LG is hurt. Not angry. Just disappointed.
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Notice how in the media that there is no discussion about how lying America into the “unnecessary and unjust” (Jimmy Carter) war in Iraq lost the war in Afghanistan.
That is the most telling part of this article is the admissions of Bush’s under Secretary of Defense, Richard Armitage, that Bush “neglected” the war in Afghanistan, which attacked America on 9/11 and whose people initially welcomed Americans as saviors from the Taliban, in favor of the war in Iraq that did not attack us on 9/11 and whose people were not as happy to see American forces.
But even in Armitage’s admission that the Afghan war was lost because of Iraq, his comment that Iraq sucking up all the resources needed to succeed in Afghanistan and therefore in regard to the Afghan war, “I think I’m one of those who are responsible during the Bush administration for not having turned around and gotten us out of there.”
That is the only mention of how Iraq lost the Afghan war is not that we should never have invaded Iraq but that rather we should have invaded Iraq but first, in early 2003, pulled out of Afghanistan first.
Now does anyone old enough to remember 9/11 believe that was ever possible, to pull out of Afghanistan and invade Iraq. OF COURSE NOT. In fact Tony Blair as a precondition to agreeing to support Bush’s Iraq War was to first invade Afghanistan.
NOBODY, except for maybe the media, would have supported for the war in Iraq, which again did not attack on 9/11, and supported pulling out of Afghanistan.
So well for the first time I see the media printing someone saying that the Iraq War lost the Afghan war, the answer that we should have pulled out of Afghanistan before going into Iraq, that everyone who remembers the time and the nation that really did attack America on 9/11, knows could never have happened.
That is the media continues, so as to hide its own lying and responsibility for losing the Afghan war by helping to start a new war based on lies in Iraq.
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And “At war” status, which is useful for certain promotions. Tame wars are still wars, for star-collecting generals.
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The USA was doing nothing in Afghanistan but standing between a barrel of gasoline and a bonfire and lusting to step away. Biden’s move there took guts. Get out and let the inevitable explosion take place.
Tons of analysis about the politics and optics of Biden’s move and belly aching about how the press is milking it. But the image of President Biden is starting to gel and it seems to be one of ‘fuck all that’ and do what’s right. I have a gut feeling at the end of this, in a month or two, the pull out ceases to be cast as a failure and more of one that needed to be done and was handled as well as it could be by a man that was willing to do it.
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And you get to train your troops with live fire on a relatively safe environment, my nephew served there and he claims that Afghans are lousy shots.
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And like getting infrastructure built, it’s popular. Once you get past the media, this is what people want. And, with a bit of luck, they will be glad they got it.
The GOP and their mascot Trump will be crowing credit for this as soon as everyone is home safely.
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Jesus Christ on a Donkey this shit was already hashed out over the fiasco that was Viet Nam and the consensus was to never go to war based on lies ever again. But the entirety of the Bush administration did it anyway even without approval of the UN Security Council and the fucker who made his chops in the Nam as the guy who tried to cover up the My Lai massacre, Colin Powell, sold what was left of his rotten soul as the chief enabler. Men and women like Pat Tillman who had enlisted to go after the perps of 9-11 were transferred into the invasion of a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with al Queda, 9-11 or WMD and began speaking out about it. Tillman was killed by “friendly fire” when he was sent back to Afghanistan. I was one of many, many Nam vets who had mental breakdowns when Dim Son and his henchmen invaded Iraq on what we knew were lies. All that death and carnage of Viet Nam was swept away in an instant as Rumsfeld got to go after the city of Baghdad with every 2,000# cruise missile in the inventory as well as B-52 and other fast movers committed to “Shock and Awe”. We were told to be proud of the massive bombardment of that once beautiful middle eastern city but to be appalled by the suicide bombers who were using the few weapons at their disposal to counter the foreign invasion of their country. Now we’re going to gnash our teeth and rend our garments over the failed invasions and occupations of countries when we had already learned not to do just that. The mind reels that even this article doesn’t mention that we went through this very process after Viet Nam as if this is the first war we have had to withdraw from with the inevitable chaos of the evacuation.
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The major story that will run throughout the oligarch media in about two to three weeks:
“Good thing the media did its job and so closely scrutinized the administration’s initial failures during the evacuation, or they would never have corrected their mistakes and eventually succeeded in failing to hold onto Vietna… errr, Afghanistan…”
/s ← (here it is…)
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Someone should remind these “Generals” that they don’t fight their wars they fight America’s wars. In order for that to go down the way the American people want the people elect a civilian boss to keep the Military Brass in step with who they fight for. No reason to talk to them about policy or mission or the rights and wrongs of a war. That’s above a 5 Stars pay grade and their preview.
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He’s a major league lying asshole so chock full of hubris he may explode. God willing of course.
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Rumsfeld’s stand was,“I don’t want Afghanistan. There are no good targets in Afghanistan. I want Iraq”. So Tony fucking Blair had to make the deal with the devil to only support the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq if we first went after bin Laden. The leaders of the free world making such war mongering deals with each other shows how far we have to evolve as a species.
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As the Wall Street Journal reports on Wednesday, Prince continues to offer his wartime services to those in Afghanistan—for a price. According to the WSJ , Prince has said he is “offering people seats on a chartered plane out of Kabul for $6,500 per person.” This money also promises to get you to the airport and on the plane, though an extra cost will be applied if you need to travel door to door from home. Now, who has access to the money, and probably more importantly, who has access to Erik Prince’s offer, is the story we will need to follow as the days and weeks continue.
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There was never a truthful reason to go to war in Iraq. Hussein was NEVER a partner with Al Qaida. The truth is the New York and Washington media had a hard-on for going to war in Iraq. So we went.
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Over 90,000 evacked as of this morning. And no loss of American life getting the job done.
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No Need for more troops our noble Afghan allies can handle it after 20 years and trillion dollars they are
G2G
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Wow. An actual story on Afghanistan. Thank you, Josh Kovensky.
And well done.
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A perfect epitaph for everything that has gone on in Afghanistan since the mission stopped being rout Bin Laden.
I sure wish more of the fathers and mothers of this whole caper were as introspective as David Miller was here. Perhaps he let it slip out?
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I disagree with anyone who says we should not have invaded Afghanistan. I also am torn by any discussion about “when” we should have left Afghanistan as it was in my view not only a necessary war, but a war that but for a failure of institutions, especially the American media, and a lying incompetence and corruption of a president and his administration, well not creating a first world country, would have not have ended in the Taliban taking back power.
“Never act alone”, Robert McNamara from “Fog of War” about mistakes made in regard to the Vietnam War. That if you can’t get others who share your values to go along with you, as we did in Afghanistan but not in Iraq, you are almost certainly wrong.
The first Paul Krugman article I ever read was about why Europeans opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq whereas Americans supported it. Krugman answer was, “the media”. In his article Krugman pointed out how his own paper the NYT would not allow any foreign policy or security expert to write against the war. Noting that the NYT was not alone but rather the entire American media, MSNBC for example cancelled its top rated program at the time because its host, Phil Donahue, opposed the Iraq War. The NYT, CNN, WAPO, all the networks, mocked or trivialized everyone person and comment be it Ted Kennedy to Pat Buchanan that was in opposition to the war. Krugman himself was only allowed by the NYT to write his column because he could be dismissed as a “left wing economist” with little foreign policy experience.
But to the Afghan war, the fact is, as an article a few days ago makes clear, we will one day again be forced into a position where we will need to “nation build”. That is the issue is not should the military be used to “nation build”, but rather how to succeed at nation building when, as 9/11 proved, was necessary.
The “Dr. Strangelove characters” Bush let lose were because he needed such types to support his crazy and unnecessary Iraq War.
That is we did not lose the Afghan war because it was the wrong war or because it called upon the military to nation build as it had to do in several nations after WW2, but because of how the Afghan war was managed in the first several years.
It is my own belief, that had America managed the first years of the Afghan war competently and honestly, we would have left Afghanistan years ago in much better condition than we are leaving it now. Furthermore, the reason we are not getting an honest assessment of the war and how we lost it, by pulling most of what was needed to win out to invade Iraq, is because of the media’s own culpability in the lies that got America to invade Iraq.
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He needs to make up for the lose of revenue now that his mercenaries are no longer needed in Afghanistan.
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This is an unusual circumstance. The current President of the United States is knowledgeable about Afghanistan, knows what happened to get us to this point, and was right about strategy when most of the so-called experts were wrong. Therefore he has more power than the Pentagon and foreign policy establishment, who would prefer never to accept responsibility.
I’ll even give Trump some credit, if only for knowing that the occupation of Afghanistan had lost all public support.
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