As the Donald himself might have put it: PITIFUL!
We are speaking of his horrid lip-synching effort last night to
keep time with the voice of his ventriloquist generals. Not only was the
substance of their speech threadbare, risible, foolish and quasi-criminal; they
basically turned the Donald into a pathetic joke in the process of
flip-flopping him on worldwide TV.
To justify the 180 degree shift on an anti-Afghan policy
position that he had tweeted about vociferously for six years running (see
below), the Donald’s teleprompter scripters offered an explanation that was
beyond lame:
“My
original instinct was to pull out — and, historically, I like following my
instincts. But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when
you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In other words,
when you’re President of the United States.”‘
Actually, we are relived to hear Trump finally recognizes that
he actually is President and wish he would start doing something presidential.
For instance, he could declassify all the NSA intercepts about purported
Russian meddling in the US election, and prove that it’s all a hoax generated
by Obama’s despicable national security advisor, John Brennan, and a handful of
deep state operatives who properly feared the Donald’s solid
anti-interventionist instincts.
So doing,
Trump could crush the anti-Russian hysteria and the Deep State/Dem/mainstream
media campaign to hound him from office and get on with the desperately
important business of effectuating a rapprochement with Russia. World peace
depends on it; the failing American Empire can’t be dismantled without it; and
the nation’s fast growing fiscal calamity can’t be stemmed unless there is a
drastic, multi-hundred billion reduction in defense spending.
But it’s not to be. The Donald has been hoodwinked by three
discredited, failed generals—Kelly, McMasters and Mattis—-who have been
dissembling, spinning and lying to civilian officials about Afghanistan for
most of the past 17 years.
Any generals worth their salt would have told their civilian
superiors years ago that Afghanistan is mission impossible and irrelevant to
the security of the American homeland. That’s because there never was more than
a few hundred al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and when bin-Laden hightailed
to his hideaway in Pakistan in 2003 that should have been the end of Washington’s
pointless but incredibly destructive invasion and occupation.
By contrast, there was never any US national security interest
whatsoever in cleansing the godforsaken lands of the Hindu Kush of the 12th
century Taliban fanatics who took over this hapless country during the 1990s.
And largely with weapons that had been supplied by the CIA during the 1980s in
a pointless mission to drive the Soviets out.
In short, the generals have spent 17 years sacrificing 2,400
dead US soldiers, 20,000 wounded and upwards of $1 trillion of taxpayer money
to do what? Kill tens of thousands of Taliban who never threatened us and who
could not remotely harm any American in farms, towns and cities across the land
from sea to shining sea—-even as Washington’s war machine has reduced the
Afghans’ own country to rubble and economic desolation and caused upwards of
60,000 civilian deaths and casualties.
Needless to say, rather than listening to his generals, the
Donald would have been well advised to heed the advise of the one Senator who
actually understands and can articulate the truth about Washington’s Afghan
disaster. Said Rand Paul, it’s time to come home now:
The
mission in Afghanistan has lost its purpose, and I think it is a terrible idea
to send any more troops into that war. It’s time to come home now.
Our war
in Afghanistan began in a proper fashion. We were attacked on 9/11. The
Taliban, who then controlled Afghanistan, were harboring al Qaeda, and after
being warned, and after an authorization from Congress, our military executed a
plan to strike back. Had I been in Congress then, I would have voted to
authorize this military action.
But as is
typical, there was significant mission creep in Afghanistan. We went from
striking back against those who attacked us, to regime change, to
nation-building, to policing their country for them. And we do it all now with
an authorization that is flimsy at best, with the reason blurred, and the costs
now known. We do it with an authorization that was debated and passed before some
of our newest military personnel were out of diapers. This isn’t fair to them,
to the American people, or to a rational foreign policy.
In light of these obvious truths, what words of justification
for a renewed escalation of the US occupation did the generals put into the
Donald’s teleprompter?
In a word,
that Afghanistan might otherwise remain a “sanctuary” for
al-Qaeda and other terrorist marginalia who might be thinking of buying an
airline ticket to Mexico in order to infiltrate America before the Donald gets
his wall done!
But for crying out loud—-don’t these fools recognize that it is
their bombs, missiles, drones and door-busting troops which have created most
of the world’s terrorists? And that until Washington stops raining death from
the sea, sky and land, the supply of fanatical young men in black turbans
toting lethal weapons or wearing suicide vests will not diminish.
And these jihadists most certainly will find “sanctuaries” in
some god-forsaken hell-hole somewhere on the planet. Indeed, a Martian
wandering unto the scene would surely think that Washington has actually been
in the “sanctuary” making business—- with its destruction of previously stable
states in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Somalia, among others.
And that’s
to say nothing of the endless pockets of lawlessness in Saharian and north
Africa, Pakistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, other Muslim “stans” of the former Soviet
Union, any number of potential refuges in South Asia and even the Muslim
dominated suburbs of France, Belgium, England, Germany and more.
In other
words, the logic of occupying Afghanistan to deny “sanctuaries” to
terrorists——even if it could be accomplished, which it can’t—-implies that
Washington should occupy most of the planet. After
all, in the years since 9/11 virtually none of the hundreds of minor and major
terrorist incidents that have occurred (mostly) in Europe and North America
were organized and executed from Afghanistan.
For that matter, there were no Afghans at all involved in 9/11.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and the others were
from the United Arab Emirates (2),Egypt and Lebanon. Only three of the 19 ever
even visited Afghanistan and all of them undertook their flight training and
preparation for the attack in Europe and America. The fact is, with 21st
century technology the evil-doer who planned and directed the 9/11 abomination,
Osama bin-Laden, could have done so from nearly any hideout anywhere on the
planet.
Furthermore, the overwhelming share of post-9/11 attacks have
been the work of home-grown terrorists and miscreants who got their inspiration
from the internet and their weapons from do-it-yourself web-sites and manuals.
Even the ones who got foreign “training” for the most part did so in Syria and
Libya—-two terrorist “sanctuaries” that absolutely would not exist if
Washington and its Gulf state allies had not attacked their governments.
Indeed, ending the war on the Assad government and working with
Russia and its allies to clear the remnants of ISIS from Syria would do far
more to enhance the safety and security of the American people than killing
half the Taliban army. Yet here is what the Donald’s ventriloquists mumbled as
he lip-synched along with the teleprompter:
Second,
the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11,
the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from
Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort
and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that
terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened
before September 11th.
And, as
we know, in 2011, America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq. As a
result, our hard-won gains slipped back into the hands of terrorist enemies.
Our soldiers watched as cities they had fought for, and bled to liberate, and
won, were occupied by a terrorist group called ISIS. The vacuum we created by
leaving too soon gave safe haven for ISIS to spread, to grow, recruit, and
launch attacks. We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders
made in Iraq.
That is just plain risible hogwash. Osama bin-Laden was trained
and financed by the CIA in Afghanistan during the 1980s, returned to Saudi
Arabia as a western anti-communist hero in the early 1990s and only became an
anti-American terrorist after George HW Bush’s foolish intervention in an
oil-drilling dispute between Saddam Hussein and the Emir of Kuwait in 1991,
which resulted in 500,000 pairs of “crusader” boots on the purportedly sacred
Islamic lands of Arabia.
Even then, bin-Laden operated for the next five years out of
Sudan and when forced out by the US in 1996 could have decamped to any number
of backwater refuges, but went to Afghanistan because of the Washington funded
and enabled networks he had set up there. That is to say, Afghanistan’s role in
the horror of 9/11 was happenstance; it was not some kind of unique,
irreplaceable fount of primary evil. And once bin-Laden decamped for Abbottabad
(Pakistan) in 2003, even that tangential linkage evaporated.
In essence, the Washington military machine has been pounding
Afghanistan back to the stone age for 17 years for no logical or rational
reason except revenge and the fact that unless it is outright defeated, as in
Vietnam, the American military machine rarely leaves that lands its occupies
(e.g. Japan, South Korea, Germany etc.)
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s 35 million citizen have been reduced to
a life of misery, destitution, violence and constant warfare. In fact, its
living standard has been cut to just $560 of GDP per capita—- among the lowest
figures anywhere on the planet. Even then, what passes for “GDP” consists
largely of the drug trade and the immense multi-billions of corruption and
graft on which the Afghan state is based.
The Afghan operated logistical networks which bring military
material and munitions, fuel and provisions to the US occupational forces, for
example, costs several billions per year and gives inflation an altogether new
definition. Military gasoline delivered to the giant Bagram military base costs
upwards of $250 per gallon!
The sheer
insanity of the occupation policy that the Donald has now embraced is perhaps
best illustrated by this juxtaposition. During 2017 DOD will spend nearly $45 billion on
a war to kill and destroy alleged enemies in a country that has only $19.5 billion of GDP. Even then, the Taliban
controls upwards of 40% of the country, including much of the Pashtun/Sunni
heartland.
Yet even more preposterous than the demonization of Afghanistan
that lies at the heart of Washington’s policy is the generals’ ludicrous claim
that withdrawing would foster the rise of another ISIS, as purportedly happened
in Iraq.
No it didn’t!
The
medieval butchers now being driven from Raqqua and other dusty backwaters of
the Upper Euphrates were able to temporarily establish their demented caliphate
solely and exclusively because they were heavily armed by Washington and its
allies. That includes the $25 billion weapons
cache Washington left behind in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq on the naïve theory
that there was such a thing as an “Iraqi Army” when there was actually just
Shiite militias bent on revenge.
It also includes the massive additional weaponry which came when
Khadafy’s arsenals were emptied and transmitted up the CIA “ratline” through
Turkey to the Syrian rebels; and the billions more that was supplied by the CIA
and Saudis to the so-called “moderate rebels” being trained in Jordan, who
ended up selling their weapons or defecting to the jihadists.
In short, the “sanctuary” rationale for staying the course in
Afghanistan makes no sense whatsoever. And the apparent plan to raise the US
force level from 8,500 at present to 13,000 is even more farcical.
Below is
the history of Washington’s build-ups and drawdowns in Afghanistan over the
last 17 years. At the peak, there were 200,ooo uniforms
and contractors in the country—-or one occupier for each 170 man, woman and
child in the land.
Needless to say, that massive build-up accomplished nothing but
death and destruction on both sides. Indeed, the evidence that the Afghans hate
outside occupiers—as they have since Alexander the Great—- far more than their
internal Taliban tormenters is now as plain as day.
In that context, the generals’ plan to boost the American
presence back to about 30,000 military and contractors and to vastly step up
the level of violence through relaxed rules of engagement that will inexorably
result in widespread civilian casualties can only be described in one way: it
borders on the criminal.
The Donald once had a voice of skepticism and dissent from the
depredations of the War Party. No more. He has already been defenestrated by
the Deep State and its legions of Imperial City allies, tools and shills.
But it’s worth remembering what the Donald once thought of the
matter, and the alacrity with which these sensible views were snuffed out by
the rulers of the Imperial City.
Last night’s speech also clarifies why the left-behind citizens
of Flyover America feel increasingly dispossessed, ignored and belittled. They
thought they were voting for America First, but in his first speech to the
nation the Donald capitulated to the Deep State and read a speech that sounded
much like it was being read to cameras by a hostage—or at least by
self-deputized tools of the Warfare State like George Bush, Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio.
As we said: PITIFUL!
Ron Paul
is right when he says we are wasting lives and money in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan
is a total disaster. We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to
everything else, robbing us blind.
Exactly 5
years ago, Trumptweeted:“Why are wecontinuing to train
these Afghanis who then shoot our soldiers in the back? Afghanistan is a
complete waste. Time to come home!”
Let’s get
out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we
waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.
We should
leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in,
we go in hard & quick. Rebuild the US first.
Our gov’t
is so pathetic that some of the billions being wasted in Afghanistan are
ending up with terrorists
Do not
allow our very stupid leaders to sign a deal that keeps us in Afghanistan
through 2024-with all costs by U.S.A. MAKE AMERICA GREAT!
Now Obama
is keeping our soldiers in Afghanistan for at least another year. He is losing
two wars simultaneously.
We have
wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their
government has zero appreciation. Let’s get out!
3:06 PM –
21 Nov 2013
Reprinted
with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Former
Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about
in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest book
is The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America. He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's
Contra Corner. He was an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads
LRC the first thing every morning.
Copyright © 2017 David Stockman
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