It's all the more frustrating because the "credibility" they seem so enamored with seems to refer to American willingness to sacrifices its own sons and daughters for the interests of foreign states. Do Bret Stephens and the other swamp-creatures parroting the "credibility" line actually believe that China is going to annex Hawaii tomorrow because they now doubt our "credibility?"
Oh no, are Taiwan and Ukraine now having doubts about our "credibility?" Great! That means they're less likely to engage in reckless behavior due to the moral hazard created by blank-check security guarantees and that if they chose to engage in such behavior, it is they rather than us who will bear the cost of it. In other words, these governments are now less likely to engage in destructive behavior and we are less likely to pay for it. That's a wonderful deal for the United States.
In point of fact, the Blob monsters who are lamenting the American withdrawal are most just embarrassed that the United States was humiliated by a group of rabble with funny facial hair who dress funny. A hundred years ago, Bret Stephens would have simply said what he is thinking: we cannot let our Great Nation get beaten by savages! Well, Bret, it's their country, not yours. Hence, much like the Viet Cong before them, they were willing to fight for it due to a syncretic mix of nationalism and religious fervor. On top of that, they didn't much appreciate the presence of foreign troops in their country, and apparently the locals weren't willing to fight or die on behalf of a comedically corrupt regime that had virtually zero support outside of Kabul, where the American gravy train coincidentally had its epicenter. As I seem to recall, our own nation had an episode where a group of unwashed farmers beat the mightiest imperial military in the world. Happed some time around 1776 I think.
Afghanistan was a complete farce from the beginning. A corrupt military industrial complex milked the occupation for all it was worth. Generals who were only interested in their own careers consistently lied about how well the occupation was going. Their underlings fed the generals false information because it was what they wanted to hear. Afghan elites latched onto American largesse in order to advance their own status and positions; it was only they, and not ordinary Afghans living in small villages, that the pliant press used to represent the voice of the Afghans.
Beyond this, the fact that neither the generals, the politicians, or the American public knew anything about the modern history of Afghanistan at the beginning of the war is somewhat excusable. It was a quick-strike response to 9/11. The fact that nobody in a position of authority in Washington know anything about the country or its history 20 years later is an inexcusable farce. Everyone with a star on their collar in Washington should have known the broad strokes of Mullah Omar's biography within a year of the war beginning. But much like Iran or China, we fill in the gaps of a country whose history we do not understand with cultural stereotypes.
The imperial war machine deserved the humiliation of Afghanistan and so much more, and so do its supporters. Cry me a river over the fact that they will have to endure an embarrassing news cycle. This entire project has been an embarrassment from the beginning.
I have a different concern than that [expletive deleted] Brett Stephens:
When I was younger, I used to sometimes take meals with an older lady who had lived in a suburb of Warsaw during WWII and who liked cats. She mentioned that, as sadistic as the Nazis had been in 1939-42, they were far worse in 1943-44, when you could see the terror in their eyes, the eyes of a bully who had met up with a bigger meaner, nastier bully and who was afraid that he was losing his grip. The Germans were fleeing the Red Army as fast as they could, but they were still dangerous to Poles, Czechs and the like.
Every time I see Jen Psaki jawing fatuously on some press conference and sounding like nothing so much as Hirohito after Nagasaki ("the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage...") , what worries me is that, having just been publicly beclowned in front of the entire world, that the United States will start another war, just to avoid the accusations of "weakness" and something something Muh American Credibility.
There are a contingent of rightwingers in Washington and the rest of the Western capitals who want to provoke a war with China over Taiwan. Their problem is not with the autocratic nature of the Chinese Communist Party -- these people would gladly disenfranchise black and Hispanic Americans at home for cynical political gain. No, their issue is that China has taken the mantle of prestige that they believe can only rightfully belong to a Western country.
To put it in Chinese terms, they believe that the West is losing the Mandate of Heaven.
My favorite is the new talking point by FDD types that the Taliban have just offered definitive proof to silence critics of “military solutions” and showed how well it works. With luck, Dubowitz, Gerecht, Joscelyn, and the others have already forwarded their resumes to the Taliban, who could probably use a few regime-change analysts so that we can be done with them.
Military solutions can work. Just not their military solutions. Note that trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were knocked out cold by a bunch of farmers wearing shower shoes.
No one familiar with American history or the power of nationalism as a vague, generalized concept should be especially surprised by this. America's Founding Fathers relied on militia forces who were often unwashed, illiterate farmers yet managed to defeat the most powerful empire in the world. Granted, the absolute gap between imperial Britain and the Continental Army was probably much smaller than the gap between the US-equipped Afghan National Army and the Taliban, but the principle is the same: one side simply fought for money and the other fought for control of their homeland.
Likewise, when we have used liberal rhetoric to justify interventions in Vietnam and understood the conflict through the framework of our own stated intentions rather than understanding how the conflict was perceived by our adversaries, we lost despite superior financial and technological resources. And badly. Hell, for that matter, a peasant army led by Mao Zedong managed to route Generalismo Chiang Kai-Shek and the largely illiterate population of Haitian ex-slaves beat Napoleon. This isn't bizarre. It's the power of fighting for your home and your honor against foreign occupiers and their puppets.
Some guy, I forget his name but he was a right-wing survivalist type, said something quite perceptive, that the rifle was truly the queen of the battlefield, because nobody ever has successfully tyrannized a population armed with rifles.
I throw Afghanistan back in the face of every doofus who tells me that the US military has tanks, drones, satellites, F-15s and the like and therefore is invincible. The much vaunted and much funded US military lost a war to a bunch of farmers wearing shower shoes.
It's all the more frustrating because the "credibility" they seem so enamored with seems to refer to American willingness to sacrifices its own sons and daughters for the interests of foreign states. Do Bret Stephens and the other swamp-creatures parroting the "credibility" line actually believe that China is going to annex Hawaii tomorrow because they now doubt our "credibility?"
Oh no, are Taiwan and Ukraine now having doubts about our "credibility?" Great! That means they're less likely to engage in reckless behavior due to the moral hazard created by blank-check security guarantees and that if they chose to engage in such behavior, it is they rather than us who will bear the cost of it. In other words, these governments are now less likely to engage in destructive behavior and we are less likely to pay for it. That's a wonderful deal for the United States.
In point of fact, the Blob monsters who are lamenting the American withdrawal are most just embarrassed that the United States was humiliated by a group of rabble with funny facial hair who dress funny. A hundred years ago, Bret Stephens would have simply said what he is thinking: we cannot let our Great Nation get beaten by savages! Well, Bret, it's their country, not yours. Hence, much like the Viet Cong before them, they were willing to fight for it due to a syncretic mix of nationalism and religious fervor. On top of that, they didn't much appreciate the presence of foreign troops in their country, and apparently the locals weren't willing to fight or die on behalf of a comedically corrupt regime that had virtually zero support outside of Kabul, where the American gravy train coincidentally had its epicenter. As I seem to recall, our own nation had an episode where a group of unwashed farmers beat the mightiest imperial military in the world. Happed some time around 1776 I think.
Afghanistan was a complete farce from the beginning. A corrupt military industrial complex milked the occupation for all it was worth. Generals who were only interested in their own careers consistently lied about how well the occupation was going. Their underlings fed the generals false information because it was what they wanted to hear. Afghan elites latched onto American largesse in order to advance their own status and positions; it was only they, and not ordinary Afghans living in small villages, that the pliant press used to represent the voice of the Afghans.
Beyond this, the fact that neither the generals, the politicians, or the American public knew anything about the modern history of Afghanistan at the beginning of the war is somewhat excusable. It was a quick-strike response to 9/11. The fact that nobody in a position of authority in Washington know anything about the country or its history 20 years later is an inexcusable farce. Everyone with a star on their collar in Washington should have known the broad strokes of Mullah Omar's biography within a year of the war beginning. But much like Iran or China, we fill in the gaps of a country whose history we do not understand with cultural stereotypes.
The imperial war machine deserved the humiliation of Afghanistan and so much more, and so do its supporters. Cry me a river over the fact that they will have to endure an embarrassing news cycle. This entire project has been an embarrassment from the beginning.
Amen.
I have a different concern than that [expletive deleted] Brett Stephens:
When I was younger, I used to sometimes take meals with an older lady who had lived in a suburb of Warsaw during WWII and who liked cats. She mentioned that, as sadistic as the Nazis had been in 1939-42, they were far worse in 1943-44, when you could see the terror in their eyes, the eyes of a bully who had met up with a bigger meaner, nastier bully and who was afraid that he was losing his grip. The Germans were fleeing the Red Army as fast as they could, but they were still dangerous to Poles, Czechs and the like.
Every time I see Jen Psaki jawing fatuously on some press conference and sounding like nothing so much as Hirohito after Nagasaki ("the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage...") , what worries me is that, having just been publicly beclowned in front of the entire world, that the United States will start another war, just to avoid the accusations of "weakness" and something something Muh American Credibility.
There are a contingent of rightwingers in Washington and the rest of the Western capitals who want to provoke a war with China over Taiwan. Their problem is not with the autocratic nature of the Chinese Communist Party -- these people would gladly disenfranchise black and Hispanic Americans at home for cynical political gain. No, their issue is that China has taken the mantle of prestige that they believe can only rightfully belong to a Western country.
To put it in Chinese terms, they believe that the West is losing the Mandate of Heaven.
My favorite is the new talking point by FDD types that the Taliban have just offered definitive proof to silence critics of “military solutions” and showed how well it works. With luck, Dubowitz, Gerecht, Joscelyn, and the others have already forwarded their resumes to the Taliban, who could probably use a few regime-change analysts so that we can be done with them.
Military solutions can work. Just not their military solutions. Note that trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were knocked out cold by a bunch of farmers wearing shower shoes.
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-people?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMjU1MTcyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0MDA2MTY3OCwiXyI6Imw1NG52IiwiaWF0IjoxNjI5MTU4NDExLCJleHAiOjE2MjkxNjIwMTEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi00NzE4Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.VzWIbtqYingCqRnpxYx2UAL-qzC3sioKc0Cm019km2k
It's like they are living in a virtual reality, or maybe Bizarro World.
No one familiar with American history or the power of nationalism as a vague, generalized concept should be especially surprised by this. America's Founding Fathers relied on militia forces who were often unwashed, illiterate farmers yet managed to defeat the most powerful empire in the world. Granted, the absolute gap between imperial Britain and the Continental Army was probably much smaller than the gap between the US-equipped Afghan National Army and the Taliban, but the principle is the same: one side simply fought for money and the other fought for control of their homeland.
Likewise, when we have used liberal rhetoric to justify interventions in Vietnam and understood the conflict through the framework of our own stated intentions rather than understanding how the conflict was perceived by our adversaries, we lost despite superior financial and technological resources. And badly. Hell, for that matter, a peasant army led by Mao Zedong managed to route Generalismo Chiang Kai-Shek and the largely illiterate population of Haitian ex-slaves beat Napoleon. This isn't bizarre. It's the power of fighting for your home and your honor against foreign occupiers and their puppets.
Some guy, I forget his name but he was a right-wing survivalist type, said something quite perceptive, that the rifle was truly the queen of the battlefield, because nobody ever has successfully tyrannized a population armed with rifles.
I throw Afghanistan back in the face of every doofus who tells me that the US military has tanks, drones, satellites, F-15s and the like and therefore is invincible. The much vaunted and much funded US military lost a war to a bunch of farmers wearing shower shoes.
Please see/listen to the truly eye-opening US recent bipartisan crimes in this outstanding Haiti interview -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3iT3y7MktI