Meanwhile, Back In Afghanistan...

The US failure to create a stable national government in Afghanistan has been a slow train wreck coming. Some conservatives became restive under Early Obama, whose commitment and conviction to victory were, well, suspect.

And what might victory have looked like? I was firmly in the camp that believed the US was unlikely to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan even with resolute US leadership. I wrote this 2010 and reprised it in 2011 while discussing a Reagan-era military expert, Bing West, who detailed the probable failure of the US counter-insurgency effort.

My official editorial position is that if we had Lincoln in the White House, the Afghani equivalent of George Washington in Kabul, and Generals Marshall and Eisenhower peering at maps of Kandahar, we might still lose in Afghanistan.  Gen. Petraeus is a great general and a great American, but he is not partnered with Lincoln and Washington.

Obama didn't have the character to recognize who he was and pull the plug in 2010. Remember, Afghanistan was the "good war" and Iraq was the "bad war". Since Iraq was Bush's mistake, victory there was not important, even if achievable. Fighting the 'good war' made political sense to Obama even though military success was unlikely.

Whatever, dude, and a happy belated birthday from Maureen Dowd. Trump put us firmly on a withdrawal path we should have taken years earlier, and Biden will oversee the final debacle. 

Comments

[mike in houston]

first

[Narciso]

the collapse has been faster then western iraq in 2014, remember the 'jayvees'

https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1426517839582744582

General austin, has been in the big muddy, from 2002 on, in iraq for a spell, on the joint staff, then centcom, then cashed in with raytheon, he seems to be on more quixotic snipe hunts now,

[Narciso]

general donahue, fresh from an advisory gig in the sandbox spent time berating hillsdale grads, of course biden was part of the pressure against the south vietnamese 40 ought years ago, kerry is the traitor, who takes the enemies argument, so naturally he's waging the war against our industry, from his yacht and his private plane

[Narciso]

I think coulter, had a bitter jibe, 'a good war for liberals is the one, liberals, are currently not engaged with,' iraq was bad, then it was afghanistan's turn,' the war on police, statues, storefronts' cheered by general obama, clapped quietly by the likes of milley vannili, that is good, so is the rectification of the red states, and all that entails,

[Narciso]

warfighters like senior chief gallagher and sgt?? clint dorrance, were either threatened with jail, or served time for what was justifiable combat engagements, it took years to straighten out the record in the latter case, of course the revolving door out of gitmo, which was is the executive training program, continues with the last being that darija member of the tora bora brigade, which the times wept copious tears over his detention, same with the pachachi clan, (pashtun crowders)

[Narciso]

having quaffed enough koolaid

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-vanishing-legacy-of-barack-obama-147

[Narciso]

this fellow

https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2021/07/u-s-transfers-guantanamo-detainee-who-allegedly-led-forces-at-tora-bora.php

[Narciso]

'what are they good for, absolutely nothing'

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/how-cia-failed-protect-america-911-lloyd-billingsley/

[Narciso]

one of the chroniclers of long drawn out failed expeditions, this current one is about 2/3 as long as the pelopennessian,

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/a-scholar-and-a-gentleman/

[Narciso]

dowd faults obama for not destroying much of the country, you can only do so much with 'a pen and a phone' and a kow towing chief justice, after all, you stack the bureau the company, the top and middle decks of the army, you hastle law enforcement in every metropolis,

[Narciso]

You can add turning the cdc into a ministry of silly walks, making it more useless for when the results of the gain of function research, reaches fruition, then dumping that down the memory hole, why were we weaponizing a disease, that had heretofore not being transmissable to humans, pass the brie plate and be quiet,

[Narciso]

across the maple archipelago

https://torontosun.com/news/canada/trudeau-featured-in-new-liberal-ad-campaign-ahead-of-expected-election-call

[Narciso]

from my research, yemen, is a similar sandpit with perhaps even more jaded leadership, we've had the misfortune to deal with them, since the cole bombing referenced above, a product of the 'crocodiles' catch and release policy, which involved enlisting favorite son ubl in his conquest of the south, and then detaining said fighters, and rinse repeat, with the periodic shawshank episode every couple of years,

[matt - deplore me if you must]

Dowd's piece was perhaps the ultimate ""a woman scorned" revenge.

She must have been cooling her heels with all of the other true believers at Sam Adam's Genuine New England Fish restaurant pounding down umbrella drinks saying "why me?" and eating bad chowdah.

I believe we can now officially call the Lightbringer His Assholiness.

[Bela1]

>>>I believe we can now officially call the Lightbringer His Assholiness.<<<

Hello Matt,
The nickname "His Assholiness" is perfect! :D

[Melinda]

Oops.

Soros Liquidates Archegos Stocks After Losing Millions

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/soros-liquidates-archegos-stocks-after-losing-millions

[GUS]

Gosh, do we have buyers remorse so soon?? Or maybe our dear leader has canceled the NYSLIMES.

[Narciso]

news from 1938

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/documents-fdr-pressured-hitler-to-meet-with-his-oil-buddies

knowing the corporate class in that era, it was a coals to new castle thing

[Narciso]

or a day ending in y

https://www.theepochtimes.com/washington-post-article-published-with-reckless-disregard-of-the-truth-judge_3948789.html?utm_campaign=socialshare_fb&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR0AtU8L79N0KZeB1SiHqhEOj6f_ypDFu7vjnWUXyglRPPa_uuGiS-pRPbk

[Narciso]

maybe that moroccan fellow,

https://www.the-sun.com/news/3468810/chilling-map-jihadis-flocking-afghanistan-terror-war/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebarweb

[clarice]

Narciso, maybe that's Biden's super genius plan--get them all in one place and bomb them in place.

[Narciso]

Vauxhall cross is often as blind as langley,

[Narciso]

london as melanie phillips reminded us long ago, is as hospitable to jihadists, general haftar had done a yeomans job in libya, till the turks got involved, the central government is backed by them and qatar,

[Narciso]

of course, if the administration had not been on king zayed and salman's case, they might be able to assist in the problem, remember the gcc, but its gone into the divorce settlement and csi in both instances

[Narciso]

Yep

https://babylonbee.com/news/schwarzenegger-to-star-in-terminator-reboot-where-he-goes-back-in-time-to-tell-humanity-to-just-give-up-all-their-freedoms

[Narciso]

Oh

https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2021/08/covid-roundup-81421.html?m=1

[Narciso]

More of that civility

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1426672808537595904?fbclid=IwAR2JaiDkO8C9hdbcQE-DwG57NfepEnqnv3nB9dBPp2ilCLIdBbrCBeKbthY

[Jack Lillywhite]

Why are the posts from Narciso?

Is he an influencer?

[clarice]

https://twitter.com/ZaidZamanHamid/status/1426682375753412609
Taliban entering Kabul--US Embassy evac all snafu

[Narciso]

I expected baghdad would fall first, that may ultimately happen, with this crew,

[jim nj]

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/08/14/george-soros-xi-jinping-wants-china-to-dominate-the-world-but-his-own-tyrannical-marxism-may-stop-him-n408888

[henry]

Identify hire Baghdad Bob to coordinate messaging from Kabul yet?

[henry]

Identify? Xiden. Effing auto cucumber.

[Narciso]

is gyorgi just trying standup now, I thought orban was no #1 arch nemesis,

[jim nj]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-embassy-kabul-evacuated-within-36-hours/

Clarice, that video above is reportedly not of Kabul.

[jim nj]

narc,

I report, you decide :)

[jim nj]

Judging from the breadth and speed of the Taliban advances I'm guessing that they had forces inside of all of their targets before they launched their attacks from the perimeter.

If so, I would also assume that the Taliban already has forces inside Kabul and that is why the US embassy is being evacuated now.

[clarice]

Could be, jim. All those shitholes look the same to me.

[Narciso]

I don't get why they surrender to the taliban,

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2021/08/14/Afghan-official-confirms-city-of-Mazar-e-Sharif-has-fallen-to-the-Taliban

[Narciso]

yes zaid hamid, is cuckoo for cocoa puff, if you get my drift

[matt - deplore me if you must]

If it all goes to hell there is the 4-25 in Alaska and the 173rd in Italy. But neither are heavy units. All airborne. Not sure what the Marines have. This is perhaps the greatest cluster*ck ever.

And Joe's in the basement writing his new book, "Profiles in Ignomy" where he plagiarizes JFK, Hubert Humphrey, Neil Kinnock and Baghdad Bob.

Never in the course of human events was so little owed by so many to so few.

[Pinandpuller]

I feel like this is the part of the movie where 330 odd million people are sitting around a table in a nightclub and the Big Guy wants us all to smoke crack, diddle a kid and take the Jab to prove that we’re a Fed.

[GUS]

Matt, SLOPPY JOE, has no idea what he is fucking up. The HARD LEFT MARXISTS in charge, do not ask for SLOPPY JOES opinions or guidance. He is the DEMENTED GRANDPA, who still believes that he is some sort of self made up STUD.
This man has never been anything of substance. It is so far beyond any reasonable debate, that the Little Sheeeeple, who still try to support him, are merely acting as they've been PROPAGANDIZED to do.
Biden has always been an ass-hole of epic proportion, and he for 4 decades been CHUCKLED ABOUT. "OH, that's just Joe".
UNTIL..............

[GUS]

Pin, 330. 331, 332, 333. It's too late to stop the destruction. DACA was a huge lie and was the vehicle, that got us here. Hundreds of thousands of ILLEGALS entering freely into our country. Paid $1200, and flown to the destination of the COMMIES CHOICE. Drugs, rape, COVID, and any other malady that can exist in such an environment of FILTH and STUPIDITY. Again, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.....EACH MONTH. If this isn't TREASON........WHAT IS???

[Jack Lillywhite]

Good morning.

Awake due to terrible sinus attack. Come on Zirtek😊

[clarice]

Good morning, JOM.https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/reality_bites_bidens_policies.html

[James D.]

Clarice, you’re far too generous to Biden, or more likely, his handlers.

I don’t believe for a second they view most of the crises you lost as crises at all. I think they welcome humiliation in Afghanistan and weakness against China and an economy where people are paid more to not work than to fill open jobs.

[Tom Bowler]

Great Pieces, Clarice. Lots to unpack.

The "mercurial Emmet Sullivan?" You're too kind, but I like your sense of humor.

What happens when most of these cases collapse, as I think they will with a bit more sunlight on the Department of Justice’s foul plays?

I expect the usual "F*ck you. What're ya gonna do about it?" response.

[clarice]

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/autumn-johnson/2021/08/14/google-rewrote-news-algorithm-target-trump

James D as we grow nearer to the midterms, I think they will recognize these are crises. Tom, after the fact in Stevens Sullivan talked a good game and set down some good rules, but never forget he refused Stevens a change of venue when it was a perfect candidate for a change--the property on question was in Alaska along with all the witnesses.

[Tom Bowler]

I wasn't aware he refused the change of venue for Stevens, Clarice. I was thinking of the show he put on refusing to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn.

[clarice]

That. too, Tom B.

[Melinda]

Managing calendars for electoral purposes makes more sense for DoJ than any pesky Requirements for speedy trials. Show trials in lieu of actual campaign promises seems the lower sloped hill to climb.

We will see.

[Melinda]

Oh, and thank you again, Clarice.

[Melinda]

PM of NZ has her own “Hunter” moment:

https://twitter.com/Michell69397997/status/1426712561198718985

[henry]

Xiden’s OODA loop is a demented squiggle that never quite completes a loop.

[clarice]

Apparently so, Henry

[Narciso]

Oops

https://mobile.twitter.com/nedryun/status/1426668646332567558

[Narciso]

ah emmett sullivan, I compared him to the protagonist of ocean park, and apelbaum didn't disagree, (hes chasing his own rabbits now) he presided over the sham stevens trial, then after there was no remedy he ordered up the schulte report, he let hillary slide, and continued the sham against general flynn, with macher gleeson, (is that the right word) at this point in 2017, all the j20 rioters, who were attempting to poison delegates, who destroyed property's charges were dropped,

[Narciso]

warning hellraiser image

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/nanny-state-marquis-sade-jacob-siegel

[Stephanie Nene Not Your Normal Granma]

Michael Smith
·
Everything I need to know about how America is supposed to work, I learned in a hot, humid, late summer Mississippi hay field.

My entire career has revolved around technical businesses, and technology belongs to scientists and engineers. Over several decades, I have evolved from engineer to management of engineers, to management of companies that rely on engineering.

I love engineers, I count myself as one – even though my years in management has dulled my skills and largely gotten me excommunicated from the guild. While scientists are largely idea people, engineers fix things, make ideas work and generally have powered the advancement of mankind through innovation, creativity and bullheaded stubbornness when faced with seemingly intractable and unsolvable problems.

And if you think engineers need college degrees, you have never been stuck, sweating over a hay baler that has stopped knotting the sisal rope that holds the compressed bales together – in the 100-degree heat/90% humidity August afternoon in a Mississippi hay field with 20 acres of hay on the ground and thunderstorms building in the west. You don’t have time to call a service tech or some asinine help line, you start taking sheet metal covers off, figuring out how every part is supposed to function, and you set about fixing it.

The problem with engineers is that they like to engineer. That’s what they do, and most are perfectionists who just want to deliver the best solution possible. In that mindset the motivation, is to shave off every sharp edge to get the optimal solution.

But there is a curve that represents the process of process and product development, one I have always called the DCC or the “Double Crap Curve” (also known as the “Oh, Shit!” Curve). This curve has a peak, a breakover point between cost and functionality. Stop short of that point and you have a suboptimal process or product (otherwise known as “crap”), go past that point and you have a brittle product or process that is too expensive to use or for a customer to purchase (coincidentally, also called “crap”).

Finding that sweet spot is the nirvana of any technology effort.

The most difficult task I have ever had is to get good engineers to recognize when they reach the breakover point and stop engineering.

People commonly use the term “social engineering” to describe how people in power tend to tinker with society and culture. A most inexact “science”, this process is based on “soft sciences”, and is something more akin to witch doctoring or alchemy.

Best conducted in Petri dishes, it is more art than science, more experimental than experiential, but it follows the same curve as the more reality-based, natural law bound, engineering processes. Stop short and you have a suboptimal society (i.e., anarchy), go too far and you have a brittle society held together with force (authoritarianism).

But America isn’t a Petri dish. It isn’t a controlled environment where variables can be managed. It has more in common with a Mississippi hay field on a hot and humid August day than an air conditioned, sterile, Class 4 bio lab in Wuhan.

Given the degree of multivariate influences and entropy a free society must withstand, one could legitimately wonder how such a process could ever exist, much less prosper without the gears grinding to a halt. How in hell could America ever be expected to find and maintain the breakover point?

America has a constitution that provides the answer to reaching that breakover point, no matter how much the curve shifts right or left, up or down.

Like the example of the broken Mississippi hay baler, it is a process of individual citizen engineers, each with their own skills and experiences, grabbing a pair of Vice Grips, a hammer or two, maybe a pipe wrench and once everything is beaten and bent back into the right shape, dragging a Lincoln generator powered welder to the field, and stitching it all back together so everybody can get back to work and get the necessary jobs done before the hay on the ground gets wet.

While both engineers and scientists have their value, America works best when the problems are solved by the people in the field, not the people in the labs. America has always been a “dirt under the fingernails” country, one not enslaved to the technocrats in lab coats.

The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we get back to the sweet spot on the Double Crap Curve.

[Jack Lillywhite]

Great “Pieces”, Clarice.

The Biden presidency continually reminds me of the Peter Seller’s movie “Being There”.

[clarice]

It does me, too, JIB. Pick up McCarry's "shelley's Heart" for a prescient tale of a presidential election stolen by the Deep State Yalies.

[Narciso]

Yep

https://mobile.twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1426900888841592843

[MissMarple2]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal.html

Headline:

Debating exit from Afghanistan, Biden rejected generals' views
============================================
I don't have a subscription, so someone who does will have to report on this.

To me,the headline indicates that either the Biden crew is portraying him as an independent thinker, or the Pentagon is refusing to take the blame for the chaotic withdrawal and Taliban takeover.

[MissMarple2]

Richard Engel
@RichardEngel
·
18m
Seeing Taliban fighters on streets in kabul now. Armed.
======================================
How curious that the NBC CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT provides no pictures or video.
I have a few questions:

How does he KNOW they are Taliban? Is it because he saw some guys in black turbans?

If they ARE Taliban and are armed, whose weapons? Russian, American, Iranian, Chinese?

Is Engel even IN Afghanistan?

[MissMarple2]

From Twitter:

[Melinda]

Head of Sierra Club resigned Friday?

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/sierra-club-head-resigns-why.php?utm_source=63red.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=63red

[matt - deplore me if you must]

Great pieces, Clarice. But it is all becoming overwhelming. The Michael Smith piece is one of the best summaries I have read of the engineering profession. I too am one of those engineering managers.

He misses the other part of the "of shit" dilemma, when engineers blow smoke to keep fruitless projects alive. That cost me a few dollars over the years.

October 7 is the 20th Anniversary of the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom. What laugh that is now. Kabul has fallen. In 2 weeks, no less!

What a complete funeral pyre of trillions of dollars. What a repudiation of 20 years of American policy. Whoever planned the Taliban strategy deserves the George S. Patton Medal for kicking ass.

This wasn't Vietnam. Vietnam was sellout first and foremost. This was an empty paper sack filled with hot air and popped by a bunch of illiterate tribesmen.

All of those West Point and Annapolis and Harvard and Yale grads got it wrong. And what better figurehead than Joe? He can go into the midterms with the slogan "He lost Vietnam and Afghanistan!"

Tens, probably hundreds of thousands dead for nothing.

The WSJ had a very perceptive article this morning on the why of it. We built a military to mirror our own. In a tribal society we purposely mixed tribes to create a national army. Our strategists seem to have forgotten the lessons of clan, town and state we learned in the Civil War.

We pulled the techs who supported the Afghan Air Force. We tried to build a modern, rules based society ignoring the fundamental corruption at the top.

Somewhere soon the shit will hit the fan again, and the clowns in charge are the scariest bunch of clowns you've ever seen.

[matt - deplore me if you must]

"the "oh shit" dilemma.

[MissMarple2]

matt,

The former Ranger running for Congress in Washington State, Joe Kent, was asked why he kept going back to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He told the questioner (I think it was Bannon) that he did it for his men, to encourage them and fight for each other.

I think that's a similar mind set. During the Battle of the Bulge, when temps were so cold and there was snow and icy fog, Patton stood up in his jeep and led from the front. Ask yourself if Mark Milley would have done that.

[MissMarple2]

Election Wizard
@ElectionWiz
·
2h
“The Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country…” — Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 21, 2021

[Narciso]

milley vannili, is just baghdad bob, in a different
uniform,

[MissMarple2]

Max Abrahms
@MaxAbrahms
· 2h
Jake Tapper: Secretary Blinken, how did President Biden get Afghanistan so wrong?

Yikes, when Biden loses CNN…
=================================
Carmine Sabia
@CarmineSabia

This is Biden's disaster and all the bots in the world and all the paid Internet shills are not going to change how the world sees this. No number of @KeithOlbermann tweets is going to change the disaster of this presidency.
==========================================
Miss Marple would like to know how it is that a bunch of normal Americans, including Midwestern grandmas, non-big bank finance guys, retired engineers, etc. seem to know more about national security policy (including Afghanistan and the southern border of the US) than all of those "experts" at Langley and the Pentagon.

[MissMarple2]

Joseph Zeballos-Roig
@josephzeballos
·
1h
“Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has left the country bound for Tajikistan, reports say” https://bbc.in/3yQPT5N

[Narciso]

well no one wants to be shaj shuja, he was the loser in the deal, or najibullah if you want a modern reference

[MissMarple2]

https://www.stripes.com/incoming/2021-08-15/us-diplomats-fly-out-kabul-flags-classified-documents-burned-taliban-enters-capital-2561597.html

Account of the situation at the embassy and the streets of Kabul.

"They are coming.."

[Narciso]

going back to better angels, mccarry predicted an organization like islamic state, called the eye of gaza that would recruit westerners willing to blow themselves up, this was 1979, when suicide bombers were not a thing, they are funded by a middle eastern sheikh, in the statelet of hagreb, which could be saudi or qatar,

[matt - deplore me if you must]

Don't forget the hundreds of thousands of Americans who served in Afghanistan and are watching as their work and friends lives, and their own lives, were all for nothing.

That is a bitter, bitter pill that is going to taint our society for decades. It took years before our military began to from Vietnam. Something else Reagan helped turn around. He brought back pride in America.

Ford and Carter weren't evil men. Biden is.

Henry Kissinger can't be reached for comment.

[clarice]

He was very prescient, narciso besides written great novels.

[clarice]

HAVING written

[Jack Lillywhite]

Since we are leaving, a good way to save our regrets and humility is drop a farewell MOAB where G2 figures out where the Talljeybone set up HQ.

Just one will do it.

[Buckeye]

The Michael Smith that Stephanie posted at 9:15 sounds explains a lot.

His life story/career path sounds just like mine. No surprise I agree with nearly everything he says.

I have fixed many a “hay baler” out in the field in the 100 degree heat:)

[Barbara]

That is a bitter, bitter pill that is going to taint our society for decades. It took years before our military began to [recover] from Vietnam.

Matt,

It only took one stolen election to put in a senile democrat who was more than willing to preside over the destruction of everything we hold dear.

While both engineers and scientists have their value, America works best when the problems are solved by the people in the field, not the people in the labs. America has always been a “dirt under the fingernails” country, one not enslaved to the technocrats in lab coats.
Michael Smith

This is the way forward if we are brave enough to insist upon it.

[jim nj]

new thread