Mass Surrender To The Taliban
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 5 months ago
At reddit/Firearms. I can’t guarantee the video will stay up.
Ridiculous. After wasting the blood of the sons of America on that shit hole, the ANA surrenders en masse to the Taliban.
The men who sent Americans to perish in that war have blood on their hands and will answer to God for their actions. We fought a campaign of armed social justice.
But hey. At least the bankers and defense contractors got rich. That’s the point of war, right?
On July 1, 2021 at 10:30 pm, George 1 said:
At least in this day and age General Smedley Butler was right.
On July 1, 2021 at 11:26 pm, Bill Buppert said:
Having spent almost two years in that neo-imperialist shitpit, I remain convinced all of America’s wars are a very clever and sophisticated money laundering operation for the military-industrial-political complex.
On July 1, 2021 at 11:36 pm, Kris said:
US Govt is A Criminal Cartel.
A WE, are here to be used by it
Fact
On July 2, 2021 at 1:40 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Herschel
Re: “Ridiculous. After wasting the blood of the sons of America on that shit hole, the ANA surrenders en masse to the Taliban.”
The idea that Afghanistan was a nation-state in any real sense of the word was always a fiction, from the very first. Yes, it has lines on a map denoting its borders, and a capital city, central government, and the usual other accouterments of functioning nations, but the similarities end there. The dominant mode of social organization in Afghanistan, in that part of the world generally, is tribe or clan-based.
The idea that western-style Jeffersonian democracy could somehow be grafted, root-and-branch, into such an alien society was preposterous twenty years ago, it is is preposterous today.
Representative nation-state government of the kind we are attempting to transplant into the harsh soil of Afghanistan won’t grow there; it can’t -for it was created by Europeans and only grows in that soil from whence it came. Yes, other societies than European ones have adopted such – including India – but Britain colonized the Indian sub-continent more-successfully than it did what is now Afghanistan, and left much of the needed civilizational infrastructure in place which enabled India to later become the world’s largest democracy. And even then, it is problematic for India in certain ways, since they remain a deeply tribal society themselves.
Bluntly, the Afghans have lived as they have lived for the last thousand years, and they will probably go on living that way for another thousand. They neither want nor need what the foreign-policy wonks and would-be nation-builders in Washington, D.C. are offering. And the Afghans have a centuries-old tradition of being willing-and-able to successfully resist invaders and would-be colonizers. The typical Pashtun or Dari tribesman out in the hinterlands would sooner die than betray his way of life or become a slave.
The American foreign-policy establishment, being essentially historically-illiterate, apparently did not know – or did not care – that Great Britain tried more than once in her long “Age of Empire” to conquer and subdue the Afghans – completely without success. They were beaten, just as the Russians were later beaten, and now our turn in the docket.
Oh, and that “mass surrender”? Just consider it the latest recruiting drive for the Taliban. Most of the men in the Afghan National Army, so-called, were little more than mercenaries who stayed as long as the money and freebies from Uncle Sam were there, but once those ended, their loyalty ended, too.
Many were Taliban sympathizers all the time; they just pretended not to be to get access to American training, weapons, and equipment. Once these were obtained, then it was time for the “green-on-blue” attacks to begin again in earnest: You know, the ones where our Afghan “friends” and followers of Islam get an attack of “sudden jihad syndrome” and kill some infidels.
Our intervention in Afghanistan was sold to the American people based upon a surfeit of lies, half-truths and omissions. Those grew into a veritable mountain by the time we marked our twentieth year there. I noticed something mysterious and strange happening maybe 6-8 years ago. Whereas up to that point, the military-industrial-Congressional complex had offered a steady stream of reasons and rationales for our being in Afghanistan and spending the blood of our fighting men, suddenly and without warning, these simply ended. Meaning that the powers-that-be decided that we the people no longer even merited an explanation of why we were there.
“But hey. At least the bankers and defense contractors got rich. That’s the point of war, right?”
As one other comment noted, if you can find it, read the slim, small volume entitled “War is a Racket,” written in the 1930s by then recently-retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881-1940). Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient and one of the most-decorated Marines of all time, wrote how after concluding his career, he realized how he had been so often used as a tool of the big-money men, the banks, corporations, and movers-and-shakers. Butler states in the book that most wars are avoidable, and that in his view, there are only two causes for which it was legitimate to take up arms and shed blood – the defense of our homes and families, and the defense of the Bill of Rights.
I doubt Butler survived to read/hear the modern expression, “War is a business and business is good…. invest your son,” but one suspects that if he had read it, he would have approved. Just as he would have disapproved of our intervention in Afghanistan.
On July 2, 2021 at 1:44 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “I doubt Butler survived to read/hear the modern expression, “War is a business and business is good…. invest your son,” but one suspects that if he had read it, he would have approved. Just as he would have disapproved of our intervention in Afghanistan.
To clarify, he would have approved of the pointed sarcasm of the saying, and its attack upon the MIC…. as a straight-up expression without sarcasm or social comment, he would have of course disagreed with it. At least by the end of his career after his eyes had been opened.
On July 2, 2021 at 1:54 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Bill Buppert
Re: “Having spent almost two years in that neo-imperialist shitpit, I remain convinced all of America’s wars are a very clever and sophisticated money laundering operation for the military-industrial-political complex.”
Indeed they are, for the defense contractors, politicians and others who profit from war-as-a-business have discovered that periodic wars fought hard-to-their-conclusion (fighting to win as quickly and decisively as possible), do not offer the fat profit margins and predictable long-term earnings of a de facto permanent state of war, which is what this nation has been in for the last many decades. In other words, a permanent state of small wars, interventions, “peace-keeping” and other operations simmering along just below a boil – is the optimum business model for them.
Apropos of that, is one reason why the MIC lobbied so hard to disband the draft in this country back in the 1970s. Conscripts, who by definition most of the time don’t want to be there, cast a far-more-jaundiced eye upon military affairs than careerists and ticket-punchers. Views that they took with them back into civilian life when their terms of service ended.
This is not meant as an argument in favor of conscription, per se, but merely to note that as long as there is a draft and America’s sons are being called up, the war or whatever it is will be on the front burner and in the public eye, perhaps more than the profiteers would like. And of course, if there is no draft, then the sons of the rich, famous and politically-connected won’t have to risk themselves or their friends and family doing any of the dirty work.
On July 2, 2021 at 5:10 am, Arthur Sido said:
Has there been a war, apart from the Pacific theater in WW II, in the last 100 years that was even plausibly fought for American national interests?
On July 2, 2021 at 5:18 am, Joe Blow said:
My Son had to register for selective service this week in order to sign up for classes at the community college.
Asked the female administrative aid helping us when they were going to make women register so we can all be equal?
Oddly she never answered that question….
On July 2, 2021 at 7:24 am, Bradlley A Graham said:
The Bacha Bazi bug out.
On July 2, 2021 at 8:37 am, Frank Clarke said:
@Arthur Sido:
No. In fact, you can extend that timeline out to about 170 years.
The worst part is that most of the commenters here are Republicans (I will bet an arbitrarily large sum) and Republicans of late are just as willing as Democrats to get us involved in foreign conflicts. We who now see war for what it really is have few or no allies in the political realm, yet we continue to vote GOP in hopes that they won’t screw us nearly as thoroughly as would the Dems.
On July 2, 2021 at 8:59 am, The Old Freedom Fighter said:
“In modern warfare, there’s nothing sweet or fit in you dying. You will die like a dog & for no damn good reason.”
Ernest Hemingway.
Keep in mind, Hemingway’s observation was during the war that was supposed to end all wars.
Remember, every empire that ever ventured into that shithole collapsed shortly afterwards. It now looks like the FUSA will join the list shortly along with the former Soviet Union.
On July 2, 2021 at 9:55 am, Bill Buppert said:
@arthur sido
“Has there been a war, apart from the Pacific theater in WW II, in the last 100 years that was even plausibly fought for American national interests?”
Too little space to address why both Roosevelts were responsible for incentivizing Japanese aggression in the twentieth century, I will leave that to our resident historian, GB61, to address in detail if he wishes.
I am hard pressed to justify any use of American arms after February 1815 even though I owe a wry nod to the British for burning the US Capitol building to the ground on 24 August 1814; they had a sense of the future we didn’t at the time.
In addition to Butler’s slim volume and aiming at Afghanistan, I recommend two books:
“Why We Lost” by LTG Daniel Bolger [an acquaintance of mine]
“Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan” by Scott Horton
Per GB61’s observation, Afghanistan is not a country outside of Kabul but a polyglot collection of tribal enclaves.
Yep.
On July 2, 2021 at 11:54 am, Chris Mallory said:
I have long said “the last time American troops fought to defend American interests, their uniforms were gray and they lost the war”.
On July 2, 2021 at 12:48 pm, HouseWolf said:
At least the opium is safe.
On July 2, 2021 at 1:29 pm, scott s. said:
The strategy of “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” sounded good, but was unworkable. Paul is trying to get the AUMFs terminated, might succeed this time.
On July 2, 2021 at 4:49 pm, Gospace said:
We don’t have to fight them here if we don’t allow them to immigrate.
On July 2, 2021 at 5:11 pm, George 1 said:
Also, TPTB seem to be trying to start a military conflict with Russia. Why in the world would you want such a thing? All the neocons say that Putin will back down and that if he didn’t back down NATO could crush Russia anyway. Maybe.
I for one do not wish to test their theory. Russia is a nuclear power and they have established a military alliance with China. Putin is no white hat but I don’t see Russia attempting to start a war with NATO. I think TPTB are just angry that they won’t get a cut of the NS2 Pipeline.
On July 2, 2021 at 6:58 pm, Fred said:
But it’s the 4th of July and I’m free.
On July 3, 2021 at 12:25 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Bill Buppert
You’re on the right track vis-a-vis the Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin, but as students of history, we don’t get left off the hook as easily as trying to pin the conflict with Japan upon them. The Japanese period from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 forward into the 20th century and on to the Great Pacific War, which is what the Japanese call WWII in the Pacific, is not only fascinating, it is complex, even byzantine in its complexity and plot twists and not easily reducible to a simple set of conclusions. It is a daunting task for a westerner to understand Japan and the Japanese anyway, and that is in peacetime.
While it is certainly true enough that we Americans and the other world powers of that time, did plenty to hasten war with Japan, that nation was itself bitterly divided for literally years over what course of action Japan should take in its foreign policy and with regards to what it regarded as its sphere of influence in East Asia and the Pacific. Moderates and those in favor of a more aggressive policy – “hawks” I suppose we can call them – clashed regularly, and during the years 1900-1940, political assassinations and other acts of violence were fairly common.
Japan’s modernization from 1868 forward to the turn of the century was/is nothing short of remarkable: If there is another record of a formerly feudal, virtually medieval nation progressing so quickly into a modern technologically-advanced nation-state, I can’t think of it. Even modern China, 1990 to the present, does not match Japan’s achievement. It was and remains a stupendous achievement, of which the Japanese can be justly proud -for it remains a tribute to their industry, discipline and ways of life.
So, in a real sense, Japan’s coming out as an international power was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Particularly, Japan’s crushing naval victory at the Battle of Tsushima on May 27-28, 1905, when naval forces under the command of Admiral Heihachirō Togo – “Japan’s Nelson” – soundly defeated the Russian Imperial Fleet sent out to meet them.
Yet for all her success at technological modernization, Japan still retained a great deal of her feudal past in her customs, ways of life, traditions, and ideas about Japan’s place in the world and the country was still quite insular. Yet, paradoxically, she sought recognition for herself internationally and a place among the world’s great nations, alongside the western colonial powers. If they could have empires and overseas colonies, so could Japan – which is precisely the justification Japanese strategists and diplomats used to rationalize the interventions in Korea in 1890 and in Manchuria and elsewhere in China from the late 1920s onward.
Japan’s surging imperial ambitions, which ratcheted up during the peak of the Age of Empire for the West, were ill-timed in the sense that being late to the party, as it were, Japan found herself shut out of possessions in her sphere of influence by the British, Dutch, French, Spanish and Americans who’d gotten there first. When Spain lost the Spanish-American War and was broke to boot, the U.S. took over her colonies in the Pacific.
Resource scarcity and international markets for her goods were the other crucial issues for Japan. Japan’s newly-industrialized economy had to have export markets to survive and thrive, and she needed iron ore for steel, petroleum and coal for her energy needs, rubber, tin, and much else. A resource-poor nation, Japan either had to buy these things and import them, or subsist upon what meager domestic reserves she had. Of these vulnerabilities, Japanese political and military leaders were keenly aware.
There was undoubtedly a racial/ethnic component to the emerging conflict with her neighbors and the U.S. & western powers. During those now-distant times, of relatively primitive communications and time-consuming and expensive international travel, nations and peoples were far-more-isolated and insular than in today’s networked world.
Few Japanese had ever seen an American in person and up-close and the reverse was true of Americans & Europeans. Other than specialists of various kinds, diplomats, missionairies and a few military men, knowledge of Japanese culture by the West was nil, and the same applied in reverse to most Japanese. Perhaps inevitably, crude racial stereotypes and bigotry were common on all sides.
To these, we must add that the Japanese believed themselves to be a superior race, not just to the barbarians of the West, but to Japan’s neighbors in East Asia. Particularly, Korea and China suffered enormously under Japanese occupation for this reason. Korea had been militarily-occupied by Japan since 1890, and China since the 1920s.
Had Japan’s leaders been more-broadminded, they could have appealed to their shared identity as East Asians and united to force the Europeans out – but Japan squandered that by behaving with vicious cruelty and wanton violence in these places. Promptly making enemies of both.
The Japanese viewed the Emperor – Emperor Hirohito – as divine and a god in human form. The traditional Japanese code of Bushido, is actually fairly similar to the old code of chivalry once followed by European medieval knights of old, but the old ways of Bushido and the Samurai were, to an extent, corrupted and turned to the wrong ends during the Imperial era. To fail the emperor was a fate more-dishonorable than death.
The concept of face, of saving face, is also crucial to understanding the Japanese mindset, not just then, but now. It is a difficult concept to translate into English, but suffice it to say that it was a form of honor in which committing or even admitting error or mistakes required harsh discipline or self-punishments. Up to and including ritual suicide by disembowelment with a short sword, called sepukku, if called for.
Japanese society has been built, since ancient times, around a complex and interlocking network of mutual obligations, duties, customs and traditions that the Japanese obligate themselves to follow. It has worked well for most of her history, but it has occasionally gotten them into a bit of trouble, and during the imperial era was one of those times.
As relations with the West deteriorated over the years following WWI, these concepts of face and Bushido prevented Japan from turning back from the disastrous course it was set upon. To be sure, the U.S. and other western imperial powers have a great deal for which to answer in goading Japan into a war against her best interests, but the Japanese themselves also failed to attempt to change course until it was too late and the die was cast. This is perhaps the ultimate tragedy in the victory of the extremists and hardliners at home, over the moderates who sought a peaceful way out of Japan’s conflicts with the West.
And how ironic and strange it was to the Japanese and Americans alike, when to their utter shock and surprise they met face-to-face after the war for the first time, and discovered that they had much in common and could be friends. Japanese civilians had been taught by their government’s propaganda that the American GIs and Marines would kill-and-eat them, but were pleasantly surprised when the Americans smiled at them and gave them chocolate bars instead. The Americans, thanks to U.S. propaganda, expecting buck-toothed midgets with bad eyes, were likely wise surprised at the cultivation and sophistication of Japanese society and civilization.
On July 3, 2021 at 10:14 am, Bill Buppert said:
@GB61,
A splendid sketch of the incredible Japanese rise. One thing that has always baffled me is that during and after the conduct the Russo-Japanese, the Japanese were hailed and credited planet-wide with their incredibly humane treatment of surrendered prisoners and even gallant behavior toward defeated foes. We all know this changed in a generation. I don’t know what caused the sea change in martial behavior.
Ironically, the last Whig, Millard Fillmore may have been the root cause of American martial interface with Japan through his dispatch of ADM Perry to Nippon.
Roosevelt I approved the the 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement (recognizing Japan’s annexation of Korea) and the 1907 Root-Takahira Agreement (acknowledging Japan’s control of Manchuria) setting into train a future that would lead to the US and Japanese conflict in the Pacific.
Per Teddy and his machinations to make the world a worse place, a scintillating James Bradley interview:
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/121083
Well met, Geogiaboy61, as usual.
On July 3, 2021 at 10:33 am, Thomas Madere said:
Thank you Georgiaboy61 a most enjoyable read. I seems politicians here are on a path to create an Afghanistan West consisting of tribalism among blacks, whites, right, left, gay straight.
On July 3, 2021 at 4:33 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Thomas Madere
The oft-repeated mantra of the Cultural Marxists and their allies is that “Diversity is our strength,” but this is at best an unsupported assertion and at worst, a bald-faced lie. It is much closer to the truth, albeit politically-incorrect, to say that “Diversity + proximity = war,” as sites like WRSA have stated on their blog.
It is deeply-ingrained in human biology to prefer one’s own kind, to wish to be around them and among them in daily life, including family life. People of one’s own race, ethnicity, culture, religion, tribe, clan, whatever identifier is most-important to that individual.
Biologists even have a name for it, the “enmity-amity complex,” the competing drives of people on one hand to be curious about the new, novel, and unfamiliar, yet prefer the company of our own kind on the other.
Highly-diverse societies, ones in which various groups of widely-different people coexist in the same space, are prone to strife, conflict and oftentimes, warfare, in order to sort themselves along more nature and sustainable lines. Yugoslavia’s descent into civil war in the 1990s after the fall of communism is a prime example of this phenomenon in action.
The tribe or the clan – whatever term you wish to use – is the oldest and most-durable social unit on earth apart from the nuclear family itself. In some cultures/societies, such as the tribal areas of the Middle East, Africa and SW Asia, clan/tribe and family are synonymous with one another, for all intents and purposes. And in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the tribe which is the primary organizational unit of society, and not the government. If government exists at all, it is grafted onto the tribal relationships already in place… and if push comes to shove, it is the government and its laws which get ignored and not the tribes.
The globalist oligarchs want world government – that’s their end-game. They want to run the whole show. But before they can attain that goal, they have to break down/destroy existing the social structures in place which order society as it is in the present. This includes the whole notion of the nation-state as an organizing principle of society.
The United States, which once had such high social cohesion and internal unity, was a tough nut to crack, but the Cultural Marxists hit upon the notion of enforced (compulsory) diversity as one means of breaking down internal cohesion, societal unity, shared customs and traditions, a common language and so forth.
The watershed for this movement came with the 1964 Immigration Act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, which upended the heretofore standard immigration practices of the United States to preferentially-admit Europeans – in preference to would-be immigrants from other parts of the world. After Hart-Celler, immigrants from places vastly-dissimilar to the U.S. were given preference over those from places which had historic ties to the U.S. and its founding.
And the multiculturalists and diversity-crats have been remarkably successful in their efforts, as the diversity racket is now a multi-billion dollar a year business, and the U.S. looks nothing like what it did in 1950 or 1960.
Part of this endgame, too, is the fact that widely-diverse societies, such as pre-1990s Yugoslavia, can only be held together with a large and strong central government. In their case, Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980), the de facto dictator of that nation since WWII. In our case, the vast federal leviathan we now see in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. “The business of government is government – and business is good!”
And you are indeed correct that the powers-that-be are seeking to turn the U.S. into de facto a tribal society, but one in which people of European heritage (a.k.a. whites) enjoy few or none of the privileges of the other tribes. If this sounds like apartheid, it is – only this time, it is inverted from how it was in the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa.
It is a logical and moral fallacy of the highest order that today’s people of European ancestry are guilty of the crimes of their forbearers (if in fact those crimes were committed in the first place); there is no such thing as inherited guilt for someone else’s crime- yet here we are.
On July 5, 2021 at 7:54 pm, Randy said:
Afghanistan was Vietnam without C-rations and good music.