NEW ON HARD TRUTH: In “With Friends Like Gen. Mark Benedict Milley, America Doesn’t Need Enemies,” David Vance and myself marvel at the institutional tolerance in the United States—among spineless Republicans, especially—for Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
In the dying days of the Trump presidency, Milley is alleged to have contacted the Chinese to promise them he’d give them plenty notice if the United States were to attack them. Azimuths and all, presumably.
Finally, pundits are using the “T” word; pundits, but not Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Sure enough—and this is so very curious—Fox News has shelved the Milley breaking-news story, on its website and in live reporting. As David and I were had predicted, the GOP and its TV appendage would back-down.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson appears in thrall to Lara Logan’s political observations—to her “philosophical” meditations, too. Alas, Logan is no Roger Scruton.
You might have heard Logan claim, recently and repetitively, that everything in the world is simple. “Everything is simple,” she keeps intoning in her appearances on Fox News.
Applied to the fiasco in Afghanistan, Logan’s Theory of Simple is that, considering that America is omnipotent, whatever occurs under its watch is always and everywhere planned and preventable.
Ridiculous and wrong, yet Tucker, whom we all love to bits, giggles in delight.
“They want you to believe Afghanistan is complicated,” lectured Logan. “Because if you complicate it, it is a tactic in information warfare called ‘ambiguity increasing.’”
“So now we’re talking about all the corruption and this and that,” she further vaporized. “But at its heart, every single thing in the world… always comes down to one or two things …”
Logan likely recently discovered Occam’s Razor and is promiscuously applying this principle to anything and everything, with little evidence or geopolitical and historic understanding in support of her Theory of Simple.
Occam’s Razor posits that, “the simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex,” provided “simple” is “based on as much evidence as possible.”
A nifty principle—and certainly not a philosophy—Occam’s Razor was not meant to apply to everything under the sun.
Misapplied by Logan, why? Primarily because Logan’s explanation for America’s defeat in Afghanistan—that the United States threw the game—is hardly the simplest explanation, despite her assertion to the contrary.
UPDATED (9/28): Afghans have hereditary disorders due to marriage between relatives.
Good genetic stock, @Steve_Sailer: In #Afghanistan, prevalence of cousin marriages is about 46.2%… Hereditary disorders might be one of the fundamental causes of the high mortality. #FoxNews celebs tripping over one another to bring Afghanistan here.?https://t.co/eenEWmfm92
Fox News celebrity anchors and their tough-talking guests continue to trip over one another to talk up the wonders of our Afghan allies and the legions of Afghan Americans who have American citizenship, but happen to hang out a lot in Afghanistan. It’s a terrible affront, they all say, that America has failed to lift them all to safety.
Between the Republicans and the Democrats, there isn’t a country in the world that could not be a target for resettlement in America.
Wait a sec, there is: South Africa. Truth be told, I’m deeply repulsed by legions of Americans, ex-soldiers and other sentimental sniveling wrecks, rushing to bring Afghanistan to the United States.
I’m a South-African American. Who’s rescuing the people I love and left in South Africa? We South-African Americans never think to demand it, although Afghan-Americans stridently do.
Some of my people have been robbed and beaten within an inch of their lives. And others are subjected to daily racial depredations and discrimination; their white kids having no future to speak of. All are far more compatible with life here, although, to be fair, my South Africans do suffer a comorbidity: they’re white.
One of the networks interviewed one Tim Kennedy, a hardened, yet teary ex-military man, Special Forces.
On August the 26th, as he packed his bag, Kennedy waxed fat to his interviewer about dying for anyone who wanted to fight for a freer world.
And off this globalist went to fight for his people du jour, the Afghans. (On Twitter he promotes Special Visas for Afghan.) …
Fox News celeb anchors continue to trip over one another to talk up the wonders of our Afghan allies and the affront of failing to lift them to safety.
Between the Republicans and the Democrats, there isn’t a country in the world that could not be a target for resettlement in America. (“DHS Official: Afghans Without Visas Being Brought to U.S.” On what moral basis are the lot at Fox News objecting?)
Truth be told, I’m deeply repulsed by legions of Americans, ex-soldiers and other emotional sniveling wrecks, rushing to bring Afghanistan to the US. I’m an American. Who’s rescuing people I love in South Africa? Many are subjected to race-based depredations and all are far more compatible with life here, although my South Africans have a comorbidity: they’re white.
One of the networks interviewed one Tim Kennedy, a teary, hardened military man from Special Forces. On August the 26th, as he packed his bag, Kennedy waxed fat about dying for anyone who wants to fight for a freer world. And off he went to fight for his people, the Afghans. (He is on Twitter, too, promoting the Special VisasAfghanSIVApplication@state.gov.)
I find it hard to respect this kind of deracinated soldier of empire.
I can’t listen to Kennedy’spat neoconservative rants (never with any journalistic proof) about the Taliban and their crimes. These soldiers of empire remain so vested in homelands not their own, this as their own homeland is being invaded and is filled with poor, sad people.
If members of the US Military had a moral core, they’d disobey orders en masse and head to the THEIR OWN COUNTRY’S South-western border.
Or, help such pathetic, helpless and hopeless Americans like “The Whittakers: An Inbred American Family,” living like animals in the United States of America. There is so much unutterable suffering in the US. The bravado of the typical, tough-talking military man, gushing over—and rushing to—Afghanistan not only doesn’t impress, but turns my stomach.
As I watch the wretched of the world living within America’s borders, I think of the words of Cullen Murphy, superb author of “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome”:
“Imperial overstretch” is “the idea that one’s security needs, military obligations, and globalist desires increasingly outstrip resources available to satisfy them” (Are We Rome, p. 71).
Outsized and excessive: The above is a perfect description of the improper and misplaced exhilaration of this Kennedy ex-Special Operations, on his private mission to Afghanistan. Everything about it is outsized and excessive. Such a military sickens, as a military is designed to defend the homeland and the homeboys.
UPDATE (9/7): “Here’s another ex-Special Forces guy bragging about the massive global effort he and a GOP Congressman put forth to import foreign Muslims into our neighborhoods,” writes a Twitter friend. He is Cory Mills.
