Here Come The Mandates: FDA Approves Covid Shot
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The Food and Drug Administration has just approved the Pfizer covid shot, paving the way for the roll-out of vaccine mandates across the public and private sector. Will there be push-back? Also today, the FBI shoots down Jan 6th "insurrection" myth and former head of CIA and NSA calls for unvaccinated Trump supporters to be sent to Afghanistan to be killed. Watch today's Liberty Report: Here Come The Mandates: FDA Approves Covid Shot Click on the headline to read the full story from
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Did anyone expect the US war in Afghanistan to end cleanly? If so, you bought the lies all along and the cold water now is hitting sharp. While the actual ending is particularly harsh and clearly spliced together from old clips of Saigon 1975, those are simply details. Who should we blame for losing Afghanistan? Why blame anyone? Why blame Biden? He played his part as a senator and vice president keeping the war going, but his role today is just being the last guy in a long line of people to blame, a pawn in the game. That Biden is willing to be the “president who lost Afghanistan” is all the proof you need he does not intend to run again for anything. Kind of an ironic version of a young John Kerry’s take on Vietnam “how do you ask the last man to die for a mistake?” Turns out, it’s easy: call Joe. Blame Trump for the deal? One of the saddest things about the brutal ending of the US-Afghan war is we would have gotten the same deal—just leave it to the Taliban and go home—at basically any point during the last 20 years. That makes every death and every dollar a waste. Afghanistan is simply reverting, quickly, to more or less status quo ante September 11, 2001, and everything between then and now, including lost opportunities, will have been wasted. Blame the neocons? No one in Washington who supported this war was ever called out, with the possible exception of Donald Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney walks free. The generals and diplomats who ran the war have nice think tank or university jobs, if they are not still in government making equally bad decisions. No one has been legally, financially, or professionally disadvantaged by the blood on their hands. Some of the era’s senior leaders—Blinken, Rice, Power, Nuland—are now working in better jobs for Biden. I’d like to hope they have trouble sleeping at night, but I doubt it. George Bush is a cuddly grandpa today, not the man who drove the United States into building a global prison archipelago to torture people. Barack Obama, who kept much of that system in place and added the drone killing of American citizens to his resume, remains a Democratic rock god. Neither man nor any of his significant underlings has expressed any regret or remorse. For example, I have recently listened to Ryan Crocker, our former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, on CNN. Making myself listen to him was about as fun as sticking my tongue in a woodchipper. Same for former general David Petraeus and the usual gang of idiots. None of them, the ones who made the decisions, accept any blame. Instead, they seem settled on blaming Trump because, well, everything bad is Trump’s fault even if he came into all this in the middle of the movie. In the end the only people punished were the whistleblowers. Fair Use Excerpt. Read the whole article here. Who’s To Blame For Afghanistan? Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity This month marks fifty years since President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window” that had allowed foreign governments to exchange US dollars for gold. Nixon’s action severed the last link between the dollar and gold, transforming the dollar into pure fiat currency. Since the “Nixon shock” of 1971, the dollar’s value — and the average American’s living standard — has continuously declined, while income inequality and the size, scope, and cost of government have risen. Since the beginning of this year, price inflation has increased much, and it could continue onward to exceed the 1970s-era price spikes. Understandably, Republicans are trying to blame President Joe Biden for the price increases. However, a major cause of the current price inflation is the unprecedented money creation the Federal Reserve has engaged in since the 2008 market meltdown. This, though, does not mean Biden and most US politicians of both parties do not bear some responsibility for rising prices. Their support for the Fed and massive government spending contributes to the problem. The main way the Fed pumps money into the economy is by monthly purchases of 120 billion dollars of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. Even many Keynesian economists agree that rising price inflation means the Fed should stop pumping money into the economy. Yet, this year the Fed is likely, at most, to only slightly reduce its purchases of Treasury securities. It will almost certainly keep interest rates at near-zero levels. A reason the Fed will not stop or significantly reduce its purchases of Treasuries and allow interest rates to increase is that doing so would increase federal debt payments to unsustainable levels. Even with interest rates at historic lows, interest payments remain a significant portion of federal spending, and recent indications are that the US government is not about to start being frugal. Consider, for example, Congress' six trillion dollars “Covid relief and economic stimulus” spending spree and the Senate passage of the trillion dollars “traditional infrastructure” bill and a budget “outline” of a 3.5 trillion dollars “human infrastructure” bill. The “human infrastructure” bill represents an expansion of government along the lines of the Great Society. Among its initiatives are universal pre-kindergarten; two “free” years of community college; increased government control of health care via expansions of Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid; and a raft of new government mandates and spending aimed at reshaping the US economy to fight “climate change.” The need to gain support of “moderate” Democrats will likely mean the final “human infrastructure” bill will costs less than 3.5 trillion dollars. However, no Democrat is objecting to the bill's programs; the objectors just want cheaper tolls on the road to serfdom. While progressives will likely accept reduced spending levels in order to get their wish list into law, they will then work to increase funding and expand the programs. As the programs become more entrenched, even many “conservatives” will support increasing their funding. The expansion of government will increase pressure on the Fed to keep the money spigots open. This will lead to a major economic crisis. The good news is the crisis may mark the beginning of the end of the fiat monetary system and the welfare-warfare state, along with the dawn of a new era of free markets, sound money, and limited government. From the Nixon Shock to Biden-flation Click on the headline to read the full story from US Customs and Border Patrol announced its officers at a port in Alaska recently seized thousands of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards that came from China. The seizure opens the door for government to go forward with the technological tracking of US citizens. How so? It strengthens the arguments of pro-vaccine passport types who say Americans must be vaccinated, or else risk infecting the innocent; that Americans must prove vaccination as conditions of associating freely in public and interacting with others; that vaccine passports are obviously the easiest means by which proof of vaccination can be displayed; but that paper vaccine passports are vulnerable to counterfeit. A smartphone app that carries a scannable electronic code tied directly to the carrier’s medical records — connected directly to the clinic or doctor’s office that administered the shot — is the viable alternative. So will go the line of logic. See, see? — they’ll say: Paper passports are prone to fakery. We need something more secure. We need something technologically advanced. In fact, this is the alternative that’s already being tested in select spots, by select tech companies. “Smartphone developers are gearing up for a world where users can store their Covid vaccination proof in their phones’ digital wallets, making it easy to simply tap their phones when they enter new buildings,” Yahoo! News wrote. “Google, Apple and Samsung have all recently announced plans to offer a feature that readily calls up a QR code that can be scanned to quickly verify a user’s vaccination status.” Once that electronic bridge is crossed, the once-dim potential for America’s government to track US citizens moves to certainty. If private business can compel free citizens to carry electronic proof of vaccination as conditions of work, as conditions of entry, as conditions of travel, then what’s to stop government from arguing for the need to tap into this data to, say, track the whereabouts of a suspected terrorist — a suspected drug dealer — a suspected child abuser — a suspected bank robber — a suspected home invader — a suspected petty thief — a suspected drunk and disorderly? A suspected political dissenter? The law of unintended consequences looms large here. Just in the past couple of years, America has moved from the unthinkable to the accepted — from the idea of forcing citizens to take a vaccine that’s only been approved for emergency use to the idea that those who raise questions about the safety of this vaccine are branded unpatriotic, dangerous to society, needful of forced home quarantine. Now add technologically driven contact tracing and vaccine passports to this mindset shift. Now toss in apps that prove vaccination status, and all the open-door possibilities this new shift in mindset will bring. Once Americans are conditioned to cough up medical data on demand, it’s only a horizontal move to make the case — to win the case — for Americans to accept the use of personal and private data for other similarly billed necessary needs. After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why fear police having your data? Why fear government knowing your location? Kafka, meet trap. Pandora, meet box. Albatross, meet neck. Counterfeit vaccine cards, meet government surveillance. “Getting these fraudulent cards off the streets and out of the hands of those who would then sell them is important for the safety of the American public,” said Lance Robinson, area port director of the Area Port of Anchorage. It always is. It’s always about safety. That’s how government grows its footprint. That’s how oppressors gain their foothold. The only solution that saves for the long-term is to demand God-given rights, the ones founders forged for us all, the ones supposedly cemented in this nation’s foundation. That’s the only way to permanently stop this coming un-American tide of tyranny. Reprinted with author's permission from Washington Times. Counterfeit vaccine cards will lead to total government surveillance Click on the headline to read the full story from Many Democratic leaders, including - most notably - Nancy Pelosi refuse to let go of the notion that the Jan. 6 "attack" on the Capitol was a terror attack on par with 9/11 or the Pulse nightclub shootings. Why? Because, they claim, the whole seige was planned and perpetrated by shadowy militia groups like the Oath Keepers, working in concert with Republican lawmakers. Dems also blame President Trump for instigating the incident (the supposed reason behind Twitter and Facebook banning his accounts). But according to a scoop from Reuters published Friday, prosecutors who once planned to try and lay charges of sedition, conspiracy or other serious offenses against members of the Oath Keepers and other militia groups have been stymied by the reality of what actually happened. And now that the first (surprisingly stiff) jail sentences have been handed down, the FBI has apparently determined that there's "scant evidence" to suggest that the events of Jan. 6 resulted from an "organized plot", according to a scoop published by Reuters. In other words, it's a repudiation of prosecutors' claims that "trespassing plus thought crime = terrorism". The FBI tells Reuters that "95%" of these cases are "one offs". And even among the "5%" who were more organized, there is still no evidence of a "grand scheme" to overthrow Congress and install President Trump for a second term. Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.But that's not even the most disappointing bit for Pelosi, who is trying to use her Jan. 6 Committee to punish GOP colleagues. Because the FBI also told Reuters that there's no evidence that Trump, or people around him, were involved in organizing the unrest. But the FBI has so far found no evidence that [Trump] or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence, according to the four current and former law enforcement officials.The report specifically cited "dirty trickster" Roger Stone (who was famously taken into custody by a SWAT team for a perp walk in front of CNN cameras) and InfoWars founder Alex Jones. Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described "dirty trickster", and Jones, founder of a conspiracy-driven radio show and webcast, are both allies of Trump and had been involved in pro-Trump events in Washington on Jan. 5, the day before the riot.The findings could also help the 40 or so defendants who belong to militia groups, and are facing more serious conspiracy charges. As we first learned a few weeks ago, prosecutors feel they don't have enough evidence to lay charges of "seditious conspiracy", or use the RICO act to target militia groups as if they were an organized criminal gang. But one source said there has been little, if any, recent discussion by senior Justice Department officials of filing charges such as "seditious conspiracy" to accuse defendants of trying to overthrow the government. They have also opted not to bring racketeering charges, often used against organized criminal gangs. Senior lawmakers have been briefed on the FBI's findings and find them "credible", according to Reuters. The ultimate takeaway is this: while some groups may have discussed the rally and attendant protest in advance, and while they ultimately may have "worked together" on the day in question, there's simply no evidence of a grand conspiracy headed by a single nefarious ringleader (not Stone, not Jones, not even Trump). Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against 40 of those defendants, alleging that they engaged in some degree of planning before the attack. They alleged that one Proud Boy leader recruited members and urged them to stockpile bulletproof vests and other military-style equipment in the weeks before the attack and on Jan. 6 sent members forward with a plan to split into groups and make multiple entries to the Capitol.With seditious conspiracy now off the table, the most serious charges are likely to be the assault on an office charges, which carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Reprinted with permission from ZeroHedge. FBI Shoots Down Dem 'Conspiracy Theory' That Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Was Pre-Planned Click on the headline to read the full story from After the Taliban captured Kabul far faster than anyone in Washington forecast, secretary of state Tony Blinken went on Sunday morning talk shows and announced that the US mission in Afghanistan had been “successful.” Unfortunately, there will be plenty of robotic civil servants and political appointees who recite that deranged verdict in the coming years. There is no reason to expect the twenty-year US debacle in Afghanistan to humble Washington policymakers. Korean War fiascos were swept under the rug, paving the way for fresh delusions that led to the Vietnam War. The debacles of the Vietnam War were buried long ago, spurring similar follies in the Afghan and Iraq wars in this century. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), reported finding “a USAID lessons-learned report from 1980s on Afghan reconstruction but nobody at AID had read it!” Foreign policy makers will likely remain arrogant and myopic regardless of how many more nations they despoil. On a winter hike almost a decade ago, I witnessed firsthand both the haughtiness of officialdom and its human cost. I arrived at Great Falls National Park in Maryland early for that Sunday morning jaunt and found a wooden rail fence to lean against as I awaited the arrival of other hikers. A few minutes later, a handicapped van pulled to the side of the nearby road. A twenty-something woman bounded out of the shotgun seat and zipped around to the side of the van. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a single ponytail topped by a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. That bright red hat perfectly complemented a bit of rouge—or maybe she was naturally red cheeked. When she slid open the side door, her husband poked his head out warily. He had a sturdy jaw rounding out Hollywood-caliber rugged good looks. His military-style close-cropped haircut and his Army Rangers T-shirt settled any doubt about his occupation. She reached up to provide a slight assist as he moved gingerly out of the van like a toddler taking his first steps. One shirt sleeve was cut off. Instead of a left arm, I saw a metal rod with a wire hand at the end protruding from it. As he exited the van, I noticed that in place of legs he had two metal rods extending downward from his knees. The soldier clenched a monogrammed wooden cane in his right hand while his wife eased him forward by his left side, brightening a cloudy morning with an unforgettable radiant smile. Perhaps this was a day that she had been hoping and praying for ever since she got the bad news from the other side of the world. This couple was desperately seeking to regain a little normalcy and recapture some of the joys they feared were lost forever when the husband was maimed by a roadside bomb, likely one of thousands of American casualties during Obama’s surge in Afghanistan. I had no idea how long this guy had been in rehab or how much progress he might have already made. Walter Reed Hospital, the nation’s top military hospital, was only a dozen miles away from the park. The drop-off point the van chose offered quick access to the C&O Canal Towpath and a vista overlooking the Potomac River. I have seen many such couples at this park, at the National Zoo, and at the National Mall. The vast advances in medical treatment had assured that far more soldiers survived grisly wounds than in prior wars. But there had been no corresponding progress in assuring that politicians gave a damn about the plight of the soldiers they sent off to fight. As I waited, a chunky, blue-eyed blond recognized me from earlier hikes and plumped down hard on the fence rail next to mine. The hangover she boasted of having made her look fortyish before her time. She sported a bright green down vest over a maroon running outfit and the latest chic walking shoes. Heather was an affable Midwesterner who, like many hikers, defined herself in part by athletic feats she flourished like a row of Olympic medals. She told me she’d hiked half of the two thousand–plus–mile Appalachian Trail all by herself and was forced to abandon the quest to become a “through hiker” because of severe ankle problems. Twenty years earlier, as a college student in Switzerland, she had continued hiking in the Alps even though altitude sickness spurred severe migraines and heavy vomiting day after day. She wanted to prove beyond a doubt that she was not a “quitter”—perhaps the most despised term in her vocabulary. Turnout was sparse for the hike and Heather couldn’t find anyone else to brag to. She probably assumed that I was not “the sharpest knife in the drawer” based on my barn coat and battered Aussie-style canvas hat. (Okay, maybe it was the scruffy beard.) Her hunch that I was a loser was confirmed when in response to her question I said I’d never done a marathon but had run 880-yard relays for the high school track team. Any distance less than twenty-six miles was beyond contempt. She confided that when she applied to grad school for her master's in business administration, “my GMAT scores were very impressive.” After she repeated that point, I wondered if she had the test scores tattooed where the sun doesn’t shine. She had transcended that triumph by passing the Foreign Service Officer exam. And she was off and running with the “my brilliant career” storyline. She boasted that she had an extremely high level of security clearance—unlike the other half million Washingtonian-area employees with humdrum security clearances. She spent a decade based at US embassies in South America, defending the US drug war and other policies that made life hell for the locals. She extolled the State Department as the wisest of federal agencies. Other government agencies were not only technologically far behind the State Department, she said, but they also had failed to develop ways to assure that the best and brightest (such as herself) rose to positions of command and influence. “What about Americans who say the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the biggest blunder since the Vietnam War?” I asked. “It is unclear whether invading Iraq was a bad idea,” she curtly replied. “Saddam Hussein was an evil ruler. There is a lot of inside information that has not been made public that would put the Bush administration’s decision in a very different light.” “Didn’t bipartisan congressional investigations conclude that the Bush team blundered horribly?” Heather scoffed: “There were a lot of facts that Congress didn’t know—you can’t rely on their conclusions.” This woman sounded like she had exclusive access to the Temple of Delphi, or at least the inside-the-Beltway equivalent. Tapping my “innocuous country boy” tone, I asked, “What do you make of Wikileaks disclosing all those secret State Department cables that contradicted the public statements of the US policymakers?” She snorted. “I have not looked at any of those cables. We were told that we would lose our security clearance if we read any of those unauthorized disclosures.” Since the information had not been officially disclosed, good Washingtonians were obliged to pretend it did not exist. I mentioned in passing that I was a journalist but that tidbit did not hold her attention. She was enjoying strutting her expertise—which was fine by me. She then revealed why private citizens could not make competent criticisms of US foreign policy: “Even if you study the relationship between the US and another country the whole time, you would only know at most 80 percent of the most important facts. It is like trying to judge a married couple who you casually know—it is simply not possible to do.” And since Heather was between the sheets of US foreign policy, I should take her word that Americans weren’t getting screwed. “If you want to deal with unadulterated mass stupidity,” she said, warming to the subject, “just look at the opinion polls on foreign aid. Almost everybody is against it but they don’t even know how much money the US distributes abroad. Even worse, people totally fail to recognize how aid advances America’s grand strategic objectives.” “Haven’t there been some controversies about US aid money bankrolling atrocities by foreign governments?” “The US has no responsibility for the actions of foreign governments that receive US foreign aid. They are separate entities. It is like responsible adults—they do their own thing.” I silently lamented that the US government hadn’t given me a few billion dollars to “do my own thing.” I had been writing about foreign aid for decades but couldn’t recall it previously vindicated as a windfall for foreign politicians’ self-expression. “Help me figure this out,” I said. “Any American who donates to a foreign group that commits atrocities gets charged with material support of terrorism. Why isn’t the same standard applied to recipients of US foreign aid?” “It’s different when our government does it, because it serves the national interest.” “How do we know that?” I asked. She affixed me with the glare a schoolmarm uses to smite the dumbest kid in the class: “That’s why we have a democracy—there are checks and balances.” “How can we have self-government when the feds withhold so much information from citizens?” “People know what they need to know,” she replied testily. “They don’t need to be told everything, because the people in charge are experts. Besides, sometimes it’s more important for the government to do what’s right, not just what’s popular.” She omitted mentioning that the US State Department is doing God’s work—or doing what God would do if He knew the facts of the matter. “But if the government is so secretive … ” “Americans are free because they can vote—everybody knows that,” she snapped. Sensing that her patience with my pesky questions was damn near done, I asked if she felt any personal responsibility for promoting policies that worked out badly for the US or foreigners. “I have to be an adult—and being an adult means taking responsibility. It is like proposing a budget … Sometimes you don’t have control of all the items in your budget and not all the numbers are met. But you have to take responsibility.” Heather knew all the rhetorical tricks to absolve the government and herself. “How does that apply to cases where the US bombs foreign nations and unleashes mass killing and chaos like in Libya?” “You know, I should not even be talking to you,” she growled as she glared with disgust. “Kind of late, honey,” I didn’t say. Instead, I gave her my best Cheshire Cat smile as she scowled and raced ahead on the trail. Heather was a classic Washington high achiever, a very intelligent woman whose career progress hinged on zero intellectual curiosity. She only read official sources, and thus knew that officialdom was wonderful. Disputing with her was like conversing with a religious devotee who had memorized responses from a foreign policy catechism. For her, any alleged US foreign policy debacle was either nonexistent or irrelevant. Her guiding principle was “government is smarter than you are.” Her notion of democracy consisted of little more than inferiors submitting to the secret decisions of their anointed superiors. And as long as government keeps so much information classified, it can always deride ignorant critics. As I headed back to my car, I saw another van pull up at the edge of the parking lot. A reddish-curly-haired lass barely out of her teens sprang out of the shotgun seat and circled around to the side door. She was wearing a puffy pink sweater and a calico skirt, but her young face was riddled with angst. Her soldier husband/boyfriend was missing only one leg but I suspected that he also suffered a lot of other physical damage that would not be evident to a passerby. He repeatedly grimaced in pain, but that couple advanced together bravely regardless. Heather was long gone by that point, but I suspected she would not have given that couple a second glance. She would have presumed that none of the maimed soldiers hobbling through the park that day could have passed the Foreign Service Officer exam. Reprinted with permission from Mises.org. Kabul's Collapse and DC's Incurable Arrogance Click on the headline to read the full story from
The mask debate is again raging in the US, and again it is becoming a political football. Red state governors are attacked in the mainstream media for not re-imposing mask mandates while blue state governors where cases are increasing get a pass. So what's it all about? Public health? Also today - the California recall is becoming a referendum on masks and mandates. Finally - should we import thousands of Afghans? Watch today's Liberty Report: Masks: What Are They Hiding? Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
The lightening-fast Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has left billions of dollars of US weapons scattered around the country for the taking. And this doesn't just mean rifles or handguns. After 20 years of fighting them, the US has turned into the Taliban's biggest weapons supplier. But the US arms merchants got paid. Watch today's Liberty Report: Guess Who's The Taliban's Biggest Weapons Supplier? Click on the headline to read the full story from Joe Biden’s speech following the Afghanistan debacle made for compelling television for one main reason: here is a government official – the man who holds the office once called the “leader of the free world” – recognizing the limits of government. No matter how long the US stayed, no matter how many troops the US deploys, no matter how much blood and treasure are expanded on this war, the US could not accomplish its ends. “How many more lives, American lives, is it worth? How many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer,” he asked. “Despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to give the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will and they ultimately decided that they would not fight for Kabul and they would not fight for the country,” added his national security advisor. As I listened, I began to replace one set of words for another. Taliban equal SARS-CoV-2. Lives and fortune lost equal collateral damage of lockdowns. The dream of a free and democratic Afghanistan equals a nation without the pathogen that causes Covid. Lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and other mitigation measures all equal the measures deployed for 20 years to achieve the unachievable. The day before this very speech by Biden – one that finally articulated some degree of humility in the conduct of public affairs and foreign policy – Anthony Fauci had another message for the American people. It concerned the need to continue the domestic war on Covid. “Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties,” he said. “and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus. And we really have to go together to get on top of this.” The two weeks to flatten the curve have turned into 18 months of chaotic policy that have robbed Americans of all their traditional presumptions concerning their rights and liberties. We didn’t know it – or most did not – but government can shut our businesses, close our churches, empty out our schools, restrict our travel, separate us from loved ones, all in the name of crushing a virus. We might as well replace crush the virus with drive the Taliban out of public life in Afghanistan. Some things government can do; others it cannot do. It is long past time to hear an American president recognize that. Now that recognition needs a domestic application as well. The news from Afghanistan presented the world an unbearably tragic picture. No matter the spin by the Biden administration, no matter what the talking heads say, no matter how many experts are there to assure people that this is not a failure, the humiliation for US foreign policy was on display as never before. Among the most shocking images were from the airport in Kabul, where thousands of Afghans swarmed the tarmac begging to board planes leaving the country. Some clung to the planes as they approached the runway. There are claims that a few people managed to hold onto the wings as the plane took off and then fell to their deaths. I’ve watched the film and cannot say if it is true, but the point remains. The whole scene gives new meaning to the word chaos, making even the 1975 exit from Saigon look orderly by comparison. There surely were better ways to end this mess, surely ways in which the US could have better protected its partisans on the ground, surely some path toward avoiding this calamity. Still, the ending we see was in some form inevitable; the US could not really win this. Biden is right about this. The US entered Afghanistan in 2001, not just to punish the perpetrators of 9/11, though it was never established that the government had anything to do with funding or planning that attack. The decision to repeat the Soviet-style failure in that country was a decision by George W. Bush – one terrible decision among many made by this administration in its years in power (another was to plot lockdowns for disease containment). In quickly driving the Taliban to the hills, and declaring victory right away, the US adopted a more ambitiously ideological goal of reconstructing the country into a modern democratic republic. Surely the Midas touch of US military presence would achieve this – same as US power could drive down cases and intimate the virus into disappearing. Talk about completely ignoring history! It’s not as if this failure could not be foreseen. The US would expend lives and treasure on a futile mission, same as the British and Soviet empires before. Nothing could change this outcome. The US had to leave at some point. The Taliban would come back at some point. Rather than prepare and protect, the US bailed in a panic and merely allowed events to unfold with the people it had fought for 20 years regaining total hegemony in a matter of days. Twenty years of work and sacrifice disappeared like dust in the wind. In all those years, the US claimed that the government in Afghanistan was not its puppet at all, but wholly legitimate and supported by the people. The tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with the foreign occupiers were not internally despised, but respected as agents of modernization. They were not vulnerable to being overthrown, but rather represented a bright and wholly Westernized vision of the future of the country. Those of us who had our doubts were routinely attacked as unpatriotic. Twenty years later, in a matter of one week, only a few months following the US announcement of withdrawal, the Taliban did an easy victory march straight to the capital of Kabul and inspired the quick surrender of hundreds of thousands of US-trained forces who saw the writing on the wall. Even as Biden promised to send thousands of more troops to achieve an orderly transition, the US embassy was quickly abandoned and the priority became getting aid workers, reporters, and US officials and their allies out as soon as possible. Usually the government is in the business of hiding its failure. Hiding was impossible this time. Biden administration officials were left sputtering on TV, blaming the Trump administration, claiming that this was a victory in disguise, and so on. But nothing could change the images of Taliban fighters reveling in victory all over the country, to the cheers of many people and the terror of many others. Even now, US officials are on TV explaining how they are working for an orderly transition when it should be clear that the deed was done. How much did 20 years of undeclared war cost? American troops killed: 2,448. Contractors killed: 3,846. Afghan military and police killed: 66,000. Civilians killed: 47,245. Taliban and resistance fighters killed: 51,191. Dead aid workers: 444. Dead journalists: 72. The debt cost of this fiasco certainly exceeds $2 trillion. There is a larger and more meaningful cost to the US government: the absolute humiliation that comes with total defeat. In many ways, what remains of the US military and economic empire rests on perceptions and history, the belief that most people have underestimated American strength for the better part of a century and they have generally been proven wrong. The disasters of the Korean and Vietnam Wars were eventually mitigated by victory in the Cold War. This time it is different. The loss of Afghanistan occurs following the calamity of the Iraq War, and is followed by nothing but the rise and rise of China as a global superpower. If one wants to isolate a single vice of the US government, it would be the lack of humility to admit that not everything can be controlled by economic and military might. The example of past failures in Afghanistan were available to everyone 20 years ago but this was widely ignored in favor of a messianic mission to achieve the impossible and control the uncontrollable. Let’s also mention another extreme failure of the George W. Bush administration from those years. In 2005, he had the brilliant idea of using the power of the federal government to mitigate disease. The stay-at-home orders, the school and business closures, the attempt to suppress a virus by force, the travel restrictions – every bit of it was mapped out by 2006. The plans sat there mostly unnoticed until 2020 when they were deployed in ways that devastated American liberty. The same weekend that the Afghanistan disaster was shown on TV to the world, Fauci was on television telling Americans that they need to surrender more of their precious liberties in order to get the Delta variant under control. If there was ever a time in history for Americans finally to realize that they cannot trust their leaders to tell the truth, it is now. My overall impression is that the mask wearing and distancing are entirely performative at this point, just as the fighting in Afghanistan has been for the better part of 15 years – performative in the sense that no one really believes it is working but very real in terms of cost. Even bars in D.C. have signs saying that while you have to have your face covered to come in, you can take them off immediately because “we know this is dumb.” Americans pretend to comply with and believe in Covid rules just as the US-backed regime in Afghanistan pretended to rule the country, and the US pretended to be in the business of emancipating the country from Taliban tyranny. Both policies represent hubris based on a willful ignorance of history and an unwillingness to admit the limits of power. Now reality has bit back. Whether we call this reality the Taliban or the Delta variant, governments eventually have to recognize their inability to make good on their wildest dreams of their power to perfect the world. In the old days, before the US found itself embroiled in endless wars, a core of smart people knew that the key to peace and prosperity around the world was not messianic war but trade and diplomacy. So too, we once understood that the best path to domestic health and long lives was a combination of good science, access to medical care, doctor-patient relationships, and good lifestyles – not lockdowns, not impositions on rights and liberties. These huge collective plans to rid the world of the evil of the day – whatever it is – are likely to create even larger problems. War is often a cure worse than the disease. So too are lockdowns and mandates designed for our own good. Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute. Biden’s Other Unwinnable War Click on the headline to read the full story from In early July, Ron Paul penned a column titled “It’s Saigon In Afghanistan,” invoking the imagery of the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US military helicopters scrambled to evacuate personnel from the roof of the US embassy. But Paul suggested that maybe the situation in Afghanistan was “perhaps not as dramatic” as the situation in Saigon forty-six years ago. But that was six weeks ago. Now, it looks like the end of the US’s war in Afghanistan may be in many ways every bit as chaotic as the US regime’s final defeat in Vietnam. When Paul was writing his article in early July, we were already getting hints of the direction things were going. US forces abandoned Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night, and the US didn’t even tell its allies what was going on. Afghan officials discovered the US was gone hours later. Shortly thereafter, looters ransacked the base. But that, it seems, was just the beginning. Over a period of a mere ten days, provincial capitals in Afghanistan have fallen one after the other. On Sunday, the Taliban entered the strategically key capital Kabul. The Taliban’s reconquest of the country was so fast that even the US regime’s spokesman admitted “the militants' progress came much more quickly than the US had anticipated.” Now, after spending twenty years implementing “regime change” in Afghanistan, and after spending more than $800 billion—an official figure that’s likely far smaller than the real monetary cost—the US’s strategy in Afghanistan has completely collapsed. Indeed, for the US’s local allies, the situation is far worse now than what it was in 2001. Those who were unwise enough to ally themselves with the Americans over the past twenty years now face reprisals from the Taliban. Death will likely be the result for many. Not surprisingly, then, Afghanis in recent days have flocked to Kabul International Airport, desperate to find some way out of the country as the Taliban closes in. It's doesn’t take an immense amount of imagination to recall the images of those who were desperate to escape from the US embassy in Saigon. Blame the Generals and the Pentagon So now we reach the stage of figuring out who is to blame for this total strategic failure in Afghanistan. Some politicians will try and use the US regime’s failure in Afghanistan to score points against the Biden administration. We already see it with some Republicans who still haven't figured out that the American public long ago stopped caring about the war. It’s easy to see the partisan reasons for this, but if we want to honestly focus on who’s to blame for the utter waste of time and resources that was the war in Afghanistan, we have to look far beyond just a handful of civilian politicians. Yes, much of the blame should go to the civilian bureaucrats, because they share an immense amount of the blame in bringing about this strategic blunder. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Madeleine Albright are just a few of the politicos who encouraged the continuation of this lost war. But the fact is the civilian war architects were encouraged and enabled every step of the way by Pentagon bureaucrats (i.e., the generals), who were only more than happy to have an excuse to pad their budgets and increase their relevance on Capitol Hill. As Ron Paul put it this week: The generals and other high-ranking military officers lied to their commander-in-chief and to the American people for years about progress in Afghanistan. The same is true for the US intelligence agencies. Unless there is a major purge of those who lied and misled, we can count on these disasters to continue until the last US dollar goes up in smoke.And of course, the Pentagon allied itself with the “private” sector industries that suppled the materiel. Paul continues: The military industrial complex spent 20 years on the gravy train with the Afghanistan war. They built missiles, they built tanks, they built aircraft and helicopters. They hired armies of lobbyists and think tank writers to continue the lie that was making them rich. They wrapped their graft up in the American flag, but they are the opposite of patriots.Or, as Timothy Kudo describes it, Across two decades, our military leaders presented rosy pictures of the Afghanistan War and its prospects to the president, Congress, and the American people, despite clear internal debate about the validity of those assessments and real-time contradictory information from those fighting and losing the daily battle against the Taliban. Or, to put it in the words of John Sopko, the inspector general who issued a series of reports known as the Afghanistan Papers: 'The American people have constantly been lied to.'Nor did the military officers council caution or peace. Douglas MacGregor at the American Conservative correctly recalls: All that can be said with certainty is that between 2001 and 2021, none of the senior officers expressed opposition to the policies of intervention and occupation strongly enough to warrant their removal. None felt compelled to leave the service and take their opposing views to the public forum.Moreover, Petraeus and countless military technocrats continued to call for more military action while trying to place the blame on others.1 Doug Bandow sums it up: Many of those once responsible for US forces in Afghanistan while in authority have taken the lead in trying to perpetuate the mission. For instance, David Petraeus is busy trying to shield his reputation and shift blame to Biden as the Afghan project collapses. Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recently co-chaired the congressionally mandated Afghanistan Study Group, which predictably insisted that the United States should stay in the country. What other conclusion was imaginable? As the entire geopolitical enterprise collapses, its promoters insist that American forces should stick around with no good purpose and no realistic plan of action.Indeed, the incompetence of the US’s military leadership has been on clear display in recent weeks as the US-trained and US-armed military personnel have been impotent in the face of Taliban advances. The US’s military hierarchy was specifically tasked with training these Afghan forces, yet it’s now clear how well that directive was carried out. Unwarranted Trust in Military Brass The complicity of the military brass’s role has always been especially damaging, because the generals have long banked on the unwarranted amount of credibility they enjoy with the public. As Kudo notes: The promise that victory was just around the corner proved intoxicating to presidents and politicians, not to mention everyday Americans, who blindly trusted anyone with four stars on his epaulettes. Despite the partisanship and institutional mistrust of the past two decades, the military consistently has been the most trusted institution in the country, rated highly by roughly 70 percent of Americans. Cloaked in near-universal trust, these officers repeatedly argued that an unwinnable war could be won.Unfortunately, because of this, military personnel are likely to continue to be shielded from the criticism they deserve. After all, there is a persistent habit among many Americans to repeat the narrative that all wars will be won if only the politicians listen to the generals, and “let the generals do their job.” One still hears this today from those who still engage in wishful thinking about the Vietnam War and who still cling to the idea that the war could have been won if only the military “experts” had been in charge. In actual experience, however, the lost war in Afghanistan is what we get when we listen to the generals. But don't expect any meaningful reform. In the United States, when bureaucrats fail, they usually get rewarded with larger budgets, such as when the US's "intelligence community" allowed 9/11 to occur right under its collective nose. The same is likely—at least in the short term—for the Pentagon. The generals will simply "pivot" to argue for ever-larger military budgets in the name of fighting China, Iran, Russia, and other perceived enemies. In other words, the generals and the civilian politicians are hard at work planning the next Afghanistan. Let's just hope the taxpayers who pay for it all may be a little less naïve next time. ________________ 1.David Petraeus was the great strategic genius behind the “surge” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which accomplished nothing more than prolonging lost wars. He went on to head the Central Intelligence Agency. He also gave classified information to his mistress and intentionally lied to federal investigators about it. A “normal” person, of course, would have faced years in prison for these transgressions, but since Petraeus is a member of the coddled military technocracy, he received a slap on the wrist.) Reprinted with permission from Mises.org. The Pentagon and the Generals Wanted This Disastrous War Click on the headline to read the full story from |
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