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Geostrategic developments, fall of Kabul

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The weekend marked a shock-wave event, the rapid fall of Kabul that was not supposed to happen.

Twenty years of nation-building attempt failures, a poorly managed withdrawal, abandonment of 14 – 86,000 supportive allies, logistically crippled government forces and likely bribing local commanders led to a one-week collapse. This primarily speaks to strategic and operational incompetence of the US decision-makers as a class as a better managed withdrawal was clearly feasible and a soft landing end state was arguably possible. Trillions wasted, with blood also on the line.

Predictably, mass murders, return to utter unbridled barbarism, hosting of terrorism and likely a surge in opium-based drugs esp. Heroin. More subtly, Afghanistan counts as in the direction of Khorasan in Islamist readings of apocalyptic hadiths so we can expect a mahdist push; only utter shocking defeat will stop that, a horrific shock comparable to that of August 1945. Meanwhile, China next door likely is trying to use money to influence the situation.

I find this commentary by a veteran useful:

I offer this main point: the government of Afghanistan lost the “Mandate of Heaven.” The people of Afghanistan had twenty years to experience Afghan government and decide that it was not worth fighting for. The stories are legion: the first president, Karzai, constantly releasing captured terrorist leaders as he dealt directly with the Taliban. President Karzai’s brother being the top gangster of Kandahar. The Afghan Air Force heroin-smuggling ring. The Thursday Man Love sessions for all the pedophiles of the Afghan police and military. The “ghost” soldiers and ever-stolen supplies of the Afghan Army. The massive vote fraud of the Afghan presidential elections. The Afghan judges who gave no justice without a bribe. In sum, the Afghan government had the façade of a constitutional system — but inside its halls, it was a collection of thieves and robbers getting as much as could be gotten while the money was flowing.

There has apparently never been a cohesive, lawful Afghanistan, and that creates a culture of lawless oligarchy, even when trappings of democracy are imposed. I note, though that we need to account for differential performance, as the Pushtun behind the Taliban are not an outright majority. The operational answer points to logistical starvation [no beans and bullets to fight with, after taking 60,000 dead in trying to defend a failing state], a lockdown on technical support that grounded the air force. All of which had to be known to the US decision makers. Their failure to do right by 86,000 people as listed who put their life on the line shows the fundamental untrustworthiness and want of honour of the American decision makers. And this is the second time within fifty years.

I don’t buy the oh this was not expected. Contrast the open borders policy with this breach of honour betrayal of people who put their lives on the line in a now failed attempt to build a better future.

A bruised reed indeed.

The vet continues:

[G]roups, communities, and nations usually get the government they deserve.  A virtuous people is usually ruled fairly well — an anarchic people either collapses into anarchy or is ruled strictly.  I think this was President Bush’s major conceptual strategic mistake in the post-9-11 wars.  He believed that every nation longed for freedom and was capable of democratic self-government.  As we have learned the hard way, our American constitutional government was not just ordered into existence by the Founders; it is the heritage of untold generations of Germanic tribal self-government, the monastic stewarding of the Roman legacy of education, the Anglo-Saxon traditions of consultative government, the compromise of the Magna Carta, the residue of the English Civil Wars and Bill of Rights, and the self-governing experience of the Pilgrims and the colonial founders in the New World interacting with the French and Scottish Enlightenment.

This was not Afghanistan’s experience — the many peoples of Afghanistan lacked the human capital to democratically govern themselves.  The vast majority of Afghans could not read, write, or numerate — parts of Afghan Army basic training were simply teaching soldiers to recognize numbers.  The few Afghan elites were ethnically divided and mutually suspicious.  Often there was no tradition of peaceful self-governance — of the clans living in a valley, often there would be a low-level war among them over resources.  Simply put, the Afghans were not truly capable of self-governing democracy in the Jeffersonian sense.  Therefore, they could not create a government worth dying for.

Sadly, we Americans ourselves also lacked the moral clarity and realism to even try to make the conditions to help build a moral government.  All too often the phrase “it’s an Afghan matter” was used as a rationale to excuse some immoral action of our Afghan government partners.  We saw the evil actions of the Afghan government officials but did nothing about it — in great contrast to the colonial heyday, when British officials would say, “It may be your tradition to burn widows alive, but it is my tradition to hang those who do so.”  We simply shrugged our shoulders and said, “It’s the culture” as we tolerated the evil that destroyed the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

This of course speaks to the cultural buttresses I have often highlighted in discussing an alternative political spectrum:

This leads to explaining what we see as a slide to lawless oligarchy and a coup:

The lessons for the threatening disintegration of cultural buttresses in the US and elsewhere are obvious.

Let’s look at the geostrategic picture:

Afghanistan is an obvious move for China’s Silk Road push to the oil-rich ME and a land bridge to Pakistan, but brings up a contest with Iran and further alienation of India and the belt of states on China’s near-coastal rim from Singapore to Japan and South Korea.

The American geostrategic defeat, retreat and humiliation, combined with a largely continental mindset, points to the post Vietnam malaise as a direct parallel. This also further alienates the dissatisfied hinterland people from the patently incompetent establishment/deep state apostates.

The 4th generation conflict in the US ratcheted up and its inner cohesiveness just got another crack. I still believe the cultural marxists, their red guard cannon fodder and media promoters will lose, but the geostrategic butcher’s bill is going to be high. END

PS: What might a soft landing have looked like? If the Jordanian model of a stabilising adequately backed military had been followed and perhaps a lawful monarchy with a core western presence present to take the two generations to build capacity, something might have been possible. However the depth of corruption may have undermined even that.

U/D: Here is a State Dept archive on mail-in ballots:

Similarly, the highly relevant McFaul colour revolution model and SOCOM insurgency escalator:

F/N Aug 19: A General’s assessment:

U/D Aug 21, the map seen on 9-11, with the 100 year global conquest vision also expressed in the Muslim Brotherhood The Project Document captured by Swiss Financial Police:

Comments
This OP died a few days ago but a recent article from the British Telegraph (hard to access) summarizes the suicide of the West.
At least four mega-trends are conspiring to break the West’s grip on the world: the emergence of non-democratic capitalism; the misuse of technology; the net zero revolution; and America’s and Europe’s ideological decadence. It used to be believed that the entire world would converge voluntarily on a Western model. We would wear the same clothes, drive the same cars and eat at McDonald’s. Capitalism would lead to the universal adoption of democracy, human rights and secularism, buttressed by institutions such as the UN: this Hegelian version of history was as deluded as the Marxist nonsense it replaced. It was based on a series of intellectual errors, not least a denial of the West’s particular Jewish and Christian history, the latter recounted so brilliantly in Tom Holland’s Dominion, and a narcissistic, arrogant, ahistorical downplaying of other traditions. A corollary to this was the erroneous belief that adopting capitalism – a technology to deliver economic growth – had to mean also adopting individual liberty: one couldn’t pick and choose, because both emerged together in England and the Netherlands. Terrifyingly for libertarian conservatives such as myself, this was wrong. The Western model can be disaggregated, as the Chinese have proved. Capitalism can easily coexist with tyranny; free markets don’t imply free speech. This means that the 21st century will be defined by a range of clashing civilisational models. There will be China, of course, and India, but also Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and Nigeria as regional powers. Thanks to capitalism, they will become rich; but they won’t be Western. Some may be democracies, but in a very different sense to what we understand by it: India, for example, may well become far more explicitly Hindu nationalist. The next big change is that the West is no longer putting economic growth first, while the emerging empires are still desperate to get rich. America and Europe’s embrace of net zero is largely driven by altruism: its proponents believe that poorer countries will suffer greater harm from climate change than wealthier nations. Yet many of these same nations are planning to make the most of the West’s green turn to reinforce their own rise. China’s real agenda is to pick up new, clean technologies developed at great cost by the West on the cheap, allowing it to leap-frog America and Europe without crippling its own economy. Net zero will also unleash geopolitical chaos: how will Putin respond to the collapse in demand for gas? Could he push Nato and an unprepared, semi-pacifist EU beyond destruction? The Gulf States are also likely to implode, creating a series of additional Afghanistan-like scenarios for America. Last but not least, by bolstering the importance of the rare earth metals such as lithium and cobalt required for new technologies, net zero will give China a dramatic boost. It has cleverly been seeking to corner the supply of these key 21st resources and is hoping to grab Afghanistan’s plentiful supplies. Technology, and its misuse, represents the third great paradigm shift. In the West, social media in particular has had a catastrophic, corrosive impact on attention spans, the quality of discourse and, paradoxically, the ability to think freely. Bullying and hate are the norm, squeezing out reason, kindness and support for free speech. It has dramatically exacerbated tribalism and extremism. At the same time, states now have more tools than ever before at their disposal to control their populations. Privacy, the best protection of the dissident, is dying. Everything we buy, read and every trip we make can be logged. For China, this is a dream come true. When all cars are electric and networked, the state could simply shut down the vehicles of opponents. When all currency is digital, dictators can track, control, tax and confiscate as they please. Combine all of that with massive progress in facial recognition and AI, and the outcome will be nightmarish. Authoritarian states will become ever harder to overthrow, further tipping the balance of power in their favour. What of the West? Will we embrace a Chinese-style social credit system in the guise of fighting obesity or saving the planet, and in effect converge with our authoritarian rivals? All of this takes us to the fourth mega-trend driving the West’s decline: we are turning our backs on the values that made us great. Support for capitalism is dwindling at the very time when every other society has embraced it, and many would rather see mob rule than the rule of law. In the US, the young are less likely to support democratic values than the old. There is growing scepticism about reason and the pursuit of truth. Universities are going back to their obscurantist roots, putting identity politics before knowledge. Many believe meritocracy has gone too far. We are even seeing a resurgence of neo-Lysenkoism, whereby politics trumps science. The woke ideology is the greatest threat to freedom since communism, and it is gaining ground by the day, fragmenting and dividing society, and pitting group against group better to undermine the West. As Afghanistan burns, the rest of the world is looking on, and laughing at our stupidity
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/25/four-mega-trends-condemn-west-irreversible-decline/jerry
August 28, 2021
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F/N: Leaked data on evacuees from Kabul: https://twitter.com/alexbward/status/1430133660162924544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Alex Ward @alexbward · 9h NEW: Leaked State cable with evacuation numbers (as of Aug 23 at 1500 ET): Total manifested since midnight Kabul AUG 23: 483 AMCITS, 6,425 Afghans natls, 8 3rd country/unknown. Total = 6,916 Total manifested since op began: 4,407 AMCITS, 21,533 Afghans, 642 TCNs. Total = 26,582 Alex Ward @alexbward · 9h Other items in cable: • 128 planned flights in the next 48 hours • Approx 13,000 people inside HKIA • Denmark won’t temp host US SIVs • Cyprus will host evacuees in the “low hundreds” for 30-60 days • Netherlands to take 2k people for 60 days
KFkairosfocus
August 24, 2021
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Blame Obama https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/dont-blame-trump-afghanistans-collapse-blame-barack-obamajerry
August 22, 2021
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KF, generic do-gooddery isn't going to solve anything. Not when you have the screeching Western academics throwing out emotions at the same time. You continue to fail to make any kind of meaningful evaluation of the importance of the concepts of subjectivity and emotions.mohammadnursyamsu
August 22, 2021
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MNY:
I don’t think you really can distinguish Islam from radical Islam, because it is such a generic difference. It is just more severe. You can distinguish it when they are in a group of declared radicals, like the Taliban. But any muslim can come to be a radical.
That is an issue, radicalisation is very possible and it does not need supplementation of Q. However, that points to the responsibilities of moderates, to find and teach the counter-balances to radicalism. The alternative to that in the end is nuclear fire. KF PS: I suggest, starting with the self-evident, built in first duties of responsible reason, recognising that we are morally governed and that sound conscience is key. Mothers throwing their babies across a wire has a telling force, that is the last desperation of a mother in a fire, save my baby.kairosfocus
August 22, 2021
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I don't think you really can distinguish Islam from radical Islam, because it is such a generic difference. It is just more severe. You can distinguish it when they are in a group of declared radicals, like the Taliban. But any muslim can come to be a radical. There isn't much of any specific teaching outside of the Quran, like hadiths, by which a muslim becomes radical, but rather from the ordinary Quran, and then given the circumstances, a muslim could well decide to become a radical. In nazi ideology, there is a very specific teaching you can attack. Namely the teaching that the personal character of people can be established as a matter of fact of biology. That teaching is a logical error. And with that teaching destroyed, then nazism would certainly have become much more benign. It would lose the coldhearted calculating aspect it has, in asserting personal character as scientific fact. But you can hardly attack the teaching to fight against spiritual corruption, on which the radical Islam is based. It's a good thing to combat spiritual corruption. And so I am back to the ridiculous reality that subjectivity is generally discarded in Western academics. No way, no how, can you throw out people's emotions, and then things would somehow still turn out ok. It's not going to turn out ok, it's going to turn out very badly.mohammadnursyamsu
August 22, 2021
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PS: I clip Col Austin Bay:
Understand that I think that since 9/11, America's essential mission in Afghanistan has been what I call Guard Duty Writ Large. I first used that description in 2012. To protect U.S. national security at home and abroad, America had to attack and damage militant Islamic terrorist organizations. That meant denying them bases in anarchic regions, like Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. Denying doesn't mean we have to occupy those places. It definitely doesn't mean we need to engage in nation building and culture-changing -- those are mega-challenges. We can strike Yemen and Somalia from the sea. Landlocked Afghanistan presents a problem. The closest air bases are six to seven hours away. Guard duty in Afghanistan means -- or meant -- maintaining an on-the-ground presence, primarily to support Afghan forces and refuel allied aircraft, but also to occasionally conduct U.S. air and ground raids on high-value targets throughout the region. The special operations raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistan compound was launched from Afghanistan. Many in the defense and intelligence community agree that guard duty was the essential mission. Some argued nation building would ultimately give pro-democracy Afghans the tools to guard themselves. We did try that. Afghan corruption undermined the effort. In many respects, the U.S. Afghanistan operations since mid-2019 have been guard duty. The last American combat death occurred in February 2020. [--> corroborates the other main claim by Levin, Pompeo confirmed force level] Pro-democracy Afghan government military and police forces did most of the fighting, with the U.S. and NATO providing air and fire support and intelligence assistance. This support meant the Taliban couldn't defeat the Afghan government. In this case, stalemate aided America's essential mission. Unfortunately, high-visibility American political and media narrators, particularly on the left but also on the right, would call me an advocate of endless U.S. military commitments and condemn guard duty as a form of "forever war." I use scare quotes because I'm not quite sure what "forever war" means in the real world. It measures time like a Hollywood movie -- beginning and end. That's disconnected from reality. The term works as angry rhetoric but fails to address on-the-ground security. [[--> esp long term, and such has geostrategic consequences] Fact: U.S. military personnel have been in South Korea far longer than they have been in Afghanistan. There is no peace treaty between South and North Korea. Don't tell me Afghanistan is America's longest war. And don't tell me American withdrawal means the war in Afghanistan is over. It's not. In July 2021, the stalemate ended and anti-Taliban forces collapsed after they lost U.S. and allied air support. The Biden administration made no attempt to counter the Taliban's surprise offensive. The Taliban filled the vacuum America's incompetent withdrawal created. Al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and other homicidal terror factions will eventually return to Afghanistan. The stalemate protected pro-democracy Afghans who believed America would defend them and, failing that, give them refuge. State Department bureaucrats say it will take 12 to 18 months to process their visa applications. Meanwhile, Taliban death squads will execute the tens of thousands who fail to escape. It didn't have to be this way.
That's pretty close to my estimates above.kairosfocus
August 22, 2021
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Jerry, given 20 years of spin and the underlying continental mentality of a big slice of the US population, fading support for fighting was a given that had to be addressed. With kneejerk hostility to anyone and anything alternative to the hymn sheet, a withdrawal policy was probably unavoidable, though in my view given the nest of terrorism issue, inherently dangerous. A conditional withdrawal was thus justifiable, as Pompeo outlined. That was switched to a disastrously mismanaged bug out with dishonour, which ironically will make for far worse military consequences. That is where unmitigated blameworthiness applies. KFkairosfocus
August 22, 2021
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Silver Asiatic, the course “ History of Science: Antiquity to 1700” is now on sale for $29 for audio download. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-science-antiquity-to-1700 Some ads say take another 10% off. Supposedly good through Monday night. I’m never sure what appears on my computer shows up for others.jerry
August 21, 2021
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An excellent assessment of the debacle that Trump and Biden created. The pullout was stupid. How it was handled by Biden was criminal. https://strategypage.com/on_point/202108172241.aspxjerry
August 21, 2021
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SA, nowhere have I suggested that this is a worse problem than the dechristianisation of the W. In my region I have championed the opposite, that the dechristianisation is tidal wave 1, with radical islam-ism as wave 2, both exploiting our weaknesses. I have identified mass abortion as the worst single holocaust, with numbers. That said, this is a case where both come together, it is cultural marxism riding on radical secularism cum neopaganism -- it's utterly incoherent -- that fed into the policy and operational blunders that now open up a series of geostrategic disasters. The specific blind spots I listed come from the first cluster, but open the way to a second serious threat, with more coming from China's blue ocean breakout push. We need to deal with them all and dare not neglect any but the second cluster is least recognised, hence my outline. Radical Islam-ISM is to be distinguished from Islam and ordinary muslims though the estimated 10% of what 1.2+ billions makes this a very serious issue in magnitude. The Hadiths are real and are taken that way and given credence by the -ISTS. The selection of a significant date for 9-11 should not be overlooked, nor the turning of Aircraft against Skyscrapers at the heart of the financial centre of gravity of the US, all loaded with cultural significance. As explicitly identified, I am talking of crushing Islam-ISM, a radical movement tracing to the 1930's and championed recently by Bin Ladin et al. We can compare German patriotism and nationalism with Nazism, a violent, world-conquest radical ideology that preyed on otherwise responsible cultural forces and manipulated widespread concerns, seized power using dirty tricks and launched aggressive war. No one seriously holds that German patriotism is evil in itself, but the Germans themselves are vigilant to guard against nazism. More can be said, I think I have sketched enough. KFkairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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M
Then the Afghans would be much more resistant militarily, and the jihadi’s would have less excuses to engage in warfare anyway, because there would be less Western debauchery to combat.
That's probably true, but in fairness, Jihad has been part of the religion since the founding. Violent attacks came against Christianity in the Middle Ages when it was not a society of debauchery. But Islam also had centuries of peaceful co-existence. And even today there are Islamic populations that are not marked with extremism or even the desire for world domination by force.Silver Asiatic
August 21, 2021
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The problem is very simple, the rejection of subjectivity on the intellectual level, by many people, especially in academics. Without that rejection, the West would not be in a state of debauchery. Without that rejection, we would have had the understanding of how to build up a national Afghani spirit. Then the Afghans would be much more resistant militarily, and the jihadi's would have less excuses to engage in warfare anyway, because there would be less Western debauchery to combat. However, it is not easy to make people accept the validity of subjectivity. It is a deeply psychological problem to reject subjectivity. The problem is based on conceiving of making a choice, in terms of figuring out the best option. There is enormous psychological pressure from society, and people's own ideals, to do your best. And it has several other aspects of psychological appeal. With all that psychological pressure, it is not easy to conceive of making a choice in terms of spontaneity. But that concept of choice is needed for the concept of subjectivity to function.mohammadnursyamsu
August 21, 2021
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KF
Tie that to the direction of Khorasan hadith, as to where Mahdi arises, and the ideological significance of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan surfaces. With, onward, that of Iraq, Syria and Israel, bringing in the Gharqad tree hadith on latter-day mass slaughter of Jews that is embedded in the Hamas covenant.
I do not see that as worse than atheistic-secularism of the West which is on-course for global conquest and subjugation of peoples. Mass slaughter not only of Jews but of all races through abortion and euthanasia. At least Islam attempts to reverence God, whereas secularism is atheistic and empty of spiritual values entirely. It threatens to destroy the world.
This ideology is explicitly a global conquest, apocalyptic agenda, and death in the course of jihad . . . the historic meaning is primarily military struggle to subjugate [cf Q sura 9, 5, 29 and context of competent translations] . . . is presented as a sure gateway to paradise, complete with the notorious 72 perpetually renewed virgins.
There's a big difference between an ideology and a religious conviction.
Such ideologies can only be crushed, shattered then exposed.
If you're talking about crushing and shattering Islam (but we can't talk about Zionism) are we drifting off-topic?Silver Asiatic
August 21, 2021
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What was foregonekairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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Jerry
“Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.” But there is a difference in Afghanistan and other similar countries to it. It is very religious in nature while the other countries listed above are not.
Japan was highly religious at the time. Shinto worship of the nation and emperor was a powerful force. The legacy of nation building there has been one of extreme consumerism, isolation, ruthless competition (against the builders) and social dysfunction. That's the problem with the so-called American values that are promulgated. Secularizing democracy ends up destroying itself, since "we the people" are empty of spiritual values. This does fit the saying that politics is downstream of culture and culture downstream of religion. America has not had robust spiritual values to communicate - certainly not much of a culture aside from buying-selling and money.
This is probably an important reason why no democracy/stable form of government can last in many countries.
As above, democracy has not been a stable form in any country - not just Islam. This assumes also that democracy is necessarily the best form. The American founders tried to offset the harms of pure democracy with representation. We have now legislation by unelected court justices and politicians getting rich and staying in office for decades. If the people don't have a good idea of values and rightness, then "government by the people" will reflect all of their problems. If I wanted to argue for Islam I'd say "why do we need democracy? We're taking over huge parts of the world without it." The USA might try to sell freedom but if this means access to pornography, abortion and transgender surgeries then a lot of people will reject it.
What this is all saying is that Christianity is unique in that it can tolerate democracy.
I don't think it really can very well. As you mention, it's deteriorating here over only a couple of centuries. Several nations in Eastern Europe now, coming out of Communism are not looking to American democracy as a solution, but as more of the problem. They want strong leadership and nationalism - what the American left calls "tyranny". But why should people have to spend most of their life trying to figure out the best position on political issues, then vote, then lose -- when a good leader can do it rightly and free the people for other pursuits?Silver Asiatic
August 21, 2021
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Before anyone decries nation building as a futile effort, let’s all say together “Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.” But there is a difference in Afghanistan and other similar countries to it. It is very religious in nature while the other countries listed above are not. There is the expression that
Culture is downstream from religion and politics /policies is downstream from culture.
This is probably an important reason why no democracy/stable form of government can last in many countries. I was listening to a lecture on the third century Roman Empire. It was a mess. What had held the Roman Empire together was gone. So maybe the above expression should be
Culture is downstream from religion/ideology and politics /policies is downstream from culture.
The ideology that was the glue of the Roman Empire was gone. Diocletian and Constantine were able to briefly restore power but essentially the Roman Empire was over in the late 2nd century. From above Assabiya wins every time. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/assabiya-lee-smith What this is all saying is that Christianity is unique in that it can tolerate democracy. But it didn’t for almost 1700 years till the Protestant religious wars of the 17th century in England. Then it grew first in the British colonies and then the rest of Europe. But now it is deteriorating in the West as religion, Christianity, retreats and non religious elites want to impose their will.jerry
August 21, 2021
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It seems we fail to recognize what motivates people. Yes, a lot has been written about the fall of Afghanistan in the last 10 days. But little seems to understand what has happened. Yes, Biden botched the withdrawal big time. But few can justify staying there when there was two corrupt sides, the Afghan leaders and the American corrupt military establishment. For some insight into American corruption from the very beginning, here are two opinions. One early and one from Rand Paul, more recent. https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1428345142876966912 https://techstartups.com/2021/08/16/kabul-fallen-dont-blame-president-biden/ The podcasts linked to above on the John Batchelor show by the most knowledgeable people in th US on the situation points to the lies by the military over the years. But the military were serving the politicians.jerry
August 21, 2021
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F/N: Yet another smoking gun, here on broken assurances to other Western powers, in June: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-20/biden-assured-allies-in-june-u-s-would-ensure-kabul-s-stability
Biden Assured Allies in June U.S. Would Ensure Kabul’s Stability By Alberto Nardelli August 20, 2021, 3:09 PM GMT-4 Vow came ahead of Taliban’s rapid push to capture control British officials assumed they would keep embassy functioning President Joe Biden told key allies in June that he would maintain enough of a security presence in Afghanistan to ensure they could continue to operate in the capital following the main U.S. withdrawal, a vow made before the Taliban’s rapid final push across the country, according to a British diplomatic memo seen by Bloomberg. Biden promised U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall, England, that “critical U.S. enablers” would remain in place to keep Kabul safe following the drawdown of NATO forces, the note said. British officials determined the U.S. would provide enough personnel to ensure that the U.K. embassy in Kabul could continue operating. But the withdrawal of U.S. forces saw the Afghan government collapse as Taliban fighters raced across the country seizing provincial capitals, culminating in scenes of chaos at Kabul’s airport this week as Western governments tried to pull out their diplomats. The British embassy has since been evacuated, Johnson’s office said, and the U.S. embassy is now shuttered.
There is onward waffling about being caught off-guard. Irrelevant given clear warnings and obvious signs. The fundamental issue is losing sight of realistic alternatives. Going beyond, on fair comment, much of this goes to deep rooted character and integrity issues, indicting the US establishment. That's why there is rightly now no confidence in the US as a guardian of geostrategic stability. Similarly, what we have seen should shift our evaluation on concerns over media, academy and cultural messaging, and frankly on integrity of the US government systems including the dollar and elections. In that last regard, I am not impressed that apparently CA recall election mail ballots allow the vote to be seen through strategically located features of the envelopes, further underscoring the fraud-proneness of that whole push. Kabul today, Sacramento tomorrow, DC the next day [or was that, first of all?], it seems. KFkairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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PS: I added to op the map seen on 9-11-01 re the Islamist 100 year ideological vision.kairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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PS: Notice, the outline framework with implicit conditionality that withdrawal was tied to consistently good behaviour, and confirmation in part of the Levin summary:
“As far as how it would have been different, we had an approach that we literally worked on from the very beginning,” Pompeo said. “So President Trump had made clear in his campaign, he wanted to get our young men and women home as quickly as he could. We were striving to achieve that. He also made very, clear both when I was CIA director, but more directly to me when I was the Secretary of State, that we had a second objective—and that was to make sure we could do so in a way that was orderly, that got equipment home, that got American civilians out, and then protected our second objective there, which was to continue to be able to reduce the risk that we ever had an attack on the homeland from that place. And so there were lots of work streams underneath that, one of which was the intra-Afghan conversations. So we spoke with the Taliban, we spoke with the Tajiks, we spoke with the Northern Alliance, folks in the West, we spoke with the Afghan government and had an agreement with the government— we were working to begin the peace and reconciliation process – an ugly, complex, almost certainly years-long endeavor. But at the same time, we made clear to the Taliban that here are our set of conditions. If you honor those conditions, we will honor ours, which is to draw down our forces. We we did that in a measured, step by step way, from about 15,000 to about 2,500. But we never got to the conditions where President Trump felt comfortable that we could go to zero and so we didn’t go to zero.” Pompeo said that the Taliban repeatedly broke a February 2020 agreement that laid the groundwork for the broader withdrawal process—during Trump’s time in office and afterwards. When Trump was president, Pompeo said he would respond in force whenever the Taliban broke the terms of the agreement—but when Biden took over, Biden did not do anything when the Taliban kept violating the agreement. “The Taliban broke the agreement a number of times during our time in office,” Pompeo said. “When they did that and when they would attack in a place that they were not permitted to, where they acted in a way that was inconsistent with their on-the-ground military obligations, we pounded them. This is the model when America’s interests aren’t protected, when people don’t honor their promises to the United States, you impose costs on them. We did that each and every time. And that repeated effort—that focused, organized, repeated, deliberative deterrence model that had held. And so everybody wants to say, well, what would have been different? I can’t promise you. I don’t know. This is counterfactual. But I can promise you this. We went down from 15,000 to 2,500. So we went down by 80 percent. And we still had the order and structure that helped provide the security for the Afghan people and the Afghan security force. We still had the capacity to reach out and impose costs on them for that entire time that we were engaged in that drawdown mission. There’s no reason to think that we couldn’t have continued to hold that until such time as the conditions were right where we could have gotten to zero.”
I think the framing of the situation was highly misleading, at policy and media levels. Somewhere, this led a half generation to grow up that failed to understand the global danger of militant, radical Islam-ISM, Mahdi-ism and associated Jihadism. Which includes that 9-11 was on the 318th anniversary less one day, of the Jan Sobiesky lifting of the Vienna siege . . . i.e. the highwater mark in the W of Islamic geostrategic power, the nearly successful siege of Vienna, 1683. That was itself a message and an implicit Mahdist claim by Bin Ladin. Tie that to the direction of Khorasan hadith, as to where Mahdi arises, and the ideological significance of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan surfaces. With, onward, that of Iraq, Syria and Israel, bringing in the Gharqad tree hadith on latter-day mass slaughter of Jews that is embedded in the Hamas covenant. This ideology is explicitly a global conquest, apocalyptic agenda, and death in the course of jihad . . . the historic meaning is primarily military struggle to subjugate [cf Q sura 9, 5, 29 and context of competent translations] . . . is presented as a sure gateway to paradise, complete with the notorious 72 perpetually renewed virgins. Such ideologies can only be crushed, shattered then exposed. Meanwhile, containment is a generational challenge; here, with a mushroom cloud looming in the usually unstated background. Generational struggle is the normal course of global conflicts, indeed even WW1 and 2 were in reality two phases of the second German 30 years war, building on the wars of German unification from the 1860's on. It is time to wake up to geostrategic realities. KFkairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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Pompeo on the withdrawal alternative foregone https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/20/exclusive-pompeo-on-bidens-tragic-afghan-disaster-it-didnt-have-to-be-this-way/kairosfocus
August 21, 2021
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Afghanistan has the 4th highest birth rate in the world.
In the hundreds of essays and opinion pieces on Afghanistan over the past week I propose that you will not find that significant fact mentioned anywhere.Silver Asiatic
August 20, 2021
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Mohammad
Islam is simple and complex. It is simple in that it is just about belief in one God. So as that even people prior to the prophet may be said to have been muslims. Then it has complex rules for good living. Suicide is forbidden in Islam.
The other significant thing that Western atheist-secularists have tried to do is to destroy the power of religion among the people using all manner of immoral content in entertainment - basically the promulgation of pornography first, then related sexual disorders to follow. This is a Marxist approach towards revolution in the culture and society. Islamic societies rebel (rightly) against this, and it has been an on-going problem for America in the Mideast, since America is perceived as promoters of immorality. America has become a global advocate for gay marriage for example, and this is (admirably) rejected in Islamic countries. The same is true for feminism which is a Marxist-styled revolution against family life, masculine virtue and childbearing. Interestingly - I just looked it up - Afghanistan has the 4th highest birth rate in the world. That means it is a youthful society and family life is thriving (polygamy is a factor). The Western countries are aging and dying, with no belief in family or children. So, what values can they bring to a society that has a lot of children and big families? I think women will want monogamy and probably birth control, but masculine societies will generally be stronger and more militaristic than effeminate. Multiple wives may balance that off though because men will be morally scattered over several women and children they have not bonded with. So that's self-defeating.Silver Asiatic
August 20, 2021
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@silver In reality most intelligent design theorists consider God to be objective, just as well as they consider the creation to be objective. Most intelligent design theorists are clueless about subjectivity, just the same as atheists are clueless about it. I always watch this issue in someone's position, and that's just the way it is. The secular atheists etc. are extremely fact obsessed, and clueless about subjectivity. That is what defines them. That is why they throw up all sorts of nonsense policies, in total disregard of both the human spirit, and God the holy spirit. They make policies that don't work out well emotionally, which means, the policies make people unhappy, because they are clueless about happiness. The secular atheists, have no clue what they are doing. You cannot give someone the task to build up the Afghani spirit, who is clueless about the spirit. They are obviously going to fail at that, because of being ignorant about it. Same for the American spirit, I am sure the atheists just consider that some meaningless words, and nothing more. They just don't know what spirit means. Islam is simple and complex. It is simple in that it is just about belief in one God. So as that even people prior to the prophet may be said to have been muslims. Then it has complex rules for good living. Suicide is forbidden in Islam.mohammadnursyamsu
August 20, 2021
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They were warned, on record, in July, re a quick collapse https://www.wsj.com/articles/confidential-state-department-cable-in-july-warned-of-afghanistans-collapse-11629406993 Now ponder an alternative universe Dunkirk in which Hitler held about 100 k British troops captured instead of evacuated. Where would WW2 have gone from there, with so many hostages and human shields in Hitler's hands? For one, Churchill's support would have collapsed -- he came to power on the Norway Debate over a fiasco in the North, May 10 1940, only a few weeks before the army was put into the Dunkirk pocket -- and the UK would be under huge pressure to make a devil's bargain peace. Where would our nightmare alternative world have gone from there? What could that tell us about where we now are?kairosfocus
August 20, 2021
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Folks, the focal issue is far too central for a side debate on Zionism, the nationalism of the most famous exiled people in history. I suggest, we need to refocus the main subject, which is weighty with severe geostrategic consequences that may reverberate for generations, potentially marked by rivers of blood and fire. Consequences that may be playing out across the world's no 1 chessboard already, the Eurasian landmass. I add to the above that the Ukraine may come back to a boil given the Russian wild card. The revelation of the US as a bruised reed is sobering and it seems that serious steps should be at focus of attention, can it be splinted? If not, where is all of this headed? China is already putting the evil eye on Taiwan, bigtime. KFkairosfocus
August 20, 2021
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@silver Yes, a creation requires a creator. And a creator can only be identified with a chosen opinion, subjectivity, and a creation can only be identified with a 1 to 1 corresponding model of it, in the mind, objectivity. What is your point?
You're missing the logic. In your view, a creator is subjective. The creation is objective. Then you say, creation (objective) requires a creator (subjective). So, whenever you have the objective, you necessarily have the subjective. When you talk about the objective (as ID does) you necessarily have the subjective (which you deny that ID has). When you talk about creation, you necessarily have a one-to-one relationship with the creator. When you talk about the objective, you necessarily have the subjective. The creation (objective) gives you creator (subjective). That's the point you're missing. You cannot separate the two. Atheists attempt this, but it does not work. That's what ID shows. That's why this site exists - to show that connection. If you're missing that, then you're missing the point of UD.
The previous relief efforts in Afghanistan by the academic people, has produced a kind of entitlement and dependence culture. A value signalling culture.
This is true for two reasons and has nothing to do with your concepts of subjectivity and opinion. 1. The secular-atheist academics want a system of dependency so they can control people. That's socialism. They do not want independent people because that eliminates their influence and power over people. 2. Islam already has built-in a high-degree of dependency on the Mosque and Imam and spiritually, through sublimation of the personality and a kind of fatalism (not everywhere in Islam but especially in Afghanistan). Earthly life is not considered a high value, thus even suicide or continual warfare is expected. In that scenario,, it is easier for a controlling-factor to create entitlement and dependency.Silver Asiatic
August 20, 2021
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It was the European countries that persecuted, expelled, confiscated property, initiated pogroms and wiped out 6 million (in approximately 10 years) and you expect Jews to entrust their fate to them?
You ask a great question and there are a couple of ways to deal with it, hinging on the notion of "do I expect the Jews ...?" For me, that's just about everything all in one phrase. What do I expect from the Jews. That's the problem. For me to expect the Jews to do something is to make myself Boss of the Jews. But that's what happens when someone says "here, you can have this country for your own". Those people are telling the Jews what to do, for their own reasons. I'm not a Jew so I can't tell them what to do. But I can expect something from Jews. Should they have been made to return to Europe? Well, many did and there wasn't a problem. They lived in Europe for centuries. Why wasn't that considered their home? What right did they have to move to Israel? They lost that land almost two thousand years earlier. But people attempted to interpret the Bible or claim "this is what God would do" or something like that and then claim that Israel is "the ancestral land" of Jews. What if God never wanted them back there? Well, nobody in the U.N. was going to answer that question. Even today, nobody can even explain what the Jewish religion is given the diverse sets of belief and non-belief. But aside from all of that, and getting back to "what do you expect from the Jews"? Like everyone, I expect them to respond correctly to the truth. That's why I argue with Atheists. I expect them to listen and then change. I expect them to adopt my beliefs because what I have found is good, and I want everyone to have what I have found. It's like saying "do you expect atheists to accept a theistic-based society? Do you expect them to want Christian churches to have privileges and tax-breaks". As atheists, no I don't expect that. I expect them to oppose Christianity. But I wouldn't enable that behavior because I ultimately expect atheists to receive and follow the truth about their own belief. I think the same for Jews and Muslims and any other people.Silver Asiatic
August 20, 2021
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Querius
Politically, any ethnicity without a powerful nation to object to abuse against their ethnicity often faces persecution and genocide. I agree that this applies not only to Jews, but to other ethnic groups: Uighurs in China, Armenians in Turkey, Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, native Americans and African-Americans in the U.S. to name a few such groups.
Agreed, but there's a difference between ethnicity and religion and that's where Zionism gets mixed up. Should we preserve every ethnicity? This would mean eventually, for example, outlawing intermarriage between ethnic groups. As Americans we oppose that. But for (some) Jews, that's what they do.
The Jews that Hitler exterminated weren’t asked what their religious affiliation was, but just their ethnicity condemned them to death.
That's true but I think a convert to Judaism would have been persecuted even if not Jewish-ethnic. But anyway, the state of Israel is supposed to correct the ethnic persecution, but instead, it's built on religious-theological grounds. The idea that Israel is "the ancestral homeland" is a religious view. As I suggested before, the Jews lived in Europe for centuries, so they could have been returned there. Additionally, the Jews invaded Palestine, killed a lot of people in warfare and took the land for themselves. They then lost the land for various reasons - the Romans destroyed their temple and exiled them. So, why should they be given that land again? They lost it fair and square. The problem persists because modern-day Jews have intermarried at such a high rate (58% as of the late 1990s) that was does Jewish ethnicity mean? As you say, the Nazi's thought it meant something but I don't think we should adopt their mentality.
As a Christian, I recognize that most Jews in Israel are agnostic today, but support their right to reconstruct their nation in light of the massive persecutions and genocides they’ve endured over the centuries.
Understood, but for me that's the problem with the religious question. When "what it means to be a Jew" cannot be tied to ethnicity (as above) or religious conviction, then there's a problem. 41% of Jews do not believe God exists. There are Jewish congregations oriented towards atheism - not to convert them, but just with full acceptance. Judaism does not require the believe in God. It also does not require an ethnicity (converts). It's a social and cultural thing. As such, still nobody should be persecuted or have a genocide against them, but should this group of people be given their own country under that basis? The key point here really, for me is, what could I or anyone do about it anyway. The State of Israel is here. I can grumble or complain about it. I can oppose financing it. But the global community supports the concept (with some violent exceptions), so it's more just an exercise in religious principles. I respect your support for the state of Israel and the same for all of the Jews who support it. Although, I do agree with the minority of Jews who do not support Zionism, for what I think are good reasons.
Are my interpretations all correct? Probably not, but the basics are there, that God miraculously reconstructs Israel from its dry bones (see Ezekiel 37).
To me, this is the most meaningful way to look at the situation. It's a theological problem. In that view, then the Bible is establishing a prophecy that the Jews should be in Israel - therefore the State of Israel is justified on that basis. That makes sense. However, I don't think the American government - the biggest financial supporter of Israel - or anyone else in the global community ever says "we want Israel because of Bible prophecy". Individual believers say it, but the policy has not been built on that prophecy. If it was, would an alternative Biblical prophecy be considered (like my view of the Bible which conflicts with the pro-Israel view?). That's just unspoken. Again, the idea that we're making up for persecution of an ethnic group by giving them a religious state conflicts with what we would do for Islam for example. We wouldn't create a state for them based on Sharia law, no matter how much they believed their religious convictions. In fact, we fight against their religious teachings on the role of women in society, without a problem. But for Judaism, we give a preferential treatment. Logically, that doesn't make sense - although emotionally I understand it. I also accept and understand that many see Israel through a Biblical interpretation, but why should that interpretation be the winner and not a conflicting interpretation? That's one reason why I would take time to argue about it. In the end, I believe my worldview and religious belief system is true and right. So, I would want everyone to have what I have - and that's Jews, Atheists, Muslims - anybody. Failing that, then it's a matter of compromise with care for all people and the hope of contributing to peace and greater understanding, and the end to violence and warfare for any reason, especially for ethnic and religious conflicts.Silver Asiatic
August 20, 2021
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