An argument that the US invasion of Iraq doomed US efforts in Afghanistan

The history I was aware of indicated that there were two independent factors the US could never have succeeded in Afghanistan. Both were fatal on their own. One was the intractable corruption and associated incompetence of the Afghan government the US installed there. Many of the Afghan people came to hate it. The corruption and incompetence made a mockery of their lives and dignity. Sarah Chayes made clear the depth and breadth of corruption in Afghan government and society in her 2015 book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.

The other fatal factor was the fact that Pakistan provided a refuge for the Taliban, making it impossible to destroy it militarily. The Taliban was impossible to defeat by military force as long as Pakistan provided a sanctuary and the US refused to wage war there.

A third independent reason has been argued by foreign policy expert Johan Blank. A few weeks ago, Blank wrote this in The Atlantic:

The original sin of the war in Iraq was going to war in Iraq. And the original sin of the war in Afghanistan was going to war in Iraq.

In September 2001, when Joe Biden was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was the policy adviser for the stretch of Asia that included Afghanistan. By 9 a.m. on 9/11, I felt certain that al-Qaeda (which was based in Afghanistan) was behind the attacks—but that we’d end up invading Iraq anyway.

To understand [Biden’s] decision to get out [of Afghanistan], one has to understand the decision to get in—and how that choice was quickly undermined by the invasion of another country.

In 2001, even the most ardent war hawks didn’t want to invade Afghanistan: They wanted to invade Iraq. Neoconservatives, such as the Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, had a grand vision of remaking the country in America’s image. Paleoconservatives, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, wanted to oust Saddam Hussein, install a pliable puppet, and thereby deter any other would-be adversaries. Both camps saw Afghanistan as an unwelcome distraction from the main event, but they applied the same rationales there.

Biden belonged to neither camp. He rejected both the unrealistic ambitions of the neocons and the unambitious realism of the paleos.

Biden never bought into the notion of full-on nation building, though. As he said on the Senate floor, right after his first trip to Afghanistan, “We’re not talking about turning Kandahar into Paris.” He did believe that if the U.S. was going to invade a country, it had the moral and political obligation to do right by its inhabitants. He was the first American political leader to propose a billion-dollar pledge of reconstruction aid.

The approach advocated by Biden was forward-leaning but not unrealistically ambitious: Enough troops to crush al-Qaeda and prevent the Taliban from moving back into power before a successor could be established; enough development aid to help a ravaged people get back on their feet after far too much suffering; and all of this as part of a genuinely multinational effort. Could such an approach have worked?

Yes—and it did. For about two years after the ousting of the Taliban, that’s the path the nation was on.

What changed after 2002? In a word, Iraq. The Bush administration’s focus started shifting within weeks of the Taliban’s ouster, and plans for the Iraq invasion soon became all-consuming. Too light a troop presence in Afghanistan meant that security was never truly established; too little money actually delivered meant that the fledgling government was never able to prove its credibility to its own people; too little focus from U.S. policy makers meant that a highly centralized governing structure, imposed on a never-before-centralized nation, could not be prevented from degenerating into nepotism, ineffectiveness, and rampant corruption. Failure to provide enough troops, money, and focus on the front end resulted in exponentially more troops, money, and focus down the line.

By the time U.S. troops crossed into Iraq in 2003, Afghanistan was already an afterthought for the administration. The Taliban regrouped across the border in Pakistan and was soon back on the offensive. Osama bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda’s leadership, after escaping the U.S. dragnet at Tora Bora, was comfortably ensconced nearby. Without effective support from the U.S. during this key period (the first few years were when the commitment was make-or-break), the fragile experiment in Afghanistan had little chance to succeed.

So many things went wrong in the subsequent years, and there was plenty of blame to go around. I saw Biden’s frustration grow: frustration with the Bush administration, with Afghanistan’s then-President Hamid Karzai, with all of the supposedly smart experts (and clearly not-too-smart staffers) who couldn’t figure out how to make the project work.

Biden reached the end of his rope on the last trip I took with him while he was chairman, in January 2009. .... He was ahead of the curve: A dozen years further on, much of official Washington still isn’t ready to leave Afghanistan.

The Afghans will have to forge their future under far more difficult circumstances now than they would have if their fledgling civil society had been given, say, a decade to really take root. That breathing space could have been provided by U.S. resources that were instead pulled away for the war in Iraq.

There is a real chance that Afghanistan will return to the bloody anarchy of the 1990s. But there’s also a real chance that it won’t.

Blank goes on to express optimism that the Afghan people will resist the Taliban and go on to build a society that is different from what the Taliban wants to impose by force. He argues that what will be needed is continuing US support for the government now in place, regardless of its corruption and incompetence. 

One can only hope that Blank is speaking for what most of the Afghan people want and that it really is possible given how deeply flawed the government is. To get a feel for just how corrupt the government is, the Chayes book Thieves of State is a good place to start.

Regarding what critical race theory is and is not

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to do away with racial discrimination in the law. But discrimination persisted.

An article at the Conversation, Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t, discusses what CRT is and is not. It was written by David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Affiliate, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis. Dr. Gray writes: 

U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to fellow Republicans on June 24, 2021, stating: “As Republicans, we reject the racial essentialism that critical race theory teaches … that our institutions are racist and need to be destroyed from the ground up.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

Rep. Banks’ account is demonstrably false and typical of many people publicly declaring their opposition to critical race theory. Crenshaw’s characterization, while true, does not detail its main features. So what is critical race theory and what brought it into existence?

The development of critical race theory by legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Crenshaw was largely a response to the slow legal progress and setbacks faced by African Americans from the end of the Civil War, in 1865, through the end of the civil rights era, in 1968. To understand critical race theory, you need to first understand the history of African American rights in the U.S.

The history

After 304 years of enslavement, then-former slaves gained equal protection under the law with passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The 15th Amendment, in 1870, guaranteed voting rights for men regardless of race or “previous condition of servitude.”

Between 1866 and 1877 – the period historians call “Radical Reconstruction” – African Americans began businesses, became involved in local governance and law enforcement and were elected to Congress.

This early progress was subsequently diminished by state laws throughout the American South called “Black Codes,” which limited voting rights, property rights and compensation for work; made it illegal to be unemployed or not have documented proof of employment; and could subject prisoners to work without pay on behalf of the state. These legal rollbacks were worsened by the spread of “Jim Crow” laws throughout the country requiring segregation in almost all aspects of life.

Grassroots struggles for civil rights were constant in post-Civil War America. Some historians even refer to the period from the New Deal Era, which began in 1933, to the present as “The Long Civil Rights Movement.”

The period stretching from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which found school segregation to be unconstitutional, to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing, was especially productive.

The civil rights movement used practices such as civil disobedience, nonviolent protest, grassroots organizing and legal challenges to advance civil rights. The U.S.’s need to improve its image abroad during the Cold War importantly aided these advancements. The movement succeeded in banning explicit legal discrimination and segregation, promoted equal access to work and housing and extended federal protection of voting rights.

However, the movement that produced legal advances had no effect on the increasing racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites, while school and housing segregation persisted.

What critical race theory is

Critical race theory is a field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America.

Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law.

There are a few beliefs commonly held by most critical race theorists.

First, race is not fundamentally or essentially a matter of biology, but rather a social construct. While physical features and geographic origin play a part in making up what we think of as race, societies will often make up the rest of what we think of as race. For instance, 19th- and early-20th-century scientists and politicians frequently described people of color as intellectually or morally inferior, and used those false descriptions to justify oppression and discrimination.

Second, these racial views have been codified into the nation’s foundational documents and legal system. For evidence of that, look no further than the “Three-Fifths Compromise” in the Constitution, whereby slaves, denied the right to vote, were nonetheless treated as part of the population for increasing congressional representation of slave-holding states.

Third, given the pervasiveness of racism in our legal system and institutions, racism is not aberrant, but a normal part of life.

Fourth, multiple elements, such as race and gender, can lead to kinds of compounded discrimination that lack the civil rights protections given to individual, protected categories. For example, Crenshaw has forcibly argued that there is a lack of legal protection for Black women as a category. The courts have treated Black women as Black, or women, but not both in discrimination cases – despite the fact that they may have experienced discrimination because they were both.

These beliefs are shared by scholars in a variety of fields who explore the role of racism in areas such as education, health care and history.

Finally, critical race theorists are interested not just in studying the law and systems of racism, but in changing them for the better.

What critical race theory is not

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, giving his false version 

of what critical race theory is

“Critical race theory” has become a catch-all phrase among legislators attempting to ban a wide array of teaching practices concerning race. State legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia have introduced legislation banning what they believe to be critical race theory from schools.

But what is being banned in education, and what many media outlets and legislators are calling “critical race theory,” is far from it. Here are sections from identical legislation in Oklahoma and Tennessee that propose to ban the teaching of these concepts. As a philosopher of race and racism, I can safely say that critical race theory does not assert the following:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;

(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;

(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.

Americans are used to viewing their history through a triumphalist lens, where we overcome hardships, defeat our British oppressors and create a country where all are free with equal access to opportunities.

Obviously, not all of that is true.

Critical race theory provides techniques to analyze U.S. history and legal institutions by acknowledging that racial problems do not go away when we leave them unaddressed.

Questions: Is misrepresentation of what CRT is intentional and used as a means to keep some people fearful, angry, distrustful and loyal ? Do race problems not go away unless they are addressed? Is it even possible to address race problems when about half the country is polarized and emotionally manipulated by the Republican Party? 

In lieu of politics today…

If you celebrate this particular day, and if fireworks just don’t do it for you, here’s a little something to lift the spirits.  Dare I say, humanity at its "more civilized" level.

We can go back to our normal bitching and moaning about politics tomorrow.   Thanks for indulging me, Germaine. 😊

Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for passing it along by recommending!

An Afghanistan update

Guards at the gate at the Bagram air base

Can they defend it from the Taliban?

Do their guns even have more than a 

couple rounds of ammunition?

News reports of the US withdrawal and its impact continue to be nearly all negative. By now, it is clear that the US presence will be washed away as the Taliban comes in and replaces the inept kleptocratic government in place now. The open question is whether there will be a major civil war or the Taliban will just take over with most of the bloodshed limited to Afghan military resistance and US collaborators. 

The one positive development is an increase in US government concern for getting collaborators out of the country before the US withdrawal is complete. How that will play out is unclear. There isn't much time left for that to happen, maybe about two weeks is about all that's left before the US is completely gone.

The New York Times reports on the final US withdrawal from the Bagram air base.

American troops and their Western allies have departed the U.S. military base that coordinated the sprawling war in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, effectively ending major U.S. military operations in the country after nearly two decades.

The American exit was completed quickly enough that some looters managed to get into the base before being arrested, Afghan officials said.

The fear that Kabul could fall to the Taliban relatively soon haunted the administration’s debate over the decision to pull out of the country. But Mr. Biden suggested that even though the United States still retained the ability to conduct airstrikes if things went bad, no reversal of the withdrawal was on the table.

“We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity,” he said, talking about air assets based in other places, “but the Afghans are going to have to do it themselves with the air force they have.”  

Some U.S. intelligence estimates predict that the Afghan government could fall to its rivals, the Taliban, in from six months to two years after the Americans complete their withdrawal. The Taliban are inching closer to Kabul after having taken about a quarter of the country’s districts in the past two months.

As discussed before, the US military assessment is that  the Afghan air force will completely cease to be operational within a few weeks of the US departure. It is 100% reliant on US military and civilian personnel to keep its aircraft operational. 

It's not clear what Biden is talking about. Maybe it's just lies. If it is, Biden hurts himself and the opposition to the growing power of already powerful Republican corruption and fascism. That is a needlessly self-inflicted wound from the Democratic circular firing squad that's now in place and idiotically blazing away at itself.

Another NYT article, As Afghan Forces Crumble, an Air of Unreality Grips the Capital, continues in about the same vein.

With his military crumbling, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fired a crucial part of his command structure and brought in a new one. He created a nebulous “supreme state council,” announced months ago, that has hardly met. And as districts fall to the Taliban across the country, he has installed a giant picture of himself outside the airport’s domestic terminal.

As the last troops and equipment trickle out of Afghanistan, an atmosphere of unreality has settled over the government and Kabul, the capital. 

Americans have not been a visible presence in the city for years, so the U.S. departure has not affected surface normality: Markets bustle and streets are jammed with homeward-bound civil servants by midafternoon. At night, the corner bakeries continue to be illuminated by a single bulb as vendors sell late into the evening.

But beneath the surface there is unease as the Taliban creep steadily toward Kabul.

“There’s no hope for the future,” said Zubair Ahmad, 23, who runs a grocery store on one of the Khair Khana neighborhood’s main boulevards. “Afghans are leaving the country. I don’t know whether I am going to be safe 10 minutes from now.”

The security blanket that the United States provided for two decades haunts the Afghan government’s actions, inactions and policies, fostering an atrophying of any proactive planning, in the view of some analysts. If there is a plan to counter the Taliban advance, it is not evident as the government’s hold on the countryside shrinks.  

“The environment is extremely tense,” said Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister, noting what he called an atmosphere of “semi-panic” in the government.

“It’s beyond a crisis,” he said, adding: “The mismanagement has led us to where we are today.”

Of course there is no plan to counter the Taliban. The Afghan government is an incompetent kleptocracy. Its only competence was looting the country. This mess feels awfully familiar. Feels just like Vietnam. That sad reality comes despite politician, e.g., George Bush, promises early on that Afghanistan would be short and nothing like Vietnam. That was just more empty rhetoric and/or lies from ignorant, arrogant, incompetent self-deluded politicians. 

One can only feel sorry for Afghan people who don't want the Taliban back and fear for those who tried to help us. 

One of the ex-president's fund raising tactics

This short note of interest just came to my attention again. It is worth a short post, just to keep bad memories fresh. The human mind tends to suppress bad memories. Sometimes that's a bad thing, like in this instance.

Various sources reported on this little nugget related to the 2020 election. Business Insider reported on the fund raising in an article entitled Trump is pocketing Georgia Senate runoff donations for his PAC, while the GOP candidates themselves don't get a dollar, a new report says:

While fundraising for the Georgia Senate runoffs, President Donald Trump is diverting 75% of most donations to his Save America political action committee, effectively allowing him to hold on to that money for future endeavors, Politico reported Monday.

"The reality is Donald Trump does not care about the future of the Republican Party, so if he can raise money off of the Georgia runoffs but keep the money for his own purposes, he will do so," a longtime GOP strategist told Politico.

ABC News reported similarly.

This is just a reminder of how blatantly corrupt the ex-president was and still is, e.g., this April 2021 article entitled How Trump steered supporters into unwitting donations.

Ah, good. Memory refreshed. 

A billionaire pissing match

Two billionaires, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) are locked in a ferocious pissing match. Bezos whipped it out first a few weeks ago by declaring he is going into space on the first commercial space flight on his rocket, which I affectionately call the "Big Weiner."

Branson then whipped his out and announced that he was going into space on his first commercial space flight on his rocket, which I affectionately call "The Turd." Branson is scheduled to beat Bezos into space. Branson's announcement sent shares of Virgin Galactic soaring beyond low Earth orbit and in into deep space.

Today, various sources are reporting that in pissing retaliation, Bezos announced that he is going to take a Wally Funk with him on his first Big Weiner. Bezos had planned to auction the last seat of his first space flight to the highest bidder. But after Branson's uppity move, Bezos had to do something.

Who or what is Wally Funk?

Good question. Wally Funk is an American woman, 82 years old. She is an aviator.

Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk in 1995

Short detour: Ms. Funk came to my attention some years ago, when she was admirably memorialized on a world smash hit CD, The Flight of Wally Funk, by the famous Australian rock band Spiderbait. The CD contains record shattering Spiderbait tunes such as Most Boys Suck, which is a gentle and touching commentary on the . . . . things in the typical early adult human male mind. This is heavy evolutionary biology stuff.

Most Boys Suck - lyrics

Love that patronizing air

Telling you what it thinks fair

It's as if we really care

We know that most boys suck

We're supposed to underplay

Worship everything you say

Doesn't seem to work that way

We know that most boys suck

You would like us all to know

Your dick fascinates you so

Ugly little sucker though

We know that most boys suck

Spiderbait is an outstanding Australian rock band. My fave Spiderbait Nobel Prize winning masterpiece is Parking Lot, which is the sad story of a woman who laments hard times about getting her tight pants on and waiting for her boyfriend to get out of custody for stealing groceries. It's really heavy social commentary stuff. There are echoes of another Spiderbait Nobel Prize winning masterpiece, Arse Higgin' Pants, in Parking lot. Tight pants seem to be a thing with the Spiderbait crowd.

Parking Lot - lyrics

All day all I think about is you

Can't wait to do all the things we do

Slip in to my jeans and Ill be gone

Takes me half a day to get them on

Chrous

Here's where i'd wanna be

Hanging out in the parking Lot

Don't you know I was born to rock

Heavy metal boys make me hot

Nah-nah-na-na-nah

Hanging out in the parking lot

See the charger go round the block

Wish the seventies never stopped

Nah-nah-na-na-nah

Nah-nah-na-na-nah

All week all i think about is you

One day my name there on your tattoo

Ripping stuff off from the grocery

Getting chased by the security

[chorus]

Uh-huh

Today all i think about is you

Wonder what it is all day you do

Waiting till the day when you'll be free

So sad now that you're in custody

[chorus]

 

Back to Ms. Funk: According to Wikipedia, she was born February 1, 1939. She is an American aviator and Goodwill Ambassador. She was the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the first female Federal Aviation Agency inspector, as well as one of the Mercury 13. NASA never picked Wally to go into space because she was a woman. So, she got credit for her work from Spiderbait in Australia and now she gets some more credit from Bezos in America due to his pissing match with Sir Richard. 

One can only wonder how this would have played out if Branson hadn't whipped his fantasy out and locked horns with Bezos. Wally would most likely had her seat into space and her place in history diminished by the highest bidder that Bezos decided to forego. It was only in view of Branson's ego with its stream of urine thought that pushed the thought of Wally into Bezo's fevered mind. 

See, sometimes something good can come from billionaires in pissing matches.

Go Wally! Good for you girl!