Scooby's note:
I got this as a comment in another post. It was off the subject but reflects on the new faces of terrorism. So, it deserves a 'blog spot".😀
It is a very somber September 11 today. 20 years ago the biggest threat to our nation came from international terror. Now we face a much greater domestic terror threat, from extremists, fake news, misinformation, racism, propaganda, denied voting rights, womens rights, and radicalized nationalism. This has cost us 650k dead, the Jan 6th insurrection, leaving 5 dead police officers, and we 80 million people who refuse to get vaccinated which could lead to several hundred thousand more dead. We have chosen the wise course to leave many of our foreign entanglements such as Afghanistan to start focusing on domestic threats. The threat is now from within and is more dangerous than anything we have faced. Just as we called the time after 9/11 the global war on terror which we won, we now must realize that we could be entering a war on domestic terror which threatens our democracy. As Bush said 20 years ago, "they attacked us for our freedom", now we have allowed or own freedom to attack us, how ironic.
17 comments:
"Just as we called the time after 9/11 the global war on terror which we won..."
Not even close. It isn't over. You don't win a war by quitting and running away. Wait a year or two for al Qaeda and ISIS to get firmly reestablished in Afghanistan and then see who "won."
AQ/ISIS in Afghanistan will do the same thing as ISIS did in Syria/Iraq in 2011. Running away like cowards and demonstrating a willingness to abandon your citizens is not how one defeats an enemy. AQ/ISIS will be back and we will be out of position to do anything meaningful in response.
Meanwhile, back at home, I learned that the VP apparently thinks I (vaccinated) need to be protected from the unvaccinated. So now I'm wondering why I bothered getting vaccinated. Are these people really the "adults"? They undermine their own credibility nearly every time they make a decision or speak. One can only imagine the giggles heard at ISIS leadership meetings.
Patriotism is unconditional, like love. You seem to admire ISIS.
What do you suggest this administration do to subdue ISIS?
"Patriotism is unconditional, like love. You seem to admire ISIS.
What do you suggest this administration do to subdue ISIS?
9/13/2021 1:55 PM"
Fair question, one thing we could have stayed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Would that subdue ISIS? Who knows, but it was certainly an option. Biden could have easily done this. Of course staying could have made things worse as well.
By the way how is patriotism or even love unconditional? They could be but it depends on the individual. I can imagine a case where someone says they are patriotic but with conditions on what the nation can do or not do. As for love, come on there are whole songs on this topic, "I will do any thing for love (but I won't do that)".
Hi Scooby
Are you equating patriotism with not being enamored with poor national leadership? I suspect that you are not trying to make that equivalency, but to be clear - my approval of leadership is conditional, based on demonstrated competence.
Second, I loathe ISIS and its ilk, incrementally more than I loathe cowards who abandon their citizens in hostile territory and then get angry with their citizens at home over second order issues like vaccine hesitancy. Only an insecure person rants (or virtue signals) at those s/he governs.
Third, we abandoned Afghanistan, which implies that we abandoned the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan, and in a manner that offended our allies and undermined our international relationships. This will only embolden the extremists abroad. There is nothing that can be done about that fact. Maybe the sons and daughters of those who spent the past two decades fighting in Afghanistan will be sent to clean up the mess (again, parallels with Iraq and Syria), but only time will tell.
It is easy to criticize anything/anyobe when you are sitting comfortably in your living room.
Who is abondonning American citizens in Afghanistan? Those who stayed include a large number of Afghan-born US citizens who chose to stay.
Again, how would you have proceeded to have NO ONE left behind if you were the administration?
Is anything else causing you to discredit Biden?
I'm unsure about patriotism being unconditional. A country has to do certain things to earn the loyalty of its citizenry. As long as those actions remain in place that loyalty can be unwavering.
We have held to a tradition of "No man ( or woman ) left behind." Our armed forces have fought and died in efforts to save a fellow warrior. Our national leadership just abandoned uncounted Americans and allies in a remarkably poorly planned withdrawal. Our State department then refused to allow individually-organized rescue flights to leave for safer lands.
How can I be proud of a country that does such things? Who could demand unswerving loyalty to a government that cares more about whether I wear a facemask than whether a young woman who gave children their first real schooling will now face rape and possible murder?
Restore the core principals that currently missing. Then we can discuss restored loyalty and by that, patriotism.
This lost sense of affiliation does not mean that ISSIS/Talliban/Al Quaeda has gained a fan-boy. They are barbaric organizations that should have been exterminated as punishment for their crimes against humanity. That we allowed these groups to continue to exist is another failing that needs correction.
@3:45pm wrote “ Third, we abandoned Afghanistan, which implies that we abandoned the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan, and in a manner that offended our allies and undermined our international relationships.”
False, false, false. We didn’t abandon Afghanistan. We supported them for 20 years. Our US troops fought and bled and died fighting for their freedoms for 20 years. We trained them and gave them the military equipment to vigorously fight for their freedom, but in the end they weren’t willing to fight and bleed for their own freedoms. I ask you this: Why should we have continued to send Americans to fight and bleed and die for the freedoms of a people who showed that they weren’t willing to fight and bleed for their own freedoms?
As for “abandoning the fight against terrorists”, no we haven’t. We don’t need to send troops to occupy every country in the world that has terrorist activity to the tune of $220 billion per year per country in order to fight terrorism. We have other effective means of fighting terrorism, including the use of drones, intelligence networks, and cooperation with local forces and governments.
-Doug
"False, false, false. We didn’t abandon Afghanistan. We supported them for 20 years. Our US troops fought and bled and died fighting for their freedoms for 20 years. We trained them and gave them the military equipment to vigorously fight for their freedom, but in the end they weren’t willing to fight and bleed for their own freedoms. "
It is a tad bit more complicated than that. We never actually trained them or even supported them. Most of the US people in Afghanistan where contractors. They got paid big buck to go into places like Iraq and Afghanistan to supposedly train, build infrastructure, schools, nation build that kind of thing. These contractors where things like Black water, Bechtel, Halliburton, and endless other sleaze bag, operations. That money was mostly stolen. What kept the place going was the US military., I say we do bare some responsibility in that we never forced our contractors to their jobs, because (1) there was little competition for these jobs only a handful of corporations could do it so no matter how bad they did the the same groups would get the contracts. (2) The media never cared, (3) They are far away places that could not be examined very well. (4) After 20 years a whole lot of people made very good money so there was never an incentive to stop this. You had military guys go there for 5-8 years, get out and join some contractor for 300k a year to do nothing. It is unfair to the Afghans to say we did all this stuff for them when in fact we never did those things. We built large structures for contractors to live the high life, do little work and make huge profits. It was the same problem you are paid a fixed amount of money to do something, you need to spend a portion of the money to do that job, or you could just take it all and not do the job. In a free market you get fired, but Afghanistan and Iraq are not free markets.
If you do not believe such corruption could go on for 20 years, look no further than what Bechtel did in Los Almaos for 10 years. They made lots of money but never added anything to institute. They claimed they would save money but a year after they came into the place was so broke they had to fire people. This when on year after year, and was in the US with plenty of people saying what was gong on. In a place like Antofagasta it was way worse, with no one even looking. The place feel apart in a a few weeks for a reason. The Afgans where never actually trained to use this equipment, large portions of the equipment was never even set up or worked. The infrastructure for the Afgan military was never made or never functioned.
The idea that we built up an Afgan army, police force, or other infrastructure was never true. So in some ways we did abandon the Afgans. At the same time Afghanistan was a outstanding success if you where a contractor or one these companies, they made billions and billions in profits. There goal was to make money, not win a war or build a nation. They have made great money so it all worked out for them. In the same way Bechtel was very successful in Los Alamos. They made very good money for no investment at al, for 10 years.
Bechtel, Halliburton, Blackhawk and other sleazy corporations were certainly big winners in Afghanistan. Come to think of it many of those same sleazy corporations make huge profits for ruining the National Labs.
"Blackhawk"
I think you mean Blackwater. Although they come across is really sleazy they did do a reasonable job at what they where paid to do. From what I can tell they hired pretty competent ex-military types. They also did all sorts of other stuff like the Nisour Square massacre where they killed a bunch of civilians. It is likely they did a lot more killings than that since they did not have the same constraints that the US military did and did not have to have press go with them. So who knows how much weird stuff went down with them. They always came across as mecernary types. They paid pretty well from what I know.
10:40, yes, you are correct I conflated “blackhawk” (the helicopter) with, “blackwater” (the mercenary contractor). My mistake.
9/14/2021 5:35 PM
For Afghanistan, it was Fluor at 3.1 Billion (current triad partner) not Bechtel. Bechtel was Iraq. Still having LANS PTSD.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/federal-contracting/bidens-afghan-exit-alarms-contractors-who-outnumber-u-s-troops
9/17/2021 1:11 AM
Actually I am pretty sure that over the 20 years that Bechtel and some of its subsidiaries did have some contracts in Afghanistan. They may not have been there in the end but it is almost certain that they played some role. There is only so many of these big contractors that do this work and most got in on the action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The point was that people in LLNL and LANL can in some way understand why we failed in Afghanistan and in some ways Iraq. These big for-profit contractors simply do not deliver on their job promises and can stay in these positions for 10 years or more even if they do a bad job. The idea of blaming the Afghan people for the failure is not exactly accurate because they never got the training or resorces that is being claimed.
9/17/2021 10:15 AM
Please elaborate on what "promises" for-profit contractors made in taking contracts in Iraq or Afghanistan. Quotes would be good.
Please elaborate on what "promises" for-profit contractors made in taking contracts in Iraq or Afghanistan. Quotes would be good.
9/17/2021 6:57 PM
Do I have to go though all the articles, documentaries, personal accounts, whistleblowers, books, news reports. There are thousands of these, did you ever watch any news in the last 20 years?, and read any newspapers? These "quotes and links have also been posted on the LLNL and LANL blog countless times since 2007. Sigh. Suppose I do all this again than nextyear someone will post again, and you will say, "show me link or a quote" and this starts all over again because you have no memory of anything.
Instead I will provide you some evidence that even surely you are ware of. There is this place called Afghanistan, we where there for 20 years spending up a trillion dollars, with large portion of that going to contractors to do among other things train a military to use high tech weapons. After we announced we where leaving and mostly left, this supposedly large well armed and well trained army collapsed in weeks. Some say they did not have any training and did not know how to use the equipment much, much of the equipment did not work or was never there in the first place.
How does one explain this
Some possibilities.
(1) You could say the Afgan army simply sucked so bad that they lost in weeks to a bunch of guys in pickup truns and AKs
(2) They where in fact never trained, the equipment was never maintained, large parts never showed up, and no one ever checked this or the news reports on this where ignored.
Ok, so even without having me go though the reams of articles, books and interviews on this, with just the information given above can you entertain the very real possibility that the "for profit" contractors did not keep their promises probably because they could never do what they claim or they could make more profit by no doing what they promised to do? If you happen to work at LANL you will recognize that contractors often do not do what they promise to do and can fail for 10 or more years before they are called out on it.
Ok fine, I have no quotes there is no data whatso over. It is all the Afgans fault. I concede your point, you win.
9/18/2021 1:40 PM
Lots of words, lots of anger, all opinion, no facts.
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