Someday our descendants will laugh with embarrassment at the people today who pore over weather records prepared to proclaim an existential threat from a fraction-of-1-degree rise in the average global temperature over any previous year “on record,” that is, unless the government spends trillions of dollars on a program of virtually totalitarian control of our lives. “On record” actually means “in the last century and a half” because that’s how far back “the record” goes. And that, by the way, roughly coincides with the beginning of the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, which continues to this day. The earth of course is 4.5 billion years old.
Blog
Furious Over Afghanistan? Blame Republicans, Too
“Americans want someone to fault, and, understandably, they’re pointing the finger at President Joe Biden, whoas commander-in-chief does deserve the brunt of the immediate blame. But the truth is that Biden’s deadly mistakes are a symptom of a thoroughly rotten established political order, one to which Democrats and Republicans alike, along with conservative and liberal media, are beholden.”
Bodies littered the Kabul airport on Thursday as bloodied and battered survivors of a suicide bomber were carted off in wheelbarrows. When the dust generated by the blast settled, more than 100 people had perished, including at least 13 American service members: 10 Marines, two soldiers, and one sailor.
For many Americans, fury has replaced grief in the wake of tragedy. After two decades of wandering in the Graveyard of Empires, they have nothing to show for it but a mountain of skulls and a river of blood. Two trillion dollars burned in the furnace of the war machine, thousands of Americans killed before Thursday; and now, more sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands will never return home.
Americans want someone to fault, and, understandably, they’re pointing the finger at President Joe Biden, whoas commander-in-chief does deserve the brunt of the immediate blame. But the truth is that Biden’s deadly mistakes are a symptom of a thoroughly rotten established political order, one to which Democrats and Republicans alike, along with conservative and liberal media, are beholden.
Recall that by November 2001, the Taliban had been beaten into submission and were suing for peace, making virtually no demands. But Washington was not interested; its hubris would not even allow it to entertain the idea of yielding.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time.
President George W. Bush went from campaigning against the fool’s errand of nation-building to boasting in his memoir that “Afghanistan was the ultimate nation-building mission.” Only a year before the war began, Bush warned that “if we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.” And yet, just two years after the first shots were fired in Afghanistan, Republicans would launch a second nation-building war in Iraq.
The Antiwar Comic: Biden Derangement Syndrome
Political Cartoon: Blindsided or Blind-Sighted?
C. Jamison is a cartoonist and graduate from the Corcoran College of Art + Design located in Washington, DC.
Daniel R. DePetris: There Was No Goldilocks Option In Afghanistan
“The next time you watch a former U.S. commander or senior defense official on television wax about some magic solution to Afghanistan’s problems, save yourself the trouble and change the channel. The sustainable stalemate is a myth, nothing more and nothing less.” Daniel R. DePetris at Newsweek
Four months after President Joe Biden decided to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, a narrative continues to proliferate in the ether that the White House could have simply carried on with the status-quo ante: retaining several thousand U.S. troops and helping the Afghan government maintain control with a combination of air power, training and advisory support. The horrendous ISIS attack near a main gate at Kabul airport on Aug. 26 that resulted in multiple casualties, including U.S. troops, is only amplifying the speculative analysis.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 20, Retired Gen. David Petraeus (a former commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan) said this type of U.S. commitment on behalf of Kabul would have been “sustainable.” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested something similar. “After 20 years, the U.S. had reached a level of limited involvement commensurate with the stakes,” Haass wrote in an Aug. 16 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.
Yet when it comes down to it, the Biden administration only had two choices as it debated what to do about Afghanistan: withdraw from a failed 20-year state building exercise or escalate in the hope the situation on the ground would eventually stabilize. The notion there was a Goldilocks option in Afghanistan between these two poles is unsupported at best and fanciful at worst.
More here
Political Cartoon: A Monstrous Disaster
C. Jamison is a cartoonist and graduate from the Corcoran College of Art + Design located in Washington, DC.
‘Death’ by Ross Ulbricht
Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and stoic, wrote: “Imagine you are dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” No one makes it out alive. In the end, they put you in a hole in the ground and throw dirt in your face. But having accepted this, the question one must face is “now what?” Will you live this day as if life is just another thing to take for granted? Will you waste it bored and cynical? I never knew just how precious life is until I lost it. When I stop and look at myself, my life, the universe and everything, I am deeply humbled. I am grateful for what little I have left. I am grateful for this very moment.
More Here
H/T Darren J. Beattie
Paying Tribute To The Gods Of War
Podcasts
