Tag: Afghanistan

Government

I Need To Stop Reading

I’ve come to the realization that I need to stop reading. And watching podcasts. It makes me angry and probably isn’t good for my blood pressure. I’ll give you an example. I started out my week by reading the book “The only plane in the sky“. It’s an oral history of the 9/11 attacks. Minute by minute recounts of the events of that day by everyone from survivors, police, fire, and government officials. Excellent book that at times was hard to read. Going through the transcripts of peoples last phone calls to their loved ones is heart wrenching. It rekindled the anger we all felt after that day. I’d forgotten how big and devastating the attack was. Hard to believe that was more than twenty years ago now.

After finishing the book, a long-form interview popped up from Shawn Ryan. He interviews Sarah Adams who is an ex CIA targeting officer who specialized in Libya and Pakistan. This is her second interview with Shawn. It’s basically a masterclass in how we managed the end of GWOT and what the Islamic armies are up to now. Want to be angry at your government? Go watch this.

In a nutshell our government is corrupt, incompetent, and so driven by politics we’ve dumped everything we did since 9/11 into the wastebasket. Al Qaida is now more powerful than they were pre-9/11. And the best part? We’re funding them. Yep, we fund the Taliban to the tune of $40-87 million dollars… A WEEK. Yes you read that right. A plane with pallets of cash land every 7-10 days. Ostensibly it’s for humanitarian work, but it’s all siphoned off by the Taliban, to terror leaders, by ISIS, and the bin Laden group. We’re funding everyone we’ve been at war with. Isn’t that special?

It’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Two decades of fighting and untold loss, blood spilled, and trillions spent – for what? We’ve now rearmed the Taliban, funded them, and Afghanistan is once again the terror training capital of the world. In a previous post I described how we developed our biometric monitoring systems over there during the long GWOT. Massive databases containing biometric data on virtually everyone in the country. The Taliban now has those systems and in the last six months, with the help of the Chinese and Iranians, have gotten it all back up and running. Every poor soul the US paid or was a member of the Afghan army, the Taliban now knows exactly who they are. Tens upon tens of thousands of people have already been “disappeared”. It’s simply disgusting what we’ve done.

Here’s an even better one – the United States Government pays a monthly stipend to the families of Taliban members who were killed… fighting against us! It’s hard to believe it’s real. It makes your head spin it’s so outrageous.

I don’t understand how anyone involved can think this is ok? Where are the whistleblowers at the State Department? The CIA, the FBI, DOD, there isn’t anyone who raises their hand and says this is not right? Where are our elected officials whose job is providing oversight of all this? Isn’t there anyone willing to put party politics aside and be an American first? Never mind, don’t answer that. There’s a reason the deep state exists and exerts the power it does.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have served during the GWOT and now see this. What a punch to the gut. What a waste of blood, lives, and trillions of dollars.

So that’s it. Until my blood pressure returns to normal, no more reading unless it’s weight loss or gardening books. And definitely no more podcasts. Or Twitter. I was much happier with my head in the sand. At this point I wish I could take the blue pill and go back to blissful ignorance.

Lists

I Have Questions
  • It looks like vaccine acquired immunity is fading somewhat, combined with a Delta variant that the vaccine appears to be less effective against. Vaccinated folks can clearly get and transmit Delta. So what then is the point of a vaccine passport to participate in daily life if I can still infect others?
  • Either the intelligence services completely screwed up the analysis of Afghanistan and gave bad advice to the White House, or they gave correct advice and the administration ignored it. Which is it?
  • Since we know it’s not the president… who actually is crafting the White House’s agenda, messaging, and plans?
  • What exactly is this “over the horizon capability” word salad nonsense the president keeps bringing up? Have we invented some super secret new technology nobody knows about?
  • We’ve evacuated 83,000 people from Kabul. That’s like 2 or 3 interpreters for every single soldier ever stationed there. Was every single at risk person who ever helped the US, living in Kabul? What about the thousands upon thousands of folks who helped that are scattered throughout the rest of the country? How many of these people now get to settle in the US?
  • Why doesn’t the national news ever cover Antifa? It’s an actual terrorist group operating in multiple cities across the country, growing rapidly and spreading destruction and violence almost daily. Why the radio silence from the media?
  • I eat croutons like potato chips. What strange power do they have over me that I’m unable to contain myself?
  • Why are people incapable of swallowing more than one pill at a time, yet they happily swallow giant pieces of steak or sandwiches?
  • If continued masks and mask mandates are what’s needed to defeat the virus, why are we seeing a spike with the Delta variant? I thought the masks protected me from the virus? Why can’t someone show me a graph of any region in the country that implemented a mask mandate and had a corresponding drop in cases? That would be pretty compelling evidence wouldn’t it?
  • We’ve spent/allocated $4.6 Trillion on the Covid response. The US House just passed a $3.5 Trillion budget, plus another $1.5 Trillion on an “infrastructure” plan. We’re approaching $10 Trillion in spending in just the last year or so. We have to borrow all of that. Can we really continue printing money forever without consequence?
  • How come I can’t hit a golf ball? I’m good at every other sport I play. Why am I afflicted with this strange golf dyslexia?
  • Why will nobody in the military, CIA, DIA, or state department be held accountable for Afghanistan? How come nobody in Washington ever loses their job?
  • Why is the press, the last bastion of free speech, completely unconcerned with Twitter, Facebook, and Google’s massive censorship campaigns?
  • How is it that British and Australian actors can have perfect American accents, but American actors sound ridiculous when they try to mimic their accents?
  • How is it possible the Taliban maintains their verified account on Twitter, but the former president of the United States is too dangerous to be allowed to tweet?
  • Why has nobody told Uncle Joe that he’s the only person in the world that pronounces it “TaliYe-bon”?
  • Why isn’t our national press covering the authoritarian nightmare that’s happening with Australia’s covid lockdowns? Perhaps they wish we were doing the same here?
  • And finally, how is it possible Britney Spears has been deemed as not capable of making her own decisions and under conservatorship for 13 years, yet has managed to record and perform all that time? Does that not seem suspicious? #FreeBrittney!

Government, Politics

Put It On My Credit Card

This weekend we were treated to the complete collapse of a country. Not ours, yet, but Afghanistan. The human cost will be horrible, but entirely predictable. Unless of course you’re a high level military officer, work for one of the intelligence services, department of state, congress, etc… Our elites, the ones who know better than us, have screwed the pooch on this for literally decades. And this coming week will be an epic circle jerk of finger pointing, blaming every past administration, other agencies, and frantic scrambling to ensure they’re not last one standing when the music stops. Or not. Nobody is ever held to account in government-world. Don’t worry, the Durham report will be released any day now!

The president is on vacation and may or may not address the nation in the next few days. The press secretary also left for vacation yesterday. Kamala won’t take any questions. Afghan citizens are literally falling to their death, desperately clinging to U.S. military planes as they try to evacuate the last remaining embassy personnel. This is a bad week for the Biden administration. When added to the southern border disaster, rising gas prices, inflation, skyrocketing crime rates, Antifa running unchecked through the streets, and the failed Covid plan… this week may be what cost the dems the house and/or senate in ’22. Which will change nothing because there’s virtually no difference between the two parties once you scrape away all the verbal diarrhea spouted at the TV cameras and Twitter.

Everything about how this ended in Afghanistan is awful. There are two main takeaways from all this. First, there should be no further evidence needed that there is such a thing as the deep state. From the military brass to defense contractors to think tanks to intelligence services to K street lobbyists and consultants to congress… they exist to line their own pockets and keep the status quo. The bad orange man had at least one thing right – it is a swamp. And the swamp creatures will do anything to defend their piece of the pie. We ridicule the corruption of third world countries. Do you really think our government is any better?

The second takeaway is closely related to the first. We spent $2.26 trillion on the now failed forced democracy experiment in Afghanistan, according to the Costs of War project. Billions upon billions in squandered reconstruction projects. Billions upon billions in military equipment that now lays in the hands of the Taliban. And here’s the best part – we had to borrow all that money so we could give it away. We’ve already paid $530 billion in just interest payments on that borrowed money. Every time you hear someone caterwauling about the U.S. needing to live up to our leadership role and dole out more aid, support, and assistance to some other country – WE HAVE TO FREAKING BORROW IT SO WE CAN GIVE IT TO SOMEONE ELSE. The leaderships of Russia, China, and the middle east must laugh at us.

Meanwhile, our intrepid government leaders are busy fighting over another 1, 6, 10 trillion (?? I’ve lost count of how much it’s up to now) in “infrastructure spending”. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s all for shovel ready projects. Good paying union jobs! Taxes of every possible type are going to go up. Because, you know, we all need to pay our fair share.

It’s a helpless feeling. Like back when the mob ruled various cities. Pay protection or your shop gets burned down. Pay bribes if you want to get a building permit. You were powerless to do anything about it because the police and officials were all on the take. Speak out too loudly and you’d end up in a shallow grave somewhere in the desert. While the little guy suffered and simply tried to make an honest living, the elites and the mob bosses went to the front of the line and lived the good life. I suppose it’s always been that way. Sometimes it’s just more blatant than other times.

Watching the debacle of this Afghanistan withdrawal and reading the reactions on the social medias, I feel the level of frustration, discord, anger, and distrust in this country is starting to reach dangerous levels. But then again, maybe not. After all, there’s plenty of videos from the Chinese owned TikTok to distract us. Hmm, I think I sounded a little pessimistic in todays missive. Time to unplug and go do something outside. I suggest you do the same.