I ask myself this simple question whenever I watch a war film with US forces in the Middle East, Afghanistan or Iraq; what the bleeding fuck are we doing there? i do like watching war movies when we have actual bad guys like Nazis. But what did Afghanistan ever do to the US? Nothing? 'Nuff said. I'll respond in Medium tomorrow when I have more time to think. Peace, All
The real comedy of all this is that the democrat propagandists want us to believe that:
1. Their government got almost overthrown and “insurrection” by zero armed citizens.
2. Biden thinks armed citizens won’t be able to prevent tyrannical government when shit hits the fan because he’s got f-15s and nukes to use on his citizens.
3. Neither the Soviets nor the largest military spending of the USA has been able to win the Vietnam nor the 20 year Afghanistan shit show.
Small on the ground gorillas can beat massive military power when shit hits the fan.
Isn't American Imperialism and wars for Israel fun? How many are dead and injured? How many people have been uprooted and homeless? All so the industrial-military complex can still make a profit and Israel can have a wet dream about its greater Israel project!
Let me exploit this Afghanistan debacle to make my own point- Afghanistan and Vietnam are perfect examples which debunk the whole “your ar 15s will never stand against the military tanks”.
Neither the Soviets nor the largest military spending of the USA has been able to win the Vietnam nor the 20 year Afghanistan shit show. Small on the ground gorillas can beat massive military power when shit hits the fan.
Afghanistan is about the pipeline and lithium. It is the Bush Doctrine prerogative returning with a mighty force. Can you hear Kissinger chattering in the background?
I disagree. Afghanistan is a lousy place to park big, vulnerable, expensive immobile infrastructure such as a pipeline. Not only is Afghanistan full of warlords who can't be contained and who would be happy to shakedown pipeline operators, it's full of mountains, which sends both capex and opex through the roof (pumping petroleum uphill costs beaucoup $$).
If securing lithium were all that we wanted, we would have done a deal with the Taliban at the outset. After all, we are happy to work with the Saudis, and they don't actually sell that much crude for US markets (although they are the lynchpin of the petrodollar).
Hard to explain RAWA incident and the fact Osama was not even in Afghanistan. They already came to believe Taliban would never work out, and they had the PNAC plan they were working with from the beginning.
Agreed. Like pipelines, mining operations benefit from stability and don't care how oppressive or odious that the government providing that stability is to western sensibilities.
In other words, if mineral extraction is the end goal, it would be far easier to make a deal with the Taliban.
Funny how the media and US Generals go on tv and say "imposing a Federal structure on the tribal clan-loyal patchwork of Afghanistan is foolish", but yet.....THE TALIBAN are taking over EVERYWHERE! Funny! How come they can be de-facto universal in all provinces, but the US "coalition " is no where.
The Afghan papers which were published by nytimes couple years ago showed that none other than General Flynn had been speaking out about how no one knew what the fuck they were doing in Afghanistan over a decade ago. Maybe that’s why the deep state railroaded Flynn.
Flashback! RAWA told Bush administration that they knew where Osama was in Pakistan and could deliver him. The women's underground railroad was then destroyed and many women's lives in the process. Bush never did find Osama.
Remember that the Iraqi Communist Party was for US intervention in Iraq, a fact which the entire US left ignored. The US may be a particularly atrocious imperialist regime, but the Taliban are about as close to legit fascism as you can get in the world today. An emancipatory leftist position would expose both as two sides of the same coin, the coin being the modern dilemma of freedom. Only a strong internationalist socialist movement could stand up to both. Taking easy potshots at either the US government or the Taliban, though, is not a first step to building such a movement.
F*ck "internationalism." Governments should see to the needs of the people within their borders and not go about the world searching for dragons to slay. It's none of our business whether or not the Taliban is authoritarian or "close to legit fascism." If the Afghan people support it, which seems to be the case, then it its "legit," whatever your opinion of it is.
You are a Jacksonian. That was Andrew Jackson’s conception of the US government. Trump is a Jacksonian and his followers are the last but large vestige of that position. Your position was main stream prior to the First World War.
I am in total agreement with you.
Trump will die but Trumpism and will not die because it is common sense it is the Jacksonian position that states affectively the following: Government is to be minimalist and serve the purpose of supporting peoples freedom and quality of life. No foreign interventions ever! Foreign interventions are treasonous to the people. I believe this position will gain strength and find a proper leader - not an Ignoramus like trump.
Trump was a reaction to the stupidity of the left wing internationalist hypocrisy. Trump was stylistically rude and patently ignorant but his America first deal was a good thing. America has to stop intervening in the world it is a betrayal of the American people and devastating to the countries they intervene in.
The problem is that Trump didn't follow his own agenda, unless the fine print read something like: "ISRAEL FIRST! Saudi Arabia Second! and america can have whatever crumbs are left over, I guess..."
True statement but I loved watching it, he was so irksome to the elite he enraged them into a state of pure apoplexy. They’re a bunch of hypocritical pricks that deserve that.
I checked out your profile wow you’re reading a lot of substack stuff. Good!
I disagree. Regardless of whatever trump did, one has to acknowledge that he flipped the script in Washington to the point where he made the “DNC left” embrace neocons like Bush, Cheney, made them become the “censorship” party while the right has now started to become the “anti war” and “anti censorship” party. More trump supporters support pardons of Assange Snowden etc as compared to the “DNC left”. One of the major disappointments from trump chickening out.
Glenn Greenwald recently shared a Pew research poll how democrats now trust the fbi, cia etc and a lot more than republicans do. And democrats now have 76% trust in media while republicans only 10%.
The script has been flipped because of the reaction which trump brought in the brains of neocons and neolibs.
Populism isn’t dead, it’s more popular than ever in the other side now. There’s more in common between a pre-2015 bernie supporter and today’s “trumpist”.
You're making huge assumptions about me. I could more accurately be described as a left-libertarian. I believe all people are born with unalienable rights. Jackson was a slaver, a racist and an ethnic cleanser. I am not. What distinguishes me from a right-libertarian is that I believe in private property owned by individuals. I believe corporate charters granting "limited liability" are modern political man's biggest mistake.
There is a fairly extensive body of literature comparing the publicly traded corporation run according to its fiduciary duties with the behavior of a sociopath.
The fundamental problem lies in the separation of ownership from management.
Beyond that, limited liability allows investors to deny personal responsibility for how their assets are used. LL is also what gives investors the privilege of turning their assets over to a manager. They wouldn't dare do that if their entire net worth were at risk for the torts and debts of the corporation.
We must always remember that the royally chartered East India Company was the focus of much of the discontent.
The breaking of promises again and again made it even easier to give propaganda material to the taliban. First they were supposed to be out of Afghanistan last year. The military industrial complex conveniently concocted the “Russian bounty” hoax which warmongers like Liz Cheney used to prevent pulling out last year. Then the next promise of leaving by March this year got cancelled too.
Taliban easily used this to propagandize and hire more people.
I ask myself this simple question whenever I watch a war film with US forces in the Middle East, Afghanistan or Iraq; what the bleeding fuck are we doing there? i do like watching war movies when we have actual bad guys like Nazis. But what did Afghanistan ever do to the US? Nothing? 'Nuff said. I'll respond in Medium tomorrow when I have more time to think. Peace, All
Another great article Caitlin but for some reason you misspelled Afghanistan: Vietnam. There, fixed.
The real comedy of all this is that the democrat propagandists want us to believe that:
1. Their government got almost overthrown and “insurrection” by zero armed citizens.
2. Biden thinks armed citizens won’t be able to prevent tyrannical government when shit hits the fan because he’s got f-15s and nukes to use on his citizens.
3. Neither the Soviets nor the largest military spending of the USA has been able to win the Vietnam nor the 20 year Afghanistan shit show.
Small on the ground gorillas can beat massive military power when shit hits the fan.
Isn't American Imperialism and wars for Israel fun? How many are dead and injured? How many people have been uprooted and homeless? All so the industrial-military complex can still make a profit and Israel can have a wet dream about its greater Israel project!
Let me exploit this Afghanistan debacle to make my own point- Afghanistan and Vietnam are perfect examples which debunk the whole “your ar 15s will never stand against the military tanks”.
Neither the Soviets nor the largest military spending of the USA has been able to win the Vietnam nor the 20 year Afghanistan shit show. Small on the ground gorillas can beat massive military power when shit hits the fan.
Afghanistan is about the pipeline and lithium. It is the Bush Doctrine prerogative returning with a mighty force. Can you hear Kissinger chattering in the background?
I disagree. Afghanistan is a lousy place to park big, vulnerable, expensive immobile infrastructure such as a pipeline. Not only is Afghanistan full of warlords who can't be contained and who would be happy to shakedown pipeline operators, it's full of mountains, which sends both capex and opex through the roof (pumping petroleum uphill costs beaucoup $$).
If securing lithium were all that we wanted, we would have done a deal with the Taliban at the outset. After all, we are happy to work with the Saudis, and they don't actually sell that much crude for US markets (although they are the lynchpin of the petrodollar).
Remember, all the instability in Iraq never stopped Hillary from trying to sell it to all those CEOs as THE PLACE to do future business.
there is lithium and there is lithium. Some is easier to extract that than other.
https://www.sierranevadaally.org/2021/08/11/federal-judge-consolidates-lawsuits-plaintiffs-opposing-the-thacker-pass-lithium-mine/
watersheds are at risk. https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/tribes-seek-order-banning-digging-at-lithium-mine
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/why-lithium-americas-stock-just-jumped-10-25/ar-AANa04g?ocid=BingNewsSearch
Oh, OH. And after what he did to RAWA and endangering all those women's lives further. LMAO. POS. https://news.yahoo.com/bush-criticizes-afghanistan-withdrawal-fears-100731364.html
LMAO
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/politics/george-w-bush-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/08/10/afghanistan-papers-book-dick-cheney-attack/
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/afghanistan-has-only-one-hope-lithium-18372
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/did-9-11-attacks-halted-bushs-plan-of-invasion-in-afghanistan/
The lithium ambitions go back a ways. It was all the talk when 9/11 happened if you kept up with the stock market. http://www.truthinmedia.org/2013/AfghanWar.html
I have no idea what your Gish Gallop is on about, but I worked with Central Asian miners at the time of 9/11.
It wasn't on their radar. Or look at lithium prices at the time. Didn't budge from trend.
I was investing in H2 fuel cell companies, but all the talk was lithium would win out. By 2010, lithium was big talk.
I am well aware of our Saudi business dealings, did I say otherwise? Still all goes back to Bush Doctrine and their oil interests.
https://www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
I never said it was a good idea! LMAO. But there is a reason we have been there for decades and decades.
To be fair the demand for minerals like lithium has only just very recently started exploding because of electric cars and home storage batteries.
Hard to explain RAWA incident and the fact Osama was not even in Afghanistan. They already came to believe Taliban would never work out, and they had the PNAC plan they were working with from the beginning.
It is just another added incentive. See 2010 article above.
Agreed. Like pipelines, mining operations benefit from stability and don't care how oppressive or odious that the government providing that stability is to western sensibilities.
In other words, if mineral extraction is the end goal, it would be far easier to make a deal with the Taliban.
The GrayZone published this in April
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/16/biden-afghanistan-war-privatizing-contractors/
HRC and GW really care about the women. That is why the destroyed RAWA and the underground railroad for women.
Funny how the media and US Generals go on tv and say "imposing a Federal structure on the tribal clan-loyal patchwork of Afghanistan is foolish", but yet.....THE TALIBAN are taking over EVERYWHERE! Funny! How come they can be de-facto universal in all provinces, but the US "coalition " is no where.
The Afghan papers which were published by nytimes couple years ago showed that none other than General Flynn had been speaking out about how no one knew what the fuck they were doing in Afghanistan over a decade ago. Maybe that’s why the deep state railroaded Flynn.
Flashback! RAWA told Bush administration that they knew where Osama was in Pakistan and could deliver him. The women's underground railroad was then destroyed and many women's lives in the process. Bush never did find Osama.
Remember that the Iraqi Communist Party was for US intervention in Iraq, a fact which the entire US left ignored. The US may be a particularly atrocious imperialist regime, but the Taliban are about as close to legit fascism as you can get in the world today. An emancipatory leftist position would expose both as two sides of the same coin, the coin being the modern dilemma of freedom. Only a strong internationalist socialist movement could stand up to both. Taking easy potshots at either the US government or the Taliban, though, is not a first step to building such a movement.
F*ck "internationalism." Governments should see to the needs of the people within their borders and not go about the world searching for dragons to slay. It's none of our business whether or not the Taliban is authoritarian or "close to legit fascism." If the Afghan people support it, which seems to be the case, then it its "legit," whatever your opinion of it is.
You are a Jacksonian. That was Andrew Jackson’s conception of the US government. Trump is a Jacksonian and his followers are the last but large vestige of that position. Your position was main stream prior to the First World War.
I am in total agreement with you.
Trump will die but Trumpism and will not die because it is common sense it is the Jacksonian position that states affectively the following: Government is to be minimalist and serve the purpose of supporting peoples freedom and quality of life. No foreign interventions ever! Foreign interventions are treasonous to the people. I believe this position will gain strength and find a proper leader - not an Ignoramus like trump.
Trump was a reaction to the stupidity of the left wing internationalist hypocrisy. Trump was stylistically rude and patently ignorant but his America first deal was a good thing. America has to stop intervening in the world it is a betrayal of the American people and devastating to the countries they intervene in.
I think Caitlin is a proto-Trumpist.
The problem is that Trump didn't follow his own agenda, unless the fine print read something like: "ISRAEL FIRST! Saudi Arabia Second! and america can have whatever crumbs are left over, I guess..."
Trump is a complete nincompoop. His sales pitch was spot on, his actions were impulsive sporadic out of control
Worse than a nincompoop, Trump and his raging incompetence did more to discredit populism than anything the establishment could have done.
True statement but I loved watching it, he was so irksome to the elite he enraged them into a state of pure apoplexy. They’re a bunch of hypocritical pricks that deserve that.
I checked out your profile wow you’re reading a lot of substack stuff. Good!
I disagree. Regardless of whatever trump did, one has to acknowledge that he flipped the script in Washington to the point where he made the “DNC left” embrace neocons like Bush, Cheney, made them become the “censorship” party while the right has now started to become the “anti war” and “anti censorship” party. More trump supporters support pardons of Assange Snowden etc as compared to the “DNC left”. One of the major disappointments from trump chickening out.
Glenn Greenwald recently shared a Pew research poll how democrats now trust the fbi, cia etc and a lot more than republicans do. And democrats now have 76% trust in media while republicans only 10%.
The script has been flipped because of the reaction which trump brought in the brains of neocons and neolibs.
Populism isn’t dead, it’s more popular than ever in the other side now. There’s more in common between a pre-2015 bernie supporter and today’s “trumpist”.
You're making huge assumptions about me. I could more accurately be described as a left-libertarian. I believe all people are born with unalienable rights. Jackson was a slaver, a racist and an ethnic cleanser. I am not. What distinguishes me from a right-libertarian is that I believe in private property owned by individuals. I believe corporate charters granting "limited liability" are modern political man's biggest mistake.
There is a fairly extensive body of literature comparing the publicly traded corporation run according to its fiduciary duties with the behavior of a sociopath.
The fundamental problem lies in the separation of ownership from management.
Beyond that, limited liability allows investors to deny personal responsibility for how their assets are used. LL is also what gives investors the privilege of turning their assets over to a manager. They wouldn't dare do that if their entire net worth were at risk for the torts and debts of the corporation.
We must always remember that the royally chartered East India Company was the focus of much of the discontent.
What does the Iraqi Communist Party have to do with Afghanistan?
Moreover, the Iraqi Communist Party wasn't acting out of a sense of principle, except that the Baathist regime was an obstacle to their seizing power.
SPAM
The breaking of promises again and again made it even easier to give propaganda material to the taliban. First they were supposed to be out of Afghanistan last year. The military industrial complex conveniently concocted the “Russian bounty” hoax which warmongers like Liz Cheney used to prevent pulling out last year. Then the next promise of leaving by March this year got cancelled too.
Taliban easily used this to propagandize and hire more people.
betcha taxpayer money is leaking into the mansions of Erik Prince. Betcha!