I read that we have succeeded in breaking another record. July was the hottest month in recorded history. It now is that each month breaks a record of some sorts. An article I read points out how the increase in heat and the melting of ice has adversely affected places on all parts of the world. Yet we still have many who refuse to accept global warming and that it is caused by human behavior although some Republican Congress folk seeing its effects on their voters have started to believe it.
There’s the boiling over in Afghanistan that was as predictable as the sun rising. Blame will be tossed back and forth between political parties when it rests fully on the shoulders of both.
Several things boggles my mind. The idea you could bargain with the Taliban is commensurate with thinking you can do so with a poisonous snake. More absurd is making a deal, watching the other party continually break it, and believing you still are bound by it.
Trump’s mistake was bargaining with the Taliban and setting a May 1 withdrawal date. Biden’s mistake was seeing the ongoing breaches of Trump’s deal, feeling despite that he was bound by it except to move the date to September 1.
I know that we have been in Afghanistan for 20 years, we’ve wasted billions training its army, and it seemed unable to resist when the Taliban came. Shouldn’t that have been known by us? Why was it with 2,500 US troops and a few thousand ally troops the Taliban made little gains? Shouldn’t that have been considered.
We have now got a taste of what life is going to be like under the horrific rule of the Taliban. Smart phones are banned, music listening is punished, door-to-door searches arresting and intimidating people. Women, especially, will suffer mightily.
We knew that will happen but suggest we stayed too long as if there was an expiration date. Maybe a few more years may have changed things for the better. How long have we been in South Korea, or Germany?
The biggest losers from the American standpoint are the thousand of Americans killed and wounded to drive the Taliban out. Why did we go there if after 20 years we let the Taliban back in power? Just remember we had the ability to prevent this but decided not to do it
Blame the Afghan army but it did a credible job with our help. Without it, and having relied upon it, its morale collapsed.
Worse of all we see that the Biden administration made no plans other than having our troops run. Biden said there was not going to be a repeat of the South Vietnam experience of panic flight. Words are easily said but that is what is happening.
We have 4,000 people working in our embassy – we’re sending in soldiers we just took out to protect them. We have many thousands more who aided us as interpreters who we promised to get out. Infighting among US officials ensconced safely in the US has endangered these helpers.
I’ve seen over the years people with stickers showing the American flag saying: “These Colors Don’t Run”. Unfortunately it is not true.
I hope the Chinese and Russians aren’t paying attention. If they are they see a nation that is casualty adverse and willing to give its enemy a victory because it could not stay the course. Maybe they’ll think that the US is really an empty suit and little better than the Afghan army.
The Chinese might think the US will not defend Taiwan; Russia hopes to grab the Baltic states; and Kim might be emboldened. Did any of those in the Biden or Trump administrations think of that?
The countries you cited (Germany, South Korea) are not good analogies. The purposes they serve are completely different from the situation in Afghanistan. They are a clear statement from the West that aggression from Russia or North Korea will not be tolerated and the West will not be hustled.
Matt
https://www.madcowprod.com/2021/07/27/pegasus-projects-modified-limited-hangout-2/
Pegasus Project’s “Modified Limited Hangout”
By Daniel Hopsicker –
July 27, 2021
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”—Upton Sinclair
“Never argue with anyone whose job depends on not being convinced.”—H. L. Mencken
In other newes.
http://cavdef.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Human_trafficking_and_sex_rings
Category:Human trafficking and sex rings
American War Machine
Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan
PETER DALE SCOTT
also see
Geopolitics, Profit, and Poppies: How the CIA Turned Afghanistan into a Failed Narco-State
The war in Afghanistan has looked a lot like the war on drugs in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns in Asia, with a rapid militarization of the area and the empowerment of pliant local elites.
by Alan Macleod
Back in Maine….
July was world’s hottest month ever recorded, US scientists confirm
Global land and ocean surface temperature last month was 0.9C hotter than 20th-century average, beating July 2016 record
Siberian wildfires now bigger than all other fires in world combined
YouTube · · 8/12/2021 · by ABC News
Morning Matt
I researched a tribute Senator Brooke had given about one of his staffers, a lovely woman who died from brain cancer 10 months after she had married a close friend. That speech took place on April 9, 1975, when we were all so young!
I returned to the publication out of simple curiosity….the preceding entries were by Barry Goldwater and Frank Church. Goldwater noting a column,” The Death of a Country” and Church a Washington Post column “The Meaning Indo China Crisis”, both about what was happening at the Fall of Saigon.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1975-pt8/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1975-pt8-2-2.pdf
I told an old friend that we pray that his son is hanging in about Kabul. That Marine officer led a sniper brigade there recently and served several other tours where he and his troops did honorable things. We asked the father to please thank his son for us and tell him we truly appreciate him and the service of his troops! I then sent a note to friends who served in Vietnam.
Oh what we fail to learn from History! How had we missed the French lessons in Vietnam or the Russian ones from Afghanistan? The Washington Post had published “The Afghanistan Papers” in 2009:
U.S. officials misled the public about the war in Afghanistan, confidential documents reveal – Washington Post
AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.
By Craig Whitlock Dec. 9, 2019
Might be worth studying those records: “The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.”
They don’t call Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires “ for frivolous reasons.
If our mission in that tribal enigma called Afghanistan was to win a war,I agree
we should have remained. But we weren’t in to win,we were there to nation
build, a policy disaster of twenty years running for which democrats,republicans
and our military leaders are wholly responsible. We can’t allow more of our
nations youth to be sacrificed in this way ever again. Shame on all of those
who put our country in such a position.