing over and over for decades. In some ways I think it has been a huge distraction from our situation here over the decades. But one thing I do know is it’s not working.
Old paradigms. it’s a different world than it was even 20 years ago.
Kenneth Felton to Paul Dueffert
I just did, Put down your dribble cup and check it out.
Mt Geoff-Debbie to Paul Dueffert
Even if someone is — almost certainly there is — the greatest national security and military minds seem to be greatly divided about how to deal with this situation. They’ve seemed divided since the Syrian revolt began.
Paul Dueffert to Mt Geoff-Debbie
It’s a serious question and you aren’t answering it. The President has no background whatsoever in armed conflict. He has gotten rid of men like McMaster and Mattis. Does any career military man have the President’s ear right now? What is his name?
Dan Miller to Paul Dueffert
Paul, I think you can understand that with Syria we don’t have good guys and bad guys. We have bad guys and not quite so bad guys. Do we really need to position a small number of personnel in the middle of that? We know from years of experience in the region that some of those people are going to be killed at some point. When that happens what is our response to be? Lob a few missiles? The ultimate question is are we willing to go to war? That is the big risk. Trump knows that if one or any number of the antagonists over there call our bluff there is not support in the US for another middle east war.
DesertFlower to Paul Dueffert
Among other things, he has background in New York real estate … which some folks would consider dandy preparation for armed conflict. 😂
David R. Graham to DesertFlower
Ah, yes! 🙂
lydia to Paul Dueffert
And that is a positive thing. Tell me why we are in Afghanistan 18 years later with all those expert military minds advising presidents?
Paul Dueffert to lydia
Having no one with a voice of experience even to advise is a good thing? What planet do you live on.
DesertFlower to Paul Dueffert
For Pete’s sake, give it a rest.
lydia to Paul Dueffert
You are asserted something above that you have no idea is true or not. Unless of course there are leakers. But even then we can’t believe them.
My point still stands that it is wise to think outside the military box for a change. there are a couple of ways to look at your assertion. you are either stuck in the eighties with Paul Mirengoff and can’t get out. Or, this is simply an issue to beat up on Trump by lying about green lights. It’s being presented that Trump actually an actively encouraged erdogan to invade. That is not only deceptive but it does not fit the context of what was going on on the ground with less than 50 military personnel in the northeastern sector. once again you guys try to drive the narrative without the context.
You guys also have an optics problem. There are homeless veterans everywhere and plenty of guys walking around on fake legs after 18 years of “red lighting”these sorts of barbarians.
What absolutely amuses me about you though is that I am sure you thought Obama had great expertise advising him in sending billions to the mullahs who oppress women and stone gays.
You have no credibility with me so why do you bother? Trying desperately to find a gotcha?
Paul Dueffert to lydia
Well, I bother because my question was addressed to Debbie, and you then chose to insert yourself in the conversation.
lydia to Paul Dueffert
My bad. I thought it was an open comment thread.
Paul Dueffert to lydia
Because George Bush and Dick Cheney were obsessed with Iraq instead?
Update 1: Sundance: President Trump Delivers Remarks on Turkey-Syria-Kurds Ceasefire and Agreement: “Great Day for Civilization”
Update 2: Stephen Coughlin and Richard Higgins: Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left:
The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America
Update 3: Susannah Catalan: Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar
Update 4: Kurt Schlichter: Get the Hell Out of Afghanistan Now
Related: WaPest: At War With The Truth: The Afghanistan Papers
Update 6: Robert Gast: Lost Cause: A Special Forces Soldier’s Case For Leaving Afghanistan
doc_steve
There is an actual (Inter)National Security argument for staying in the Middle East, but to articulate it is impossible in today’s (or even yesterday’s) political climate. Like all polygamous societies, the Arabs need to kill a certain fraction of their sons every year, or end up with wild bands of rootless young men raping and pillaging at home. Islam explicitly turned this requirement outward – to spreading Islam though conquest, murder, rape and slavery of others, not your own tribe(s). Thus, Islamic Arabs literally cannot be peaceful for too long, or the wifeless men go amok… and Islam explicitly tells these angry young men how to solve their problem – jihad.
If (and this is a big if) you accept the premise that some fraction of Arab men must die and/or expand by conquest, and that historically the primary front for expansion is Europe (for the Arabs), then the only question is whether to indulge them here, or there. Our stance in the Middle East under Bush, Obama, and to some extent even Trump, is that Arab culture requires conflict, and we would rather be blowing things up over there than over here.
There is, of course, also the question as to why the US is still trying to solve feckless Europe’s problems; the argument there being that Europe has proven incapable of managing their own affairs, and the US was twice drawn into a World War to sort them out. Like the “fight them here or there” argument, this is the “fight them now, while they are weaker, or later when they are stronger” argument; i.e. if the French had done more than “oui, oui” at Hitler at the beginning of WW II, would there have been a WW II?
This is not, by the way, meant to necessarily argue that that we should stay in the Middle East; I’m merely pointing out that no one really stupid gets to pulling the levers in DC; whether right or wrong, there is always a reason for these kinds of policies; and if you want to argue against them you first need to drag them into the light of day…
David R. Graham to doc_steve
Very insightful statement in several directions. Thank you! Sound 50K feet high view of the field. I am folding these facets into my own contemplations of the matter.
There is another course of action: colonize Afghanistan. Finding wide support for that course of action would be difficult. But it is as rational a course of action as the one Gast commends.
And strong pluses of several kinds can be adduced for colonizing Afghanistan, starting with the fact that a foundation for doing that is in place.
The inner question is not get out or stay but rather: what strategic interest(s) has USA in Afghanistan at all?
Falling Up
A friend recently suggested we were maintaining Afghanistan as a country sized live-fire training base and weapons test range. I don’t have a better answer beyond a sense that the some people are getting very rich from us being there. I’d like to see a Venn diagram of them and #NeverTrumpers.
David R. Graham to Falling Up
Very close to the truth. The live-fire training aspect is an excuse for being there, not a reason. Some CDRs there have summoned the excuse to placate Soldiers’ displeasure with having no good military reason for being there if they are not allowed to just win the war, which they are not allowed to do. Strategic and tactical planning as well as the more well-known ROEs prevent US Soldiers from winning the war there. They easily could do if ordered to do it.
GO career promotions, CIA/SEALs/NGO analyst and operator promotions and just plain cussedness, as well as contractor income are the actual reasons for keeping US forces in Afghanistan post-success of the punitive expedition that completed in 2002, as Gast points out. Remember, school and contractor boards are stuffed with retired GOs and ADMs, and their staffs include clouds of retired COLs.
And yes, probably most of those worthies are NeverTrumpers because Trump wants to close the gas tanks inflating their name, fame, and retirement accounts. Think Barry McCaffrey and a murmuration of others.
CreativeDude✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ Terran
“High-ranking members of two administrations and senior military commanders were aware of a clear lack of purpose in Afghanistan, yet lied to the American people to justify the continuing conflict.”
A clear and concise statement that explains how many of us feel about both the republicans and the democrats in congress. A sizable percentage of republicans would instantly sell their voters down the river if democrats would guarantee them a permanent seat at the table where tax dollars are carved up.
David R. Graham to CreativeDude✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ Terran • 36 minutes ago
Don’t forget the GOs and ADMs sitting on the boards of defense contractors and their big law co-conspirators.
Update 7: Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State
Update 9: Josiah Lippincott: America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve
David Barno and Nora Bensahel: When America’s All-Volunteer Force Loses A War
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