From Richard Engel:
It is deeply depressing to watch what could be among the final Afghans loaded up and flying out of their country. Afghans had hope. Now millions live in fear. A humiliating end for the US in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/cy126AQTwX
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 26, 2021
You might expect me to be annoyed by this, but not really. I'm pretty unhappy with the media's obsession over panic and chaos, which has prevented a more balanced treatment of the evacuation, but that's all. The fact is, it is deeply depressing to watch the Taliban take over again in Afghanistan and it is humiliating for the United States. And it's horrific to think of the fate of women and girls under Taliban rule. That doesn't change even though this denouement has been obvious for many years and probably inevitable from the start.
So true, but we need to focus on helping countries with humanitarian relief and not military support. No lessons learned in this war I think though.
I hope ISIS leaders have all updated and signed their life insurance paperwork, because we're coming to get them, wherever they hide around the world. It's going to take time, and don't expect a lot of spectacle, but we will get them (and obviously not by more invasions and occupations, which we see haven't worked, and actually led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq).
No more emotional reactionary policies that inevitably lead to blowback, we need the best and brightest on this to forge a novel and effective counter-terrorism strategy.
I was going to reply to this in a serious way but then the use of "the best and the brightest" made me think that your comment might be snark.
I was serious, just emotional in the moment though, just meant the conventional wisdom being used over past 20 years isn't going to get it done, and it a mission we need to effectively mount.
But the notion that we can finance an tacitly support all sides while occasionally shooting the odd wedding party or wiping out a small village every so often seems to be indelibly impressed on the American military and political class. It isn’t just the past twenty years, either. Every intervention since World War II has been a failure and, after each failure, the military and the blog have demonstrated their “seriousness” by doubling down.
By their nature and training, the “best and the brightest” are incapable of changing in the way you want. And the lack of accountability and the growth of the US into a superpower that can bleed small amounts of blood and treasure means that every mistake can be ignored and the buck can be passed indefinitely or until a Democratic president is willing to pay the price politically. But the “best and the brightest” never pay; which is the root problem that needs to be addressed.
Because they're not the best and brightest, they're the most connected and legacy in many cases, still afflicted by a Cold War mindset that should have been shit-canned a long time ago.
No, you’re right that these aren’t really the best and the brightest but they, nonetheless, they are still the “best and the brightest” (as David Halberstam described this class) and they’ve been absolutely impossible to dislodge or educate; as a group they’re careerists, arrogant, and incapable or change or of even the most modest introspection.
And I agree, in training and evaluating the best and brightest, there must be transparent metrics, and most definitely accountability, which should be understood as coming with the job/role.
It's hard to look at South Korea today and consider that intervention to have been a failure.
It a somewhat complicated story and the developments that make Korea a successful society (and a place where our military lives and works safely, more or less as they would in the states) have little or nothing to do with us. But it’s also worth remembering that our inability to control the military turned a speedy and highly successful multinational defense of South Korea (under UN auspices) into a long bloody slog and, to borrow from the Duke of Wellington, very much of a near run thing. The initial objective of repulsing the North Korean attack and return to the previous border was barely achieved by our military (and at a huge cost) at which point our idiot generals cleverly started a war with we also came very close to losing; also, it’s worth remembering that every drop of American blood and every American life loser from October 1950 was down to our worthless generals hubris and gross incompetence.
The reason ISIS exists is because after the American Iraq invasion occurred and created ISIS we didn't immediately invade Syria and take them out.
The only solution is to invade several more countries. It would be extra helpful to bomb some weddings and hospitals since that worked so well to bring peace in Afghanistan. Perhaps we can give Saudi Arabia some more weapons since violence is peace. Look at Yemen and you will see the Heaven created by American proxy wars.
Anyone opposing is lacking brightness and is trapped in a dark pit.
We gain insightfulness by obeying those who war provides profit.
Afghanistan has to lead its own destiny, we'll help, advocate, cajole and pressure as appropriate, but clearly our focus needs to be on counter-terrorism, and the Taliban are no friends or ISIS either, so there's avenues to create new conditions and situations going forward.
...no friends of ISIS...
In reality, ISIS has had no better friends than the US and its allies. The organization was created out of the remnants of the Iraqi military and security services whom we improvised and unemployed after our failed conquest. ISIS received immense amounts of advanced weapons and money when the huge army of our puppet state abandoned them and ran away. And, of course, the money to create and sustain ISIS has come from our great "allies" the Saudis and the other Gulf States.
Which, ironically, is quite similar to the story of Al-Qaeda which was created and supported by the Saudis. And quietly ignored when they killed our people our of solidarity with the huge amounts of money that the Saudis were giving to our elites, our neocons, our retired generals, and our former presidents (of both parties).
We postured mightily but the reality was that the supposed "fight" against Al-Qaeda was simply an effort to capture people (many pretty much at random) who could be tortured into "confessing" what the Americans already knew beyond doubt was a non-existent link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to justify the proposed conquest of Iraq and its vast oil reserves.
Talking about people "living in fear", maybe that will be true in the big cities. Out in the country, it's a different story. Those folks had endured 40+ years of war already The latest war featured the United States with its huge, brutal soldiers who had no manners breaking into homes and grabbing at the women. It had US unmanned drones, operated by some kid on the other side of the world sitting in an air conditioned office, that would indiscriminately shoot down wedding parties, groups of representatives going to the Capitol to serve, funeral parties -- and maybe get an enemy combatant every now and then.
One of the CNN reporters, who had just gotten back from Afghanistan this weekend, was on NPR's "Fresh Air" and a major point she made was that in the "back country" of Afghanistan, people didn't see many of the great 21st c advantages that the US brought in. They were just mired in warfare and constant fear. So of course they'd be okay with a Taliban takeover. The Talibans were harsh, but you knew where you stood, and there would be order. Besides, life for women wasn't much changed under their rule.
It's sad how the US never bothered to understand the culture, kept getting things wrong.
If the US government really cared about the treatment of women in Afghanistan it wouldn't have helped put the violent Taliban in power by helping them overthrow the secular pro-equal rights Afghan government.
The Taliban who were trained and armed by America decided to bite the hand that fed them. America responded with a trillion+ dollar, 20 year occupation that destroyed the country, and killed hundreds of thousands of people. The result of all that is that the Taliban still control the country.
What is depressing about this (besides the death, trauma and destruction) is that America's media, and populace still think war is a good and noble practice.
Historical point of order: you're confusing US support of anti-Soviet mujihadeen in the 80s with the rise of the Taliban in the 90s. The Taliban were Pakistani proxies, not American.
That’s a matter of perspective. The Americans have lavished countless billions of dollars on Pakistan’s military and intelligence service over the years since 2001 and have continued doing so even once it became impossible to ignore that it was they who were equipping, training, and giving sanctuary to the Taliban. Every weapon fired was paid for by the American taxpayers and every atrocity committed was made possible by the tacit support of the American government and military.
Interestingly, to a slightly lesser extent, the same can be said for ISIS which was birthed through the misguided efforts of the blob, protected indirectly by the studied incompetence of the American military and intelligence agencies, and financed chiefly by our great friend the Saudis.
There being five days left until the previously fluid deadline, those being the last out thanks to the likes of https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/5592386001 ?
Ugh.
Earlier today they were saying three were wounded but that was preliminary so i was prepared for maybe there being one or two deaths. But I did not think it would be 12.
Yep, what's happening in Afghanistan is tragic and sad. What happened today was always in the scope of possible events in our pullout from the country, which was and remains the right decision.
If your sincere concern is what happens to the women and children of Afghanistan, one factor will be what the US does in response to the attacks. Anyone advocating we unleash Armageddon needs to explain how that would make anything better for Afghans. (Or maybe your concern is not the Afghans, after all.)
The media reaction to all this news makes me wonder what would have happened if Al Gore were president in 2001. One possibility, he heeds the flashing-red-lights warnings and prevents the 9/11 attacks. Another, he does not, and his presidency is essentially over. He does not see his approvals soar to 90%. The media would push his ratings into the 20s. 9/11 would be the greatest failure of defending the nation in our history, and what would be different under Gore, the president would pay for it. He is, after all, a Democrat. Only Republican presidents can abandon Vietnam in disgrace, flee Beirut after hundreds of troops are killed, ignore warnings of the 9/11 attacks, lead a disastrous war against Iraq, and be Donald Trump, and not have to pay a price for it. None of the GOPers, to their credit, ever presided over catastrophes like Benghazi and Kabul.
Oh, I don’t know. Distance in the past notwithstanding, if a Democratic President could survive Pearl Harbor I’d think s/he could have survived 9/12
9/11…
Pearl Harbor? We were different people in those days.
I think you've got it. Had President Gore been inaugurated and by some chance been unable to stop the coordinated 9/11 attacks, he'd have treated the terrorist attack as if it were a crime, not a declaration of war. Coordinating with the other nations, all of whom rushed to offer aid and sympathy and information to the US, Gore might have tracked down and brought to trial basically all of al-Qaeda.
But that's not "sexy" like the air bombardment of Baghdad (carried LIVE on all the networks!!) The US would not have "come together", it would have been open season on all Democrats.
Besides, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Gore's agenda would never have gotten off the ground. The midterms would have been a bloodbath, and President Lieberman (Gore had already been impeached and convicted by then for his carelessness) would have gladly toed the Republican line.
Which may have meant actual war with Iran, as Israel keeps begging for. Who knows?
I remember, and started paying attention, when Ashcroft (among others), in June (when rumors about commercial hijackings became public), shunned commercial aircraft and started using military aircraft only. Should have been a heads up warning for the "leadership".
I don't think it's any more depressing than your average tragedy... earthquake, tsunami, random human stupidity resulting in death and destruction. That's all just part of the landscape of human nature. Ezra Klein and the rest in the media want to comment on the folly and are compelled to do the "thoughts and prayers" thing like this: "My heart breaks for the suffering we will leave behind in Afghanistan."
Mine does not break. I have no such need to be PC. The rest of Klein's essay is relatively good and he continues...
"But we do not know how to fix Afghanistan. We failed in that effort so completely that we ended up strengthening the Taliban. We should do all we can to bring American citizens and allies home. But if we truly care about educating girls worldwide, we know how to build schools and finance education. If we truly care about protecting those who fear tyranny, we know how to issue visas and admit refugees. If we truly care about the suffering of others, there is so much we could do."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html
Being anti-war is like being anti-racist. It's not enough to sit on the sidelines and write silly comments, blog posts, or NY Times opinion pieces. We have to do something else... We have to reject the consensus view and call it out.
"The American foreign policy establishment obsesses over the harms caused by our absence or withdrawal. But there’s no similar culpability for the harms we commit or that our presence creates. We are much quicker to blame ourselves for what we don’t do than what we do."
Because this is the hypocrisy underlying it all.
"To many, (and to me, Justin!) America’s pretensions of humanitarian motivation were always suspect. There are vicious regimes America does nothing to stop. There are vicious regimes America finances directly. It is callous to suggest that the only suffering we bear responsibility for is the suffering inflicted by our withdrawal. Our wars and drone strikes and tactical raids and the resulting geopolitical chaos directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis."
Cry for those left behind and ignore the deaths before. This is the sad American way.
Well, the shit has really hit the fan now with this attack in Kabul. Haven't read all the reporting yet, but I would assume this is ISIS's doing.
I assume so but it makes a big difference.
Al queda is still friendly with the taliban have some sort of control over them as the host. With isil, not the same . They are an enemy of the taliban.
Thing is, isil is so crazy and extreme and really more like a gang of sadist vs. True islamists, that everybody seems to hate them.
If it is isil, as the taliban still do have responsibility if they are the govt , they cannot just wash their hands of it. But we do not have to go crazy and start bombing the taliban all over.
In that case, we should insist on an extension of the 8/31 deadline as tgis makes it impossible to meet that deadline.
And insist the taliban had better provide real help and actually escort people to the airport.
So, let's review:
1. Overthrew Iran's first Democratic leader and installed Shah, which led to take over by ayatollahs.
2. We support the mujahedeen in Afghanistan (via Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), to make matters worse for the Soviet Union there, leading to the Taliban and more crucially Al Qaeda.
3. After Al Qaeda conducts one-off 9-11 attack, we invade and occupy Afghanistan.
4. Not yet done in Afghanistan, we lie our way into invasion/occupation of Iraq, with subsequent nation/military building, which goes to hell and results in rise of ISIS (with American weapons seized from surrendering or defeated Iraqi troops we trained).
5. On our way out of Afghanistan, after finally coming to our senses, and seeing these invasions/occupations/nation-building are a worthless farce, we lose a dozen Marines and many more innocent Afghan civilians from terrorist attack by ISIS.
Peace and prosperity will occur if we start/support a proxy war in Yemen, Syria, and Libya. Oh wait, America already did that... Maybe if Israel bombs some hospitals and news organizations in Palestine peace would occur? Wait, they've been doing that for years. Hmm maybe the Pentagon needs a few hundred billion dollars more in funding? War is peace!
There will be no deadline extension. Once it's done, it's done. End of story. And if Richard Engel, or any one else for that matter wants to be "depressed" about all of it, just imagine being a widow to one of those 12 service members who died today because people like him insisted we HAD to evacuate everyone out of Afghanistan because honor demanded it.
That's the funny thing about honor. It can be an admirable quality but can also get people killed. It's like dynamite.
And damn anyone who wants to make political hay out what happened today. I don't give a shit about poll numbers or elections a goddamn year away that writers talk about only because they have nothing better to write about. It's all bullshit and noise. Let's just hope and pray no one else gets killed before Aug. 31 and soon after. Let's just finish this damn thing.
Very well put.
I think maybe you need to explain a bit more what Richard Engel is referring to and why it's depressing.
US appears to have determined that it will now focus on evacuating its personnel only. No more Afghan refugees.
See: https://youtu.be/1P3_YZ7gUpA?t=197
Also: https://www.wartimeallies.co/
There are calls for retaliation and action...these words are insanely foolish.
How Do You Make a Suicide Bomber AFRAID?
....and just who do you retaliate against?
When their body parts are all over the airport?
Any permanent "peace force," would be equally and always at risk. Everywhere.
People don't get it and still don't...a static force is just easy to plan against and attack, it is a sitting target...
There is no vengeance, no retaliation to be had...wiser heads will continue the draw down to zero.
Traveller
I think it requires something that the US has never been willing to do; perhaps from deeply ingrained prejudice against elite accountability in any form and perhaps because it’s beyond the capabilities of our intelligence agencies.
Obviously, you can neither frighten nor punish the ones who blow themselves up along with their victims. But it’s notable that, insofar as I’m aware, no senior member of any terrorist organization has himself gone on such a mission. And my guess is that if they believed that reprisals would target them personally there’d be very few and possibly no such missions at all.
For example, we have always known the identities of the financiers of Al-Qaeda and ISIS but those people are considered sacrosanct and so they are undeterred in promoting terror attacks against us and will surely continue until they run out of cannon fodder.
I agree. I do think a lot of the foreign policy pundits (and in some cases reporters) are gasbags who should shut up.
People are upset, and that's reasonable. Something bad is happening. But the bad thing is not that we're leaving: few people really think we should be controlling a distant country for 20 years. The bad thing is not how the withdrawal was implemented: there may have been mistakes, but overall, this is about as well as it could have gone.
The bad thing is that Afghanistan won't be a safe, pluralist, democratic society, and there's really nothing the United States can do about this. We spent 20 years and failed. It sucks.
So should we still expect the twice daily posts about how well the evacuation is going?
Are you of the opinion that evacuating nearly 100,000 people in a dangerous situation for over two weeks is a mark of failure? What's "success" in your view?
The reason Kevin posts those numbers is because assholes like Tapper and Engel and Gunzberg and others keep posting and reposting tweets about empty flights, people turned away at the gate, suspended flights, unruly crowds, chaos, its always "chaotic" or even when people do get out how terrible it is in Doha. But that's not because the evacuation is a failure because unless someone is pathologically lying, the fact that so many have evacuated including nearly all Americans in country should be warmly received. But no! We get the Do More/Not Enough gasbags continually carping and bitching because they hate the withdrawl itself. It has nothing to do with the evac but they attack one because they can't admit to the other. They want the U.S. to stay!
I have to admit I kept my fingers crossed and prayed we'd get out this with no casaualties at all. Maybe I was naive to think that would happen. Either way, it's just horrible. Awful. No other way to describe it. But no one should want to wait around after Aug. 31 to see more people get killed because they're sitting ducks at that airport. Even Taliban fighters got killed today. Continue with the mission and then get the hell out. That's all anyone should ask for.
No, I'm of the opinion that treating that evacuation "success" as the main story several times in the last few days, with the overall awfulness of the situation basically being a footnote, is completely backwards.
I get the urge to want to push back against the narrative that Biden totally bungled this in an effort to create some sort of "balance," but I think every Afghanistan story should be 99% about the giant mess we've created, with the RELATIVELY successful evacuation being the footnote.
Amen.
Agreed.
I do not think how many we get out determines whether it is a success or not.
The issue is how many you do NOT get out that you should have evacuated and intended/ promised to evacuate.
Any American left behind is a mark against you , although unfair to expect perfection. Any Afghan siv holder left behind counts against you , but even more leeway there for some being left behind. Other afghans even more leeway. And the presumed additional hundreds of thousands left behind who we never intended or promised to evacuate- they have no relevance to whether the administration did a good job evacuating at all. They would be relevant as to whether we should have pulled out at all.
So evacuate 100,000 and leave 200 you could not get too - not really fair to expect much better so good job. Evacuate 100,000 and leave 50,000 behind- that is a failure
100,000 is outstanding under the circumstances, can't save everyone, and can't account for all the varying expectations from different parties.
I wouldn't want the United States to assume responsibility for any Afghans who want to leave their country. Those who have their visas should be helped as much as possible.
I wouldn't want the United States to assume responsibility for getting all Americans out, either. People who went to Afghanistan of their own choice are now free to find their own way back home. It isn't the United States' country, though. The U.S. can't send helicopters all over the place.
Young Ezra Klein has a good op-ed in this morning's Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html
He notes that all the hand-wringing about the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan is overshadowing the actual thinking and remembering that Americans ought to be doing about why the US sent its military in (and other allies; don't mean to short them), in the first place, and what we hoped to accomplish there. What we did wrong and recognized at the time, but covered up. What in retrospect we learned that we'd been wrong about.
You know, actual thinking with the goal of learning from our mistakes, instead of showy public wailing and ripping of garments, so as to blame the most convenient targets.
As many have said, it was always going to be ugly, beating a hasty retreat after a military defeat. No way to sugarcoat it.
Seems like the elephant is too imposing in the room now, the blowback from the other invasion/occupation/nation-military-building (ISIS) just tragically got involved with our exit from this one.
Let's not forget that Trump made this deal with Taliban and removed most of our troops before we even had a plan who and how many civilians to rescue, because no one expected our prized Afghan government and military to fail this quickly and easily.
The 2K troops removed at Bagram certainly wouldn't have held a major city, just likely expanded our perimeter around airport and embassy, perhaps leading to even richer target environment for ISIS.
Leaving Afghanistan was right thing to do, both Trump and Biden will deserve credit, and also get their fair share of criticism for the execution of it. Biden was dealt a bad hand on this though, as he accurately said, to do anything different would have broke the Trump deal with Taliban, and required a surge since we would have been back in fighting war with them. Even Trump was insisting in April that we should stick to May 1 withdrawal, and crowing in June that Joe couldn't stop the momentum he started.
Problem now is that this is only going to look good in rear-view mirror down the road, right now we have multiple tragedies unfolding, and people need to put away the daggers until we're out of this thing. There will be plenty to investigate later, including the position that Biden inherited and that Trump floated he couldn't change, even if he wanted to (of course he could have, but with a surge and lots more dead Afghans in the likely resulting shooting war with Taliban).
floated=gloated
Holding Bagram would not have created a " target rich " environment because it is easily defensible. Even with limited troops but with air power, it would be suicidal for the taliban to attack directly and real hard to terrorists like isil to creep up on.
The Kabul airport is right by the city with urban areas right next to it. It is impossible to defend unless you are willing to level all of the city within large distance and create a free fire zone ( which we are not). And trying to control the building around the airport just increases your perimeter to defend. Even worse when you have massive crowds at the gates. How can you prevent a terrorist getting close then? Impossible.
Evacuating from Kabul airport and not controlling the city always inherently depended on not having an ACTIVELY hostile power controlling the city itself. And , assuming the Taliban itself did not sponsor this attack , the taliban have not yet been actively hostile.
You can criticize by asking
1) should we have got into the position of only controlling the airport and not the city
2) should you have counted on the taliban being both not actively hostile and being able to stop forces like isil
3) should we have been able to get Americans to the airport before losing the city
But ridiculous to ask
Why did we not do a better job in stopping this attack from where we were yesterday
I was pretty clear the target-rich environment would be people (including Americans) traveling to Bagram, which is 40 miles outside Kabul. That's a lot of road for IEDs and what not, not to mention a pretty lengthy helicopter trip with lots of places for artillery.
I'm not suggesting the Bagram base itself was a target-rich environment.
OK. That is a valid point. I tend to think holding Bagram itself would have made sense as another option for evacuation ( cannot hurt to have an option). And as extra leverage. And as a place to project air power from if needed ( see leverage).
Not sure if it is easier to get an evacuee from the edge of Kabul through non urban areas to Bagram or through the crush of the city to Kabul airport.
But, honestly, not too relevant as, when the decision to abandon Bagram was made, we were assuming that Kabul the city would hold long enough to evacuate through the airport. And, if it did , Bagram would not be needed.
So any criticism is really relevant for that mistaken assumption- leaving Bagram as a decision based on that assumption is OK.
Biden has mentioned asking the relevant military leadership, and they didn't feel Bagram was value-added. I agree with them, peaceful coordination with the Taliban may have been much more difficult with evacuees shuttling 40 miles to Bagram on an open road, along with the security threats, without open conflict breaking out.
And you mention the biggest scandal of all, how we were so unaware how weak and feckless the Afghan state and military would be, which goes back a decade, not just the past few weeks.
We need to get to the bottom of that.
Biden's litmus test for the Taliban.
Lots of Afghan allies will be left behind; will the Taliban use the list to grab them, or will they continue to support the US in bringing these Afghan allies to the US after August 31?
Wait a minute . If there were only 1500 Americans left as they told us and of those 1000 might not want to leave, then there should be plenty of spare capacity to take out afghans if we have that great capacity of 10,000 a day that kevin was telling us about.
That 1500 figure was always suspicious. We had been told for weeks that it was maybe 15000 or more Americans in Afghanistan to evacuate. When actual numbers being taken out were a fraction of that, so it looks like cannot meet the goal of getting out all Americans, suddenly the number goes dramatically down by changing the definition?
I did not hear before that we were only intending to evacuate all the Americans who registered. When suddenly looks like you cannot get them out, sorry you did not register?
Things are constantly in flux, but probably most Americans who wanted to get out have been able to get out. The question is, how many Afghans who were qualified to be evacuated were left behind. Word is, US forces (and everyone else's) are leaving now, no more evacs of remaining SIVs and others who qualified, just military and gov't workers.
Accurate numbers are hard to come by.
For years people ignored the Embassy requirements of registering.
I will raise this question again.
Why SHOULD the Taliban who are now running a country that is financially in ruins LET ANY Afghani out? This folks were interpreters which meant they had some education.
So do you let your best and brightest go? Knowing full well you NEED them to rebuild? This doesn't make sense
As for Bagram? The vehicle of choice of the Taliban seems to be used Toyota pick up trucks. They have no air force or air line to speak of.
A few cruise missiles would render Bagram useless - but if this sets off the Taliban on a mission to kill any remaining Americans on world wide TV then we have made a serious mistake in judgement
We've been telling our people to get out since June. We've been warning people NOT to go there and NO ONE has listened - even two congressmen went there.
This was a failed mission. End it.
A few thoughts...
This will be the last time we nation-build, at least until the next time we do it.
We'll have learned the lesson of Afghanistan just like we learned the lesson of Vietnam.
The only thing worse than a President failing is the appearance of a President doing nothing.
Nothing ever changes; "... the civilian press are about to wet their pants and we've heard even Cronkite's going to say the war is now unwinnable. In other words, it's a huge shit sandwich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite." - Full Metal Jacket
We never really learned the lesson of Vietnam, not universally, except in pop culture and Hollywood movies.
We're in a whole different situation now, as we didn't get blowback from leaving Vietnam, which turned into a success story of sorts, but now we've got blowback after blowback after blowback, the latest blowback interacting with the blowback in a different sphere, there's just literally no way to see the emperor is wearing no other here, our hubris, imperial adventures and conventional wisdom need to stop, or we face worse than overreach failure and embarrassment.
...no way not to see...
...wears no clothes... (damn phone auto-correct)
👍🏻
Watching the fall of Stalingrad is glorious.
It's gotten so bad, even Russia has changed its mind and decided to get the hell out.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1431009272524009472
The world needs to figure out how to nation build in a less humiliating and depressing fashion.
But, the fact that 45% of Afghanistan is rural religious fanatics no longer surprises me, as we here in 'Merica have the same proportion of nutjobs denigrating women and trying to destroy Democracy.
Which, I guess means, we 'mericans need to figure out how to nation build right here in our own country first.