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

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

1 Reply

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

1 Reply

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/

Who Are The ‘Trapped’ ‘Americans Living In Afghanistan’? Nobody Has Asked

America, Conservatism, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Islam, Journalism, Media, Terrorism

5 Replies

Who the hell are these “Americans living in Afghanistan”? What are they doing in such inhospitable climes, in a country most of whose people hated the American presence?

I can’t find a thing on their nationalities, origins, whereabouts, and occupations, although my guess is that U.S. citizens in Afghanistan lived within army erected green zones, paid for by American taxpayers.

And what is their business in Afghanistan? The incurious moron media never ask (although watch conservatives who monitor dissident content miraculously come up with these questions following publication of this material).

Growing up in Israel, I recall many Israelis, in those days, went to Africa to help a few friendly nations learn how to … farm in the desert, something Israel had perfected. What are our citizens doing in Afghanistan? Is nobody curious?

The blowhards on Fox News have been whooping it up with partisan battle cries such as, “Hostages, Americans behind enemy lines. Teach the Taliban a lesson, Corn Pop.”

Dare I ask if these Americans are making money off military contracts, the spoils of the military-industrial-complex?

My colleague, David Vance, did some digging. He sends a likely breakdown of “Americans in Afghanistan,” via “Danger Zone Jobs, which tracks more than 300 companies with overseas contracting jobs in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.” It reeks:

“US troops remain in Afghanistan and as many analysts pointed out, the military numbers, whatever they end up being, have typically been supported by even more private contractors. As long as troops are on the ground in Afghanistan, civilian contractors will be there with them. …The two primary sources of jobs in Afghanistan are with private contractors supporting the military and companies who subcontract to various international relief and development efforts.”

“Approximately 29,389 DoD contractors supported operations in Afghanistan during 1st quarter FY19, an increase of 16.4% from 4th quarter FY18. Local Nationals comprise 21.5% of total contractor force; 23,078 US/TCN remain to redeploy.”

The distribution of contractors in Afghanistan by mission category are:

Base Support 4,140 (14.1%)
Construction 2,113 (7.2%)
IT/Communications Support 951 (3.2%)
Logistics/Maintenance 9,271 (31.5%)
Management/Administrative 1,881 (6.4%)
Medical/Dental/Social Services 88 (0.2%)
Other 690 (2.4%)
Security 4,842 (16.5%)
Training 1,372 (4.7%)
Translator/Interpreter 2,138 (7.3%)
Transportation 1,903 (6.5%)
Total: 29,389

MORE.

*Image care of WSJ.

America Doesn’t Know Shiite From Shinola: Iran (Shia) Worries About Afghanistan Insanity (Sunni)

English, Individual Rights, Iran, Islam, John McCain, Terrorism, The West

Leave a reply

The title for this blog post comes from a 2014 column, “Don’t Know Shiite From Shinola,” in which I write that America is “a mulish military power which doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola.” The original expression is 100% American: “Doesn’t know shit from Shinola“:

Shinola was a brand of shoe polish previously manufactured in the USA. The alliteration of the expression ‘doesn’t know shit from Shinola’ partly explains the derivation. Also, without putting too fine a point on it, the two things named in the expression could possibly be confused. However, only one of them would be good to apply to your shoes and only particularly dim people could be expected to muddle them up.

To continue the theme of the previous blog post, “Afghanistan And Its Neighbors; China And Those Uyghurs,” you’re not considered properly American unless you’re carping about “Iran, Iran, Iran.” The John McCain version is, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”


For merely asking, “When last did Iran commit terrorism against the US?,” Tucker Carlson was attacked viciously by Mark Levin. Carlson, however, was on the money. As I chronicled in this 2017 blog post: “Iranians Killed ZERO Americans In Terrorist Attacks In U.S. Between 1975 -2015.”

Iran is neighbor to Afghanistan, sharing a long border with it. And, “Iran … has a more tortured relationship with the Taliban. Its leaders are certainly delighted to see the Great Satan, America, abandon its bases next door.”

As always, The Economist offers informed analysis in, “Afghanistan’s neighbours are preparing for life with the Taliban”:

“Shia Muslims … view their own Islamic revolution as a modernising movement.” After all, “Women can study, work and hold office in Iran, so long as they veil.” Yes, Iranians “look askance at the Taliban’s hidebound Sunni fanaticism.”

Swamped for decades with destitute refugees and cheap heroin from Afghanistan, Iran is also worried about a new influx, particularly of Hazaras, a Shia ethnic minority that the Taliban have viciously persecuted in the past.

“With little leverage over the Taliban and no liking for the tottering government in Kabul, Iran is likely instead to lend support to local Afghan militias in the border region, which recently beat off a Taliban assault on the city of Herat.”

What do you know? When compared with the Sunni Islam (Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism), a faction of Islam with whose practitioners the West feels much more simpatico—Shia Islam (Iran’s poison of choice) is more enlightened. Yet America and Israel side with Saudi Arabia, the epitome of Sunni insanity. Go figure. And the title says it all:

America Doesn’t Know Shiite From Shinola.

Thoughts from Twitter:

We invade and then centralize:

Totally tribal: This would sound like a brand name to our idiots, but it’s how Afghans think and feel.

Our fight for democracy is not necessarily theirs.

 

*Image courtesy LinkedIn