Category Archives: Military

UPDATED (9/7): Outsized And Excessive In Every Way: The Immorality Of The Empire And Its Military

America, Conservatism, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Globalism, Homeland Security, Military, Nationhood, Relatives, South-Africa

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 Visas AfghanSIVApplication@state.gov.)

I find it hard to respect this kind of deracinated soldier of empire.

I can’t listen to Kennedy’s pat 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.

MAGA and America First didn’t stick to the GOP, did it? That’s why I say, “GOP, RIP.”

*Image vis Reuters.

Situational Awareness: If Only Marines Were Not Cradling Afghan Babies For The Cameras …

America, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Military, Terrorism

“We’ve seen picture of US service members at the Kabul airport cradling babies,” puled Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Yes, and how it nauseates any person with a solid understanding of what the mission of the US military ought to be: defend the homeland and its inhabitants.

Perhaps if “our men and women in uniform” exemplified less “compassionate courage” for The Globe, as Blinken describes the cradling Marines, and better, more spry situational awareness—perhaps they’d have their eyes peeled and would have spotted suspicious, shifty strangers about to detonate themselves in their midst.

On the other hand, this is what the Marines, paid for by US taxpayers, are trained to do: Be a “global force for good.” In fact, in 2009, this was, for a short time, the motto of the Marines, until it met with objection. That objection would no longer be noticed.

MORE: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivers remarks on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan following the evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghan refugees. He also says diplomacy with the Taliban will now take place from Doha, Qatar.”

NEW COLUMN: Afghanistan: Bringing The Military-Industrial-Complex Home

America, Asia, China, Foreign Policy, Iran, Military, War

NEW COLUMN: “Bringing The Military-Industrial Complex Home,” or “State Department Still Doesn’t Know Shiite From Shinola,” is on WND.COM, the Unz Review and The New American (“War Is the Health of the State — and the Statists“).

Excerpt:

Realpolitik: What Modest Foreign Policy Looks Like

Similarly, you are not a good pack animal unless you worry about “the Uyghurs, the Uyghurs. China is oppressing the Uyghurs. Our values, our values.”

Uyghurs are also China’s biggest headache, now that America is no longer mired in Afghanistan. What the dummies on the idiot’s lantern fail to tell you—although analysts at The Economist do—“Uyghurs count among thousands of foreign jihadists active in Afghanistan, mostly enlisted in Taliban ranks.”

So, as the skittish media hounds and politicians, stateside, gnash teeth and beat on breast over Afghanistan, less hysterical countries, abutting Afghanistan, are acting calmly in their national interest, to ensure that Jihad and heroin don’t spill over their borders.

Unlike Lara Kissinger Logan of Fox News, who “thinks” America could have won a war that other superpowers have lost—the Chinese and the Iranians are hip to what just happened. This was “probably one of the best conceived and planned guerrilla campaigns ever,” says Mike Martin, a former British army officer in Helmand province, now at King’s College London. “The Taliban went into every district and flipped all the local militias by doing deals along tribal lines.”

In negotiations with the Taliban, Beijing has thus realistically demanded that Afghanistan not become “a base for ethnic Uyghur separatists.” For their part, “Taliban leaders have pledged to leave Chinese interests in Afghanistan alone and not to harbor any anti-China extremist groups.”

Like Beijing, Tehran, too, is busying itself with realpolitik….

… In all, after Afghanistan, we can all agree that American foreign policy is an angels-and-demons Disney production—starring the prototypical evil dictators killing their noble people, until the US rides to the rescue—and that the producers at Foggy Bottom don’t have the foggiest idea what they are doing. …

… READ ON. “Bringing The Military-Industrial Complex Home,” or “State Department Still Doesn’t Know Shiite From Shinola,” is on WND.COM, the Unz Review and The New American (“War Is the Health of the State — and the Statists“).

WATCH: Afghanistan: Bringing the Military-Industrial-Complex Home

America, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Media, Middle East, Military, Terrorism, War

NEW ON VIDEO: “Afghanistan: Bringing the Military-Industrial-Complex Home

“Who exactly are those “trapped” Americans living, up until now, in Afghanistan? The military-industrial-complex! David and ilana break it down on Hard Truth.

To paraphrase Randolph Bourne, war is the health of the State—and the statists. As the skittish media hounds and the politicians, stateside, gnash teeth and beat on breast over Afghanistan, HARD Truth also examines how less hysterical countries abutting Afghanistan are acting calmly in their national interest.

LISTEN on the go by downloading the Hard Truth podcast: https://hardtruthwithdavidvanceandilanamercer.podbean.com/e/afghanistan-bringing-the-military-industrial-complex-home/