Tag Archives: afghanistan

09/2/21

Time For Questions About Afghanistan

During the Afghanistan evacuation, the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Pentagon spokesman sang the chorus, “There will be plenty of time after this to ask questions, but now is not the time.”

Well, dear readers, it is now that time — the Question Time to find out what went wrong in Afghanistan, who was holding the steering wheel, and who will be reprimanded and held accountable.

The Three Stooges of Kabul. Hire clowns, expect a circus.

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08/22/21

America Is Baaaaaack!?

Once upon a time the world, our enemies in particular, feared American power whilst our friends and allies revered it.

It was bad to be an enemy of America.

It was good to be a friend of America.

After the Normandy landing in World War II, it took America and her allies ten months to bring the German war machine of Adolf Hitler to an end and to accept their unconditional surrender. Ten months from the landing until victory.

 

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08/16/21

The Biden Foreign Policy in Afghanistan, the Fallout

I do not intend to discuss or critique the recent events in Afghanistan other than to say that it is clearly not the highpoint of America’s foreign policy which at this instant is entrusted to our current POTUS.

The most pathetic image of an American President ever seen? Does this project power? Reliability? Confidence?

When the current POTUS was running for the job, we were assured that one of the mitigating factors of his half a century in the swamp was that he was an old and steady hand when it came to foreign policy — hmmm, maybe not so much, eh?

A single discordant voice was former Sec Def/Dir CIA Gates who opined that Joe Biden had been on the wrong side of every major foreign policy issue for the last four decades.

Today, President Biden takes great pride in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, a mission he opposed at the time.

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08/12/21

Afghanistan — One Month Before Taliban Control

A month ago, I wrote that the Taliban would control Afghanistan within six months:

The Taliban Will Control Afghanistan in Six Months

At the time, I was stepping out, big time. I would like to revise my prediction. The Afghan government will not last for more than thirty days.

When I made the six month prediction, US intelligence was saying it would take a year and maybe the Afghans — they had an army of 350,000 that we trained and armed — would last for a year.

Triumphant Taliban fighters

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07/10/21

The Taliban Will Control Afghanistan in Six Months

It is tempting to blame President Joe Biden for pulling US troops out of Afghanistan, characterizing him and his ilk as being soft on defense (which they are), but that would be inaccurate and unfair.

The decision to finally and pragmatically pull the plug on A’stan was made by the Trump admin. He ran for President promising to get the US out of Afghanistan categorizing the war as already lost.

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08/20/20

Accountability For Failure — Afghanistan

In the running of any enterprise, you will encounter some triumphs and some disasters.

If you remember your schoolboy Kipling, you will know that the right path is to “treat those two impostors just the same.”

That is well and good, but it is also critical to assess what went wrong, why, and how to avoid it in the future.

Which, dear reader, brings me to the subject of Afghanistan and America’s two decades unending war in a far away place called the Graveyard of Empires.

How did Afghanistan get so fucked up?

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02/29/20

Afghanistan — Peace? Not A Chance In Hell

You may have noticed that the United States signed a “treaty” with the Taliban pertinent to Afghanistan that will lead to the end of hostilities between the US and the Taliban.

The Taliban negotiating team including one man who was a Gitmo detainee who we released. These guys outsmarted our generals and out waited our Presidents.

The US has been at war with the the Taliban for 18 years making this the longest war in US history.

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09/7/19

Afghanistan — No Peace, No Honor

The Trump admin is about to cut and run from Afghanistan. Worse, it is the right move. We are tired of Afghanistan, and it is not (never was) a strategic threat to the United States.

Stop right there — is that the right policy for the United States?

There are some who say it is given the current world situation and the lack of an American strategic interest in Afghanistan. Your Big Red Car agrees.

Some background as to how we were seduced into America’s longest war in its history.

 1. President Bush accused Osama bin Laden of masterminding the 9-11 attack (11 September 2001) on the World Trade Center twin towers.

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