How Afghanistan fell and why chaos ensued

A stream of articles is coming out that explains how the Taliban caused the army and government to collapse. The New York Times writes: 

In early May, a Taliban commander telephoned Muhammad Jallal, a tribal elder in Baghlan Province in northern Afghanistan, and asked him to deliver a message to Afghan government troops at several bases in his district.

“If they do not surrender, we will kill them,” Mr. Jallal said he was told.

He and other tribal elders complied. After several rounds of negotiations, two government bases and three outposts surrendered without a fight. More than 100 security forces handed over weapons and equipment and were sent home unharmed.

The Taliban’s strategy of coercion and persuasion was repeated across the country, unfolding for months as a focal point of the insurgents’ new offensive this year. The militants cut multiple surrender deals that handed them bases and ultimately entire provincial command centers, culminating in a stunning military blitz this summer that put the militants back in power two decades after they were defeated by the United States and its allies.

The negotiated surrenders were just one element of a broader Taliban strategy that captured heavily defended provincial capitals with lightning speed, and saw the insurgents walk into the capital, Kabul, on Sunday with barely a shot fired. It was a campaign defined by both collapse and conquest, executed by patient opportunists.

Each surrender, small or large, handed the Taliban more weapons and vehicles — and, vitally, more control over roads and highways, giving insurgents freedom to move rapidly and collect the next surrenders as the security forces were progressively cut off from ammunition, fuel, food and salaries.

The Taliban also received money, supplies and support from Pakistan, Russia and Iran, analysts said. That included 10,000 to 20,000 Afghan volunteers sent from Pakistan, a Taliban safe haven, and thousands more Afghan villagers who joined the militants when it became clear they were winning, said Antonio Giustozzi, a London-based analyst who has written several books about Afghanistan.

The volunteers swelled Taliban ranks to more than 100,000 fighters from most analysts’ estimates of 60,000 to 70,000, Mr. Giustozzi said. That was more than enough to crush a government force listed at 300,000 on paper but hollowed out by corruption, desertion and a staggering casualty rate — U.S. officials have said that perhaps only a sixth of that total was in the fight this year.

Regarding the chaos of the final days, Biden argues it was inevitable. The NYT writes:

Even before Mr. Biden announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops, his administration rejected frantic calls from lawmakers and activists to evacuate Afghans, who now find themselves in jeopardy.

Then this summer, Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, implored Mr. Biden to hold off on evacuations until U.S. forces were gone for good, fearing that the image would undermine confidence in his government.

The president on Wednesday defended the U.S. withdrawal and said he did not see a way to leave Afghanistan without “chaos ensuing.” In an interview with ABC News, he was asked whether the exit could have been handled better.

“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that we’re going to go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” Mr. Biden said. “I don’t know how that happened.”

But critics said the administration was squarely to blame.

Some lawmakers, such as Representative Matt Rosendale, Republican of Montana, have expressed concerns about expediting the vetting process.

“Now we’re going to develop a procedure with which we can vet thousands of individuals and just relocate them to the United States?” he said in an interview. “Once they’re settled here, they can bring additional family members here. One kind deed does not make an ally.”

So, if T**** had been re-elected, there would have been at least as much chaos, probably significantly more. The Afghan government opposed evacuations, which make matters worse. US intelligence estimates were badly wrong. Biden relied on relied on intelligence showing a Taliban takeover was 18 months away.

And, it may be the case that a fair number of Afghan allies had hoped there was a lot more time to get out, so they didn't act sooner. If that is true, that could leave thousands of allies now stranded and unable to get to Kabul for evacuation assuming they don't get blocked for merely offering just one kind deed.

Failure on top of failure seems to have got us here.

So, was chaos in Kabul inevitable? Was the end result inevitable once T**** signed the agreement to withdraw in February of 2020, which was the start point for the Taliban's plan to get opposition to surrender and eventually collapse?

Here comes the Taliban's alt-reality and social media propaganda war

We all knew this was happening. But here's some evidence. The Washington Post writes:

For a group that espouses ancient moral codes, the Afghan Taliban has used strikingly sophisticated social media tactics to build political momentum and, now that they’re in power, to make a public case that they’re ready to lead a modern nation state after nearly 20 years of war.

In accounts swelling across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — and in group chats on apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram — the messaging from Taliban supporters typically challenges the West’s dominant image of the group as intolerant, vicious and bent on revenge, while staying within the evolving boundaries of taste and content that tech companies use to police user behavior.

The tactics overall show such a high degree of skill that analysts believe at least one public relations firm is advising the Taliban on how to push key themes, amplify messages across platforms and create potentially viral images and video snippets — much like corporate and political campaigns do across the world.

One image from a video circulated online in Afghanistan shows Taliban fighters dressed in camouflage and brandishing machines guns while posing unmolested in an eastern province, not far from Kabul, under a gorgeous pink and blue sky. The text below, in Pashto and English, reads, “IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF FREEDOM.”

Wide distribution of such propaganda imagery would have been almost impossible for an insurgent movement there a generation ago, before the arrival of smartphones, Internet connections and free social media services brought unprecedented online reach to Afghanistan. The nation lags the world in Internet connectivity but it has grown sharply over the past decade amid a gush of international investment.  

Recent months have seen an uptick in online messages offering a gentler, more reassuring face of the Taliban, whose brutality during its previous reign over the nation was notorious, featuring mass executions, repressive moral codes and the exclusion of women from schools and workplaces.

It's not just the Taliban doing this. Every hate-driven and extremist group on the planet with half an ounce of brains has figured out by now that social media is it's most potent soft power weapon. Most or nearly all extremist groups are autocratic or authoritarian. Social media is unparalleled for a small group or presence to (i) deceive by creating alt-realities based on lies, deceit, emotional manipulation and motivated reasoning, (ii) build public support, (iii) find recruits, and (iv) raise money. 

Social media propaganda power works even better if the authoritarians hires an "amoral" public relations firm to create the lies and deceit and show the rot online in effective ways. There's no apparent shortage of PR firms willing to take any tyrant's money. After all, public relations companies, like all other businesses, are amoral and therefore free to advance the agenda and lies of anyone who can afford to hire their services and expertise. All businesses are free to ignore truth and morality to the limits of the law, or sometimes (often?) beyond that. 

For context: The Taliban took over Afghanistan by first offering villages two choices. Surrender and submit, or face death. The central government was powerless to stop that. After local villages capitulated, the Taliban went to towns and made the same offer. The central government was powerless to stop that. Then the Taliban went to cities and make the same offer and the central government was powerless to stop that too. The Taliban hunted down and murdered village, town and city leaders and prominent elders who resisted. Organized local resistance was impossible.

Questions: 

1. Is the Taliban gentler, or is that just a routine propaganda lie to make those dark ages thugs, sadists and theocrats look less vicious? 

2. Is social media a net benefit or net detriment to (1) democracy or non-tyrant governments, and (2) authoritarian or tyrant governments? 

3. Is business amoral, or because it is a human activity, inherently moralistic regardless of what economic ideologies have to say about morality or truth? 

Worker productivity, spending and the Democrat's big infrastructure bill

The Washington Post published an interesting article this morning and a possible sustained increase in worker productivity. That might sound boring to some, but it really isn't.  When productivity increases, wages tend to increase and the overall economic situation tends to be solidly good. One of the key points is that the second infrastructure bill the Democrats have advocated and, not surprisingly the fascist Republican Party (FRP) opposes, increases funding for R&D. Economists point to that as a good indicator of increased productivity. 

Evidence of the increase is in recent data. Second quarter worker productivity grew by 2.3% and 4.3% in the first quarter, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Productivity gain in the decade after the financial crisis averaged 1.2%.

WaPo writes:

Rapid adoption of robots and artificial intelligence during the pandemic combined with a rebound in government investment is making some economists optimistic about a return of a 1990s economy with widespread benefits.

As companies and customers embrace new technologies, making it easier for Americans to produce more with fewer workers, a growing number of economists say this is not a blip and could turn into a boom — or, at least, a “mini boom” ― with wide-ranging benefits for years to come.

Higher productivity typically leads to more goods and services available at a lower cost and increases in wages. Without it, economic growth is sluggish.

“America used to do a lot more public investment and it used to grow faster. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. It seems like we are reentering an era of public investment,” said professor Erik Brynjolfsson, director of Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab. He forecasts “a productivity surge that will match or surpass the boom times of the 1990s.”

The other key dynamic is increased government investment in the economy. The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that recently passed the Senate has received widespread praise among business leaders and economists. The decision to stimulate the economy has also created a lot more demand than normal coming out of a recession, which is helping drive continued productivity and business investment.

“Infrastructure investment certainly has the potential to improve our productivity,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives and a former Federal Reserve economist.

The nation hasn’t seen this kind of public investment in years. Improvements in roads and bridges are much needed, but economists are most excited about the money in the bill to expand and enhance broadband, and research and development. Democrats are also working on a $3.5 trillion spending package that is more controversial, though some economists praise parts of that bill that would expand child care and paid leave to make it easier for more U.S. parents, especially mothers, to work.

“It won’t be a game changer to just fix roads and bridges. It will help at the margin, but it’s not transformational,” Coronado said. Instead, she noted that “creating more child-care infrastructure could cause the labor market to be more dynamic and drive stronger workforce participation from women.”

Higher productivity could also alleviate many of the nation’s top economic concerns. Inflation is currently running at a 13-year high, with many Americans citing it as a big worry. As prices for so many goods and services rise, workers can’t afford to buy as much. Productivity gains typically lead to lower prices since factories and offices can produce more, and it tends to bring higher pay as workers are seen as more valuable and effective.  

“We are going to be short of young people. So all the tasks that were being done with the prior amount of the labor will have to be automated quite a bit,” said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. “There won’t be that many drivers available for Uber and garbage trucks and all that. It’s very clear. Something will have to give.”

This is some rationale to think that the broader infrastructure spending the Democrats want could have good economic effects. Despite that, the FRP constantly attacks it because it believes that things like daycare and expanded broadband access aren't infrastructure. The FRP's fascist ideology considers (1) that infrastructure is roads, bridges, railroads and not much more, and (2) government and domestic spending is unconstitutional, evil, socialist and ineffective at everything other than (i) running a huge military-industrial complex, and (ii) courts to defend and advance the the dominant interests of the FRP and its wealthy donor class, namely power, wealth and non-democratic government. 

It's not clear why some of the FRP in congress voted for the first, narrower bill. After all, the spending is still evil, socialist and something Democrats want. The FRP vehemently opposes all of that. If the FRP had its way, all infrastructure, like 100% of public schools, would be privatized and run by the always better free markets. Probably fear of the 2022 elections mostly explains it. Re-election first, ideological coherence second.

Questions: If the productivity boom does sustain itself for a while, say at least the next six months, would that justify spending on the Democrat's broader vision of what constitutes infrastructure these days, or does one need to wait a couple of years to assess the cost-benefit? Is one or both infrastructure bills and their spending socialist, unconstitutional and/or evil as the FRP and its ideology sees it? Should all infrastructure and all public schools be privatized as the FRP wants, or is it exaggerated and inaccurate to say that is what the FRP wants? Is it exaggerated and inaccurate to say that the Republican Party, including its rank and file, is fascist? 

Any thoughts on Afghanistan?

The end of the end game is starting to become clear. The next few days ought to shed more light on the end of the very end. For example, will the Taliban allow militarily unopposed flights out to evacuate Americans and allies, or will we have to fight our way out on foot into Pakistan? Will the US actually be able to evacuate its allies? How many will be left behind? Who lied to the American people, when did they lie and who gets what share of credit or blame? What did the former president do or not do to prepare the US to get out by the May 1, 2021 deadline that the usually incompetent Lyin' Donnie "negotiated," assuming he actually negotiated anything of substance? What did Biden do well or badly? What whoppers did Obama and Bush lay on us? How culpable is the US intelligence community for not coming close to reading the situation, assuming they did misread it?

Taken together, the answers will help shape reasonable answers to who gets how much credit and/or blame. Over the next month or two, it is reasonable to expect more important information to come out. That could reasonably change assessments made now. 

Skinny children playing with detritus of war

At the grocery store

Children playing, I think

The guy in the cage just might be hosed

Town meeting! Town meeting!

Afghan women expressing their unique identities

A displaced family on the move

At the bakery

At school

Friendly Taliban folks

Thoughts on tax subsidies for religious organizations

No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit in the public income thus caused. -- ascribed to Mark Twain, but it's nonetheless true if someone else said it

Context

Although this topic is complicated and probably boring to most people, I believe it is far more important than most know. In my opinion, it is one of a few central aspects of potentially lethal political and social threats to secularism, American democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and transparent, honest governance that I and some other people strongly believe is now dire and imminent. 

Included in this blog post are some points and counterpoints raised by informed, intelligent people about tax privileges for religion in the US. They are in disagreement about the nature and cost-benefits of the US government allowing the gift of unique tax privileges for religion worth tens of billion per year.  But they strike me as (1) much better informed than ~98% of the American people about this, including at least ~95% of the people and organizations that run this country, and (2) quite thoughtful and sincere.

In my opinion, public ignorance of this issue underpins public complacency and its inability to see the seriousness of the threat.

The church-tax break industrial complex is especially privileged, opaque, 

resists transparency and thus can be corrupt 

Point: Churches are the same as other non-profits, and they do not enjoy special privileges in their tax exempt status.

Counterpoint 1: Not true. Religious organizations have a number of important benefits that secular 501c(3)s do not. First, no application is required from a religious organization. The US government grants tax exempt status without application, and without any need to demonstrate that the exemption serves the purpose for which it was offered. Second, unlike secular 501c(3)s, religious orgs are not required to make their accounting public, ensuring that their operations are opaque. Third, it is extremely difficult for the government to audit them. A very high level official at the IRS must sign off on the audit - unlike all other non-profits. The result of this is that there have been but a handful of such audits in decades, and their ability to run opaque operations is matched by their ability to avoid any oversight.

Counterpoint 2: The opacity is central to the entire church tax break-industrial complex. By estimates in 2012 and 2013, tax breaks were worth ~$70-80 billion/year. Those estimates are likely significantly understated because complete information was impossible to obtain. Many religious groups refuse to disclose their finances for analysis. Not surprisingly, sometimes that opacity hides massive wealth, e.g., a secret ~$100 billion investment fund, that essentially no one knows anything about, including the US government. Gains on those investments are not taxed. The amount of the gains are unknown. The amount of crime that may be involved is apparently unknown, which makes sense. We only find out about crimes after a whistleblower files a whistleblower complaint in hopes of making a lot of money. 

The scope of religious tax breaks is broad

Religious organizations pay no sales tax. When representatives of a religious entity make a purchase such as office supplies, cars or travel, they are exempted from local sales taxes. They also pay no income taxes for businesses they own, if they can show that the business furthers the objectives of the religion. For example, a bookstore that sells religious books would be exempt. Clergy and members of religious orders are the only citizens who can opt out of paying Self-Employed Contributions Act taxes, which are 15.3% taxes on income for self-employed individuals that pay for Social Security and other federal benefits. If they opt out, they don't get social security benefits on retirement.

Religious organizations pay no property taxes, which are used primarily to fund local services such as firefighting, emergency medical services and police departments, schools and other infrastructure, all of which religious organizations use. One analysis indicated that the value of property one Florida county, Manatee county, asserted to be fairly typical for moderately populated US counties was $406.7 million. Property tax savings in that county amounted to $8.5 million annually, or about 1% of the county  budget. Extrapolated nationally, that benefit would amount to about $6.9 billion/year.

Tax breaks and religious freedom

Point: Denying religious organizations tax exempt status unfairly or illegally singles out religious churches and groups specifically and punishes them by denying them the same opportunities offered everyone else.

Counterpoint: Not true. Any religious organization is free to create a subsidiary non-profit, whose tax exempt status would then be the same as for any other. There is no reason a homeless shelter or kitchen for the undernourished couldn't be run by a church as a non-profit, but it could not be run as a church. Many businesses run subsidiary non-profits, like the Coca Cola Foundation.

The foregoing only hints at the complexity of the religious tax subsidy issue. Other serious aspects of this include fights over constitutional interpretation, fights over Free Speech and fights over the Establishment clause. The powerful Christian nationalism political movement is highly focused on advancing legal arguments to expand its reach into the US treasury. It has been refining and advancing those arguments for years with slowly increasing success in recent years as the number of radical Christian nationalist federal judges increase in dominance. With each expansion of access to tax dollars the federal courts grant, the Christian nationalist movement's power and influence increases and so does the intensity of the attack on democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, secularism, and honest governance. 

Immediate concerns vs long term concerns

 Before Covid I would meet every weekend for coffee with a group of friends and we would talk sports, politics, and yup - gossip.

That was on hold for a while, now we are back to getting together on the weekends at our favorite coffee shop (which is observing limited seating) to hash out this and that.

I expressed an opinion recently to Germaine, that U.S. politics and the worry about the rise of rightwing fanaticism is not THE biggest worry I have, it is the environment, because it IS more of a "existential" threat not only to Americans, but the world.

Now new flags are being raised about what will happen in Afghanistan, and will terrorism grow again there so at some point we will AGAIN have to deal with another ISIS or Al Qaeda situation.

Maybe, because it is too far away for my feeble mind to contemplate, but I just can't get overly concerned about what will happen next in Afghanistan, neither (as I have expressed multiple times) am I AS concerned about rightwing politics. For me it is the environment.

So, back to my having coffee with my friends. We raised this subject of what is most worrisome to us right now - and to those who I have coffee with two things were MORE worrisome to them than even the environment.

They stated first worry is Covid variants and the rapid spread of the Delta variant, and the 2nd worry was inflation - they are convinced inflation is going to get a lot worse, and they see the spread of Delta and the rising costs of goods going hand in hand.

When I tried to argue that as long as you are vaccinated and keep masking your risks are low, and inflation is something that can be absorbed, but you can't stop worrying about the environment because of the existential risk, they balked and said that YES while the environment is a concern the immediate concern should be fighting misinformation and getting everyone vaccinated and finding ways to combat inflation.

Not to be critical (though no doubt I am sounding critical) but clearly their views on what is the most worrisome is what is most close to home and immediate. MAYBE that is why so many people worry about what the Republicans are up to, it is close to home and immediate.

So, are people like myself, who are less worried about the immediate crisis and worry more about future dangers off base? Or is it just human nature to view future dangers as less important than those dangers we perceive as immediate? 

Weigh in.