New York Times lies about JFK. Again.

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.foxnews.com/media/glenn-greenwald-knocks-media-changing-tune-biden

Glenn Greenwald is always worth listening to. 

Yes, lithium deposits, or a base for terrorist attacks, or women's rights are being trampled, or Russia and China will gain a leg up in a great global power game. 

So, we witness a puppet narco-state whose soldiers run away from battle and leave all their weapons behind.

If Afghanistan is worth fighting for, then anybody, anything and anywhere is worth fighting for.

That is the message from the establishment. 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Yep, there will never be a shortage of reasons for foreign intervention - strategic, humanitarian, security.  And that will generally come to include cultural intervention (projecting our system of democracy and equal rights overseas), regime change, nation building, and all the opportunities that go along with it.  

After all, its worked so well for us....

[Ron Bulman]

44 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Yep, there will never be a shortage of reasons for foreign intervention - strategic, humanitarian, security.  And that will generally come to include cultural intervention (projecting our system of democracy and equal rights overseas), regime change, nation building, and all the opportunities that go along with it.  

After all, its worked so well for us....

Your sarcasm drips Larry, drop by drop.  Thank you once again. 

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Yep, there will never be a shortage of reasons for foreign intervention - strategic, humanitarian, security.  And that will generally come to include cultural intervention (projecting our system of democracy and equal rights overseas), regime change, nation building, and all the opportunities that go along with it.  

After all, its worked so well for us....

You know what drives me crazy? I am a pro-business kind of guy. Yes, government can become too big and bloated. I like productive people. I love the best attributes of America.  I admire people who work for a living. 

Then I read these headlines about how huge Biden's infrastructure program is. Maybe too big! Waste! Although I can't tell it if is a $500 billion program or a $1 trillion program over the next eight years. 

You know what the US will spend on the DoD, VA and black budget and pro-rated debt in the next eight years? More than $10 trillion.

Our national conversations are not serious.  Trillions are spent in Afghanistan over 20 years, but the monologue is that Biden bungled it.

The relief pitcher that allowed a homer out of the park in the top of the ninth when the home team was down 17-4---that's Biden, and he lost the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

6 hours ago, Adam Johnson said:

I still believe this is all one of the greatest military strategical ploys ever devised: stage 1 pull out all coalition forces. Stage 2 allow Taliban scattered across the middle east to return to Afghanistan and think they have won a great battle.  Stage 3 give the Taliban 6 months to accumulate in large numbers in several cities whilst being watched by satellite and secretly installed surveillance equipment. Stage 4 make up some bullshit sighting of tactical nuclear weapons being constructed in several Afghanistan cities by Taliban. Stage 5 surgically nuke Afghanistan cities off the face of the earth thus destroying 80% of all known Taliban. Stage 6 have strike teams assassinate all suspected Taliban cells around the world at the same time as air strikes with tactical nukes begins. Stage 7 when the world starts to complain the US can just stick its fingers in their ears and go..."la la la I'm not listening la la la". Stage 8 give things a few weeks and life goes back to normal. Stage 9 send a txt message to China and North Korea saying pull your heads in or your next motherxxxxers. Stage 10 Biden reveals he and Obama put this 10 year plan together in 2012, Joint Chiefs release statement saying Biden planned this in 2012/13 and they backed him all the way, CIA announces they had no knowledge of plan. Biden wins 2022 noble peace prize.

AJ

P.S This post is not to be taken seriously....have a nice day😀

 

That's funny Adam! For awhile you really had me going there!  I can think of another thread here, where utterings like that are almost commonplace. So literally nothing can make me even flinch anymore!

**

It's like the U.S. is so empty within, that they're completely given over to the world and idle pleasures come streaming in from without, and are welcomed as a diversion. And wielding the fate of others becomes an amusement which will always find an opportunity toward indulgence.

-Maybe Trump was the true American President!

heh heh

*****

 

Larry said: Yep, there will never be a shortage of reasons for foreign intervention - strategic, humanitarian, security.  And that will generally come to include cultural intervention (projecting our system of democracy and equal rights overseas), regime change, nation building, and all the opportunities that go along with it.  

After all, its worked so well for us....

 

Well put! Larry, you can see it now in the myriad of rationalizations to stay. It's like we're coming to grips that we're going to have to jettison our true egalitarian Afghanistan dream  of the convenience of home delivery from Amazon, and a Mac Donald's at every corner and a Starbucks on every block. for every Afghani man, woman, and child.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Kirk Gallaway

[Joseph McBride]

We were in Afghanistan not for the bullshit reasons we

were given but for the minerals and the opium. Briefly

the truth came out in this remarkable 2010 article in the New York

Times, which is a shopping list for the military-industrial complex: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

I realized the end was finally near when Trump complained to his cabinet

that we weren't getting the minerals out of Afghanistan because the

Chinese were doing it instead. We can't get anything done anymore.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[James DiEugenio]

How did that article get printed?

[Joseph McBride]

Rather amazing, isn't it? But it doesn't go into the

opium, which is "news that's not fit to print." Readers

would have to turn to Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott

for that context.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Larry Hancock]

Actually the larger picture is that we really never seem to be able to weigh in and consider the local and cultural histories when we  become involved, the culture in Afghanistan is tribal with warlords and local leaders always just doing the best deals they can to minimize banditry (or taxation) - and in the south that has involved opium - for centuries.  Before we began supporting the Taliban against the Russians that trade was carried on pack animals, once we and the Saudi's began dumping in cash it moved up to hundreds of Honda pick ups.

But we just show up and expect to change those traditional practices with "progressive" thinking and elections (and do it in a few years) and are always amazed when that effort fails.   We also fail to note how different practices are even within the region - for reference take a look at how the Kurds fought large Isis formations to a standstill even in street to street fighting (destroying their own cities as necessary) - and how effective their women fighters (many expert snipers) were in those battles.

But so as not to entirely give up my sarcasm, its interesting to see how many ultra conservative anti-immigration folks now want unrestricted immigration for "our" Afghans when before they wanted absolute travel bans - and how now they are forming welcome committees for incoming Muslims when before....well the hypocrisy is astounding.

 

[David Andrews]

12 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Smedley Butler said so. 

Fun Fact: in JFK, Clay Shaw's butler is named Smedley.

SHAW It adds a taste of elegance for which I must confess a weakness now and then. I call him Smedley. His real name is Frankie Jenkins—but I could hardly imagine anything more uncouth during dinner than my turning toward the kitchen and hollering, “Frankie!”

Apart from amusing coincidences, Ben, I really don't see us as being "done" with Afghanistan, and predict we will be back in, early or late.  The current press outrage about Taliban danger to Afghans who helped during our occupation can seem like an incitement, or at least a marker on a longer road back to Kabul for us - one that may require a second "new Pearl Harbor"...

Edited August 22, 2021 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

7 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

We were in Afghanistan not for the bullshit reasons we

were given but for the minerals and the opium. Briefly

the truth came out in this remarkable 2010 article in the New York

Times, which is a shopping list for the military-industrial complex: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

I realized the end was finally near when Trump complained to his cabinet

that we weren't getting the minerals out of Afghanistan because the

Chinese were doing it instead. We can't get anything done anymore.

Afghanistan was also a handy strategic place to squat on Pakistan's border, making sure that nation didn't encroach on India in the Kashmir, didn't fall under Chinese sway, or otherwise defy any legal or extralegal agreements made with the US prior to 9/11, such as backing away from any Saudi-financed support for al Qaeda.

[Andrew Prutsok]

22 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Larry,

That's why I don't think JFK's move to pull out of Vietnam was the raison d'etre for his assassination.

Nobody seems to aiming for Joe Biden.

Or, has the military/industrial complex milked everything that they think that they can get out of Afghanistan, so it's ok to leave?

Or was the threat of world-wide communist domination a bigger threat than world-wide domination by Islamisists?

Steve Thomas

Everyone says the Deep State had it out for Trump. If so, why didn't it just murder him like it had done so many times before with people it had it in for?

[David Andrews]

53 minutes ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

Everyone says the Deep State had it out for Trump. If so, why didn't it just murder him like it had done so many times before with people it had it in for?

Do we all now live in fear of Covid because the pandemic was started in order to disgrace and oust Trump, whose admin was patently unequipped to handle it?  Did people worldwide die for this op?

Edited August 22, 2021 by David Andrews

[Benjamin Cole]

57 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Fun Fact: in JFK, Clay Shaw's butler is named Smedley.

SHAW It adds a taste of elegance for which I must confess a weakness now and then. I call him Smedley. His real name is Frankie Jenkins—but I could hardly imagine anything more uncouth during dinner than my turning toward the kitchen and hollering, “Frankie!”

Apart from amusing coincidences, Ben, I really don't see us as being "done" with Afghanistan, and predict we will be back in, early or late.  The current press outrage about Taliban danger to Afghans who helped during our occupation can seem like an incitement, or at least a marker on a longer road back to Kabul for us - one that may require a second "new Pearl Harbor"...

Egads, I hope you are wrong on another Pearl Harbor, of Gulf on Tonkin incident, or 9/11.  My guess is the public has had it with Afghanie. 

One thing is different from the Vietnam days: No draft.

We have a mercenary military now. I never supported a mercenary military and I do now now. This allows wars to go on forever. There are reasons to have a citizen-soldier military. If you (or I) had to send a son with Afghanie, the apathy would evaporate immediately. 

On "Smedley" it is too bad we are so many years behind in unraveling the JFKA. Well, Shaw was certainly an interesting card, a well-dressed swain in N.O.'s gay world, and a CIA asset, and globe-traveler, and house restorer before it was cool. Like a pulp fiction character.  Verily, he would have a "Smedley" under roof. 

 

 

 

 

 

[David Andrews]

Maybe we need to incorporate Afghanistan into a "Greater Pakistan."  Let the Pakistanis handle the current Afghan state the way they handle the rebel Baluchs on their Iranian border.

There's a Pashtun dominance in Pakistani politics that can align with the Afghan Pashtuns.

Our Syriana plan now needs to be revised.

Edited August 24, 2021 by David Andrews