I want to make one thing clear, I’ve never been a fan of the 20-year debacle that destroyed thousands of lives and pissed away $2 trillion. Both could’ve been put to so much better use, namely infrastructure and elevating millions out of poverty. Either way, Cap’n Brunch finally did something I could get behind in the 90% realm. Obviously, the Chickenhawk Party will attack and attack and try to make this a talking point in ’22 despite their Girth Vader pushing the same goal. Girth also contributed to the inept, corrupt Afghan government’s fall by releasing 5000 captured Taliban fighters against the insistence of the US and Allied militaries.
Let’s not forget how the Great Equivocator, now pontificating from his Martha’s Vineyard chateau, was always in favor of the hopeless conflict. During his 2008 campaign, he said Iraq was the wrong war, he backed Afghanistan. This was and remains a frequent oversight of his apologists and asskissers.
The propped-up regime falling wasn’t a shock. Its speed at collapsing, that’s the surprise. There was much more for the thieves in Kabul to embezzle. I’ll bet the Taliban were shocked to see how easy it was. Hell, the Soviet-backed government they left behind after 1989 lasted three years before the land was divided warring fiefdoms for four years.
Now we must deal with the guilt of all those people left behind as plane after plane flies out of an airport named for the first piece of shit prez we propped up. Personally, every person who aided the West should be resettled in the West. Same goes for every Afghan who wants to leave. The Taliban are murderous liars and they’ve learned nothing while in the wilderness. They will return to their brutal ways against women, killing those who won’t follow their sky-cake beliefs and keeping the land a desert on every level. The West’s enemies are already cozying up to the Taliban. Russia and China suppress minorities and their own citizens hourly, the three are birds of a feather. We should punish Pakistan though, they’ve been cooperating with the Taliban for decades. They think those assholes running amuck will keep India at bay…until they seize one of Pakistan’s nukes.
So what will the future hold? I don’t know. True expertise on the area, the peoples and the Taliban is hard to find. I think the roaming bully approach might be the better route. Every time we find out the Taliban has given aid and comfort to our enemies, we just bomb the shit out them, then leave. Not like there’s much to destroy equivalent to what we have but I believe we can make our point. Oddly, we did in the initial days of attacking the Taliban. Where we went wrong was listening to the NeoCons into changing the objective from killing the Taliban until the Taliban only exists in Hell (not genocide, just paraphrasing Admiral Halsey), to nation building. Rebuilding a defeated foe demands a plan, research, cooperation from the survivors, grit and some luck. The latter definitely comes to mind for Germany, Italy and Japan after WWII. Afghanistan? Much like Russia, it’s rotten all the way down to its foundation. Corruption is a way of life. Darth Cheney thinking we could install a Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan was sad, sick, sick wet Republican dream.
It has been almost 20 years since al-Qeda punched Amerika and its bloated military in the throat. We’re pretty overdue. Will it come from Afghanistan? Under Cap’n Brunch, not likely. Given the pandemic and our domestic terrorism problems, I think we’ll have something ten times worse than OKC.
Meanwhile, I look forward to welcoming our new Afghan refugee residents to America. About 50 years ago, we took in hundreds, thousands of Vietnamese people as the Northern forces seized control. We should’ve rescued more but with Afghanistan, we could do a better job trying to right a wrong.