Quoting Yarvin from 2007 on Pakistan “The Islamists are the natural winners because, as today’s events proved, they are the baddest motherfuckers between the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. These neighbors make the Russian mob look like the Catholic Church. They are to the Crips as the Crips are to the Salvation Army. To MS-13 as MS-13 is to the Moose Lodge. We’re talking about some stone cold thug killaz, and the smart money has to be on them.”
"Indeed President Biden is far more in charge of it than President Trump—which is not much at all—and personally (I think) overrode the decision points that would have kept US forces in Afghanistan. Credit to the old man—credit where credit is due. But it’s the exception that proves the rule."
Fun Fact tho: the old man in question was actually Trump. He forged an agreement to get out in a way that would have been less calamatous. It involved a May withdrawal and an interim government (which wouldn't have lasted necessarily but big deal).
The current regime - which controls Biden, not the other way around (Trump never got control of it) tore up that agreement, shifted the US withdrawal to September, but then seems to have expected the Taliban to uphold an agreement it, itself, had violated. Credit where credit is due.
I'm not here to sing Trump's praises. Most of what you've said about him in previous posts are not things I would disagree with. But fanning Biden's balls here (when just weeks ago he and his entourage were singing a quite different tune than they did last night, btw. Glenn Greenwald covered this well if you don't independently know) is just off.
Is there any truth to the statements, at least from the perspective of the USG/Military - which doesn't mean at all that either is justified - that Afghanistan was a 20-year sandbox for the military to play in to prevent them from getting too stale, and/or that increased destabilization in the region is not necessarily a bad thing?
Also, is there any real prestige loss for the US here? i.e. What is true about the "outcome" of the Afghanistan campaign now as a 20-year blunder that wasn't also true back when it was a 10-year blunder (or even before it was even launched), and that everyone didn't predict? Maybe the one surprising thing is that we didn't stretch it into a 30-year blunder (TBD there)?
The original German of homeland security would rather be 'Heimatschutz' (I never heard the term 'Heimatsicherheit' as a german native).
The problem I see with your isolationism strategy is your old realization that "Souvereigny is conserved". This is true within a nation when the old regime collapses and it's true in international relationships. If the US would give up their claim on world domination, the weak states would not really become independent, but other powers would fill in the blank of souvereigny - most likely China and Russia. And then?
We'll see how uppity the Taliban get when 50th US President, and CFO of the United Space Federation Malia Ann Obama uses her solar dampening array to reduce the daylight hours and solar intensity in Afghanistan by 90%.
Carlyle with his excruciatingly difficult language was right about everything, now what? Where do we go from here? Oh yes, to the next book chapter to the next blog post. Fing Great! There are some companies that are no longer functional even with great CEOs. There is no hocus pocus only loneliness and sadness.
Cities and towns in Texas and Florida are forcibly devil-masking schoolchildren despite state-governors' half-hearted resistance. Government notices about vax-paper requirements are now posted on NYC restaurant doors. Masks are again required for entering banks; fat masked female customers aggressively assist enforcement by masked security-guards. Afghanistan is trivial. There is no America, no West. Everything is gone.
What more is there to say? More news by the day of people wracked by fear as the world turns on their head. The jaws clamp down but will they bite? Terrible to see so many people put in that situation. Anyone associated with the old government is fleeing the country or hiding their trail while the Taliban declares a general amnesty and asks they appear...who knows where events will lead. Only uncertainty.
Not a commentary-dense post, but really, what more is there to say?
Still, rightists celebrating this loss may be projecting their own hopes about the weakness of the GAE onto a completely foreign organization which provokes a different response. America abroad and America at home, I fear, are clean different things.
Did you know that when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the late 19th century he acted as his own Foreign Secretary and completely bypassed the actual Foreign Office? What a concept!
But then his son-in-law became Prime Minister and created the Entente Cordiale with France which isolated Germany and...
Oh well, why not have a World War. Just for the fun of it.
One possibly illuminating trend to come from what is, otherwise an abysmally predictable outcome, is the manner in which the Taliban "supposedly" is consolidating power. Having the great pleasure of reading Froude's "Caesar: A Sketch" - courtesy of course to our venerable Semitic prophet - the Taliban comes remarkably close, in rhetoric and theory of course, to embodying the sorts of values which Julius consolidated his regime upon: extending clemency to the deposed regime's sycophants, showing the utter desacralisation of the prior regime's symbols and narrative, and overcoming (at least for the time being,) the deeply embedded tribal nature of Afghan politics. While I always found Yarvin's usage of Caesar to be well-articulated and instructive, it had that manner of distance which makes implementation to-day extremely unlikely. If there is one thing to take away from this whole situation, beyond the fact that Joseph R. Brezhnev was incapable of even exerting the most paltry of authority over the oligarchy, it ought to be that the Taliban is providing a latter-day troubleshooting of how Mister Yarvin's regime change might be inaugurated in a 21st century paradigm. Pay extra attention to how it develops, or the lack thereof gentlemen.
The gang rapes
will continue
until the gender studies
funding improves.
One million "afghan" "refugees" coming to a red state near you!
Quoting Yarvin from 2007 on Pakistan “The Islamists are the natural winners because, as today’s events proved, they are the baddest motherfuckers between the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. These neighbors make the Russian mob look like the Catholic Church. They are to the Crips as the Crips are to the Salvation Army. To MS-13 as MS-13 is to the Moose Lodge. We’re talking about some stone cold thug killaz, and the smart money has to be on them.”
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/12/benazir-bhutto-mob-hit-in-pakistan/
"Indeed President Biden is far more in charge of it than President Trump—which is not much at all—and personally (I think) overrode the decision points that would have kept US forces in Afghanistan. Credit to the old man—credit where credit is due. But it’s the exception that proves the rule."
Fun Fact tho: the old man in question was actually Trump. He forged an agreement to get out in a way that would have been less calamatous. It involved a May withdrawal and an interim government (which wouldn't have lasted necessarily but big deal).
The current regime - which controls Biden, not the other way around (Trump never got control of it) tore up that agreement, shifted the US withdrawal to September, but then seems to have expected the Taliban to uphold an agreement it, itself, had violated. Credit where credit is due.
I'm not here to sing Trump's praises. Most of what you've said about him in previous posts are not things I would disagree with. But fanning Biden's balls here (when just weeks ago he and his entourage were singing a quite different tune than they did last night, btw. Glenn Greenwald covered this well if you don't independently know) is just off.
Is there any truth to the statements, at least from the perspective of the USG/Military - which doesn't mean at all that either is justified - that Afghanistan was a 20-year sandbox for the military to play in to prevent them from getting too stale, and/or that increased destabilization in the region is not necessarily a bad thing?
Also, is there any real prestige loss for the US here? i.e. What is true about the "outcome" of the Afghanistan campaign now as a 20-year blunder that wasn't also true back when it was a 10-year blunder (or even before it was even launched), and that everyone didn't predict? Maybe the one surprising thing is that we didn't stretch it into a 30-year blunder (TBD there)?
The original German of homeland security would rather be 'Heimatschutz' (I never heard the term 'Heimatsicherheit' as a german native).
The problem I see with your isolationism strategy is your old realization that "Souvereigny is conserved". This is true within a nation when the old regime collapses and it's true in international relationships. If the US would give up their claim on world domination, the weak states would not really become independent, but other powers would fill in the blank of souvereigny - most likely China and Russia. And then?
We'll see how uppity the Taliban get when 50th US President, and CFO of the United Space Federation Malia Ann Obama uses her solar dampening array to reduce the daylight hours and solar intensity in Afghanistan by 90%.
Carlyle with his excruciatingly difficult language was right about everything, now what? Where do we go from here? Oh yes, to the next book chapter to the next blog post. Fing Great! There are some companies that are no longer functional even with great CEOs. There is no hocus pocus only loneliness and sadness.
Cities and towns in Texas and Florida are forcibly devil-masking schoolchildren despite state-governors' half-hearted resistance. Government notices about vax-paper requirements are now posted on NYC restaurant doors. Masks are again required for entering banks; fat masked female customers aggressively assist enforcement by masked security-guards. Afghanistan is trivial. There is no America, no West. Everything is gone.
What more is there to say? More news by the day of people wracked by fear as the world turns on their head. The jaws clamp down but will they bite? Terrible to see so many people put in that situation. Anyone associated with the old government is fleeing the country or hiding their trail while the Taliban declares a general amnesty and asks they appear...who knows where events will lead. Only uncertainty.
Not a commentary-dense post, but really, what more is there to say?
Still, rightists celebrating this loss may be projecting their own hopes about the weakness of the GAE onto a completely foreign organization which provokes a different response. America abroad and America at home, I fear, are clean different things.
Did you know that when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the late 19th century he acted as his own Foreign Secretary and completely bypassed the actual Foreign Office? What a concept!
But then his son-in-law became Prime Minister and created the Entente Cordiale with France which isolated Germany and...
Oh well, why not have a World War. Just for the fun of it.
How does this man get elected?
narrated for you https://youtu.be/sp6uEhOptX4
One possibly illuminating trend to come from what is, otherwise an abysmally predictable outcome, is the manner in which the Taliban "supposedly" is consolidating power. Having the great pleasure of reading Froude's "Caesar: A Sketch" - courtesy of course to our venerable Semitic prophet - the Taliban comes remarkably close, in rhetoric and theory of course, to embodying the sorts of values which Julius consolidated his regime upon: extending clemency to the deposed regime's sycophants, showing the utter desacralisation of the prior regime's symbols and narrative, and overcoming (at least for the time being,) the deeply embedded tribal nature of Afghan politics. While I always found Yarvin's usage of Caesar to be well-articulated and instructive, it had that manner of distance which makes implementation to-day extremely unlikely. If there is one thing to take away from this whole situation, beyond the fact that Joseph R. Brezhnev was incapable of even exerting the most paltry of authority over the oligarchy, it ought to be that the Taliban is providing a latter-day troubleshooting of how Mister Yarvin's regime change might be inaugurated in a 21st century paradigm. Pay extra attention to how it develops, or the lack thereof gentlemen.
I'm just going to leave this right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dve_Nqa3bNk