The story over at Politico [politico] has it that the DoD had some intelligence regarding and attack at Kabul Airport prior to the suicide bombing that killed around 200 people and wounded many more.
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The story over at Politico [politico] has it that the DoD had some intelligence regarding and attack at Kabul Airport prior to the suicide bombing that killed around 200 people and wounded many more.
Success has many parents, who have PR machines behind them and trumpet it to the skies. Failure is, as they say, an orphan. In the case of Afghanistan, like Iraq, the war party has diligently flicked the remaining scraps of egg from its face and declared everything is the current administration’s fault (for doing exactly what the previous administration was planning to do).
Like in Vietnam, the US continued a bloody war well past the time at which losing was inevitable. And, now it’s over. There’s going to be some people put up against walls and shot, in Afghanistan, which is a return to normal of sorts.
A dozen years ago, I read Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and that provoked a lengthy peripheral interest in the problem of using legalisms to deal with the unexpectedly nasty monsters that occasionally crop up in humanity. As a moral nihilist [*] the nazi elite seemed tractable to me: they were just a bunch of power-drunk assholes who managed to gain power over a country with a great military, and they went on a great rampage, doing whatever got them off.
It’s sad how American media carry forward the establishment’s line that it’s a surprise that Afghanistan is quickly falling to the Taliban.
When I was a kid I went through a period where I was interested in nautical disasters. Perhaps that has something to do with my general fear of being on a boat out of sight of shore.
One of the US military’s less endearing characteristics is that it classifies its failures, which effectively puts anyone who discusses them at risk for prison time.
That great big clueless jackass, Donald Trump, tended to blurt whatever was in the forefront of his mind. Picture, if you will, a conveyor belt of bad ideas attached to a microphone, and that’s a good model for how well Trump could think and keep a secret.
This is almost certainly a pre-release bit of propaganda, but it’s – as is the case for most Russian propaganda – well done. The Russians have their own F-35! [france24]
I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of the royals in military fig. They look pretty impressive, don’t they?