U.S. Foreign Policy Failure From A(fghanistan) To V(ietnam)
The abysmal, pathetic and totally embarrassing events of the past several days in Afghanistan prove to the entire world that the American emperor has no clothes. The eventual fallout from these events is yet to be seen—but it WILL be seen.
Renowned military intelligence officer, Scott Ritter, pulls no punches in analyzing America’s Afghanistan disaster:
And make no mistake – every single one of the generals who commanded American forces in Afghanistan lied. They lied to Congress – and Congress knew it and did nothing about it. One could write a PhD thesis on political malfeasance simply by reviewing the testimony of these commanders before Congress, and the fawning adoration Congress bestowed upon every one of them. No hard questions. No insistence upon fact-based answers. Just a simple vindication of the lies being told, and the repeated passage of budgets which continued to fund these lies.
The frontline troops knew that their Afghan counterparts were incapable of fighting on their own. And yet, because the mission required the Americans to certify that the Afghans were “taking the lead” in the fight against the Taliban, these units were certified as combat capable, and that certification briefed to Congress. Medals were awarded. Careers were enhanced. And it was all a lie.
The entire Afghan conflict must be examined considering this reality – everything is a lie. Every battle, every campaign, every contract written and implemented – everything was founded in a lie.
Patrick Tilman was given a Silver Star – the nation’s third highest award for heroism in combat – for being killed by his own men. “Caught between the crossfire of an enemy near ambush,” the citation read, “Corporal Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire as he maneuvered his fire team to a covered position from which they could effectively employ their weapons on known enemy positions.” Not a word of this was true, and the Army knew it. But Tilman, a former NFL player, was a big name, and his death had to be glorious, and not the result of military incompetence [or conspiracy].
It was all lies.
The fact is the war in Afghanistan did not need to be fought. We could have ended the threat posed by Bin Laden simply by negotiating with the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, providing the evidence we claimed to have linking Bin Laden to the terrorist attacks on the United States. Any student of Afghanistan worth their salt knows the fundamental importance of honor that is enshrined in the concepts of Pashtunwali, the unwritten ethical code that defines the traditional lifestyle of the Pashtun people. If, as we claimed, Bin Laden carried out an attack on women and children while he was living under the protection of Pashtunwali, then his dishonor is that of the Pashtun tribes. To clear their honor, they would seek justice – in this case, evicting Bin Laden and his followers from Afghanistan.
In fact, the Taliban made precisely this offer.
For America, however, this would have been an unsatisfying result. We needed blood, not justice, and we sent our troops to Afghanistan to stack bodies, which they did, in prodigious numbers. Most of these bodies were Taliban. We excused this by claiming the Taliban were providing safe haven to Bin Laden, and as such were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Which was a lie.
Nebojsa Malic adds much needed illumination on the events in Afghanistan by saying:
America’s NARRATIVE failure in Afghanistan is worse than its military one – Now the entire world knows the emperor has no clothes.
What made the sudden and total collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) so devastating, however, is the explicit insistence of US leadership – from President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley – as late as two weeks ago, that it would never happen.
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the – of the United States from Afghanistan,” Biden told reporters on July 8. Except that’s exactly what happened, and then some.
‘Saigon 1975’ is forever associated with the photo of desperate South Vietnamese mobbing a ‘Huey’ on the rooftop of the US embassy. There are several contenders for “Kabul 2021,” but so far the desperate Afghans clinging onto a US cargo plane – only to plummet to their deaths – seems a strong favorite.
“A thousand narratives collapsed in real-time,” as journalist and US Navy veteran Jack Posobiec put it. “DC theater gave way to reality.”
Generals and enlisted men alike can argue the US forces never lost a battle in Afghanistan, but there’s no arguing with the fact that they lost the war. Moreover, the ANA folded despite tens of billions of dollars worth of US weapons and equipment and 20 years of training according to US standards.
Ever since the Soviet Union self-abolished in 1991, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike presented the American Empire as something inevitable, its political and economic system as the “end of history,” and all resistance to it doomed to failure. Just one word, “Afghanistan,” punctures that bubble.
“Every image coming out of Afghanistan this past weekend was an advertisement for the incompetence, arrogance, and double-dealing nature of American foreign policy leaders,” wrote journalist Matt Taibbi.
In other words, the US political establishment got so used to creating its own reality and imposing it through media and entertainment, upon its own citizens as well as on foreigners, that it simply doesn’t know what to do when confronted with people on whom this trick doesn’t work – in this case, the Taliban.
This sort of thinking was on display last week, when a prominent “security expert” advised her colleagues to look away from the images from Afghanistan to avoid getting triggered or traumatized – as if what was happening would somehow stop or vanish if they just averted their gaze.
Except people around the world watched, and took notes. Even things entirely consistent with US mentality – such as flying dogs on passenger planes, while crowding local interpreters into cargo holds – sent an unmistakable message to any potential US ‘ally.’
For an imperial enterprise built on narratives and perception management, this kind of reality bomb is highly likely to be fatal. There is no doubt that the US media machinery will launch a massive effort to deflect, spin and rationalize what happened in the coming days, perhaps even right after Biden addresses the nation on Monday. Maybe it will even work, on some people, for a while; copium is a powerful drug, after all.
Thing is, between what just happened in Afghanistan, and the years of the empire discrediting itself at home and abroad…it might not. Too many have now seen the emperor has no clothes, and that the narratives they were told to believe turned out to be smoke and mirrors.
Robert Bridge puts the final nail in the coffin for Washington’s smoke and mirrors policy wonks (foreign and domestic):
Reminiscent of the US airlift out of Saigon during the Vietnam War, this week’s evacuation of the US embassy in Kabul portends bad times for the United States, which is beleaguered by much more than just military dysfunction.
By their very definition, ‘iconic’ photographs, like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, are not really supposed to ever occur twice. Iconic photographs – like the one showing Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the lunar surface, or the naked girl fleeing a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War – are unique in that they capture the ‘spirit’ of a generation or period of time, the so-called zeitgeist.
Last week, the world was treated to an ‘iconic’ Kodak moment, as photographers captured stark images of Chinook helicopters buzzing the US embassy in the Afghan capital, where they airlifted personnel out of dodge ahead of a tenacious Taliban advance. And just like that, America’s 20-year military adventure in Afghanistan, originally planned to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda franchise, crumbled like a stale cookie before lunchtime.
A person needn’t be a history buff to experience a sense of déjà vu from watching those incredible images out of Kabul. Most people recall vivid images of the day – April 30, 1975 to be exact – when the Viet Cong captured Saigon, forcing the US military to conduct a massive airlift operation from the roof of the US embassy.
The US military’s humiliating defeat rammed home the point that firepower alone is not enough to destroy an enemy; according to Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, in their book, The Untold History of the United States, American forces “had dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than had been dropped by all sides in all previous wars throughout history – three times as many explosives as were dropped by all sides in World War II.”
The horrors of warfare aside, another question that needs to be addressed is: ‘What now for the US superpower?’ Will future historians point to America’s disastrous defeat in Afghanistan, for there really is no other way to describe it, as the main reason for its decline and ultimate destruction? After all, according to some historians the collapse of the Soviet Union was put in motion by its own lengthy Afghan War (1979-1989).
Just weeks before the fall of Kabul, the US military was busy discussing – any guesses? – yes, how to recruit members of Generation Z by applying virtue-signaling advertising techniques. And, as befitting a generation that is being indoctrinated on a steady diet of anti-white critical race theory, LGBTQ lifestyles, and the inherent dangers of ‘toxic masculinity,’ among other unproven concepts, it is no wonder that the US Army was forced to rely on an animated recruitment ad that is a tone-deaf parody of American culture at large.
On top of that, at the very same time the Taliban, which has very little interest in virtue-signaling, by the way, was making inroads towards Kabul, befuddled and muddled Joe Biden found it necessary to coddle the lunatic fringe of his party by overturning the US military’s transgender ban. Exactly what the United States needs to win more battles!
Aside from creating mass confusion inside of the military ranks, already divided over a Covid vaccine mandate, these woke experiments have created a deep chasm straight down the middle of American society that will only intensify over time. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the clock is ticking on the great American experiment in democracy; two radically different people, separated by intractable issues that the media is only too happy to inflame every single day, must naturally reach a breaking point.
These are three excellent analyses of what America’s failure in Afghanistan (and Iraq and Syria and Somalia and Yemen and Libya and Lebanon and Bosnia and Vietnam—and let’s not forget the never-ending “war on terror”) portends for this country’s future.
Lies and smoke and mirrors define more than DC’s foreign policies; they also define DC’s domestic policies.
The Covid narrative spewing forth from Anthony (Heil Hitler) Fauci is nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors. Almost everything coming out of the New York media is nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors. America’s “war on drugs” is nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors. The “woke” movement is nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors. Virtually everything associated with the State of Israel is nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors. And sadder still is the fact that the dog and pony shows known as mega-churches are nothing but lies and smoke and mirrors.
Afghanistan puts the naked emperor that is Washington, D.C., on the world stage for all to see. The elites in DC are as phony, farcical, fanatical and psychotic as the ones in Hollywood.
And it should also be understood that the psychopaths in charge of the U.S. government couldn’t care less about American lives. Most of us probably already knew this, but the disaster in Afghanistan further shines the ugly spotlight of truth on this reality.
Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was so careless and downright calloused that some 15,000 Americans inside the war-torn country have been told by the U.S. government that it will not guarantee their safety.
Biden could have and should have evacuated American civilians before withdrawing the military.
He could have evacuated Americans via the Bagram Air Base which was defensible, instead he chose to abandon it, and make our evacuation, including that of the military, dependent on Kabul’s airport.
This is a massive disaster. And there’s no plan.
American forces are on the ground in the airport, but Kabul is in the hands of the Taliban and anywhere upward of 15,000 Americans, including missionaries and reporters, are on their own as far as making it to the airport goes.
The official statement is that, “The United States cannot guarantee your security as you make this trip.”
Neither will Sullivan and Psaki commit to having the military there until all the Americans have been evacuated.
Biden’s press secretary for the State Department, Ned Price, urged Americans to “shelter in place” and not to travel if they didn’t feel safe.
The solution is that there’s no solution.
The Taliban are all around the airport. They’re on the ground and in charge.
The military is stating that they will hold the airport as long as they’re ordered to and that the Taliban have been warned not to interfere with the evacuation. But that extends to the airport, not to the area surrounding it. Military personnel have been ordered not to engage the Taliban unless they enter and interfere with operations in the airport.
This is what Biden has done.
These are the same sickos that don’t care about wasting America’s fighting men on illegal, immoral and unconstitutional wars of aggression for the benefit of the war profiteers who line the pockets of their yes men in government, that don’t care about the lives of innocent civilians around the world who are the victims of Washington’s relentless bomb and missile attacks from U.S. warships, jet bombers and drones for the benefit of the atheist antichrist government in Tel Aviv, that don’t care about the lives of innocent unborn babies murdered in government-sponsored abortuaries and that don’t care about the untold numbers of people killed and injured by the bioweapon known as the Covid “vaccines” for the benefit of the pharmaceutical giants and the members of Congress paid off by them—all at the expense of our God-given liberties protected in our Bill of Rights, of course.
There is a special place in Hell for all of these evil, self-serving psychos.
Bridge is right: “The clock is ticking on the great American experiment.” But when the clock runs out, America’s soul—not Afghanistan—will be America’s graveyard.
P.S. For the second time, I am really excited about the following announcement.
I was recently interviewed by Rashad Leonce on Changing The Narrative podcast. The title of the interview: Is The Modern State Of Israel Biblical And Should Christians Support It?
This is the VERY BEST interview on the subject of Biblical Israel that I have ever had. Rashad did a fantastic job of interviewing. He asked the right questions with a genuine seeking spirit and allowed me the time needed to fully answer the questions.
Accordingly, we are offering this audio interview on CD without cost (except for shipping and handling), as I believe this is the BEST resource to give to a friend or loved one in order to introduce them to the subject of the true Biblical teaching of Israel. It can be considered the FIRST primer for anyone unfamiliar with the subject.
I suggest that you listen to the free online audio version first. And if you feel it would be a suitable tool to give to friends and loved ones, order the CDs to give away. The CDs come in lots of 5 and 10.
- Source : Chuck Baldwin
