Afghanistan: The necessary defeat?

Your tax dollars at work.

   Who won this war? The longest war the US has ever fought on paper (20 years). It even beats out Vietnam for long drawn out attrition against an enemy, despite modern weaponry, against an enemy that resisted defeat. For the Taliban 'resist' is the operative word. Hide. Use forbidding terrain. Manipulate the local population. It was a very Viet Cong and NVA strategy and it somehow worked in the rocky moonscape desert of Afghanistan just as successfully as the jungles of South East Asia. All that 5th generation drone tech, satellite surveillance, state of the the art air support did not win the war for US forces.

   And now the retreat is humiliating not because The United States military displays weakness to its enemies but because the US has now demonstrated weakness to its friends. A defeat and a surrender (which in good faith Trump signed in February in 2020 in Doha) was at least an end to conflict. A conflict that could not be won. Biden tore it up.

  Yet this is not a red v blue situation. The US government is a monolith. Voting is a nice idea for the plebs but if it ever changed anything then they'd... do something else so long as it was saleable as "freedom". And when there is only one opinion you fall into a black hole of opinion...

• A) Because the cost of such a victory was too high for the attacking force.
• B) There was no support from the indigenous population.
• C) In warfare, time is as valuable as weaponry, and if your side has time and no weaponry, you wait. 

   Probably with an agenda in mind, the craven US media accidently  conducted a recent interview with a Taliban spokesman. One look in his eyes and you could see that this person was a high IQ individual and the US interviewer a mere shill for AP and Reuters news wires. But his answers and demeanor spoke volumes for those with eyes to see.

  

That look in his eyes when Bin Laden was mentioned.

  What he knows and the world knows is that Bin Laden was a CIA Asset working with the CIA and the Mujahedeen against the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan is the 1980s. He was their boy. Like Colonel Trautman in First Blood, the local police in the hick town didn't know what they were dealing with. In warfare, I'm a big believer in leaving people the fuck alone. Even if they treat their women like shit and throw gays off whatever their version of the Tarpeian Rock is; at the end of the day, it's none of the West's business. I'm sorry you were born in a shithole but sometimes, you've got to play the hand you get dealt.

Bin Laden was a CIA asset. This is known.

  How it became the West's business was in the wake of 9/11 when US neocons were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted is interesting. And boy, did they want a lot. Here we are twenty years later and still watching a shit show that should have ended by January 2002 after a few million tonnes of B-52 payload. But it didn't happen that way. The opium trade was just too juicy for black ops cash. Next time you're in the ER after breaking your arm watching Porn Hub, just know that pain shot came from the miserable moonscape of Afghanistan. And yet 2 trillion dollars later and 4000 US soldiers lost and who knows how many Afghan's dead, what has been gained? The problem with fighting in "the gravetard of empires" is that it continues to be, no matter how much tech you throw at it, a graveyard of empires. The Russians tried it in the 1980s and left with a very bloody nose that soon later lead to collapse of the USSR. The British tried it and failed as Kipling said not so eloquently in a poem more than one hundred years ago...

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
   An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
      Go, go, go like a soldier,


         But really that's not the point anymore is it? You can read this opinion in just about every US 
newspaper op-ed piece in the country. If there were a real media apparatus in the US, or in fact, if there
a media apparatus at all anywhere in what's left of Western Civilization, there would be honest reporting 
on what is really happening in the world. My favorite line of bullshit was the complete failure to evacuate
Kabul and Bagram Airbase. I'm no fan of authorities left or right but Trump did at least project a kind of 
will to power. Not that he understands Nietzsche or anything so profound but through his mouth and 
narcissism, through his bravado naivety and hard capitalism, he was willing to make a deal. And as 
simplistic as it sounds, he made that deal. 

     Trump was always an idiot and accidental genius at the same time. He was a type of phenomenon 
that divided the US so spectacularly that the audience lost a view of the big picture. And for all his failings,
he did make a deal. A deal with the enemy. And deals are how wars end. Of course the newspapers went 
insane but fortunately nobody reads them anymore.

   Either way, the new geriatric in chief tore it all up.

   Not because it was bad but because the orange man had negotiated it. I am no fan of either but you know 
what I am a fan of? 

   Pragmatism.

  Watching the politicians holding and passing the bag for the whole debacle is probably worth a cable TV
subscription but I've endured enough CNN in airport bars to last a lifetime. So I'll stick to clips on
YouTube. And by god were they selling the general public a narrative. After the truck bomb and by the 
sudden entrance of Player 3, named ISIS K you knew US foreign policy had fully decoupled from reality.
The new enemy sounded like a Covid Variant in keeping with the Zeitgeist and was so stage managed that
any thinking person was reaching for the drinks cabinet even if they didn't have one.

   Just imagine if you're the Taliban sitting back and watching America via satellite TV. They are not even 
laughing because humor requires a degree or irony and tact. Major Steuber in the following vid means the
 US tried to "nation build" but it local reality's could never be overcome. Especially the kid fucking.



Google fu has hit this link. Drag the timer to 23:55 to meet Major Steuber.


Do I have to quote Sun Tzu here? Maybe I do.

Country in which there are precipitous cliffs with torrents running between,
deep natural hollows, confined places, tangled thickets, quagmires and crevasses,
should be left with all possible speed and no approach. 




      The real question is, what's next geopolitically now that the US has lost Afghanistan and Bagram AFB 
which was there ostensibly to threaten Iran? There is the obvious loss of international prestige but not a loss
of military dominance. But, the Taliban have proven just like the Viet Cong before them, that disparate 
forces armed with small arms, RPGs and roadside bombs can win. 

   All you need is intent, balls and patience.

  China has already made a deal with the Taliban. (Not officially but you know it is in place).

  Their belt and road initiative (with the evacuation of the Americans) just opened a fresh square on the 
chessboard that they will fill or have already filled. The Chinese aim is to recreate the Silk Road 
(the most profitable trade route in history) but this time with two lane highways in each direction and 
high speed rail.

   We're talking something US military planners have feared for at least a century.

Never fight a land war in Asia...


   The unity of the European and Asian (and African) landmass in one continuous travel route.

   When China's belt and road initiative is complete, you'll be able to drive from Paris to Beijing so long as
 you've got enough meth to stay awake. And this highlights the difference between US and China's foreign 
policy. The Chinese are mercantile. They see the world as a transaction. If they want a road through 
Afghanistan, they're just going to pay the Taliban 20 billion dollars not to fuck with it. The US could make the 
same deal but their home population would riot for making a deal with the bad guys who make women
wash dishes and throw gays off mountains. The Chinese don't give a fuck so long as they get their road. The
US, on the other hand, is zip tied by "democracy".

   And because of this, the US and the Europeans who spawned it, are in decline.

   The belt and road initiative makes the US an island on the fringe of a world economy where dollar
hegemony is gone. The question is, "is this the necessary defeat" to set US foreign strategic policy on a new 
realpolitick based track? Just by the blow back alone the US public, both left and right, are so against the 
idea of foreign desert excursions, or foreign intervention of any kind, that it leaves neocons and hawks
in a tough position as far as their geopolitical aims are concerned. Does it mean a step backward for
 Western power in terms a force projection? Are we entering the multi polar world beyond the dual
superpower paradigm that lasted until 1990 and, for the last thirty years has been a litany of made up bad
 guys, amorphous terrorists somewhere in a desert and dictators that don't like Israel and ISIS "K".

   For this writer, this black eye to US force projection, inflicted by goat herders in a formidable land is a
defeat no matter how you frame it. The question now is... what happens next?

   And just like the insanity of the last 18 months, like most, I have no answer. 

   Usually I can sift through the geopolitical bullshit and spot the shot. But this time, I got nothing.
   
   All I got is that Afghanistan is not the loss of American Empire but it is a major breach in the wall.