If 16 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, why did the US invade Afghanistan? There were signatures by Saudi Royals on checks given to some of the terrorists cells (see Prince Bandar and his wife Haifa).
On the other hand, Afghanistan was a drug colony. Afghanistan is the world’s leading opium producer. The poppy fields were guarde…
If 16 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, why did the US invade Afghanistan? There were signatures by Saudi Royals on checks given to some of the terrorists cells (see Prince Bandar and his wife Haifa).
On the other hand, Afghanistan was a drug colony. Afghanistan is the world’s leading opium producer. The poppy fields were guarded by US and NATO soldiers. In the Helmand province alone, under British troop control, opium production rose 400%.
International finance and terrorism are addicted to drug money and rely on it for their operations.
That’s the hard truth, but no one is supposed to say it.
Afghanistan sits on $1 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, far more valuable to US—and to China, which has offered to help Afghanistan in our absence, a bid to corner the market on these essential minerals. If China succeeds, we're screwed. At least until Elon can set up a mining colony on a nearby asteroid.
If you have been paying ANY attention to reality AT ALL you’d know that whether China succeeds or not we are screwed. It strikes me that most folks are in hard-core denial of the fact that the “American Empire” is circling the drain and picking up speed as we spin. It is also remarkable how very few of us actually recognize how utterly unsympathetic and indifferent most in the USA seem to be to the attitude of inhumanity which permeates every nook and cranny of our system of our national governance. It seems to me that the good old USA is about as fucked up as can be and that most folks are like the proverbial frog in the pot of water as we all pick and quibble at small and ridiculously insignificant details of what is happening while totally missing the big picture.
If they want it so badly, let China invade and occupy Afghanistan. We can buy their production on a free market.
The cost of the Afghan war has far exceeded the trillion in rare earths you mention. To profit from them the US would have to run the mines and kill most of the civilians. It's an absurd economic position.
"We're" screwed?? Who are you referring to? Are you one of the elites that will rake in cash from the mines?? I'm okay with buying shit from China if that's who's got it. Pick your poison!
All of which minerals will become even *more important the more humankind goes with electric cars running on lithium batteries, which also require some rare earth minerals.
REALLY ? I knew they were "spendy" to mine, but I had no idea the U.S. had any of them. The way the U.S. "whines" for rare earths, I, apparently inadvertently *assumed we didn't have any,
Now the whining makes a LOT more sense ! TKY ! If we can get them from somebody *else's country, why wouldn't we ? ;-D ;-D
That said, those statistics depend on proven reserves by some means. If some geologist hasn't found evidence of the ore, it's not proven. It's like oil. If you asked people 40 years ago about oil in North Dakota, they'd have laughed. Nowadays...
GOTCHA ! Thanks for the URL. Yeah, I grew up in a podunk town in Eastern Montana, Miles City, not far from North Dakota. Not only would we have laughed about "oil gushers" in N.,Dak, but also in and around my own little berg. Ooops ! That entire CORNER of SE Montana is *filthy with oil riggers and even deposits that are not *technically part of that Bakken Field across the line in N.Dak, but are certainly "country cousins". You may be aware the NE Montana, and clear into Canada is PART of that Bakken Strike. It is a no-kidding Big un' !
Yep. Rare earths aren't even all that rare, it's more the trouble you have to go to separate them from ground they're in.
Per usual, the US took the short term view on not developing them here, preferring to have the processing done elsewhere, the PRC being the big winner as usual.
Really, given the immaturity of our elite( ahem), especially contrasted with the maturity and vision of those leading the PRC, the reality that the Chinese will dwarf us economically before this century is done, is as safe a bet as can be made, especially given the utter wastefulness of placing so much of our technology and finance on the military.
We would do well to copy the Chinese approach, which seeks to be a regional military power and a global economic one. Training for the 100 meter dash when the real event is the Marathon is a poor plan, but one we are following.
But anyone can find YouTube videos showing the opium shipments out of Afghanistan - in convoys protected by the military. Nobody has to say anything about something that obvious.
That "cash crop" never belonged to us and any American who thinks it does is a royal POS in my book and should be lined up against a wall for being a walking, breathing POS excuse for humanity.
It's a crazy idea, suggesting the US spent all that money for the opium production. If we wanted, we could easily match that by sultivating opium in Arizona. It's not hard to grow and it isn't expensive.
Maybe your response was intended for someone else? (Horatio Flemm's comment has generated a lengthy subthread.)
I wasn't suggesting the U.S. had anything to do opium production. When I mentioned drug convoys protected by the military, I meant the Afghan army not the U.S. army.
There are apparently many who think that the U.S. had an interest in seeing opium produced but that's not my view.
While I agree that the CIA and other agencies use these operations to generate their own covert funds, on a macro level, flooding the population with drugs is one of the most effective means of getting the population to destroy itself, destroy minds (often promising ones who become demoralized and turn to drugs), and just an altogether brave new world system where as Huxley put it in his infamous speech "The Final Revolution": people will learn to love their servitude.
If one has the choice between running a totalitarian state with boots on the ground enforcement, or a Brave New World-type scenario where people have all the tools and instruments to create their own alternative realities, the latter is much more subtle and effective. And it works in such that way that often times, even though people are aware that they are not free, they are just a little too comfortable to actually fight back, and they have just the right dosage and choice entertainment to not want to risk losing it all.
If people can become disgusted enough with that kind of system, then the oligarchs are in big trouble.
Here's a fun quote from Dr. Timothy Leary's biographical work "Flashback", where he recounts the kind of rich correspondence he was engaged in with Aldous Huxley:
Huxley:
``These brain drugs, mass produced in the laboratories, will bring about vast changes in society. This will happen with or without you or me. All we can do is spread the word. The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.''
Leary reflection's on Huxley's thoughts:
``We had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism had arrived.''
"[F]looding the population with drugs is one of the most effective means of getting the population to destroy itself, destroy minds ..."
Thanks. Agreed.
I was viciously ridiculed by a couple of people in the commentary of Matt's recent Obama article for hypothesizing that the *root*, not the ostensible or plausible cover, reason for the ruthless implementation of 100% COVID vaccine compliance, along with ruthless indefensible suppression of even research on preventatives and cures, is to normalize bodily-invasive access, at the individual level, for any reason it might be needed in the future. The seasonal flu vaccine campaign just didn't cut it to establish this compliance...and here we are. I'm not completely wedded to this idea, but it is certainly plausible given the past horrors we have learned.
The sociopaths who claw their way up the political chain are not experts, they are unbound killers who Will. Do. ANYTHING. ... for example - Tuskegee. Northwoods. Rome. ... just off the top of my head ... But the list is really very long...
I would hypothesize that TPTB do not want a control group of substantial size to remain. This could be from one of two reasons, both nefarious, but one downright wicked in its nature. Firstly, they know that they don't know the long-term effects of this gene therapy, which is what it is, and the poor suckers that mindlessly take the clot-shot will be fuming murderously angry if they finally figure out that they were human lab rats for an experiment that over time had shown to have gone awry. The other, more diabolical hypothesis is that the long-term effects of The King's Serum are intentional, particularly given the already known and documented evidence that it has on reproductive systems (far beyond statistical chance) and that the long-term effects are intentional and nefarious in nature.
That said, it won't be long before we - those that refuse to be pricked under orders of The Prick in Chief (party be damned) - are given the equivalent of yellow stars to wear on our sleeves. I see THAT unfolding as I type.
Notice that I make no claims of truth. It's because I just don't know the damn truth. But when the government, media, and every NGO from East to West lies to you on a drum-beat basis, you can make a decent estimate that the next "claim" too will be a bald-faced lie. That, coupled with this frantic push to take the spike protein toxin in a syringe has my BS meter so far into the red that it's broken.
My body, my choice. Anyone that disagrees with me can F off as it is THEY that are self-centered and cowardly to the core, not to mention credulously naive to the point of being useless to society.
Edit: There could be more than 2 reasons I am sure. Just haven't thought them up yet. It's always best to consider EVERY possibility. One does more harm to oneself lying to themselves than they do lying to others. So if anyone has other hypothesis' then please, I am all ears.
That’s actually why I started the “Escaping the Brave New World” podcast, to explore the very nuanced and subtle nature of our current brave new world, which includes the insane drug culture and entertainment world. I thin it can be defeated though because it’s based on a fundamentally flawed and perverted idea of human nature and the mind.
Beyond just pointing out all the perversions of truth and subversive ideologies, I think it’s important to emphasize what a healthy mind and creativity looks and sounds like.
The fact that the system has worked for so long isn’t really proof that it’s correct. In a sudden moment or crisis and realization, all of a sudden decades of work and conditioning can quickly erode. The whole thing is like a great game of Jenga, it all depends on a scientific-like precision of the narrative, but as soon as we start to reach a point of discontinuity, extreme turbulence, we start to see a bunch of new singularities pop up. In these moments, the whole narrative matrix can come down in one great crash, just like a game of Jenga.
As someone said earlier, there really is this Orwellian culture today where the only acceptable narratives are the state-sanctioned narratives, and everything else is considered weird conspiracy theory. However I don’t think that kind of thing can be defeated with just cold hard facts and logic, there needs to be a sense of creative insight whereby we don’t just try to defeat ugly ideas by exposing their insanity, we defeat ugly ideas with beautiful and good ideas. This is admittedly more difficult, but it’s necessary. Dante’s Commedia comes to mind. He takes you through Hell, but he does so in order to show the reader the way Paradise. They need to first have a real sense of Hell if they’re to actually make the longer journey.
That being said, for those not too far gone cases, the work of Whitney Webb on the defense and BigTech 360 degree bio-medical surveillance is very good.
The moral for UNESCO is clear. The task laid upon it of promoting peace and security can never be wholly realised through the means assigned to it- education, science and culture. It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise, as the only certain means of avoiding war… in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for a world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization.”
To what end would this “world political unity” be aimed? Several pages later, Huxley’s vision is laid out in all of its twisted detail:
At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
This is it. If people get that, they have the master key to understanding the current situation.
I recently saw the movie “Gattaca.” That gives a pretty good idea. Elysium and Utopia (on Amazon Prime) are two other interesting examples of what the eugenicist wet dreams look like.
Well shoot David, I watched it. I have to say it was entirely unconvincing, though I can just barely imagine airport metal detectors getting replaced by airport mind readers? Not a real happy thought for me? :)
Speaking as someone who works with CRISPR and has a company with the intent of offering human enhancements that are transformational therapies, I can tell you that this basic idea that such therapies would only be given to the rich is wrong. Reality is the other way around. The rich don't want to experiment on themselves, they want others to do it. But more than that, the economics demand huge mass markets to make the real money. Pharma revenues are measured in billions for the most part. This is why it is all but impossible to provide a treatment for rare disease. Markets are very small.
Looking at rare disease gene therapy cost and assuming on that basis that this is what it would cost per person to deliver to a mass market is just wrong.
Well, the problem is if one looks at how things are being organized top down with mandatory vaccines, which used to be optional, it’s the same with eugenics, which now falls under the banner of « human engineering » and Transhumanism.
These optional therapies are being tested, but if you look at what the conversations are like within the higher echelons over in BigTech, the DARPA/HARPA, the Wellcome Trust, the point is none of this is going to be optional.
Whitney Webb’s work on The Wellcome Trust and all these other eugenics-orientated “charities” and “research” firms is necessary reading for anyone who is still committed to the idea of Never Again.
It will make Hitler’s sterilization and eugenics policies look like very amateur stuff.
The problem is most people tend to just react to the latest developments, rather than seeing what the trajectory is. Just like with the T4 and useless eaters programs, these things started off small, with humble and seemingly harmless beginnings. But we’re supposed to know that by now.
I would really recommend the series on the new eugenics and transhumanists to get a better idea of how they are thinking top down.
What does this stuff look like today? I recently read a piece called “Scientists can now predict at birth who will have academic success”
That’s what modern eugenics looks like. Will you be allowed to go to the institutions of advanced learning if you don’t have the right distribution of phenotypes and generic markers? I don’t know. The computer says that statistically you’re not eligible. We have to follow the science. That’s not science fiction, that’s the living nightmare these people are thinking of. I think it’s hard for people to conceive of because these higher ups really do have such perverted and detached ideas about what humanity is. On the other hand, many just don’t really think about something like « what is humanity really? »
However, the transhumanists have thought about this stuff, that’s why there are billions of dollars of research being poured into it.
However, if people understand the epistemological issues, and can comfortably deliberate on those issues and easily demonstrate why they are grounded in a fundamentally flawed idea of the mind and creativity, then the World Economic Forum and their Transhumanism priesthood are going to have a serious problem.
But these kinds of ideas can only be defeated if people understand what the underlying axioms are. The thinking is genuinely weird and creepy. The stuff is always advanced by framing it at all as a mathematical question, questions of statistics and models. The mathematics are used to depersonalize people, and then make it such that if you object to their human engineering dreams, or demands, you’re just against math and science.
They are doing the same in medicine with « evidence-based medicine. » It just takes away the ability of the individual doctors to think , diagnose and act as sovereign individuals. Instead, treatment is all organized around statistical models, and at the end of the day, the doctor is basically just there to follow the formulas, determine the « QALYs . »
This is what Cybernerics was brought into governance for. Increasingly, no one will be allowed to think or make creative decisions, it will all be a question of statistical data, genetics, and consensus.
People need to really get a sense of how these governance structures are organized, otherwise it becomes difficult to see how the kind of nefarious stuff we’re seeing today is organized.
Great post ! Even now, Big Pharma is going after homeopathy (including shots), ALL supplements, acupuncture, compounding pharmacies, and I just saw today that they are going after Hemp oil as well. Basically anything that THEY do not presently control. And, they dare to come at the people and the MDs involved in anything alternate that is NOT drug based, predicated upon what is described in Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine". When there IS a disaster (Katrina) Capitalists leap aboard and do ANYTHING they want, even passing legislation that robs us of our rights in an ersatz move to keep us "safe". If there is NOT a clear and present disaster, Capitalists must *CREATE one (present day examples ??) and just *RAM it down the THROATS of any who do not want to "play", and then ruin them financially and socially ALSO in the name of "Safety" for society. Not to mention ALSO for *daring to think for themselves. But in the immortal words of Zuck, they have to "Move Fast and Break Things" to get the job done. I do not know of any four-yr-old who needs help figuring out HOW to "move fast and break things", so that Zuck really IS a "world-class" genius ! ;-D Maybe he should hire a no-kidding grown-up to actually RUN his business. ;-D
I like Tim Leary; he had some important insights. But he's waay out of his depth on that one, in misidentifying monotheism as the great adversary of mind expansion. I think Tim's extrapolating mostly from his own conflicted upbringing, about which he was always quite candid; I recommend that the curious read his autobiographies, which, while lucidly written and entertaining (and action-packed!), also indicate the limitations of his own conditioning and the narrative frame imposed by it.
Anyway, the psychedelic revolution in consciousness was always bigger than Leary, and contained many currents running contrary to Leary-thought. (I can practically hear Tim saying "Leary-thought! good one!")
It was none other than his fellow psychonaut Al Hubbard who obtained some sort of dispensation from the Vatican endorsing the potential of mind-opening substances in leading people toward piety and holiness. Hubbard was, like Leary, Roman Catholic; unlike Leary, he wasn't "lapsed." LSD explorer Clare Boothe Luce was also Catholic; her husband Henry, another voyager, retained his Protestant affiliation. As did Ken Kesey. To say nothing of what happened with Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, and Art Kleps. And so it goes...a much more colorful and variegated set of perspectives than the dreariness of the colorless allcolor of techno-atheism of the New Jacks of Silicon Valley.
"they have just the right dosage and choice entertainment to not want to risk losing it all."
The question is, "lose it for what?" What's the alternative to a life of enjoyable leisure? Who stops anyone from pursuing a life of productivity, inovation and personal growth? Creativity and "self-actualization"? No one I know of in the US? At least nothing organized?
Sure, the IRS has been engineered to enforce the economic class structure, no doubt of that. Becoming a billionaire is hard these days, becoming a millionaire 30 years ago was just as difficult. That's what the progressive tax structure is designed to do?
Other than that, anyone willing to put in the work and time can have a nice life on their country estate with a big TV, horses, fast cars, etc. It's hardly impossible? So what is it you suggest America is missing, other than legal access to heroin?
Sorry, are you saying you're not aware that most schools are simply brainwashing kids and young people? How exactly are we living in a free world if most of the education people are getting is garbage, if not outright brainwashing?
What about the media? Do you think an MSM churning out constant fabricated lies 24/7 is really the sign of a "free society?"
You haven't heard about Critical Theory and all the other insane ideologies taking over the education system, and especially targeting children?
If all this is news to you, congrats, you're a happy denizen of the brave new world!
"are you saying you're not aware that most schools are simply brainwashing kids and young people?"
No, not at all? Some certainly are? California, Washington and Oregon are all very good examples. The choice is to either move your kids somewhere else or send them to private schools?
It's your own school board and state making these decisions. Change them?
Yes. Vietnam introduced many to "China White", a heroin of about 96% purity, such that users didn't even need to inject it, they could just elect to smoke it. People who "loved" Janis Joplin used to send her China White, not realizing that Janis was used to U.S. heroin "stepped on" so many times that the user was lucky to get 30% pure on the streets. Not knowing the difference may have contributed to the reason we lost Janis to heroin.
We lost Janis due to her own stupidity. PS. I am adamantly opposed to the War on The Constitution, err on Drugs. One thing that makes us all human and adds zest to the process of living is the right to make stupid decisions, hopefully not the fatal ones like Janis made.
I don't know the solution for such a problem except to supply the addicts with drugs under certain conditions. There was a program in Vancouver, BC that was basically insisting that they come in and get cleaned up, showering and eating, and they'd get a (real, not methadone) fix in exchange for that.
Wish people would accept the reality that such programs are probably the only way to make a dent in the bad outcomes.
Yes. Amsterdam has tried a number of approaches wherein addicts are just allowed access to whatever they "need" without legal penalties or societal judgment. As always, some programs have been more successful than others.
They have done this successfully in Portugal and Switzerland as well. The idea of user sites was hugely unpopular beforehand, but now that people have seen them at work they have enormous support.
No more drugs user, needles and everything that accompanies addiction out on the street. How it is all handled in a controlled environment out of site of the public square.
If you step back and think about it, we have had controlled user sites in the US for about 90 years. A controlled environment where you can go to ingest a safe and unadulterated form of the drug under a controlled environment with people around to ensure you don't get too out of control, such as try to drive home. They are called bars and they have been very effective.
I'm juxtaposing what you are saying about bars to what the WCTU said about gin mills before Prohibition. I doubt they'd agree. Destroys the family et al...
Let's not forget Portugal, now Oregon too, who've just completely removed criminal penalties for teh possession and use of personal amounts? For some reason they still feel the need to prosecute dealers, though their reasoning is unexplainable.
I'm fine with that, but we probably need to go farther to help. Removing the criminal penalties for buying small amounts or possession doesn't change the general requirement for crime to get the drugs in the first place - my understanding is that most users end up burning all bridges with family and friends before long scamming for fixes and doing lots of small busts for petty theft and the like.
My word, Dude, you sound as if you think you were her brother. Want to lift your leg on Jim Morrison and Jimi Hedrix at the same time ? They all died at age 27 of drugs. They all lived at a time when the whole country was experimenting with drugs, some more successfully than others.
But, hey, uninformed judgement (you have only an opinion) is ITSELF kind of a "RUSH", no ? ;-D
Hear, HEAR ! *All people have the inalienable right to LEARN their own lessons in their OWN way, even if that lesson *does cost them their lives. That is, after all, why we *call it "their life" to begin with, innit ?.
"I'd like to see more from the investigative journalism community about how the Sackler family (and other Rx companies) were able to flood the U.S. with opioids"
I'd like to see less crap about "flooding the U.S. with opiods"? So I guess we're even?
I'm disabled (legally) and have depended on opiates for about 15 years. Over the course of that time, my dependence has become more and more difficult to maintain. It wasn't easy even in 2007, it's much more difficult now.
It's become little less than a leash. I can't leave the state much less the country, for more than 30 days. It's crazy. To be honest, it isn't worth the trouble any longer. The pain is more acceptable. One of those "the cure is worse than the disease" situations. And it's entirely due to our perverse and somewhat Puritanical legal system.
That was, BTW, a classic quote from the classic Mel Brooks comedy of the 1970's titled "Blazing Saddles", just in case you didn't recognize it? It was meant in good spirited jest?
While correlation does not equate to causality it can be at times be considered prima facie evidence for investigation into why the opium epidemic in the US exploded just after we invaded Viet Ghanistan. Inquiring minds want to know if a linkage exists, would you not agree?
It isn't difficult and doesn't require great leaps of insight? The so called "opium epidemic" exists in the US due to an aging segment of the population that happens to be in the majority at present? Nothing mystical about it, just millions of old people who've, over the course of their lives, messed themselves up? That's about it?
No Unicorns. No mystical or nefarious causes, just a bunch of old folks who fell off ladders?
In the dystopia we’re now all prisoners of, no one is supposed, or allowed to, say anything that’s true. Only official narratives are permitted. Just ask Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
If the all-powerful dystopia of which you speak were an actual reality, no one would have access to the sagas and disclosures of either Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, and you'd be identified, hunted down, and disappeared simply for mentioning their names.
Commenting online is no real threat to any part of the ruling class, if this is all we do, and so far it is. They'll hunt us down and disappear any of us when we are perceived as a threat to their tyranny. Read Vincent Bevins' "The Jakarta Method" for a full description of how the US has done this systematically for decades, and continues the pattern. It might just help redefine "reality" for you.
OBL was known to be resident in Afghanistan. The govt of Afghanistan was advised to surrender him and the Taliban laughed at that. OBL was trapped in Tora Bora and was there for the killing but the US Army insisted on getting him (and the credit); which allowed him to escape to Pakistan. That's where the real justification ends and the BS begins.
It is true the Taliban offered to hand him over. The offer probably should have been made on September 12th, not that it would have made much difference. No one was in the mood for negotiation at the time.
The privilege of being the leader of the rules-based order - we get to break pretty much any rule we want because no one can hold us accountable. Another reason that other countries don't see the system as having quite the same benefits we see in it.
Afghanistan was AQ’s crash pad, there’s no doubt about that. Did we let the biggest scumbag regime on the planet off the hook b/c of Bush family cronyism-of course.
My mind is drawn to that massacre in Vegas in 2017. I remember seeing a video of one of the Saudi royals escaping from a hotel with bodyguards around him while it was going on. Never found out the real story on that one, they just blamed a single nutjob for it, however implausible that seemed.
I mean, I know the geopolitical reasons why the Saudis get so much slack, but within the borders of the US? Anyway, break the oil addiction and you break Saudi power.
Let's not forget that Carter funded, armed, and gave intelligence to mujahideen 6 months before the USSR invaded. He did it for the purpose of baiting the USSR into invading to protect themselves from a dangerous nation on their southern border. Carter did this out of the kindness of his Christian heart because he hated godless communism.
Brzezinski probably didn't think of himself that way, same as Kissinger didn't think of himself as Nixon's boy. And in retrospect, Reagan even asked Brzezinski to stay on. He refused.
Your understanding of the Taliban and our war aims there are as incorrect as your spell spelling "imminent", using the word "immanent", which has a totally different meaning.
Our foray into Afghanistan was doomed from the beginning because it had as its target not getting bin Laden and then leaving( we had a total of 37 US troops on the ground at Tora Bora, where he was holed up), and instead paid Afghan mercenaries to go get him as we bombed from the air, the Afghans then going in and being paid more by bin Laden to look the other way, as is their culture, but to be the appetizer to whet our appetite for the real wars to come in Iraq, Syria and the big prize, Iran, all of which were either outright disasters, or would have been, (Iran) if attempted.
The Taliban, unlike AQ, has no interest in any country outside their own, and can we please remember these people are the end winners in our policy back in the 80's to give the USSR its own Vietnam an irony in that it has come back to give us our second one? It hurts, I know, but once again, the belief by our politicians, most of whom either were or would have been draft dodgers, or are combat virgins, that our military is the answer to any and all problems has been a resounding failure, not that either they or our media will admit it
Being a Vietnam vet, I knew this would happen 19 1/2 years ago, and that when it did, all the advocates of war would go around pointing fingers, playing political games of blaming someone else, and would find willing accomplices with our worthless media, being unable to accept the fact that their lies led to needless deaths and dismemberment and cost trillions of dollars, no one truly being held accountable.
If you can show me any concrete examples of their trying to spread their beliefs around the world, I will change my mind.
The planning for 9-11 was done in San Diego, Miami and Germany; Hamburg, if I remember correctly, and not a single Afghan or Taliban was involved, though a shit load of Saudis were, not that seems to matter to our political elites. If AQ does reassemble in Afghanistan, I cannot think or a safer place for us to have them; a landlocked country with few outlets to the world.
If Islamic terrorism is so great a threat, then why have so few here been killed by it? Are you telling me a Muslim couldn't just buy a gun here and blast away, like we do to each other on the regular?
Take a look at the number of Americans killed by drunk drivers, plain old murders, work place accidents, or even our horrible junk food diet and then try telling me our reaction to 9-11, one where we didn't even try to get bin Laden, the supposed mastermind, wasn't a complete bait and switch, the ultimate winners being the MIC and their political pimps.
If you feel so strongly, take your second amendment implements over there and go at it, but give me a heads up, and I'll give you some of the tips I learned in Vietnam decades ago. And while you're over there, just think back to how this all started with our aiding these people, who eventually morphed into the Taliban, in our desire to play The Great Game, all to give the USSR its own Vietnam. There was a movie about it, Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks, if I remember correctly, so it must have been the right thing to do, consequences be damned.
I'm no expert on Afghanistan, but isn't that because the international jihadist activities of the Taliban are ostensibly managed by the Haqqani Network, which raises funds from the same Arabic groups that Al Qaeda does, has large numbers of Chechen, Arabic, Uzbeki and other foreign fighters, offers refuge and support to Pakistani terrorists targeting India and which bombed India's embassy in Kabul? There doesn't seem to be any real difference between the Haqqani Network and the Taliban. But perhaps most importantly, if neither one have broken ranks with Al Qaeda in the last 19 years, you really have to question your belief that the Taliban is solely interested in ruining their own countrymens' lives.
Is this the same Haqqani network we used to funnel arms to the Afghans during our 1980's attempt to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?
Perhaps a bit of sober reflection might prove useful to the world's last and crumbling super power, mired in pointless wars for over 19 years, as meanwhile the only country in the world that can rival us, and that on economic issues, not military ones, eschews such follies and keeps its eye on the main prize, as we suffer casualties, relatively minor, unless you're one them or a family member, and has gone over $7 trillion further into debt for no good national purpose.
STANDINGS IN THE GREAT GAME:
1. The PRC, 0-0, with no lives or national treasure lost
2. Afghanistan, 2-0, defeated both its militarily superior foes, but suffered greatly in doing so
3. The former USSR, 0-1. Lost, but did so in a shorter time and thus with less misery than..
4. The USA, 0-1, who succeeded in giving #3 its loss, but in doing so, set the stage for its own loss, and unlike the USSR, will never accept the reality that it was the sole cause of its fate.
The Taliban has neither the desire or capability to attack the US, and why either they or AQ would need to plan an attack on us from Afghanistan, when the 9-11 attack was planned in Miami, San Diego and Hamburg, and Afghanistan is one of the most isolated places on earth, and thus worthless in such an endeavor, defies logic.
The real worry of the endless war duopoly is not that we will be attacked now that the Taliban victory is undeniable, but that we won't be, leaving the uncomfortable question: then just wtf have we been doing there for 19 years after our quick "victory" in the first months of that invasion?
It's fascinating to me that you (and you aren't the only one) think that pointing out that we assisted the Mujaheideen 40 years ago in defending their country from a Soviet invasion means that we have no grounds for complaint about any of their subsequent behavior.
I was a teenager at the end of the cold war and can't say for certain what my opinion would have been of our military conflicts in Korea or Vietnam (or our inaction in, say, Czechoslovakia and Hungary). But I have been a consistent critic of most of our elective military interventions since (Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Gulf War II, Libya and Syria, with Gulf War I being the sole exceptions). I don't regard Afghanistan as an elective intervention.
You are being dishonest in implying that the Taliban did knowingly and willingly host Al Qaeda for over a decade while Al Qaeda repeatedly planned and committed acts of war on foreign (to Afghanistan) soil and then refused to take action to turn over Bin Laden following 9/11. Those are facts. Any outcome that didn't result in Bin Laden's death or extradition was unacceptable to the great majority of Americans, myself included.
Lauding the foreign policy of an overtly revanchist China takes the cake.
"Any action that didn't result in the death or extradition of bin Laden was unacceptable to the great majority of Americans, myself included."
Thank you for one of the most unintentionally hilarious comments I've seen in some time.
The US, with the world's most advanced military and by far the largest budget, somehow found itself capable of having only 37 troops on the ground when bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora, and instead used a BS fireworks show of aerial bombing to fool gullible Americans it wanted him dead, instead, sending in paid Afghan mercenaries(contractors?) who went in, and as is their well known custom, got paid more by bin Laden to look the other way.
Less than one year after 9-11, Bush was asked a question about bin Laden and good old George said he didn't even think about him, the man we were told was behind the 9-11 attacks.
You and the American people got bait and switched. Comparing our efforts in Afghanistan with those in Iraq, show a complete emphasis on Iraq, a country with nothing to do with 9-11, with no WMD's, as Bush eventually admitted by 2004, and yet you say we demanded bin Laden's death.
The minute we went from solely killing bin Laden and taking out AQ in Afghanistan to BS nation building and compounding that by invading Iraq, this war was lost, only Biden having the courage to tear down the Potemkin village of lies we've been telling each other for these last years, Bush, Obama and Trump too scared to tell the truth. Even the release of the Afghanistan papers, that detailed our futile policies there, changed nothing.
As for the PRC, the last war they were engaged in was in 1979, a border skirmish with The Socialist Republic of Vietnam; if only we could say the same. For decades, I've warned people about the foolhardiness of our trade policies with the PRC, but that I something we've done to ourselves. Don't blame them for having more wise priorities than the US; their focus is on becoming the number 1 economy in the world, a policy we've sped up by first with ill advised trade deals, granting them PNTR, and these ruinous wars of the last nearly 20 years.
Was your post intended to read, (as amended below--
... "You are being dishonest in implying that the Taliban did (NOT (?)) knowingly and willingly host Al Qaeda for over a decade while Al Qaeda repeatedly planned and committed acts of war on foreign (to Afghanistan) soil and then refused to take action to turn over Bin Laden following 9/11."
??? An editing oversight or am I misreading your point?
Are you ignorant of the relationship and history of AQ and the Taliban or intellectually dishonest?
Bin Laden was kicked out of Sudan in May, 1996 and then went to Jalalabad, a city not under the control of the Taliban until later when they took over the city. That is 5 years, well short of a decade, and, as I describe below, the relationship was full of tension.
There was a great deal of tension between the two groups, especially when Mullah Rabbani was alive, as their world view, cultures, education levels etc. did not mesh, and even after his death in April, 2001, with Mullah Omar now in charge, the situation grew closer but still had strains.
After the 9-11 attacks, which had no Taliban support or even knowledge of, Omar, a simple and uneducated man, asked bin Laden if he was involved and was told "no". Rejecting the advice of some in the Taliban, he asked for proof of the charges and that bin Laden be tried in an Islamic court of law, which we rejected. Omar was told by Pakistani ISI, with whom he was close, that the US response would be limited to a few bombings and he believed them. I'll just add that the Taliban did officially condemn the 9-11 attacks.
If you want to continue conflating the groups, or implying a closer connection to them than was actual, I'd just remind you that believing things that are false tends to produce negative consequences, as perhaps our follies of the last 20 years have proven.
As a 19 year old, someone whose father commanded a battery in Patton's third army and whose friends' fathers all fought in WWII, I had no doubt when my government told me something, and was drafted in 1966, served in Vietnam and found out my previous beliefs were based on lies or misrepresentations, at best. I learned my lesson in Vietnam and haven't forgotten it. Perhaps had any of the neocons and members of Bush's administration that favored war had a similar experience, we might not be witnessing the tragedy we are today.
This country needs to learn that we have neither the right or even capability to remake the world, or even parts of it, into our conception of what a nation should be. If you have not read him I'd suggest the many books of Andrew Bacevich, a West point graduate, Vietnam vet, father of a son killed in Iraq, former professor at Boston College and head of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as a valuable and even entertaining source.
The Taliban did actually make the offer to hand over Bin Laden at some point. It was ignored.
I actually believe Omar on this one. Why would Bin Laden clue him in on his operations outside Afghanistan? It wouldn't make any sense from his perspective. Lots of negatives, no positives of note in letting Omar into his plans.
I have somehow avoided getting into an internet argument with a 9/11 Truther for the last 20 years. Like Cal Ripken, I didn't set out to achieve this streak, but nor do I see any good reason to purposefully break it now that it has been such a good run.
When you resort to ad hominem it shows that you have zero knowledge and therefore zero argument. The problem with America is EXACTLY this. People that lack knowledge and worse, the skills to process that knowledge.
A Truther is simply someone who doesn't believe the official story. There are alternatives within that space, but not believing the government isn't exactly ad hominem, is it?
Maybe the original poster just doesn't feel strongly about it, given that everyone involved was mostly atomized on 9/11.
You are talking to someone that made it a hobby for 4 years to prove that the media, SCO and Democratic party narrative of Russia collision was a fraud. I did original work and wrote tens of thousands of words demonstrating how the SCO's own statements and court filings contradicted their media talking points.
I don't read Taibbi for his juvenile and uninformed views on financial institutions and I don't read Greenwald for his "original" takes on Latin American caudillos. I read them because I share their skepticism of American media and government.
But I regard debating Mossad's role in 9/11 with you about as useful as debating whether Sandy Hook actually happened.
Have any of the trillions missing from Pentagon spending been located yet? It was $2.3 trillion & the top threat to our security the day before 9/11 and inquiring minds want to know since it's over $36 trillion missing now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXm2yaoWyN8
“Your understanding of the Taliban and our war aims there are as incorrect as your spelling "imminent", using the word "immanent", which has a totally different meaning.”
Yes, I know it does. I spotted and corrected the mistaken spelling of that term almost immediately after posting the comment, suspecting I'd used the wrong term—but, in the process of doing that, I neglected to copy-and-paste the corrected copy, replacing, instead, the original mistake once more. Unlike you, my efforts to correct my misspellings and other copy-editing errors are not flawlessly executed; the challenge is compounded by the truly shitty software on which this site "runs" and the hardly-less-shitty state of layman-technology in the rest of computer-linked communications..
Given that you submitted or willingly “served” in the U.S. war in Vietnam, your own life-mistakes dwarf my own faulty copy-editing, “genius.” My greatest respect is reserved for those not already in the U.S. military who, facing the call to join up, _ refused _ it, or those, if already in uniform, the order to muster for deployment, in either case by conscientious objection to fighting in that war. (re-edited and re-corrected--again).
Apparently, _ anyone _ can make a mistake. What really counts is how stupendous and life-ruining the mistakes are and whether, once made, one can learn something valuable from them.S
"Empires always fall, and for the same reasons."
No, they don't. Empires can fall for many and varied reasons. Incompetence and bad-luck, even when compounded, are not necessarily the same things.
Go polish your combat-awards, tough guy. You've now had all the time and attention you'll get from me in this forum.
Here's the revised/corrected copy to which the "reply" just above refers:
Readersaurus
16 hr ago
I believe the reasoning went something like this (a paraphrase) :
We blundered in not recognizing a manifest threat bred and promulgated from a foreign source--and we allowed it to fester as it made meticulous plans to strike us at home and abroad. Saudi Arabia, the putative native territory of the recent assailants (11 Sept. 2001) is but one such breeding ground --and not that (perhaps) most likely to breed the next imminent danger. Where else could that come from? The Taliban. And what is their home-ground? Afghanistan.
The initial reasoning was neither stupid nor irrational. There was a certain sense to it from both a political (policy) and military point of view. Moreover, (in the wake of such popular "Remember Pearl Harbor"-like phrases, i.e. "Whatever it takes!") with Bush essentially telling his general command that they'd have what was one of the most unrestrained of remits, their hands "untied", in the prosecution of the war, the response in Afghanistan began as early as October of 2001--as opposed to the Iraq war, which began in March of 2003. At the inception of the Iraq combat, such was the spectacle of was referred to in the press as "Shock and awe" and looked like it, that some people still confuse the Iraq hostilities as having begun prior to those, much less mediatized, in Afghanistan.
Well, that's a Narrative. Requires an impressively aggressive amount of editing to come up with one that inaccurate. But if you want to believe it, who cares about scholarly discipline?
Yes, I know. In the 2020s, a book of more than fifty pages constitutes a "big, thick, book" and, in this rather unfriendly comment-writing-&-editing software, 2 "deletes" and re-posts constitute for some what's called an "impressively aggressive amount of editing."
Wait, in a post of some 215 words, treating summarily a theatre of war which spanned twenty years (and much more), did I omit to mention some important details?
Your copy is pithier, of course--it being far easier to allege "inaccuracy" without even bothering to specify any of it.
Noting the inaccuracy of your potted history is preferable to allowing it to stand unchallenged, as if it were authoritative.
I've spent too many hours of research and link offerings in detailing specific objections in disputes like this one to do it any longer, when the topic is as general as this one. Most of what I'd have to say would merely be a re-phrasing of the work of others. I can direct readers to a rich archive that authoritatively refutes the insinuations and unstated premises of your cheesy partisan framing, though https://news.antiwar.com/tag/afghanistan/page/404/
Antiwar.com has another seven years of articles preceding that 404 page (thus far) archive, which only goes back to 2008. I presume that those articles are also archived somewhere. There are also plenty of other sources, of course. But the 13 years of tagged dispatches and opinion columns found in that Antiwar.com archive make for a good antidote to your facile summary.
What you fail to address is the complete lack of any coherent plan AFTER the occupation. Why is that? Why is it that for over half a century, we've been engaging in these "conflicts" over and over without any plan for what comes after? There's a reason for it, and that reason could be why we engage in them in the first place.
It's not that complicated. The "plan" was that the semi-moderate, semi-democratic government we helped stand up would prove marginally capable of holding power and governing an Afghanistan that, we believed, was never entirely enthralled with Taliban rule in the first place. You can criticize that assessment for being wrong, but you can't say there was no plan just because it didn't play out that way. I mean, that exact same plan has sort of played out that way in Iraq.
So you're saying it took 20 years to figure that out? Accepting your synopsis says the govt and military are so dysfunctional and incompetent, that they couldn't find there asses with both hands and a flashlight. it's possible, but I doubt that's the case.
We take dumbass teenagers, I was one of them, and train them for military combat in a matter of weeks. Even given the language and cultural differences, the problem you describe should have been glaringly apparent from the git go. Besides, as a military commander once said (paraphrasing), "Bootcamp is a finishing school. They're already killers when they arrive."
For *excruciatingly funny, and especially for people who may never have experienced the military, I highly recommend a Joseph Heller classic called "Catch 22", in the event that you have not already read that.
It is *most hilarious, however, if you *have been in the military, because you *know it is straight up *fact. But, keeping that in mind, a civilian can enjoy by constantly reminding themselves that this *is frustratingly funny, but it is *not even exaggerated, much less "made up" !
p.s., if you cannot get to the book, I *beg you to avoid any of the horrible attempts that have been made to catch the essence of this book into a movie. *Cannot be done. *Has not been done, in spite of at least three attempts.
I actually enjoy his posts. He's one of the few people here I make a point of reading on a regular basis despite disagreeing with him on some issues. Always cogent and to the point.
In fact, I noticed he hasn't been posting recently. Good to see him back.
Perhaps that's one reason your posts are generally worth reading: "Thankfully, I have a life outside of this comment page."
As for me, I'm literally chained to the floor in front of a monitor forced to respond to every comment here while living on scraps. Think Plato's Cave, but with gruel.
oh man, not the "paid hack" thing...that's so trite.
Not that I'd even know where to apply for a Paid Hack position, but anyone who reads enough of my posts ought to realize that there isn't a single Special Interest that would consider hiring me. I'm too Politically Unreliable.
If 16 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, why did the US invade Afghanistan? There were signatures by Saudi Royals on checks given to some of the terrorists cells (see Prince Bandar and his wife Haifa).
On the other hand, Afghanistan was a drug colony. Afghanistan is the world’s leading opium producer. The poppy fields were guarded by US and NATO soldiers. In the Helmand province alone, under British troop control, opium production rose 400%.
International finance and terrorism are addicted to drug money and rely on it for their operations.
That’s the hard truth, but no one is supposed to say it.
Afghanistan sits on $1 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, far more valuable to US—and to China, which has offered to help Afghanistan in our absence, a bid to corner the market on these essential minerals. If China succeeds, we're screwed. At least until Elon can set up a mining colony on a nearby asteroid.
If you have been paying ANY attention to reality AT ALL you’d know that whether China succeeds or not we are screwed. It strikes me that most folks are in hard-core denial of the fact that the “American Empire” is circling the drain and picking up speed as we spin. It is also remarkable how very few of us actually recognize how utterly unsympathetic and indifferent most in the USA seem to be to the attitude of inhumanity which permeates every nook and cranny of our system of our national governance. It seems to me that the good old USA is about as fucked up as can be and that most folks are like the proverbial frog in the pot of water as we all pick and quibble at small and ridiculously insignificant details of what is happening while totally missing the big picture.
If they want it so badly, let China invade and occupy Afghanistan. We can buy their production on a free market.
The cost of the Afghan war has far exceeded the trillion in rare earths you mention. To profit from them the US would have to run the mines and kill most of the civilians. It's an absurd economic position.
"We're" screwed?? Who are you referring to? Are you one of the elites that will rake in cash from the mines?? I'm okay with buying shit from China if that's who's got it. Pick your poison!
@bobD111
All of which minerals will become even *more important the more humankind goes with electric cars running on lithium batteries, which also require some rare earth minerals.
The US has a fair supply of rare earths. We choose not to exploit them because of cost.
HBI
REALLY ? I knew they were "spendy" to mine, but I had no idea the U.S. had any of them. The way the U.S. "whines" for rare earths, I, apparently inadvertently *assumed we didn't have any,
Now the whining makes a LOT more sense ! TKY ! If we can get them from somebody *else's country, why wouldn't we ? ;-D ;-D
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserves-by-country/
That said, those statistics depend on proven reserves by some means. If some geologist hasn't found evidence of the ore, it's not proven. It's like oil. If you asked people 40 years ago about oil in North Dakota, they'd have laughed. Nowadays...
@HBI
GOTCHA ! Thanks for the URL. Yeah, I grew up in a podunk town in Eastern Montana, Miles City, not far from North Dakota. Not only would we have laughed about "oil gushers" in N.,Dak, but also in and around my own little berg. Ooops ! That entire CORNER of SE Montana is *filthy with oil riggers and even deposits that are not *technically part of that Bakken Field across the line in N.Dak, but are certainly "country cousins". You may be aware the NE Montana, and clear into Canada is PART of that Bakken Strike. It is a no-kidding Big un' !
TriAWwag.
@HBI
You are welcome for those extra "bonus letters" at the bottom of my post above. Not everybody gets those ! ;-D
Yep. Rare earths aren't even all that rare, it's more the trouble you have to go to separate them from ground they're in.
Per usual, the US took the short term view on not developing them here, preferring to have the processing done elsewhere, the PRC being the big winner as usual.
Really, given the immaturity of our elite( ahem), especially contrasted with the maturity and vision of those leading the PRC, the reality that the Chinese will dwarf us economically before this century is done, is as safe a bet as can be made, especially given the utter wastefulness of placing so much of our technology and finance on the military.
We would do well to copy the Chinese approach, which seeks to be a regional military power and a global economic one. Training for the 100 meter dash when the real event is the Marathon is a poor plan, but one we are following.
HUDRF in Greenland is working on RE mining
Good point about Afghanistan's cash crop.
But anyone can find YouTube videos showing the opium shipments out of Afghanistan - in convoys protected by the military. Nobody has to say anything about something that obvious.
That "cash crop" never belonged to us and any American who thinks it does is a royal POS in my book and should be lined up against a wall for being a walking, breathing POS excuse for humanity.
OK, then.
And what group do you mean by "us"?
It's a crazy idea, suggesting the US spent all that money for the opium production. If we wanted, we could easily match that by sultivating opium in Arizona. It's not hard to grow and it isn't expensive.
Maybe your response was intended for someone else? (Horatio Flemm's comment has generated a lengthy subthread.)
I wasn't suggesting the U.S. had anything to do opium production. When I mentioned drug convoys protected by the military, I meant the Afghan army not the U.S. army.
There are apparently many who think that the U.S. had an interest in seeing opium produced but that's not my view.
While I agree that the CIA and other agencies use these operations to generate their own covert funds, on a macro level, flooding the population with drugs is one of the most effective means of getting the population to destroy itself, destroy minds (often promising ones who become demoralized and turn to drugs), and just an altogether brave new world system where as Huxley put it in his infamous speech "The Final Revolution": people will learn to love their servitude.
https://youtu.be/2WaUkZXKA30?t=0
If one has the choice between running a totalitarian state with boots on the ground enforcement, or a Brave New World-type scenario where people have all the tools and instruments to create their own alternative realities, the latter is much more subtle and effective. And it works in such that way that often times, even though people are aware that they are not free, they are just a little too comfortable to actually fight back, and they have just the right dosage and choice entertainment to not want to risk losing it all.
If people can become disgusted enough with that kind of system, then the oligarchs are in big trouble.
Here's a fun quote from Dr. Timothy Leary's biographical work "Flashback", where he recounts the kind of rich correspondence he was engaged in with Aldous Huxley:
Huxley:
``These brain drugs, mass produced in the laboratories, will bring about vast changes in society. This will happen with or without you or me. All we can do is spread the word. The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.''
Leary reflection's on Huxley's thoughts:
``We had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism had arrived.''
More on that here:
https://youtu.be/smVvJzijAek?t=0
"[F]looding the population with drugs is one of the most effective means of getting the population to destroy itself, destroy minds ..."
Thanks. Agreed.
I was viciously ridiculed by a couple of people in the commentary of Matt's recent Obama article for hypothesizing that the *root*, not the ostensible or plausible cover, reason for the ruthless implementation of 100% COVID vaccine compliance, along with ruthless indefensible suppression of even research on preventatives and cures, is to normalize bodily-invasive access, at the individual level, for any reason it might be needed in the future. The seasonal flu vaccine campaign just didn't cut it to establish this compliance...and here we are. I'm not completely wedded to this idea, but it is certainly plausible given the past horrors we have learned.
The sociopaths who claw their way up the political chain are not experts, they are unbound killers who Will. Do. ANYTHING. ... for example - Tuskegee. Northwoods. Rome. ... just off the top of my head ... But the list is really very long...
I would hypothesize that TPTB do not want a control group of substantial size to remain. This could be from one of two reasons, both nefarious, but one downright wicked in its nature. Firstly, they know that they don't know the long-term effects of this gene therapy, which is what it is, and the poor suckers that mindlessly take the clot-shot will be fuming murderously angry if they finally figure out that they were human lab rats for an experiment that over time had shown to have gone awry. The other, more diabolical hypothesis is that the long-term effects of The King's Serum are intentional, particularly given the already known and documented evidence that it has on reproductive systems (far beyond statistical chance) and that the long-term effects are intentional and nefarious in nature.
That said, it won't be long before we - those that refuse to be pricked under orders of The Prick in Chief (party be damned) - are given the equivalent of yellow stars to wear on our sleeves. I see THAT unfolding as I type.
Notice that I make no claims of truth. It's because I just don't know the damn truth. But when the government, media, and every NGO from East to West lies to you on a drum-beat basis, you can make a decent estimate that the next "claim" too will be a bald-faced lie. That, coupled with this frantic push to take the spike protein toxin in a syringe has my BS meter so far into the red that it's broken.
My body, my choice. Anyone that disagrees with me can F off as it is THEY that are self-centered and cowardly to the core, not to mention credulously naive to the point of being useless to society.
Edit: There could be more than 2 reasons I am sure. Just haven't thought them up yet. It's always best to consider EVERY possibility. One does more harm to oneself lying to themselves than they do lying to others. So if anyone has other hypothesis' then please, I am all ears.
We can be sure that whatever happens to us, will be blamed on us (and, of course, on rebels'-choice Trump).
Trump got the vaccine, as he himself (quietly) admits.
Did he?
Good job. Question everything. Unless you were there, you don't know.
I have personally observed believable films of Godzilla destroying New York City?
And your evidence is......?
Yes. Absolutely.
That’s actually why I started the “Escaping the Brave New World” podcast, to explore the very nuanced and subtle nature of our current brave new world, which includes the insane drug culture and entertainment world. I thin it can be defeated though because it’s based on a fundamentally flawed and perverted idea of human nature and the mind.
Beyond just pointing out all the perversions of truth and subversive ideologies, I think it’s important to emphasize what a healthy mind and creativity looks and sounds like.
The fact that the system has worked for so long isn’t really proof that it’s correct. In a sudden moment or crisis and realization, all of a sudden decades of work and conditioning can quickly erode. The whole thing is like a great game of Jenga, it all depends on a scientific-like precision of the narrative, but as soon as we start to reach a point of discontinuity, extreme turbulence, we start to see a bunch of new singularities pop up. In these moments, the whole narrative matrix can come down in one great crash, just like a game of Jenga.
As someone said earlier, there really is this Orwellian culture today where the only acceptable narratives are the state-sanctioned narratives, and everything else is considered weird conspiracy theory. However I don’t think that kind of thing can be defeated with just cold hard facts and logic, there needs to be a sense of creative insight whereby we don’t just try to defeat ugly ideas by exposing their insanity, we defeat ugly ideas with beautiful and good ideas. This is admittedly more difficult, but it’s necessary. Dante’s Commedia comes to mind. He takes you through Hell, but he does so in order to show the reader the way Paradise. They need to first have a real sense of Hell if they’re to actually make the longer journey.
That being said, for those not too far gone cases, the work of Whitney Webb on the defense and BigTech 360 degree bio-medical surveillance is very good.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/a-leap-toward-humanitys-destruction/
Whitney Webb is a force of nature and she deserves all the help she can get to get out this important story.
Her work is for anyone who might be asking questions like “is the third dose also mandatory? What about the fourth?”
Otherwise, the recent three part series published on Off-Guardian on the new eugenics and Transhumanism should be read the world over.
“How the Unthinkable Became Thinkable
Eric Lander, Julian Huxley and the Awakening of Sleeping Monsters”:
https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/12/how-the-unthinkable-became-thinkable/
To quote Julian Huxley:
The moral for UNESCO is clear. The task laid upon it of promoting peace and security can never be wholly realised through the means assigned to it- education, science and culture. It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise, as the only certain means of avoiding war… in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for a world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization.”
To what end would this “world political unity” be aimed? Several pages later, Huxley’s vision is laid out in all of its twisted detail:
At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
This is it. If people get that, they have the master key to understanding the current situation.
I recently saw the movie “Gattaca.” That gives a pretty good idea. Elysium and Utopia (on Amazon Prime) are two other interesting examples of what the eugenicist wet dreams look like.
Well shoot David, I watched it. I have to say it was entirely unconvincing, though I can just barely imagine airport metal detectors getting replaced by airport mind readers? Not a real happy thought for me? :)
Don't forget to call your mom?
Speaking as someone who works with CRISPR and has a company with the intent of offering human enhancements that are transformational therapies, I can tell you that this basic idea that such therapies would only be given to the rich is wrong. Reality is the other way around. The rich don't want to experiment on themselves, they want others to do it. But more than that, the economics demand huge mass markets to make the real money. Pharma revenues are measured in billions for the most part. This is why it is all but impossible to provide a treatment for rare disease. Markets are very small.
Looking at rare disease gene therapy cost and assuming on that basis that this is what it would cost per person to deliver to a mass market is just wrong.
Well, the problem is if one looks at how things are being organized top down with mandatory vaccines, which used to be optional, it’s the same with eugenics, which now falls under the banner of « human engineering » and Transhumanism.
These optional therapies are being tested, but if you look at what the conversations are like within the higher echelons over in BigTech, the DARPA/HARPA, the Wellcome Trust, the point is none of this is going to be optional.
Whitney Webb’s work on The Wellcome Trust and all these other eugenics-orientated “charities” and “research” firms is necessary reading for anyone who is still committed to the idea of Never Again.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/a-leap-toward-humanitys-destruction/
It will make Hitler’s sterilization and eugenics policies look like very amateur stuff.
The problem is most people tend to just react to the latest developments, rather than seeing what the trajectory is. Just like with the T4 and useless eaters programs, these things started off small, with humble and seemingly harmless beginnings. But we’re supposed to know that by now.
I would really recommend the series on the new eugenics and transhumanists to get a better idea of how they are thinking top down.
What does this stuff look like today? I recently read a piece called “Scientists can now predict at birth who will have academic success”
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/bigthink.com/amp/scientists-can-now-predict-at-birth-who-will-have-academic-success-2642941351
That’s what modern eugenics looks like. Will you be allowed to go to the institutions of advanced learning if you don’t have the right distribution of phenotypes and generic markers? I don’t know. The computer says that statistically you’re not eligible. We have to follow the science. That’s not science fiction, that’s the living nightmare these people are thinking of. I think it’s hard for people to conceive of because these higher ups really do have such perverted and detached ideas about what humanity is. On the other hand, many just don’t really think about something like « what is humanity really? »
However, the transhumanists have thought about this stuff, that’s why there are billions of dollars of research being poured into it.
However, if people understand the epistemological issues, and can comfortably deliberate on those issues and easily demonstrate why they are grounded in a fundamentally flawed idea of the mind and creativity, then the World Economic Forum and their Transhumanism priesthood are going to have a serious problem.
But these kinds of ideas can only be defeated if people understand what the underlying axioms are. The thinking is genuinely weird and creepy. The stuff is always advanced by framing it at all as a mathematical question, questions of statistics and models. The mathematics are used to depersonalize people, and then make it such that if you object to their human engineering dreams, or demands, you’re just against math and science.
They are doing the same in medicine with « evidence-based medicine. » It just takes away the ability of the individual doctors to think , diagnose and act as sovereign individuals. Instead, treatment is all organized around statistical models, and at the end of the day, the doctor is basically just there to follow the formulas, determine the « QALYs . »
https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/16/nazi-healthcare-revived-across-the-five-eyes-killing-useless-eaters-and-bidens-covid-relief-bill/
This is what Cybernerics was brought into governance for. Increasingly, no one will be allowed to think or make creative decisions, it will all be a question of statistical data, genetics, and consensus.
People need to really get a sense of how these governance structures are organized, otherwise it becomes difficult to see how the kind of nefarious stuff we’re seeing today is organized.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zow-CrQgZOo
If people can see this, the bad guys are in a lot of trouble.
@David Gosselin
Great post ! Even now, Big Pharma is going after homeopathy (including shots), ALL supplements, acupuncture, compounding pharmacies, and I just saw today that they are going after Hemp oil as well. Basically anything that THEY do not presently control. And, they dare to come at the people and the MDs involved in anything alternate that is NOT drug based, predicated upon what is described in Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine". When there IS a disaster (Katrina) Capitalists leap aboard and do ANYTHING they want, even passing legislation that robs us of our rights in an ersatz move to keep us "safe". If there is NOT a clear and present disaster, Capitalists must *CREATE one (present day examples ??) and just *RAM it down the THROATS of any who do not want to "play", and then ruin them financially and socially ALSO in the name of "Safety" for society. Not to mention ALSO for *daring to think for themselves. But in the immortal words of Zuck, they have to "Move Fast and Break Things" to get the job done. I do not know of any four-yr-old who needs help figuring out HOW to "move fast and break things", so that Zuck really IS a "world-class" genius ! ;-D Maybe he should hire a no-kidding grown-up to actually RUN his business. ;-D
What a lengthy statement to say nothing.
Gattaca is one of my faves. We're a ways away from that, but CRISPR shows the path.
I like Tim Leary; he had some important insights. But he's waay out of his depth on that one, in misidentifying monotheism as the great adversary of mind expansion. I think Tim's extrapolating mostly from his own conflicted upbringing, about which he was always quite candid; I recommend that the curious read his autobiographies, which, while lucidly written and entertaining (and action-packed!), also indicate the limitations of his own conditioning and the narrative frame imposed by it.
Anyway, the psychedelic revolution in consciousness was always bigger than Leary, and contained many currents running contrary to Leary-thought. (I can practically hear Tim saying "Leary-thought! good one!")
It was none other than his fellow psychonaut Al Hubbard who obtained some sort of dispensation from the Vatican endorsing the potential of mind-opening substances in leading people toward piety and holiness. Hubbard was, like Leary, Roman Catholic; unlike Leary, he wasn't "lapsed." LSD explorer Clare Boothe Luce was also Catholic; her husband Henry, another voyager, retained his Protestant affiliation. As did Ken Kesey. To say nothing of what happened with Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, and Art Kleps. And so it goes...a much more colorful and variegated set of perspectives than the dreariness of the colorless allcolor of techno-atheism of the New Jacks of Silicon Valley.
Damn good post. Kudos my friend. Well thought out.
David. Thank you for sharing this!
"they have just the right dosage and choice entertainment to not want to risk losing it all."
The question is, "lose it for what?" What's the alternative to a life of enjoyable leisure? Who stops anyone from pursuing a life of productivity, inovation and personal growth? Creativity and "self-actualization"? No one I know of in the US? At least nothing organized?
Sure, the IRS has been engineered to enforce the economic class structure, no doubt of that. Becoming a billionaire is hard these days, becoming a millionaire 30 years ago was just as difficult. That's what the progressive tax structure is designed to do?
Other than that, anyone willing to put in the work and time can have a nice life on their country estate with a big TV, horses, fast cars, etc. It's hardly impossible? So what is it you suggest America is missing, other than legal access to heroin?
Sorry, are you saying you're not aware that most schools are simply brainwashing kids and young people? How exactly are we living in a free world if most of the education people are getting is garbage, if not outright brainwashing?
What about the media? Do you think an MSM churning out constant fabricated lies 24/7 is really the sign of a "free society?"
You haven't heard about Critical Theory and all the other insane ideologies taking over the education system, and especially targeting children?
If all this is news to you, congrats, you're a happy denizen of the brave new world!
Badger
just now
"are you saying you're not aware that most schools are simply brainwashing kids and young people?"
No, not at all? Some certainly are? California, Washington and Oregon are all very good examples. The choice is to either move your kids somewhere else or send them to private schools?
It's your own school board and state making these decisions. Change them?
"After Vietnam there was a heroin epidemic."
Robert Stone's DOG SOLDIERS (1974), albeit fictional, is a key work on this topic. Won the National Book Award.
@Koshmarov
Yes. Vietnam introduced many to "China White", a heroin of about 96% purity, such that users didn't even need to inject it, they could just elect to smoke it. People who "loved" Janis Joplin used to send her China White, not realizing that Janis was used to U.S. heroin "stepped on" so many times that the user was lucky to get 30% pure on the streets. Not knowing the difference may have contributed to the reason we lost Janis to heroin.
We lost Janis due to her own stupidity. PS. I am adamantly opposed to the War on The Constitution, err on Drugs. One thing that makes us all human and adds zest to the process of living is the right to make stupid decisions, hopefully not the fatal ones like Janis made.
I don't know the solution for such a problem except to supply the addicts with drugs under certain conditions. There was a program in Vancouver, BC that was basically insisting that they come in and get cleaned up, showering and eating, and they'd get a (real, not methadone) fix in exchange for that.
Wish people would accept the reality that such programs are probably the only way to make a dent in the bad outcomes.
@HBI
Yes. Amsterdam has tried a number of approaches wherein addicts are just allowed access to whatever they "need" without legal penalties or societal judgment. As always, some programs have been more successful than others.
They have done this successfully in Portugal and Switzerland as well. The idea of user sites was hugely unpopular beforehand, but now that people have seen them at work they have enormous support.
No more drugs user, needles and everything that accompanies addiction out on the street. How it is all handled in a controlled environment out of site of the public square.
If you step back and think about it, we have had controlled user sites in the US for about 90 years. A controlled environment where you can go to ingest a safe and unadulterated form of the drug under a controlled environment with people around to ensure you don't get too out of control, such as try to drive home. They are called bars and they have been very effective.
I'm juxtaposing what you are saying about bars to what the WCTU said about gin mills before Prohibition. I doubt they'd agree. Destroys the family et al...
That said, it mostly works as you say.
Let's not forget Portugal, now Oregon too, who've just completely removed criminal penalties for teh possession and use of personal amounts? For some reason they still feel the need to prosecute dealers, though their reasoning is unexplainable.
I'm fine with that, but we probably need to go farther to help. Removing the criminal penalties for buying small amounts or possession doesn't change the general requirement for crime to get the drugs in the first place - my understanding is that most users end up burning all bridges with family and friends before long scamming for fixes and doing lots of small busts for petty theft and the like.
@SirReality
My word, Dude, you sound as if you think you were her brother. Want to lift your leg on Jim Morrison and Jimi Hedrix at the same time ? They all died at age 27 of drugs. They all lived at a time when the whole country was experimenting with drugs, some more successfully than others.
But, hey, uninformed judgement (you have only an opinion) is ITSELF kind of a "RUSH", no ? ;-D
This belief we can protect people from themselves is the problem itself.
HBI
Hear, HEAR ! *All people have the inalienable right to LEARN their own lessons in their OWN way, even if that lesson *does cost them their lives. That is, after all, why we *call it "their life" to begin with, innit ?.
BTW, Well analyzed as usual, HBI ! Thanks.
You're walking, talking evidence many American's have learned absolutely nothing fromm the failed "war on drugs". Nothing.
"I'd like to see more from the investigative journalism community about how the Sackler family (and other Rx companies) were able to flood the U.S. with opioids"
I'd like to see less crap about "flooding the U.S. with opiods"? So I guess we're even?
Sorry, I answered that out of order.
I'm disabled (legally) and have depended on opiates for about 15 years. Over the course of that time, my dependence has become more and more difficult to maintain. It wasn't easy even in 2007, it's much more difficult now.
It's become little less than a leash. I can't leave the state much less the country, for more than 30 days. It's crazy. To be honest, it isn't worth the trouble any longer. The pain is more acceptable. One of those "the cure is worse than the disease" situations. And it's entirely due to our perverse and somewhat Puritanical legal system.
Blow it out yer' ass Howard.
That was, BTW, a classic quote from the classic Mel Brooks comedy of the 1970's titled "Blazing Saddles", just in case you didn't recognize it? It was meant in good spirited jest?
While correlation does not equate to causality it can be at times be considered prima facie evidence for investigation into why the opium epidemic in the US exploded just after we invaded Viet Ghanistan. Inquiring minds want to know if a linkage exists, would you not agree?
The crack epidemic correlated with the support of right wing dictatorships in Latin America in the eighties.. but who can say?
It isn't difficult and doesn't require great leaps of insight? The so called "opium epidemic" exists in the US due to an aging segment of the population that happens to be in the majority at present? Nothing mystical about it, just millions of old people who've, over the course of their lives, messed themselves up? That's about it?
No Unicorns. No mystical or nefarious causes, just a bunch of old folks who fell off ladders?
Oops? Starting over here...
Staring over here Huff. Wider Stance? Best of Times to you?
In the dystopia we’re now all prisoners of, no one is supposed, or allowed to, say anything that’s true. Only official narratives are permitted. Just ask Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
If the all-powerful dystopia of which you speak were an actual reality, no one would have access to the sagas and disclosures of either Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, and you'd be identified, hunted down, and disappeared simply for mentioning their names.
I'm just tired of hype, that's all. Hype is ubiquitous on Internet comment pages, on practically any topic of controversy.
Read Bevins' book and then come back and tell me it's all hype.
Commenting online is no real threat to any part of the ruling class, if this is all we do, and so far it is. They'll hunt us down and disappear any of us when we are perceived as a threat to their tyranny. Read Vincent Bevins' "The Jakarta Method" for a full description of how the US has done this systematically for decades, and continues the pattern. It might just help redefine "reality" for you.
OBL was known to be resident in Afghanistan. The govt of Afghanistan was advised to surrender him and the Taliban laughed at that. OBL was trapped in Tora Bora and was there for the killing but the US Army insisted on getting him (and the credit); which allowed him to escape to Pakistan. That's where the real justification ends and the BS begins.
It is true the Taliban offered to hand him over. The offer probably should have been made on September 12th, not that it would have made much difference. No one was in the mood for negotiation at the time.
The privilege of being the leader of the rules-based order - we get to break pretty much any rule we want because no one can hold us accountable. Another reason that other countries don't see the system as having quite the same benefits we see in it.
The whole edifice of 'international law' is contingent on the US being a hegemon. It makes sense that a hegemon would carve exceptions out for itself.
Without a hegemonic US, international law won't survive long anyway.
Afghanistan was AQ’s crash pad, there’s no doubt about that. Did we let the biggest scumbag regime on the planet off the hook b/c of Bush family cronyism-of course.
Oh the ties between American and Saudi wealth vastly outstrip the ability of the Bushes to benefit.
My mind is drawn to that massacre in Vegas in 2017. I remember seeing a video of one of the Saudi royals escaping from a hotel with bodyguards around him while it was going on. Never found out the real story on that one, they just blamed a single nutjob for it, however implausible that seemed.
I mean, I know the geopolitical reasons why the Saudis get so much slack, but within the borders of the US? Anyway, break the oil addiction and you break Saudi power.
Let's not forget that Carter funded, armed, and gave intelligence to mujahideen 6 months before the USSR invaded. He did it for the purpose of baiting the USSR into invading to protect themselves from a dangerous nation on their southern border. Carter did this out of the kindness of his Christian heart because he hated godless communism.
I would sooner blame Brzezinski for that, though Carter was the dummy for listening.
@HBI,
Well, Carter or his "hirelings" as it were ! ;-D ;-D
Brzezinski probably didn't think of himself that way, same as Kissinger didn't think of himself as Nixon's boy. And in retrospect, Reagan even asked Brzezinski to stay on. He refused.
I just read a good comment on FB about that. "The world has been moved by opium for millenia. It just moved."
https://apxhard.com/2021/08/17/america-failed-in-afghanistan-because-of-the-war-on-drugs/
we failed here because of our war on drugs.
You mean The War on The Bill of Rights. Corrected that for you.
But...you said it.
Your understanding of the Taliban and our war aims there are as incorrect as your spell spelling "imminent", using the word "immanent", which has a totally different meaning.
Our foray into Afghanistan was doomed from the beginning because it had as its target not getting bin Laden and then leaving( we had a total of 37 US troops on the ground at Tora Bora, where he was holed up), and instead paid Afghan mercenaries to go get him as we bombed from the air, the Afghans then going in and being paid more by bin Laden to look the other way, as is their culture, but to be the appetizer to whet our appetite for the real wars to come in Iraq, Syria and the big prize, Iran, all of which were either outright disasters, or would have been, (Iran) if attempted.
The Taliban, unlike AQ, has no interest in any country outside their own, and can we please remember these people are the end winners in our policy back in the 80's to give the USSR its own Vietnam an irony in that it has come back to give us our second one? It hurts, I know, but once again, the belief by our politicians, most of whom either were or would have been draft dodgers, or are combat virgins, that our military is the answer to any and all problems has been a resounding failure, not that either they or our media will admit it
Being a Vietnam vet, I knew this would happen 19 1/2 years ago, and that when it did, all the advocates of war would go around pointing fingers, playing political games of blaming someone else, and would find willing accomplices with our worthless media, being unable to accept the fact that their lies led to needless deaths and dismemberment and cost trillions of dollars, no one truly being held accountable.
Empires always fall, and for the same reasons.
"The Taliban, unlike AQ, has no interest in any country outside their own..."
I wonder if they will come to believe your opinion of their opinion?
https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1426713093099249669
If you can show me any concrete examples of their trying to spread their beliefs around the world, I will change my mind.
The planning for 9-11 was done in San Diego, Miami and Germany; Hamburg, if I remember correctly, and not a single Afghan or Taliban was involved, though a shit load of Saudis were, not that seems to matter to our political elites. If AQ does reassemble in Afghanistan, I cannot think or a safer place for us to have them; a landlocked country with few outlets to the world.
If Islamic terrorism is so great a threat, then why have so few here been killed by it? Are you telling me a Muslim couldn't just buy a gun here and blast away, like we do to each other on the regular?
Take a look at the number of Americans killed by drunk drivers, plain old murders, work place accidents, or even our horrible junk food diet and then try telling me our reaction to 9-11, one where we didn't even try to get bin Laden, the supposed mastermind, wasn't a complete bait and switch, the ultimate winners being the MIC and their political pimps.
If you feel so strongly, take your second amendment implements over there and go at it, but give me a heads up, and I'll give you some of the tips I learned in Vietnam decades ago. And while you're over there, just think back to how this all started with our aiding these people, who eventually morphed into the Taliban, in our desire to play The Great Game, all to give the USSR its own Vietnam. There was a movie about it, Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks, if I remember correctly, so it must have been the right thing to do, consequences be damned.
I'm no expert on Afghanistan, but isn't that because the international jihadist activities of the Taliban are ostensibly managed by the Haqqani Network, which raises funds from the same Arabic groups that Al Qaeda does, has large numbers of Chechen, Arabic, Uzbeki and other foreign fighters, offers refuge and support to Pakistani terrorists targeting India and which bombed India's embassy in Kabul? There doesn't seem to be any real difference between the Haqqani Network and the Taliban. But perhaps most importantly, if neither one have broken ranks with Al Qaeda in the last 19 years, you really have to question your belief that the Taliban is solely interested in ruining their own countrymens' lives.
Is this the same Haqqani network we used to funnel arms to the Afghans during our 1980's attempt to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?
Perhaps a bit of sober reflection might prove useful to the world's last and crumbling super power, mired in pointless wars for over 19 years, as meanwhile the only country in the world that can rival us, and that on economic issues, not military ones, eschews such follies and keeps its eye on the main prize, as we suffer casualties, relatively minor, unless you're one them or a family member, and has gone over $7 trillion further into debt for no good national purpose.
STANDINGS IN THE GREAT GAME:
1. The PRC, 0-0, with no lives or national treasure lost
2. Afghanistan, 2-0, defeated both its militarily superior foes, but suffered greatly in doing so
3. The former USSR, 0-1. Lost, but did so in a shorter time and thus with less misery than..
4. The USA, 0-1, who succeeded in giving #3 its loss, but in doing so, set the stage for its own loss, and unlike the USSR, will never accept the reality that it was the sole cause of its fate.
The Taliban has neither the desire or capability to attack the US, and why either they or AQ would need to plan an attack on us from Afghanistan, when the 9-11 attack was planned in Miami, San Diego and Hamburg, and Afghanistan is one of the most isolated places on earth, and thus worthless in such an endeavor, defies logic.
The real worry of the endless war duopoly is not that we will be attacked now that the Taliban victory is undeniable, but that we won't be, leaving the uncomfortable question: then just wtf have we been doing there for 19 years after our quick "victory" in the first months of that invasion?
It's fascinating to me that you (and you aren't the only one) think that pointing out that we assisted the Mujaheideen 40 years ago in defending their country from a Soviet invasion means that we have no grounds for complaint about any of their subsequent behavior.
I was a teenager at the end of the cold war and can't say for certain what my opinion would have been of our military conflicts in Korea or Vietnam (or our inaction in, say, Czechoslovakia and Hungary). But I have been a consistent critic of most of our elective military interventions since (Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Gulf War II, Libya and Syria, with Gulf War I being the sole exceptions). I don't regard Afghanistan as an elective intervention.
You are being dishonest in implying that the Taliban did knowingly and willingly host Al Qaeda for over a decade while Al Qaeda repeatedly planned and committed acts of war on foreign (to Afghanistan) soil and then refused to take action to turn over Bin Laden following 9/11. Those are facts. Any outcome that didn't result in Bin Laden's death or extradition was unacceptable to the great majority of Americans, myself included.
Lauding the foreign policy of an overtly revanchist China takes the cake.
"Any action that didn't result in the death or extradition of bin Laden was unacceptable to the great majority of Americans, myself included."
Thank you for one of the most unintentionally hilarious comments I've seen in some time.
The US, with the world's most advanced military and by far the largest budget, somehow found itself capable of having only 37 troops on the ground when bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora, and instead used a BS fireworks show of aerial bombing to fool gullible Americans it wanted him dead, instead, sending in paid Afghan mercenaries(contractors?) who went in, and as is their well known custom, got paid more by bin Laden to look the other way.
Less than one year after 9-11, Bush was asked a question about bin Laden and good old George said he didn't even think about him, the man we were told was behind the 9-11 attacks.
You and the American people got bait and switched. Comparing our efforts in Afghanistan with those in Iraq, show a complete emphasis on Iraq, a country with nothing to do with 9-11, with no WMD's, as Bush eventually admitted by 2004, and yet you say we demanded bin Laden's death.
The minute we went from solely killing bin Laden and taking out AQ in Afghanistan to BS nation building and compounding that by invading Iraq, this war was lost, only Biden having the courage to tear down the Potemkin village of lies we've been telling each other for these last years, Bush, Obama and Trump too scared to tell the truth. Even the release of the Afghanistan papers, that detailed our futile policies there, changed nothing.
As for the PRC, the last war they were engaged in was in 1979, a border skirmish with The Socialist Republic of Vietnam; if only we could say the same. For decades, I've warned people about the foolhardiness of our trade policies with the PRC, but that I something we've done to ourselves. Don't blame them for having more wise priorities than the US; their focus is on becoming the number 1 economy in the world, a policy we've sped up by first with ill advised trade deals, granting them PNTR, and these ruinous wars of the last nearly 20 years.
Thanks for that. I wrote about 1,000 words but cancelled for fear of being banned. As W.C Fields would say.....
Was your post intended to read, (as amended below--
... "You are being dishonest in implying that the Taliban did (NOT (?)) knowingly and willingly host Al Qaeda for over a decade while Al Qaeda repeatedly planned and committed acts of war on foreign (to Afghanistan) soil and then refused to take action to turn over Bin Laden following 9/11."
??? An editing oversight or am I misreading your point?
Are you ignorant of the relationship and history of AQ and the Taliban or intellectually dishonest?
Bin Laden was kicked out of Sudan in May, 1996 and then went to Jalalabad, a city not under the control of the Taliban until later when they took over the city. That is 5 years, well short of a decade, and, as I describe below, the relationship was full of tension.
There was a great deal of tension between the two groups, especially when Mullah Rabbani was alive, as their world view, cultures, education levels etc. did not mesh, and even after his death in April, 2001, with Mullah Omar now in charge, the situation grew closer but still had strains.
After the 9-11 attacks, which had no Taliban support or even knowledge of, Omar, a simple and uneducated man, asked bin Laden if he was involved and was told "no". Rejecting the advice of some in the Taliban, he asked for proof of the charges and that bin Laden be tried in an Islamic court of law, which we rejected. Omar was told by Pakistani ISI, with whom he was close, that the US response would be limited to a few bombings and he believed them. I'll just add that the Taliban did officially condemn the 9-11 attacks.
If you want to continue conflating the groups, or implying a closer connection to them than was actual, I'd just remind you that believing things that are false tends to produce negative consequences, as perhaps our follies of the last 20 years have proven.
As a 19 year old, someone whose father commanded a battery in Patton's third army and whose friends' fathers all fought in WWII, I had no doubt when my government told me something, and was drafted in 1966, served in Vietnam and found out my previous beliefs were based on lies or misrepresentations, at best. I learned my lesson in Vietnam and haven't forgotten it. Perhaps had any of the neocons and members of Bush's administration that favored war had a similar experience, we might not be witnessing the tragedy we are today.
This country needs to learn that we have neither the right or even capability to remake the world, or even parts of it, into our conception of what a nation should be. If you have not read him I'd suggest the many books of Andrew Bacevich, a West point graduate, Vietnam vet, father of a son killed in Iraq, former professor at Boston College and head of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as a valuable and even entertaining source.
The Taliban did actually make the offer to hand over Bin Laden at some point. It was ignored.
I actually believe Omar on this one. Why would Bin Laden clue him in on his operations outside Afghanistan? It wouldn't make any sense from his perspective. Lots of negatives, no positives of note in letting Omar into his plans.
I omitted the "not".
I have somehow avoided getting into an internet argument with a 9/11 Truther for the last 20 years. Like Cal Ripken, I didn't set out to achieve this streak, but nor do I see any good reason to purposefully break it now that it has been such a good run.
When you resort to ad hominem it shows that you have zero knowledge and therefore zero argument. The problem with America is EXACTLY this. People that lack knowledge and worse, the skills to process that knowledge.
Where was the ad hominem there?
A Truther is simply someone who doesn't believe the official story. There are alternatives within that space, but not believing the government isn't exactly ad hominem, is it?
Maybe the original poster just doesn't feel strongly about it, given that everyone involved was mostly atomized on 9/11.
You are talking to someone that made it a hobby for 4 years to prove that the media, SCO and Democratic party narrative of Russia collision was a fraud. I did original work and wrote tens of thousands of words demonstrating how the SCO's own statements and court filings contradicted their media talking points.
I don't read Taibbi for his juvenile and uninformed views on financial institutions and I don't read Greenwald for his "original" takes on Latin American caudillos. I read them because I share their skepticism of American media and government.
But I regard debating Mossad's role in 9/11 with you about as useful as debating whether Sandy Hook actually happened.
Say, was the moon landing faked? Was 9/11 an inside job? Inquiring minds need to know.
Have any of the trillions missing from Pentagon spending been located yet? It was $2.3 trillion & the top threat to our security the day before 9/11 and inquiring minds want to know since it's over $36 trillion missing now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXm2yaoWyN8
There is no hard and fast relationship between input and output in Pentagon funding. So, any attempt at a good accounting will not fare well.
Matt deserves better readers.
I'm not sure that he gets to pick his readers. Can we be fired?
okay, the Taliban have a rhetorical interest in countries outside their own.
RE (michael t. nola)
“Your understanding of the Taliban and our war aims there are as incorrect as your spelling "imminent", using the word "immanent", which has a totally different meaning.”
Yes, I know it does. I spotted and corrected the mistaken spelling of that term almost immediately after posting the comment, suspecting I'd used the wrong term—but, in the process of doing that, I neglected to copy-and-paste the corrected copy, replacing, instead, the original mistake once more. Unlike you, my efforts to correct my misspellings and other copy-editing errors are not flawlessly executed; the challenge is compounded by the truly shitty software on which this site "runs" and the hardly-less-shitty state of layman-technology in the rest of computer-linked communications..
Given that you submitted or willingly “served” in the U.S. war in Vietnam, your own life-mistakes dwarf my own faulty copy-editing, “genius.” My greatest respect is reserved for those not already in the U.S. military who, facing the call to join up, _ refused _ it, or those, if already in uniform, the order to muster for deployment, in either case by conscientious objection to fighting in that war. (re-edited and re-corrected--again).
Apparently, _ anyone _ can make a mistake. What really counts is how stupendous and life-ruining the mistakes are and whether, once made, one can learn something valuable from them.S
"Empires always fall, and for the same reasons."
No, they don't. Empires can fall for many and varied reasons. Incompetence and bad-luck, even when compounded, are not necessarily the same things.
Go polish your combat-awards, tough guy. You've now had all the time and attention you'll get from me in this forum.
Mr. Nola, thank you for your service.
Here's the revised/corrected copy to which the "reply" just above refers:
Readersaurus
16 hr ago
I believe the reasoning went something like this (a paraphrase) :
We blundered in not recognizing a manifest threat bred and promulgated from a foreign source--and we allowed it to fester as it made meticulous plans to strike us at home and abroad. Saudi Arabia, the putative native territory of the recent assailants (11 Sept. 2001) is but one such breeding ground --and not that (perhaps) most likely to breed the next imminent danger. Where else could that come from? The Taliban. And what is their home-ground? Afghanistan.
The initial reasoning was neither stupid nor irrational. There was a certain sense to it from both a political (policy) and military point of view. Moreover, (in the wake of such popular "Remember Pearl Harbor"-like phrases, i.e. "Whatever it takes!") with Bush essentially telling his general command that they'd have what was one of the most unrestrained of remits, their hands "untied", in the prosecution of the war, the response in Afghanistan began as early as October of 2001--as opposed to the Iraq war, which began in March of 2003. At the inception of the Iraq combat, such was the spectacle of was referred to in the press as "Shock and awe" and looked like it, that some people still confuse the Iraq hostilities as having begun prior to those, much less mediatized, in Afghanistan.
Well, that's a Narrative. Requires an impressively aggressive amount of editing to come up with one that inaccurate. But if you want to believe it, who cares about scholarly discipline?
Yes, I know. In the 2020s, a book of more than fifty pages constitutes a "big, thick, book" and, in this rather unfriendly comment-writing-&-editing software, 2 "deletes" and re-posts constitute for some what's called an "impressively aggressive amount of editing."
Wait, in a post of some 215 words, treating summarily a theatre of war which spanned twenty years (and much more), did I omit to mention some important details?
Your copy is pithier, of course--it being far easier to allege "inaccuracy" without even bothering to specify any of it.
LOL!
Noting the inaccuracy of your potted history is preferable to allowing it to stand unchallenged, as if it were authoritative.
I've spent too many hours of research and link offerings in detailing specific objections in disputes like this one to do it any longer, when the topic is as general as this one. Most of what I'd have to say would merely be a re-phrasing of the work of others. I can direct readers to a rich archive that authoritatively refutes the insinuations and unstated premises of your cheesy partisan framing, though https://news.antiwar.com/tag/afghanistan/page/404/
Antiwar.com has another seven years of articles preceding that 404 page (thus far) archive, which only goes back to 2008. I presume that those articles are also archived somewhere. There are also plenty of other sources, of course. But the 13 years of tagged dispatches and opinion columns found in that Antiwar.com archive make for a good antidote to your facile summary.
What you fail to address is the complete lack of any coherent plan AFTER the occupation. Why is that? Why is it that for over half a century, we've been engaging in these "conflicts" over and over without any plan for what comes after? There's a reason for it, and that reason could be why we engage in them in the first place.
It's not that complicated. The "plan" was that the semi-moderate, semi-democratic government we helped stand up would prove marginally capable of holding power and governing an Afghanistan that, we believed, was never entirely enthralled with Taliban rule in the first place. You can criticize that assessment for being wrong, but you can't say there was no plan just because it didn't play out that way. I mean, that exact same plan has sort of played out that way in Iraq.
So you're saying it took 20 years to figure that out? Accepting your synopsis says the govt and military are so dysfunctional and incompetent, that they couldn't find there asses with both hands and a flashlight. it's possible, but I doubt that's the case.
No, I'm saying that was the plan and for the last 6 or 7 years it was relatively clear to all that that plan had failed.
Only the last 6 or 7? What about the other 13 years? What was the clarifying event in your opinion?
We take dumbass teenagers, I was one of them, and train them for military combat in a matter of weeks. Even given the language and cultural differences, the problem you describe should have been glaringly apparent from the git go. Besides, as a military commander once said (paraphrasing), "Bootcamp is a finishing school. They're already killers when they arrive."
@Dave's not here
For *excruciatingly funny, and especially for people who may never have experienced the military, I highly recommend a Joseph Heller classic called "Catch 22", in the event that you have not already read that.
It is *most hilarious, however, if you *have been in the military, because you *know it is straight up *fact. But, keeping that in mind, a civilian can enjoy by constantly reminding themselves that this *is frustratingly funny, but it is *not even exaggerated, much less "made up" !
@Dave's not here
p.s., if you cannot get to the book, I *beg you to avoid any of the horrible attempts that have been made to catch the essence of this book into a movie. *Cannot be done. *Has not been done, in spite of at least three attempts.
See Ike's "Military Industrial Complex."
Mascot is a paid hack “influencer” but sucks at it because he is a pompous asshole
I actually enjoy his posts. He's one of the few people here I make a point of reading on a regular basis despite disagreeing with him on some issues. Always cogent and to the point.
In fact, I noticed he hasn't been posting recently. Good to see him back.
Making friends and taking names.
"I noticed he hasn't been posting recently."
I thought I'd give everyone a break. Including myself.
It won't be the last time I check out for an extended period of time. Thankfully, I have a life outside of this comment page.
Perhaps that's one reason your posts are generally worth reading: "Thankfully, I have a life outside of this comment page."
As for me, I'm literally chained to the floor in front of a monitor forced to respond to every comment here while living on scraps. Think Plato's Cave, but with gruel.
oh man, not the "paid hack" thing...that's so trite.
Not that I'd even know where to apply for a Paid Hack position, but anyone who reads enough of my posts ought to realize that there isn't a single Special Interest that would consider hiring me. I'm too Politically Unreliable.
maybe I should re-name myself Big Mascot.
You know, to get in better touch with a sense of humility.
I've never met or even seen online anyone who doesn't know that the US war in Afghanistan began before the one in Iraq.