Before they clean up their timelines, here’s a few receipts from some of America’s most strategeric geniuses!
Mike Pompeo a month ago, with a Biden-level prediction: "It's time for them to step forward& actually deliver on security for themselves. I am confident that they can do that. It's a matter of will. Do they have the will to actually stand up for things they say they care about?"
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) August 15, 2021
This one is courtesy of Soonergrunt:
How quickly can the politics around Afghanistan change? Here's a section on the RNC's website in June; click it now and you get a 404 error. (Rest of page was about Kosovo/Israel-Arab deals.) https://t.co/kDJo95QfiF pic.twitter.com/HkZok9mgJW
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 15, 2021
And so you don’t have to click through, here’s the screen grab:
We’ve been in Afghanistan for more than half my life.
We need to end the endless wars. https://t.co/h1gWKACf2F
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 1, 2021
That’s enough for now.
Open thread!
Adam L Silverman
VeniceRiley
Adam, I am wondering if the upside calc on this tragedy is to put a recurring problem on Iran’s doorstep?
Punchy
Meh. TPM’s Josh Marshall has been writing a good series of posts about just how predictable this was, how this shows the Afghan gov’t and military was all phony and make-believe. That they couldnt hold for even a few days says this set up was more artificial than Kim K.
debbie
@Punchy:
If someone knew the Afghan military would collapse as fast as they did, they should have spoken up. Loudly.
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: The overall impression I had is that just about everyone thought they’d fail, and it was just a question of “failing really quickly” or “failing in 6 months with some kind of power-sharing agreement that gets gradually abrograted”.
debbie
@MisterForkbeard:
Guess top-of-the-line military hardware isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be. //
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
Apparently, our senior military officials have been lying to us for years on the progress in Afghanistan. Even when we surged more troops there a few years back under Trump, the Taliban still made progress. I’d like to know why they lied to us and who was involved
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You got to love the hawks in this one – so who’s kids are supposed to die making Afghanistan American? Inversely, whose up for a war of extermination on the Taliban? If you’re not willing make the population suffer for harboring terrorists then you are on the wrong side of the war.
Roger Moore
As a rule of thumb, critics who only say, “You’re doing it wrong” are worthless. Unless they’re willing to suggest something better, they can and should be ignored. This is true in any field, but it’s especially important in politics, where there are plenty of people like the ones shown above, who are willing to say whatever the other guy is doing is wrong, even when yesterday they were advocating exactly what he’s doing today.
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
If that’s so, then they lied like they lied about Viet Nam, and I never thought we’d see something like that again.
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: I should be clear – this is everyone I looked at for foreign policy. Most of the Republicans (like Adam has documented) were saying things would be just ducky and we should have pulled out even faster several months ago.
But the FP people I pay attention to were all of the opinion that the Afghan Army and Government were going to collapse, because they were corrupt, useless, and pretty much always had been. They didn’t have any popular support, either.
@Roger Moore: The only significant criticism I’ve seen that I’m willing to agree with is that Biden’s people should have had better contingency plans for “What if the Afghan Army doesn’t last a week – do we have all our refugees out?” Etc.
Kay
It’s just odd that this particular crime keeps coming up, is all I’m saying. Also- always “in Florida”
debbie
@MisterForkbeard:
Judging by the speed with which Ghani high-tailed it out of town, I understand why.
This is all so fucking depressing.
debbie
@Kay:
Ghislaine of the North?
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): All of them Katie.
The Dangerman
We should have packed up and left after Tora Bora. This whole CF is on Bush (and Cheney, since Bush was an idiot).
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Not just in Florida, she was arrested in Gaetz’s district too IIRC
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: A lot of us were making the same inputs inside the tent for a very long time as well. You just never hear about it because the papers we write and the briefings we give aren’t released to the public.
West of the Rockies
In breaking news, Republicans reveal themselves to be flaming hypocrites.
Urza
@Adam L Silverman: I’m seeing headlines about how Biden’s people are surprised. If that is true how is it that accurate on the ground info can’t make it that high in our system?
Chetan Murthy
@debbie:
[Just wanna say up-front, that I could be wrong about this history. This is my recollection]
Wait, wut? The same thing happened in Iraq. Remember the fall of Mosul? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Mosul
It was Iran that stood up the PMUs and other forces that eventually fought ISIS back. And yes, US air support helped. But it was the Shia PMUs that actually took and held territory.
OldDave
She was jailed in Santa Rosa county, which is certainly part of Gaetz’s district.
HRA
Adam a friend sent some information out tonight. Brian Tyler Cohen wrote in 2018 that Trump gave a presidential pardon from prison to the current head of the Taliban and now the president of Afghanistan.
She also had that memo from the RNC too late and which had been blocked.
They are still discussing it on her FB page.
Adam L Silverman
@Urza: There’s a lot of stove piping. And the senior leaders often have ways of controlling what information gets to whom and when. Finally, the Trump people broke the Interagency process. And I’m not sure that getting a couple of dozen appointees in place at DOD, CIA, DOJ means it’s been fixed in only six months.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Reagan was always trying to get the US into military adventures IIRC. Grenada, for one. Hell, during the first Presidential Armed Forces Farewell was in 1989, he had this to say re: the military and Vietnam:
I remember several Dead Kennedy songs making reference to “trying to start another Vietnam”, so I guess the US FP and military establishment, the Neocon kind, have been itching to wipe the stain of Vietnam from our national memory for a long time, which they sort of did during the Gulf War. It will be interesting to see the aftereffects on military morale and how we view the military in light of the collapse of the Afghan government
Mike in NC
I can remember reading about “the light at the end of the tunnel” many times in my youth.
Adam L Silverman
@HRA: Yep, I’ve seen all that. Not surprising at all.
Back in 2009 I got tasked with preparing a briefing on recidivism and terrorism for the SOCOM J3, which is the operations section. They were very concerned about the potential for detainees, especially those being kept at GITMO, to return to the battlefield, take up arms, and get right back into the fight. So
Adam L Silverman
I’ll catch everyone on the flip. Going to go rack out.
lgerard
I am sure someone is busy creating the apocryphal anecdotes of hippies spitting on Afghan war veterans
Mary G
@The Dangerman: This. Bomb the shit out of the al-Qaeda training camps, declare victory, and come home.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
Sorry that’s not breaking news.
That’s absolutely normal behavior for them.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies: Funny definition of “breaking news.” :)
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think The Blob learned all the wrong lessons from Vietnam. Instead of concluding that foreign civil wars are terrible because they turn into forever wars, they decided they’re great because a war that lasts forever is exactly what they want. They see the main problem as how to keep the public from getting fed up with their forever war and throwing them out of office, and they look at Vietnam as a lesson in what things lost public support.
Ascap_scab
Trump says Biden’s plan to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan is a ‘wonderful and positive thing to do’
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-biden-afghanistan-pullout-wonderful-and-positive-thing-to-do-2021-4?amp
Trump last month: “I started the process, all the troops are coming home, they (Biden) couldn’t stop the process. 21 years is enough. They (Biden) couldn’t stop the process, they (Biden) wanted to but couldn’t stop the process.”
https://t.co/CVrG6IsZ4g
https://twitter.com/justgrateful/status/1427103180257628160?s=19
Mart
We just about had ’em. Another couple trillion dollars, couple thousands of (US) deaths, and another couple tens of thousands of (US) injuries and victory would have been nigh.
smike
@Kay:
And odd that the same group projecting “Satan worshipping, child-eating pedophilia” on others keeps getting nabbed for the same.
Belafon
@Ascap_scab: Biden wanted out in 2009.
guachi
@Chetan Murthy: This is very, very false. I worked the Iraq mission out of Georgia during the entirety of the fight for Mosul and the heavy lifting into the city was by the the elite divisions and commandos of the Iraqi army. The Hashd al-Sha’ab provided support but didn’t do the main fighting.
Viva BrisVegas
I seem to recall Reagan putting Marines into Beirut in 1983 and then pulling them out again after 220 Marines were killed by a truck bomb.
Ronnie was keen on the glory of war but not so much the blood and guts. Hence Grenada, his crowning military achievement.
sab
@Viva BrisVegas: Agreed. Reagan wanted photo op military adventures. He didn’t want big expensive wars. Couldn’t stand him otherwise but I will credit him with that.
Ruckus
@smike:
Projection. They think they are normal so if they are doing something, everybody else must be doing the same thing – and it must be OK because of that. Projection. It is an extremely bad movie but they keep running it anyway.
sab
@Ruckus: Yes.
My husband and I never even think about trafficking because we don’t do stuff that makes it an issue. Our obliviousness is a problem.
My sister has a woman cousin-in-law who works for a New England police department, and sex trafficking is her beat and she cannot get anyone in her department to take it seriously. They think just a bunch of whores. She sees desperate minor girls.
Cacti
If the Republicans want to run on the promise of a renewed Afghanistan war, fucking go for it.
See you in 2022, MFers.
Repatriated
@Ruckus: “Both sides are the same, but the other guys ate worse.’
They know on some level how bad they are. That’s why the whole Q thing works — if they’re opposing something worse than they are, then they can’t be the bad guys no matter what they do. Abortion as an issue works the same way.
Morzer
@Kay: So, can we start referring to incidents like this as -gaetz rather than -gates?
Kathleen
@Kay: St. Thomas is a Catholic college. I read the linked story and it was kind of confusing. I wonder why she was in Florida. In Gaetz’s county? How big is this ring and is it run by Republicans? What the hell is going on?
ronno2018
I hate they are attacking Biden for pulling out. But I think in a couple weeks no one will care…
Tony Jay
@sab:
About a decade ago we had a moment in the UK, pretty much following the deaths of moon-shaped Lib-Dem peer Cyril Smith and celebrity DJ/TV Presenter/Charity Guru Jimmy Saville and the revelation that they had both been prolific (as in long-term and persistent) rapists of children and the very vulnerable, that it looked like the UK’s culture of establishment protection for paedophile rings might be on the verge of breaking down. Both Smith and Saville were well known creeps, but time and again complaints against them were ignored and evidence buried in a very deliberate way. Everyone knew nobody did a thing.
Then, as if by magic, the headlines were all about predatory Muslim paedophile rings preying on poor young northern girls and the local Police being unconcerned with the fates of poor, white trash and simultaneously hobbled by fear of being accused of racism for arresting brown men. Because obviously, if there’s one characteristic that defines British policing it’s a far-too lenient attitude to minority criminality. Honest.
I remain 100% certain that we’ll one day find out that Police forces across the country have had a long lasting policy of looking the other way where organised paedo rings are concerned because they know full well the position and influence of the white men involved, and the Asian groups who operated freely in the North were semi-accidental beneficiaries of a wider policy who had to be thrown to the wolves to protect the VIPs.
After all, don’t you know who they are?
Cacti
@ronno2018: The librul media has never seen a war they opposed or wanted to end.
sab
@Tony Jay: Of course you will. But still, will anyone care?
sab
@sab: Didn’t Belgium have police who let twelve year old girls actually starve to death in their cells because nobody wanted to admit it was happening
ETA When they did know it was happening.
sab
My first husband was a serious jerk, as were most of his friends. He had a seriously jerkish friend who married a Thai hooker who adored him because he had rescued her. She worked as a seamstress and mostly supported him, but she adored him because of the rescue.
Amir Khalid
Over here, PM Muhyiddin Yassin had an audience this morning with His Majesty the Agung, at which he submitted his resignation and those of his Cabinet. They will stay on as a caretaker government until a new PM is appointed.
It’s been embarrassing to watch Muhyiddin’s pathetic flailing in recent months as he tried to hang on, but the future isn’t promising either. Anwar Ibrahim or someone else might patch together a coalition to replace Muhyiddin’s patched-together coalition, which replaced the patched-together coalition that won the 2018 general election and collapsed after the inevitable falling out between Anwar and Dr Mahathir. I fear the next patched-together coalition government is going to be just as riven by competing ambitions, and just as flimsy. We definitely do not need that right now.
sab
@Amir Khalid: Yikes. Democracy is messy however it is constructed. Wishing you all well.
Cermet
Let me get this right – the taliban take over all of Afghanistan with hardly any shooting; essentially no blood shed – no mass casualties BUT our leaving (which we were doing) has to go super fast and this is dishonorable because the country SHOULD have descended into bloody civil war – mass deaths of soldiers and civilians allowing the fall to occur over a few months so we’d be out of there before the civil war was done! Really, that is the argument the fucking low life’s in the Media are making? Fuck them and I wish every one of them a one way ticket to Kabul and they are then forced to fight the taliban for this mythical honor they think exists.
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I disagree.
We have an important tradition of civilian control of the military. This means when the elected President gives the order, the military has to follow them and after that it is pointless and counter productive to say we shouldn’t be here. They cannot say “there is no way to accomplish these orders”. If they allow that to continue, they are allowing the sabotaging of lawful orders and that would happen to any unpopular orders like for example integration. This means that we cannot depend on the active military itself to resist a stupid war after the orders have been given. We the civilians, have to see that for ourselves. As I recall, several high level military men did retire before Iraq and criticize that after and that was published and made much of in the media.
Afghanistan was different. They actually did harbor attackers of the US and refused to give them up when it was known, even in the face of those attack leaders boasting of it. We were going to have to attack and make any other country unwilling to do the same. Promising to rebuild them for their own good was just pretty words. There may be modern laws of warfare that required these words. Maybe that needs rethinking. Countries can’t be allowed to harbor people that plot and kill 4000 civilians in another country and then not extradite them for trial but just pay no price because they are too corrupt for reform. Bush was too lazy and not smart enough for the moment. He promised too much.
We have to remember that the military cannot resist civilian orders. It’s on us, for allowing the stupid orders. This is built into our system.
We are aware of our own lack of knowledge (most of us) and defer to experts. This works fine if the experts are say doctors or engineers. But when it comes to military matters, we have to remember that they can’t even really think about telling us this is not possible to do after the orders are given. Before, their will be some who say it very well. After, those voices will retire, or not get promotions. And this isn’t even always retaliation. A leader doesn’t get good results picking people who don’t believe in the objective. Every war has some people who object but many wars are actually winnable. So leaders correctly pick subordinates who they think can achieve the objective.
In this case Bush was an unintelligent fool who was a poor judge of competence. He picked yes men. Too many people voted for Bush.
raven
Mika is fucking screeching. She wants Biden to send 10,000 troops in now,
Biff Baxter
@raven: Mika never wants to leave. Today, tomorrow or 5 years from now. The ending will be the same.
debbie
@raven:
Yeah, just listened to John Bolton, of all people, bitching about Biden fucking up Trump’s Afghanistan policy.
I don’t know what we’re beyond, but it’s not the looking glass.
Biff Baxter
@debbie: No, Mika. It will not be a day that lives in infamy for Joe Biden. Most Americans won’t give it a thought by Labor Day.
raven
@debbie: It’ll blow over,
Nobody in particular
@Adam L Silverman:
And probably going all the way back to arming and funding the mujahidin. It’s not the first time we’ve had Muslim Proxies slaughter Communists for us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Indonesia#Mass_killings_and_the_end_of_the_PKI
Adam, I didn’t realize you studied Criminal Justice. Herbert Packer’s Limits of the Criminal Sanction is sublime. George’s father. Hume’s Guillotine.
Nobody in particular
@Biff Baxter:
I hope you’re right. But that’s with normal people. This could all go Benghazi on the internet in no time. We’ll soon find out. These people are not rational. Quite dysfunctional.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
For an Afghani who is over 50 this will be the forth violent change of government, so they all know the drill that anyone who stands and fights the good fight just ends up dead.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Nobody in particular: Problem with going Benghazi is they will have to explain why Trump pardoned the leader of the Taliban. Yes, they are crazy, but stuff like that will make them shy away from digging too deep.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
God damn, the number of liberals screaming on twitter Biden needs to fix his mistake is just nauseating. Not only is it, look asshole you’ve been calling for this withdraw for the last 19 years, what is the correct plan then?
Another Scott
AlJazeera (live updates):
He’s probably taken the cars and the money to protect it from the Taliban. For the benefit of the suffering people of Afghanistan.
Right?? I mean, what other possible explanation could there be???
:-/
(Note – this could be Russian disinformation as well, of course. They have an obvious interest in making a former US protectorate look as corrupt as possible.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Russian disinfo, unless it was petty cash for bribes on the way out, Ghani likely has the real money stash away some were by now.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Biff Baxter: i remember when anthony hopkins stealing chadwick boseman’s oscar was the most grievous offense of the year, though only slighly worse than steven soderbergh not being able to foresee institutional racism in the academy.
by mid-may, though, no one remembered.
plus hopkins was really fuckingood in the father.
glc
In point of fact, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Or not.
J R in WV
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Actually, if you ARE willing to punish a civilian population, you ARE a WAR Criminal. The worst kind of war criminal.
Like NIxon, Kissinger, Bush I, and Bush II. Colin Powell also, who tried to cover up Lt Calley’s mass murder crime. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, everyone at Abu Ghrab prison, etc.
J R in WV
@guachi:
Actually, it may be incorrect, but is almost certainly not a deliberate lie, which is something that is “very, very false”!
TFG [Trump] says things that are very very false.
Chetan Murthy is probably not intentionally spreading falsehoods, but may be misinformed, may have read a detailed field report that was partially incorrect, etc. I think you owe Murthy an apology, tho.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
“Afghanistan” is Pustum for “Vietnam”