I am not the slightest bit ruffled about the FBI raid on Donald Trump for several reasons. One: the FBI has been a criminal organization since its founding. That it might have done a few good things along the way is beside the point; much of what it’s done has been illegal and immoral.
A couple of conservative writers that I otherwise like have begun articles with, “FBI tapes of Martin Luther King,” and I stop reading right there. MLK may not have been a saint but the FBI had no business bugging his bedroom. End of story. Disagree with his acknowledged statements. His socialist economics. Whatever. But what went on in his private life was between him and Mrs. King.
I’m positive that the Attorney General’s is covered by the finest, most exquisitely constructed mountain of documentary bullshit.
Plus, I’m out of fucks to give. It all started a year ago…
A year ago today, Kabul “fell” to the Taliban. In other words, the native Pathans took over their own territory. The nerve of them.
The New York Times has commemorated the shameful anniversary with a marathon of articles. This one is about the situation of women.
A year since the Taliban seized power, two decades of U.S.-financed reforms have been reversed by mounting restrictions on daily life.
“US-financed reforms….” Who could have expected that as soon as Uncle Sam decamped, things would simply revert back to normal? (Everybody with half a brain cell?)
A few connected Kabuli women got to sip cappuccinos at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, both Afghan and American. That’s all.
Tucked away in the middle of the article is this:
In one way, however, the country has been better off: It is largely at peace, after decades of war that tore families apart and left no corner of Afghanistan untouched.
When Western troops withdrew last year and the war ended, so did a scourge that claimed tens of thousands of Afghan civilian lives. Gone were the American raids and airstrikes, the crossfire between the Afghan security forces and the insurgents, and the indiscriminate Taliban roadside bombs and devastating suicide attacks.
Look, as I’ve said before, and will continue to say, I don’t care about Afghan women. I’m not going to bother saying something phony about how much I care when the fact is that I won’t do a damn thing when push comes to shove.
I care about my own. No American boy’s life is worth their gender identity clinics and cappuccinos. If they want to be “liberated,” they can do it themselves. If not, peace be upon them.
That international aid agencies refuse to work with the Taliban reveals them to be frauds. You work with the reality on the ground. International aid agencies are really the frilling frilly pink camouflage of the war machine.
The article doesn’t mention the fact that the US has frozen Afghanistan’s assets. I’m positive that the Taliban are incompetent and corrupt, but freezing a country’s assets is simply theft.
Do you remember July and the first two weeks of August 2021 as, bit by bit, the Taliban took over the country? In truth, I do not. I started paying attention exactly on on August 1, an easy date to remember. I predicted that by August 15, Kabul would be in their hands. I was right. I’m not bragging—I’m usually wrong about predictions. predicted the Russians wouldn’t enter Ukraine (saber-rattling, discount it). But I was right about the Taliban. How could you NOT see this?
Well, a lot of experts didn’t. Have a laugh:
This, from an “expert” who still writes for Foreign Policy, a supposedly respectable organ of the establishment!
Over the past several weeks, as the Taliban swept through half of Afghanistan’s more than 400 districts, set up checkpoints at key highways, and seized border crossings, it has been easy to assume they are on the way to taking over the entire country. Indeed, the Taliban have themselves claimed as much. But there’s no reason to take such propaganda at face value.
….
Gen. Sami Sadat is a 36-year old American-trained officer of the Afghan army and in charge of security in nearly 20 percent of Afghan territory. He spoke to Foreign Policy from an outpost in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Sadat was self-possessed and not in the slightest unnerved about the Taliban’s presence all around him. Instead, he boasted about the superior training of his men, access to advanced weaponry, and above all a sense of duty to save the country from “savages.”
“Hell no! There is no way the Taliban will take the city,” Sadat said.
The police headquarters was captured by the Taliban on 12 August 2021, and the last government forces evacuated or surrendered in the night from 12 to 13 August 2021.
Then came “the fall” and I began to read about the whole mess, and I was sick. I had avoided news about Afghanistan. Too much staring into the abyss, all that. What good would obsessing about something over which I have no control do?
I thought I was cynical. When it comes to lying governments, power, and corruption, you can never be cynical enough!
I tried reading these books about Afghanistan, but truthfully, I only scanned them. I was too disgusted.
What a waste.
At a certain point (maybe five trillion dollars later?) “we meant well” begins to lose its luster.
I supported Biden during the disengagement and I rejected the “It wasn’t the withdrawal it was the way we left” argument. This wasn’t the time for political tribalism, and I stood with libs like Kevin Drum and Heather Cox Richardson (neither of whom said a word about the disastrous drone strike that killed seven kids, by the way).
Also, I was at the time rather too impressed with Richard Hanania, a colorful contrarian conservative who supported Biden through thick and thin.
But doubts set in, as I read further.
We had agreed to exit in May, and Biden delayed so as to combine a successful conclusion to Afghanistan with 9/11 publicity. Who knows if this is true, but it sounds very Biden: empty, theatrical, grandiloquent, buffoonish, wrong.
The above tweet, dated July 8, is in retrospect even more damning. Showing your cards was simply an open invitation to the Taliban to take over. Everything Biden said could have been implemented—in private. Sure, if we’d withdrawn by May 29, 2020, per the Pompeo stip, the Taliban would have taken over—that was the damn point of the agreement—but it would have happened offstage. Image is important. The Russian-backed Kabul government fell—six months after Russian troops were withdrawn.
Afghanistan was the end of my illusions about the morality of the US power elite. My doubts began when I learned about MK-Ultra in August 2019. That’s another story for another time.
Still glad my grandparents moved here, though. I’ve lost my illusions. I haven’t lost my mind.
You are a superb writer and deserve a wide readership here and elsewhere:
"International aid agencies are really the frilling pink camouflage of the war machine"
Perfection!