Seraphim Hanisch
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Tucker Carlson delivered a scathing and brutally honest assessment of the amazing repeat of the Vietnam loss in 1975, as Taliban forces now were poised to move into the Kabul.
He was absolutely correct, as we are now seeing.
At the time of this writing, these were the latest updates:
The U.S. embassy finished its evacuation and lowered the American flag as officials moved operations to the Kabul airport, two sources familiar with the situation told Fox News.
The government and aid organizations are scrambling to get a slew of citizens – including diplomats, dual nationals, aid workers and others – out of the country.
France similarly moved operations from its long-standing embassy to the airport as it attempted to move citizens out of Afghanistan, with the temporary destination of Abu Dhabi.
The sources also indicated that officials expect the Taliban to occupy the presidential palace, raise their flag and declare the emirate this evening.
There are other very significant updates in this stream and we wish to show a couple of them:
Afghan security forces have turned over Bagram air base to the Taliban, district chief Darwaish Raufi confirmed to the Associated Press.
The former U.S. base also serves as a prison, which held around 5,000 inmates from both the Taliban and Islamic State.
Meanwhile, Afghan leaders have created a coordination council to meet with the Taliban and manage the transfer of the power “to prevent chaos and reduce the suffering of the people.”
So now, the Taliban have a nice shiny new airbase.
And this, from two hours before, at 1:30pm on August 15th, 2021, New York time:
Afghan President Ghani has fled the country, Fox News has confirmed.
“That’s it. It’s over,” a U.S. official said.
TOLO News first reported Ghani’s departure.
And indeed, it is. The American “”heads” made a truly pathetic attempt to blame the Afghan government for their “failure” to fight off the Taliban oppressors, all the while trying to replay the line that American foreign policy wonks have shoveled out for decades: If WE win it is a victory for the United States, and if we LOSE, it is someone else’s fault for not fighting to protect all the PROGRESS we have given these people…”
Blah, blah, blah.
I have two recent posts about this. Each gives its own slightly different point of view but I think they are actually both valid and you may see yet a third, equally valid point here. This may seem duplicitous and complicated, but it really isn’t; they simply reflect points of view taken by people who have different perpectives on the Afghanistan war and occupation.
This is possible because the foreign policy debacles of the United States are themselves complicated: For one reason, Americans like to believe that their government and military forces always do the right thing for the USA. While there is certainly a lot of dissent to this, by and large American people love their fighting forces, as well they should, and we are loath to undercut them when they are sent off to war somewhere, no matter how ridiculous the cause actually is. This is good old, “my country, right or wrong, my country,” and thank God, most of us still have this attitude. We love our nation and despite its mistakes, it is our beloved homeland.
However, it is increasinly difficult to support the kind of deadly nonsense the powerful have created.
With the assumption in place that the September 11, 2001 attacks were indeed carried out by Al-Qaeda (heavy asterisk, but we must start somewhere), the logical move was to go after the known training bases for this group, which were in Afghanistan. However, to the discredit of George W. Bush, the President at that time, and to his military cabinet, the Americans entered this fray with a completely absurd notion of Islamic people and how they view things. President Bush’s gravest mistake was to assume that “true Muslims” were rather soft and secular, and that the Islamists that took down the towers were an aberration. The truth, at least for these people, was and is the opposite.
An accompanying error lies in the assumption that the Middle East and Near East have the same political concepts of nations and national borders as do Western nations. They don’t. Many of the people in this part of the world are tribal. Seats of power such as we understand them in European, American and Russian / Chinese scenarios are of no consequence, and certainly the concept of loyalty to a far away group of people – any people – is anathema to any tribal faction. Tribal unity is focused on the upkeep of the tribe – and alliances made or broken are conducted because doing so supports that tribe. In a way, the tribe could be considered something like a “micro nation” in this sense, because nation-states do the same thing, but a tribe is far more flexible and agile in terms of deciding its alliances.
Those alliances are also NEVER allegiances. A given tribe may call you “brother” and yet, the truth is, you are only a brother as long as the tribe gets what it wants from you. For some reason, the Western wonks refuse to see this, perhaps because, to be entirely honest, the American manipulators see the tribes exactly the same way: useful to American “ends” but also highly disposable.
The fourth error is that the US foreign policy heads ignored the fact that any occupied nation develops resentment for its occupiers. In the case of Muslim lands, the loyalty to fellow Muslims is also higher than it would ever be to any infidel. To that end, look at this further, really stupid (yes, that is my opinion and it probably ought to be yours too!) statement given just a short time ago at the time of this writing:
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin laid the blame for the collapse of the Afghan forces on a lack of “willpower” and “leadership” during an all House member call, a member of Congress told Fox News.
The call, which occurred around 9 a.m. Sunday morning, lasted half an hour and included Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley.
Austin said that the Afghan army had “all the advantages,” including three times as many troops and twenty years of training, but that “you can’t buy willpower and can’t buy leadership.” He added that he was “beyond disappointed” that the Afghan military offered “zero resistance” in most places.
Members of Congress raised concerns over the equipment and weapons the U.S. provided to the Afghan military, which members now fear are in Taliban hands. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was reportedly “livid” over the situation.
Blinken indicated that the U.S. has prepared for all scenarios, including the one playing out in the country right now.
Lloyd Austin here reveals his amazing ineptitude. Whether the people in this country are Taliban or “republic” aligned, at the end of the day, these people are bound by common bonds far more than they would ever have been to the Americans or NATO. One might not be surprised if the Afghan president gets welcomed back home quietly in the future should he decide to return home. In all likelihood, though, Ashraf Ghani will likely take up residence in Switzerland or some other cushy place to write books about his tenure in power and make some money, while not taking any other action about the fate of his homeland. Let’s see what happens. However, to have expected Afghan people to fight against one another at the level the US envisioned was absurd.
Finally, (at least at this time), we have this update, just in at a little before 2:00pm New York time:
Ali Hashem علي هاشم on Twitter: “مقاتلون من طالبان خلف طاولة مكتب الرئيس الافغاني الهارب اشرف غني. حركة طالبان تعود إلى كابل لتحكم افغانستان للمرة الثانية في تاريخها، المرة الأولى بعد فترة من انسحاب الاتحاد السوفياتي والثانية قبل استكمال الولايات المتحدة الاميركية انسحابها pic.twitter.com/w5oNDGNoQS / Twitter”
مقاتلون من طالبان خلف طاولة مكتب الرئيس الافغاني الهارب اشرف غني. حركة طالبان تعود إلى كابل لتحكم افغانستان للمرة الثانية في تاريخها، المرة الأولى بعد فترة من انسحاب الاتحاد السوفياتي والثانية قبل استكمال الولايات المتحدة الاميركية انسحابها pic.twitter.com/w5oNDGNoQS
A Taliban official says the group will soon declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in the capital, Kabul.
That was the name of the country under the Taliban government ousted by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.
The group posted to Twitter an image of leaders sitting at President Ashraf Ghani’s desk.
The translation of the Arabic text in the tweet of the now social-media conscious Taliban says this:
“Taliban fighters behind the desk of fugitive Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban return to Kabul to rule Afghanistan for the second time in its history, the first time after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union and the second before the United States of America completed its withdrawal.”
The American foreign policy establishment has no one to blame but itself. They betrayed the American people over and over and over with this war: First in their failed worldview, second in their deploying soldiers to this place where they were never wanted, not by anyone, third by staying there for twenty years for no good reason, and fourth by this humiliation.
We lost a lot of strength with the removal of President Trump from office. While this troop drawdown would have been very difficult with him in power, it would not be the train wreck it is now, at least not with very worried Americans on a tarmac in Kabul. And, based on the rhetoric of the People In Charge now, we had better hope they don’t come up with any ideas for new wars. America will be sure to lose again under their direction.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
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This idiot Needs to be blocked, doesn’t the Duran have a policy about nuisance ponzy scheme ads???
It’s not just one idiot. It’s an entire boiler room full of them.
Pictures of a dying empire. And they do it hollywood-style with their stupidity on public display and empty suits blabbering nonsense.
Let’s see how they prop up the walking corpse president. This js going to be cruelly funny.
I could not agree more!
The most absurd part is when they used automatic gunfire for ‘crowd control’.
“The crowd was out of control,” the official said, adding that “the firing was only done to defuse the chaos.”
“I know, let’s calm everybody rushing to board our planes down by firing above the crowd and if that doesn’t work, fire into it. Surely, they’ll never mistake the gunfire for approaching Taliban.”
That, my friends is the perfect metaphor for ‘defusing the chaos of Afghanistan’ and why America failed miserably.
Since the very beginnings of our walking upright, stupid is as stupid does.
Sometimes life imitates art.
“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame”
From “Charlie Wilson’s war”.
Taliban members also fired into the air earlier today to disperse the throngs at tarmac gates.
“In a scathing criticism of the Biden administration, former Swedish Prime Minister and Moderate Party leader Carl Bildt has called the Taliban* takeover a catastrophe that will affect US foreign and security policy for many years to come, as well as undermine global confidence in Washington.”
When your staunchest European lackeys turn on you, you know the end is nigh for your unipolar fantasies.
Haha ‘moderate party’. A moderate party of fanatical russophobes, interesting use of moderate there. Sort of like the German Greens.
“At the time of writing, it will probably be said that the Soviet Union once handled its exodus from Afghanistan better than the United States did”, Bildt, a staunch Russia hawk, concluded grudgingly.
Swedes say the funniest things 😉
Sort of like British tears of empires lost.
Ya, Sven……we is big woke folk but we does remember we once had der Vikings und it big lie dey all went to Rusland und left us in Runtland.
He is shitting in his pants. There’s regular gunfights in stockholm these days, and not with air rifles.
If the afghans that came to sweden thanks to the queen of darkness in berlin turn pissed on the west who betrayed their country, it will not exactly be Bullerbü jn sverige.
The Fall of Saigon Act II. I saw the first one too.
So did my father. I cannot help but be maddened by the Great Betrayal of our fighting forces at the hands of Biden and Bush and Obama… Only Trump was different.
Revolution time?
So, you like being lied to over Vietnam (and who knows where else), with Gulf of Tonkin, with ‘China will take over Vietnam, then the world’, with Westmoreland’s phony kill sheets and with Vietnam today pos. having produced the smartphone in your hand?
OK, we know where you’re coming from now. Thanks.
In a way Biden and his crash test dummy administration are geniuses of stupidity.
They would have let him get away with just about anything. Except of course a replay of the great american trauma.
So that’s what he did.
When even CNN doesn’t paint the pig any more, he’s gone. But how do you explain to the demented geriatric what’s shaking ? That takes another genius.
When they finally roll him out, it’s gonna be cruel.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the catastrophe in Afghanistan, dead at 89
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/29/zbig-m29.html
Afghanistan was at least fortunate in that its lack of forest cover didn’t temp the use of agent orange.