The Axis Of Adults Focus On Afghanistan And May Be Entertaining A Solid Original Plan
Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave; What’s Going On?
Last week I read an article about a topic that, like many current counter narrative trends, has been covered extensively in the alt media while mostly ignored in the legacy media. That topic is the epidemic of rapes and sexual assault committed in Europe by Islamic migrants. The author, Dr Cheryl Benard, revealed something I didn’t know and that is a vast majority of these rapes were being committed by Afghans. She was focused on Austria because that is, apparently, a country she knows well. Her observations may not be applicable in countries like Sweden but that fact is irrelevant to her overall thesis. She, like me, has extensive experience working with Afghans and she was appalled by the facts she was reporting.
The article, I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave is Mind-Boggling is worth reading in it’s entirety. From the linked article:
I have worked on issues related to refugees for much of my professional life, from the Pakistani camps during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to Yemen, Sudan, Thailand, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Lebanon, Bosnia, Nicaragua and Iraq, and have deep sympathy for their plight. But nowhere had I encountered a phenomenon like this one. I had seen refugees trapped in circumstances that made them vulnerable to rape, by camp guards or soldiers. But for refugees to become perpetrators of this crime in the place that had given them asylum? That was something new. Further, my personal and professional life has endowed me with many Afghan and Afghan American friends, and there is nothing collectively psychopathic about them. They are doctors, shopkeepers, owners of Japanese restaurants, airport sedan drivers, entrepreneurs, IT experts, salesladies at Macy’s—they’re like everyone else. The parent generation tends to be a bit stiff, formal and etiquette conscious. It is impossible to imagine any of them engaging in the sort of outlandish, bizarre and primitive sexual aggression their young compatriots are becoming infamous for. Yet here we are.
Dr. Benard puts forth several hypothesis about the origins of this behavior and then promptly dismisses them with observations that I believe are true. One is Afghan men are not accustomed to strong drink which is, to those of us who know the land, nonsense. Not all Afghan men drink alcohol but most do and those who don’t imbibe in Afghanistan are not likely going to drink outside of Afghanistan. Poor impulse control when stimulated by young western women in revealing clothes is also dismissed. The victims are not all young, scantily dressed or, for that matter, women.
She concludes her review of potential causation with this paragraph:
Which brings me to a final theory being vented in Austria: that these destructive, crazed young men are being intentionally infiltrated into western Europe to wreak havoc: to take away the freedom and security of women; change patterns of behavior; deepen the rifts between liberals, who continue to defend and find excuses, and a right wing that calls for harsh measures and violent responses; to inflict high costs and aggravation on courts and judicial systems and generally make a mess of things.
She doesn’t seem to believe this theory either and on this point we are in agreement. The point of her article was to make recommendations on what should be done. Her recommendations are sound but probably wasted on European elites who appear adverse to common sense and (again apparently) are insulated from the consequences of their virtue signalling behavior.
This article was deeply disturbing to me as it in no way reflects my experience dealing with Afghans. As I pondered the implications I remembered a remarkable conversation I had with a senior Imam from the Afghan Ulmea when I first arrived in Kabul.
This is a picture of the Imam but I do not remember his name. My Afghan friend who arranged this meeting was killed long ago and I’m not sure if the Imam has met the same fate. I was new to Afghanistan when we talked and supremely confident that we were going to be able to fix the infrastructure and leave behind a functioning government. I told him this stressing that we’d done the same for Germany and Japan and there was no question we’d be hooking them up in a matter of a few years.
He told my friend Waheed and I that buildings, roads, schools, airports….none of the infrastructure we thought important was important. The hearts of the Afghan people was the only thing that mattered and his fear was the people, after so many years of war and abuse, would not be able to find it in their hearts to return to the Afghan ways of peace with each other and hospitality for foreigners.
I remember being stunned by this; I wasn’t sure what he was talking about but knew I was talking with a man of vast knowledge, great insight and one who was one of the more decent of our species. His fear was (I now believe) that Afghans would succumb to the contagion of nihilism. From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history.
I believe this describes the motivation behind the Afghan males who are raping and pillaging the welfare states of Europe. What is ironic is this is the same motivation behind the Anti Fa movement. Ironic because the Anti Fa folks come form the wealthiest civilization the world has ever known while the Afghans come from one of the poorest. Both groups appear to have nothing but contempt and hatred for the West. For Afghans that contempt is, for the most part, reinforced by their religion. For the Anti Fa that contempt is their religion.
Both groups use violence in the most cowardly of manners. The Anti Fa will not hesitate to attack and assault those outside their group as long as they have enough fellow travelers with them to avoid consequences. When they don’t have the numbers they cowardly assault people who aren’t looking and run away. The Afghan rapists use an identical methodology only attacking victims when they have overwhelming numbers or when their victims are isolated, alone and unaware.
Both groups are morally repugnant to western man (collective not gender term here) and both groups represent a clarion call, to all who are paying attention, that there is something drastically wrong with the current status quo.
Both of these groups will continue their depredations on the citizens of the west until they are faced with quick and sure consequences for their behavior. Western Europe seems to be incapable of delivering quick and sure justice in the face of this epidemic of sexual assault. Eastern Europe, as a consequence of decades of Soviet oppression, has no problems figuring this out and doesn’t have this problem.
The United States seems incapable of responding appropriately to the increasing amount of left wing Anti Fa violence. Our country is too divided, our media too corrupt and our system of justice hopelessly compromised to favor the rich and powerful over the just. Our politicians are weak and our media/infotainment complex has become 24/7 propaganda for liberal elite bromides that will never survive contact with reality.
I have no idea how this could end well for the vast majority of the law abiding, tax paying citizens. Modern liberalism is destroying the moral, religious, and metaphysical foundations of western civilization and replacing them with what? Mandatory speech codes, long lists of ‘rights’ that ignore responsibility, open border welfare states, ever increasing taxes aimed at the productive classes…the list is endless but the destination clear; the fists of fascism clocked in the velvet glove of ‘compassion’.
It would be of no small comfort to see more great men, like the Afghan religious leader pictured above, reach positions of prominence where their sage council could counter legacy media spin. But in our current cultural climate that is not going to happen. There will have to be a reset back to principals and traditions that made Western Civilization one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known but it will only come after a catastrophic event. The question is how many millions will die before that happens? In the Soviet Union the price was 20 million dying of starvation after the State declared the Kulaks (successful farming class) enemies and liquidated them. In China 45 million died in just four years during the “Great Leep Forward“. Both those states have veered sharply away from socialism towards the free market.
What is it going to take for us to re-learn what we once knew about the foundations of our great civilization? I don’t know but fear the butchers bill will be high. What I do know is the elites who got us into this mess will not be held to account in this life. But that is way of the world, something we can accept with the stoic resolve that motivated our forefathers to carve a rich prosperous land from the wilderness.
Big Army Incompetence Has Left A Potential Viceroy In Play
Demonstrating the unique human trait of hope over experience Chief Ajmal Khan Zaizi recently made a heart felt appeal to the international press to not forget Afghanistan. It was a moving speech that (experience would say) was wasted on a group of international elites who know little about history but a lot about the legacy media narrative.
Despite his efforts being wasted on the audience he was addressing seeing the Khan speaking in public warmed my old bitter heart. If there is an Afghan capable of being the Viceroy Afghanistan needs to end the vicious cycle of violence plaguing the country he is that man. The reason he’s that man is because the American Army branded him as Taliban despite the fact he is a western educated Canadian citizen who (with the help of Ghost Team) had to fight the Taliban to get into his tribal lands when he returned to lead them in 2010.
From my 2010 post about our attempts to connect Ajmal with the American army:
The initial political appointees to the Zazi Valley were sent packing back to Kabul shortly after they arrived. So now, in the eyes of the FOB bound American military, the Zazi Valley tribal police and their leadership are considered AOG (just like the Taliban they are constantly fighting). Check out this correspondence between The Boss and the young commander of the closest Combat Outpost (COP) to the valley:
Sir,
Thank you for your message. Any development project in Jaji would be great, but I would like to ensure that it ties into the district development list/tribal development list, in order to ensure that the district leadership is not undermined.
Unfortunately, Ahjmal Khan Zazai is not a tribal leader at all. I do not want you to come into this environment thinking that to be a fact. Additionally, the security force of Amir Muhammad is an illegal force that is not endorsed by MOI.
The facts are that Azad Khan, the Jaji Sub Governor, has a great relationship with the tribes a focus for his district. The ANSF in this area (ANP and ABP) are a professional/legitimate force that does a tremendous job in keeping the best security for the people.
I’ve CC’d my higher HQ, as well as representation to Department of State and the PRT, to ensure that they are tied in to your work. Again, I would love to see development here, but I want you to have the facts and go through the proper channels before beginning work. Thank you for your time.
VR, Name withheld
The young captain who wrote this message was correct about one thing; Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai is not a tribal leader. He’s the leader of the entire tribal federation in that part of the country, a point which our army did not understand or refused to acknowledge. From the 2010 post:
The battalion at the Gardez FOB called The Horse to ask if he knew why thousands of people had migrated towards “some compound in the Zazai Valley.” When he told them what was up they asked to meet with him and Ajmal when they headed back to Kabul. The meeting turned out to be a joke. A visibly upset major demanded to know why, if the Zazai Valley tribal police were on their side, had they not reported to the Americans the location of IED’s? Ajmal, by this time exhausted and barely able to talk, explained that they are not in the “sell IED’s to the Americans” business. Reporting an IED for the cash reward is a common money scam in those parts and increases the number of IED’s being made. The only IED’s the tribal police have seen were aimed at them and all those had gone off. He added that if they do gain knowledge of an IED cell on their lands they will bring both the IED’s and the heads of the IED makers to Gardez.
The Americans remain skeptical, Ajmal remains frustrated, Crazy Horse who, like myself, has spent his adult life as an infantry officer is heart sick and I am so f’ing pissed off I can’t see straight. It is impossible to be optimistic about the future of Afghanistan unless the military USAID, State Department and all the other organizations with unlimited funding get out of the FOB’s to live with the people.
That was then; this is now and the fact that Ajmal did not enter into ‘collusion’ (using a new fake news dog whistle) with the Americans is a not insignificant point. The current administration is trying to come up with a plan for our continued efforts in Afghanistan, I offered my thoughts on a way forward and what I was proposing is the same concept that Eric Prince has articulated. Recently Secretary Mattis met with Mr. Prince and reportedly he listen politely and dismissed the concept out of hand. I don’t believe that for a second because Secretary Mattis knows his history and understands the concept behind the East India Company. He is not the type of man to ignore sage council.
What I found most distressing about this meeting with Prince were the comments that showed up in comment sections and on my face book feed. They had two themes the first being that Prince was a billionaire war profiteer and the second was his sister is Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education. Eric Prince and his sister are successful, competent, extraordinarily decent people who built their own fortunes and are thus exemplary Americans our children should wish to emulate, not castigate. The only problem I have with Secretary Devos is she heads a federal department I believe should be disbanded. Not on constitutional grounds but on practical grounds; the department of education is not a functional, competent organization and it has no business interjecting federal rules in an area that should be the sole purview of the 50 states.
Eric Prince has articulated a plan that could work and one that addresses the problem of Pakistan because it would eliminate the need to pay Pakistan billions to allow our logistical tail to pass through their country. Yet in the current climate of media driven hysteria regarding the Trump administration we can’t examine that plan on it’s merits because the media and most of our fellow citizens have decided Eric Prince is a mercenary who is only driven by the desire to make obscene profits. That not one word of that characterization is supported by facts is irrelevant.
Here is an interesting aside about that: I’ve mentioned several times about the need for Afghan forces to do Pseudo Ops. Feral Jundi recently posted on a white “mercenary” who taught Pseudo Ops to the Ugandan military and although he asked for not one penny to lead this effort his team and supplies were funded by a woman from Houston, Texas. The target of the effort was international villain and complete asshole Joseph Kony. From Feral Jundi’s post:
In September, 2011, the first special-operations group trained by the South Africans crossed into South Sudan and caught Kony by surprise at a meeting with all his commanders. He escaped, but the Ugandans took back a haul of valuable intelligence: satellite phones, a computer, and diaries. Defectors later revealed that the L.R.A. fighters were baffled by the attack: Was this some new Ugandan army? After the raid, Kony lost contact with his entourage. He roamed the bush alone with one of his pregnant Sudanese wives, and helped deliver her baby—one of probably more than a hundred small Konys now in the world. When he reemerged, he was so furious that he demoted all his commanders. According to defectors, he had moved to a new camp, in southern Darfur.
Have you not heard about this? Of course not because it counters the legacy media narrative about so -called “mercenaries” while illustrating the uselessness of the United Nations in combating terrorism. Eeben Barrlow and his men are not mercenaries in any sense of the word. There is not a snow ball’s chance in hell that Joseph Komy or any other terrorist organization could hire them no matter how much money they paid. They are former military professionals who, although retired, remain military professionals willing to endure primitive conditions for months on end to teach their expertise to appropriate clientele.
Another aside – Eeben Barrlow providing his services for free reminds me of another man who did the same. That would be Eric Prince who funded the rescue effort of three young college girls who were working at an orphanage in Kenya when the country erupted in violence following failed elections in December of 2007. Hundreds of people were being slaughtered in villages near them and they had no way to make it out to Nairobi so their panicking parents started calling congressmen, senators, anyone in Washington DC who they thought could help and none of the people they contacted had a clue about getting their girls out of harms way. A family member. on a whim, then called Balckwater who got the girls out (along with dozens of other international aid workers) in about 48 hours. When asked how much the rescue effort cost Eric Prince said he paid for it – didn’t think it fair to charge desperate parents money to get their daughters back. That is not the action of a war profiteer; it is the mark of a truly great American. I don’t know Eric Prince but I do know the man he sent into Africa to get the girls out (he was his Afghanistan country manager) and there are few finer.
The concepts that Prince is talking about and that Feral Jundi and I have been writing about for years work. All of us know that because all of us have done it. The only question regarding the concept of a Viceroy for Afghanistan heading a mostly Private Military Corporation effort to move Afghanistan toward peace is who heads the effort. Thanks to our incompetence in 2010 there remains an Afghan in play who has the organizational ability to do so and he is not tied to the Americans or NATO which is plus on the credibility side with his fellow Afghans.
Will somebody in the halls of power recognize this? I doubt it, for now anyway but we are going to be in Afghanistan for a long time and what we are doing there will not work. At some point somebody is going to actually try (instead of just talking about) an outside the box solution. When they do they are going to be talking to Chef Ajmal Khan Zaizi. When that happens I hope Ajmal remembers The Horse, Panjiway Tim and I. We’re tanned, rested, fit and will answer his call with alacrity because we know good leaders, remain fond of Afghanistan and enjoy making a difference.
Vultures Descend On Kabul As The Plan Takes Form
A group of senators engaged on a ‘fact finding’ holiday stopped into Kabul to glad hand troops on July 4th and demand a “coherent plan” from the Trump administration. I do not like congressional junkets because they are prohibitively expensive, make the forces in the fight focus on hosting VIP’s instead of maintaining an external focus on the various villains they are there to fight, and they accomplish little other then promote grandstanding by the very politicians who helped get us in the mess that is Afghanistan.
My observations of these delegations both at the American Embassy in Kabul and out in the field with the troops are that our elected officials drink too much, take more ambien then is good for them, understand little of what is happening on the ground and are an enormous pain in the ass to host in the field. One of my closest Marine Corps friends banned me from talking to any CODEL after an inebriated John Bonner asked me (at the embassy in Kabul) how the war was going. He was getting both barrels when Dave coughed up an ambien, told me to shut up and saw the congressman to his assigned lodging.
Senator McCain, during his visit to Kabul yesterday, demanded a “Coherent Policy from Trump” which indicates he is either stupid, because the policy is forming right in front of him, or playing politics with an administration he doesn’t care for too much. Good losers lose and they tend to resent winners as they age so McCain’s comments are par for the course and will have exactly no impact on the plan that is shaping up.
Everything you need to know about our future in Afghanistan can be found in these two places: the Enhancing Security And Stability In Afghanistan report to congress from the military last month and General Joe Dunford’s appearance at the National Press Club last week (which was awesome and a highly recommended podcast that can be found on All Marine Radio).
The plan which we can see forming includes the recent deployment of the 3rd Squadron, 73rd Calvary Regiment, which is part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg. The 300 plus men of the 3rd Squadron have the following mission:
They will oversee security at a tactical base and serve as a quick reaction force in Helmand province, where some of the heaviest fighting of the past 16 years of war has taken place.
The squadron is part of a 1500 man deployment from the 82nd that is being sent all over the country, probably to fill a similar role. Portions of the 82nd have already arrived in the Helmand in the form of an artillery battery that deployed to both Lashkar Gah and Camp Shorabak. It’s safe to assume that is where the paratroopers will be deploying too giving TF Southwest a robust quick response force.
Along with artillery and a dedicated reaction force Task Force Southwest received some attention from on high when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford visited Afghanistan as part of his ongoing assessment.
It appears Task Force Southwest is getting reinforced with enablers that it will use in support of Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF). That means members of the advise and assist mission plan to get out and about with their Afghan counterparts where they can control American fires with the requisite precision.
This is a good thing, the only way the Marines can make a difference is to reinforce the procedures they are trying to teach the ANSF with practical application. This also explains why we recently lost (in a green on blue attack) paratroopers assigned to the advise and assist mission during combat operations against ISIS-K in Nangarhar province.
However today we learned that Pfc. Hansen B. Kirkpatrick, 19, of Wasilla, Ark., died July 3, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, from wounds received during an indirect fire attack. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas. If the 3rd Squadron of the 73rd Cav from Fort Bragg is there how did we lose a grunt from the 1stBn, 36th Infantry who is out of Fort Bliss?
An even better question is why are we mixing Marines with soldiers on a mission where it would be advantageous to have just Marines or just Army assigned to it? Marines work better with other Marines because they know each other, have the same communication equipment and training and the Marine Corps is designed to deploy as their own air/ground/logistic task force. The 82nd Airborne is also, by table of organization, designed to deploy in an identical manner so why the mix and match?
My take is the mixing of forces has been born of the necessity to keep these training packages deploying, for seven months at a time, indefinitely. Afghanistan is not the only game in town as we are also fighting in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, the Philippines, probably Libya and who knows where else? We have our national forward deployed capable forces all forward deployed making it impossible for just the Marines or just the Army to do the Helmand mission. The timing of the flow into the Helmand is important too because it will allow a 2 month window to deploy the next Task Force Southwest while the artillery and reaction force remain in country.
Why are we planning to stay indefinitely? That argument is best summed up by Old Blue in a recent email exchange we had on the topic.
According to a Rand study of over 80 insurgencies since WWII, about a third of the time, the government wins; insurgency defeated with no significant changes in the government. Another third of the time, the insurgency wins; total government collapse and replacement. The final third is “mixed outcome,” meaning that the government makes changes or reforms that satisfy the insurgency without toppling the sitting government. This was the same study that pointed out factors that successful insurgencies tended to have in common, such as external support and safe havens, such as Pakistan.
Sometimes those eggheads bring something useful to the table.
The chances of an outright win by the Afghan government are slim. The Taliban (catch-all) have too many of the prerequisites to win. Short of a major change of heart on the Pakistani side, that leaves two potential outcomes, the most positive of which is a mixed outcome.
Back to the study, which demonstrated that time really isn’t on the side of the insurgency. In fact, the percentage of successful insurgencies declined over time. The longer the fight went on, the likelier a government win or mixed solution. What Obama’s ill-considered move did was breathe life into a very tired insurgency. A few thousand troops won’t enable advising down to the company level, which is what we need to reset to, but it will show resolve. That in itself will have an impact. The mission will creep, based on input from those who will evaluate progress and needs, and the struggle will continue. That is not a benefit to the Taliban, nor to their patrons.
Note on insurgency; they do not negotiate like nations do. Mao wrote the book on this stuff, and they have read Mao, trust me on that. Mao said never negotiate unless it’s to paralyze your enemy. There are two reasons to do so; to gain time and space to recover, or right before you deal them a death blow. Negotiating in lieu of defeat is the one he really didn’t get to. He wasn’t writing a book on how to lose an insurgency. The insurgency will have to be badly damaged and finding itself outcast by the people, along with waning support from Pakistan. That is doable with support.
The “mixed solution” described by Old Blue above is exactly the way I see things ending too. The current struggle for Afghanistan has a military and a civil component. I’m not sure what we are doing on the “civil” side but would be surprised if we were not working with tribes to split local Taliban alliances. If the international alliance is throwing its considerable weight into fracturing the various Taliban affiliates the NATO military approach will, with time, drive the ambient level of lawlessness down.
There is no winning in this scenario and there are, as of yet, no identified matrices that would indicate the job is done and it is time to come home. Which means we may never leave Afghanistan just like we never left Germany or Japan.
Is that a good thing for America? Probably not; as I have argued in many prior posts we should have smoke checked bin Laden (using our troops not war lord troops from Nangarhar province) and gone home in 2002. But we didn’t and I personally am encouraged to see we are staying. I like Afghanistan – I like most of the people in Afghanistan; were it possible I’d go back there and continue to help them.
What I’m not going to be able to do is go back to embed with the Marines in the Helmand province. I didn’t come close to raising the funds needed to do that but did raise enough to off-set my trips to Camp Lejeune and Washington DC which was phase one of the send Baba Tim back to Afghanistan project. I also have failed to attract any media interest in sending me but have been getting some media exposure lately. Sometime this week I’ll get a copy of my second appearance on Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler on the OAN channel. Plus I’ll be the guest this week on the Reuters War College podcast. There still seems to be interest in Afghanistan but not enough to get the new or old media to send me.
I want to thank my friends and those of you who donated anonymously for supporting my go fund me effort. America is going to be in Afghanistan for years to come and I’m certain that at some point I’ll make it back to report the ground truth you are not going to hear from the legacy media. Inshallah.
Weaponized Hate
As I said in my last post the Green on Blue attacks will continue and they have with the wounding of four make that seven (the count keeps increasing) more soldiers. This time the attack was in Mazar-e Sharif, the capitol of the once peaceful province of Balk. There are several factors driving these Green on Blue attacks but the most important one to understand is that Afghans hate us. Couple their traditional antipathy of foreign armies operating in their country with 16 years of broken promises and what you are left with is hate.
Hatred of ‘the other’ is a natural motivating tool that America has used in previous wars. We are genetically programmed to love our own families, tribes and clans while hating those who are not part of them. Satoshi Kanazawa, an American-British evolutionary psychologist, currently with the London School of Economics, explains why in this article:
….ethnocentrism (or “racism”) is an innate human tendency. We are designed by evolution to love members of our group and hate members of other groups, in order to motivate and facilitate intergroup conflict. Yes, hate is natural. But remember the danger of the naturalistic fallacy — deriving moral implications from scientific facts. “Natural” means neither “good” nor “desirable.” Nor does it mean “inevitable.” Most of us learn to overcome our innate evolutionary tendencies.
The concept of “hate” has been removed from our lexicon but it is alive and well among the Islamic radicals we are fighting around the globe. Understanding hate helps to explain our floundering efforts in Afghanistan and the most disturbing question from the San Bernardino attack of 2015. I remember survivors of that attack saying they had recently thrown a baby shower for Tashfeen Malik, the pregnant half of the terrorist couple, and they could not understand why she had come back to kill them after they had showed her so much kindness. I’ll tell you why; she hated them, not for anything they did but because of who they are.
Hate is a dangerous weapon that is now being used by our elite political, media, entertainment, academic and corporate masters against the silent majority in the United States. Look what is has wrought so far…and here’s another prediction; there will be more political violence directed at President Trump and his supporters. Why? Because the legacy media and the democrats have doubled down on their lunatic hatred of the President and those who support him.
After sixteen years of broken promises the Afghans have no reason to trust the United States or the international community but they do have plenty of reasons to hate them. Gestures of support, like sending a permanent advisory teams to the Afghan army and national police in Helmand province (which is what the Marines are doing now) are meaningless. They will not turn the tide of battle, will not increase combat proficiency or decrease the unsustainable loses currently being inflicted on the Afghan security forces. Everybody knows this to be true yet the kabuki theater continues because the pentagon, at this point in time, has no idea what else to do.
The introduction of more troops will increase the number of potential targets for Green on Blue attack. Continuing to conduct night raids and air strikes will also increase the chances of more Green on Blue. Why? I’ve told you why in dozens of previous posts but now there is a high speed Modern War Institute study out of West Point to cite so I don’t have to repeat myself. Check this out:
….research suggests that most of the attacks are triggered by cultural frictions and personal disagreements. The triggers include, among others, anger from night raids and airstrikes conducted by international forces that result in civilian casualties, violations of privacy during searches, disrespect to religious beliefs, cultural misunderstanding and violations of local norms and values, combat stress, and personal differences between Afghan troops and their NATO counterparts.
How long have I been railing against night raids and the force protection mentality that allows NATO to shoot up car loads of civilians and pretend that it was their (the civilians) fault? Nine years if you’re counting and when I started saying this I received tons of push back but little support. In fact the only support I remember came from Herschel Smith at The Captain Journal . Having Herschel watching my back has been one of the true joys of my blogging adventure….I really need to go meet him in person one of these days.
How did the men (and women) of Ghost Team not only survive but thrive in the contested areas during the worst of the fighting? I’ll tell you our secret (which is in the linked article). We did what we promised we would do, on time, on budget and with exceptional quality control while respecting the local people, their religion and their mores. We were not only protected by the Afghans we worked with and for; we were liked and respected by them too.
Not all Afghans hate us Kharejee; there is an educated elite who are not taking part in the plundering and pillaging of the Afghan economy. They are grimly hanging on hoping that one day their talents will help unite a fractured country. Identifying who they are and supporting them would require our embassy people or the UN bureaucrats to get out from behind their walls to find them. That, they can no longer do, which is why they need to go.
For now hatred rules Afghanistan and that vile contagion is spreading rapidly across America too. Victor Davis Hanson sums the case up well:
Most Americans agree that the present levels of borrowing and spending cannot continue. But many believe that the tough medicine to cure the disease of chronic annual deficits and mounting debt is unacceptable. America’s infrastructure and military are vastly underfunded, even though some voters want more subsidies for themselves and apparently want others to pay for them.
America’s once-preeminent colleges and universities are fatally compromised. Universities charge far too much, resist reform, expect exemption from accountability, and assume their students must take on huge amounts of debt. Yet campuses can’t guarantee that their graduates are competently educated or that they will find jobs. Illiberal attempts to end free speech, to sanction racial and gender segregation, and to attack rather than argue with opponents are disguised by euphemisms such as “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and various -isms and -ologies.
Behind the guise of campus activism and non-negotiable demands is the reality that too many students simply are unprepared to do their assigned work and seek exemption through protests in lieu of hard studying.
As I wrote in my D-Day post war is a horrible thing but let me caveat that with this; civil wars are worse. In a civil war the contagion of hate runs rampant. I don’t hate Afghans but as a professional I would not hesitate to smoke check one if I was certain he was a villain who posed a threat to me or those around me. I can watch documentaries on the Taliban and respect their ability to suck up bad weather, bad food, bad karma and massive amounts of firepower without feeling a bit of hate towards them.
What I can’t do is watch footage of anti-fa protesters screaming hysterically at normal people and attacking them with bike locks, boots, pepper spray and urine without feelings of intense hatred raising in my consciousness. And I am not an angry person by nature, a fact I consider a true blessing.
The Taliban are not going to back down because they don’t have to; they’re winning and will only come to the negotiating table when they, not us, can dictate the terms.
Progressives in America are not backing down either, not because they are winning but because they face no consequences for their unhinged lunacy. Globalist big money backs the left as does Hollywood, the legacy media, professional athletes, every comedian who doesn’t want to be blacklisted, academia and our coastal elites. The progressives have plenty of money and an unlimited number of poorly educated young people for astro turf protests that make life miserable for average, hard working Americans.
I can see a way out of Afghanistan that would benefit the people of that tragic land and I’ll write about that next. What I can’t see is a way out of the culture of hate in America currently being directed at the productive classes. The progressives will continue to push right until they start facing the consequences of their actions. At that point it will be too late. Civil wars are horribly bloody affairs because identifying friend from foe is easy as is the natural impulse to hate.
There is much more darkness to venture through before we start seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel.
Green on Blue Is Back And The Perfect Storm Is On The Horizon
Three US soldiers, from the 101st Airborne were killed and another wounded Saturday on a Green on Blue attack in Nangarhar province. This latest attacked occurred in Achin district, the same district where two Rangers were killed in action last April. Yesterday a joint American/Afghan patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the Shergar area in Khoghyani district. They reportedly received small arms fire and when responding killed three civilians (a father and his two young sons) who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When dealing with news out of Afghanistan we must start with what we know to be true before speculating on the remainder in an effort to understand what happened. The soldiers were killed in Achin district where the Afghans with American Special Forces units in direct support, have been battling ISIS-K. I suspect the soldiers were in the field operating with Afghan soldiers when this unfortunate incident occurred. That would explain how four them were hit by a loan assailant. That also means the units assigned to the ‘advise and assist’ mission are engaging in direct combat. They have to do that to gain even a shred of credibility with the Afghan army but I bet they won’t be out and about much longer.
What additional troops were doing rolling around in Khogyani district requires speculation.
I suspect they were moving from the base at Jalalabad (FOB Fenty) into Achin district using the back roads to avoid the exposure of the Jalalabad – Torkham main road. Regardless of circumstances the killing of a car load of locals, something that was all too common when there were large numbers of NATO forces moving on the roads, is bad.
It appears the Taliban are trying to force Kabul to the negotiating table by inflicting massive casualties that the population can no longer endure while driving a wedge between the NATO advise and assist troops and their Afghan colleagues via green on blue attacks. That is a sound strategy. When those same American troops, while moving through a countryside they know to be hostile, kill civilians who happen to be too close to them when an IED goes off…..that’s a perfect storm. NATO doesn’t trust the forces they mentor to not kill them, the forces they mentor risk being shot every time they are getting mentored. The people are getting hammered by the Taliban and by NATO if they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s a storm alright (a s–t storm) and one for which NATO, the UN and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan have no answer.
When the problem of Green on Blue attacks reached a crisis stage in 2012 the response by NATO was to separate themselves (even more) from the Afghans they were supposed to mentor. Then they instituted a ‘guardian angel’ program to protect themselves from the Afghans they were there to help. Here are the Green on Blue numbers (hat tip Long War Journal)
Total number of attacks per year:
2017 – 2 2012 – 44
2016 – 2 2011 – 16
2015 – 2 2010 – 5
2014 – 4 2009 – 5
2013 – 13 2008 – 2
And here is how the program was described back in 2012
US military commanders in Afghanistan have assigned “guardian angels” to watch over troops as they sleep, among a series of other increased security measures, in the wake of rogue Afghan soldiers targeting Nato forces.
The so-called guardian angels provide an extra layer of security, watching over the troops as they sleep, when they are exercising, and going about their day.
Among the new measures introduced, Americans are now allowed to carry weapons in several Afghan ministries. They have also been told to rearrange their office desks so they face the door.
Now the Guardian Angels will have to be standing, at the ready, prepared to shoot any Afghan who makes a move for his gun too fast during every interaction between Afghans and NATO. How that will work out in field operations is obvious – it won’t and thus we are going to suffer more of them.
The issue is trust and trust is something that can only be built over long periods of time in Afghanistan. Governments in the West have been proving, for years now, they are incapable of taking the steps needed to protect their citizens from Jihadist terrorism. Sovereign citizens have little reason to trust their ruling elite who are more concerned with inclusion, diversity, various ‘phobias’ and not being perceived as racists then they are with protecting the population. Afghans have no reason to trust their ruling elites and the question is when you can’t trust the government who do you trust?
Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club has an answer:
Tribes and clans are still used when information security and omerta are paramount. No technical solution yet devised can beat treachery. Only loyalty can do that — and we have made loyalty, to nation at least, a bad word.
The Afghans who are committing these Green on Blue (and Green on Green) attacks are trusting the Taliban to take care of their clans when the dust settles. That is probably a solid bet. The Americans and other NATO troops in Afghanistan are not able to build trust networks during their seven month tours so they have to trust their fellow soldiers to have an OODA loop quick enough to protect them. That is not a solid bet – being that quick on the trigger will result in Blue of Green deaths that were unnecessary and further divide allies who are supposed to be fighting together.
The Perfect Storm is building and it is obvious that it will break soon. When that happens we can be certain of one thing. The elites who masterminded this fiasco will ignore it and continue taking us down the path of multi culti madness. It is too late to save Afghanistan the only question now is do we have the intestinal fortitude in the West to save ourselves?
The Graveyard Of Hope
As the recent horrific bombing in Kabul is driven out of the news cycle it is time to interject some honesty into the Afghan story. The day of the latest attack Afghans took to twitter in droves asking how can a truck bomb get into the most secure part of the city or when will they be allowed to live in peace?
The answer to the first question is the truck bomb got into the Ring of Steel the same way every truck bomb has for the last decade. Bribes combined with insiders of dubious loyalty and lax security. True it was stopped at a checkpoint at Zambaq square but that is routine; trucks are not allowed to travel downtown during rush hour, it shouldn’t have gotten that far. The fact that it did indicates it was moved into position and hidden before it took off the morning of the bombing.
The answer to the second question is you’ll be allowed to live in peace when the Afghan people rise up and fight for it. More on that below.
Today angry protesters clashed with riot police in Kabul, several were killed and all were demanding the government resign over the latest atrocity. The religious leaders (the Ulema) of both Pakistan and Afghanistan have declared the attack on civilians during Ramadan to be un-Islamic. This would be news were it not routine. Just a month ago Afghans and the Ulmea were saying the same thing after the attack on recruits praying in a Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif. The month before that it was the attack on the military hospital in Kabul (some 300 meters away from yesterday’s truck bomb) that had Afghans furious and the Ulmea declaring it an un-Islamic attack.
How does this end? It ends like it started. Back in 2001 two ODA teams 555 in the north and 574 is the south combined with anti-Taliban Afghan tribes to defeat the Taliban while Delta Force ( the Combat Applications Group or CAG) went after Osama bin Laden in Nangarhar province. As these groups rolled into the country Afghan tribes joined them in droves to rid themselves of the unpopular Taliban.
I’m not a cheer leader for Special Forces as can be seen in this post but the job they did in 2001 was one they were well suited for and one they executed like true professionals. They mimicked what the Taliban had done when they came to power – they used the power of the people to drive their oppressors out of power. Massive change comes to Afghanistan when the people of Afghanistan rise up and demand it.
The ODA teams and their unbelievably skilled brothers from the CAG were doing a mission that was squarely inside their skill set and it was an impressive feat of arms. But the momentum that gained the quick victory came from the Afghan people. They supported the international effort and they drove the Taliban from power.
Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory when generals in the rear refused to let a young Brigadier named James Mattis to throw his Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in the mountains behind Tora Bora to seal bin Laden’s escape route into Pakistan. That defeat was compounded by fuzzy thinking about staying on to help Afghanistan back into the world of functioning nation states; a mission we are not equipped to do and have never been able to do.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published and editorial that reflected my thinking on the matter although I’m only in partial agreement with its recommendation. The author was Eric Prince and the article was titled The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan. Both the author and idea are a fascinating combination that explain why Afghanistan is doomed.
Eric Prince is a military genius of epic proportions. He has proven his leadership and foresight time and again and for his efforts he has been maligned by the legacy media and jealous, less capable, bureaucrats in the CIA, Department of State and Pentagon. His crime was being successful at the ancient art of contracted war making. Google his name today and the words mercenary, infamous, and notorious jump off page after page. Forget the vitriol and focus on his accomplishments as outlined in the video below:
Eric Prince recommends a MacArthur like Viceroy to consolidate power under one person and then to address the weak leadership, endemic corruption and frequent defections; he offers this:
These deficits can be remedied by a different, centuries-old approach. For 250 years, the East India Company prevailed in the region through the use of private military units known as “presidency armies.” They were locally recruited and trained, supported and led by contracted European professional soldiers. The professionals lived, patrolled, and — when necessary — fought shoulder-to-shoulder with their local counterparts for multiyear deployments. That long-term dwelling ensured the training, discipline, loyalty and material readiness of the men they fought alongside for years, not for a one-time eight-month deployment.
An East India Company approach would use cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support. The U.S. military should maintain a small special-operations command presence in the country to enable it to carry out targeted strikes, with the crucial difference that the viceroy would have complete decision-making authority in the country so no time is wasted waiting for Washington to send instructions. A nimbler special-ops and contracted force like this would cost less than $10 billion per year, as opposed to the $45 billion we expect to spend in Afghanistan in 2017.
His solution is correct except for the Viceroy – he has to be an Afghan. You need to find an Afghan who is a warrior and an Islamic scholar. He’s there, waiting and we need to find him, present him to the Ulmea and then to the Loya jirgia and then the Afghan people. Find that man and give him Eric Prince to set up the modern day equivalent of the Flying Tigers and a ground component I’ll call the Fighting Tigers and Afghanistan will be saved.
The UN has got to go as does NATO because they cannot help Afghanistan now. You need low tech aircraft and infantry capable of doing Pseudo Operations. That means Afghan units with embedded western mentors who live, fight and die like Afghans. A force that is on the Afghans side; one they can rally behind as they once did when the Americans showed up in small numbers controlling big fires.
If the Afghans are to find peace they will need a military capability that does not rely on a multi billion dollar logistic tail that runs through Pakistan. Contracted armies can fight on the cheap using low tech air and the fighting power of western military men. Pakistan in not a friend of Afghanistan and there will be no peace for Afghans until they operate on the opposite side of the Durrani line to share some of their pain with the Pakistani enablers who send the truck bombs to kill their children.
A radical solution like this would require the international community to get over their aversion to contracted military formations. And that requires the international community to admit their efforts have been wasted, their solutions wrong and their council worthless. That is a bridge too far so, for now, and well into the future, the Afghan people are doomed by international bureaucrats who learn nothing, forget nothing but never hesitate to insist on solutions that always fail.
The way forward is to accept the lessons of the past and use what has worked in the past. Western armies can no longer do this kind of work. Contracted armies can; there are no other rational alternatives.
Memorial Day Blues: Don’t Thank Me – I Thank You
I never attend public observances of military holidays because they make me uncomfortable. My reluctance starts with the knowledge that many of the men who participate at these ceremonies are frauds. It ends with the knowledge that to date, we have failed to protect our fellow citizens from a dire threat emanating from abroad.
In 1998 a former army artillery officer named B.G. Burkett wrote the book Stolen Valor after volunteering to help establish the Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Two things struck him at the organizational meeting for this monument; the first being the number of successful men he knew from his business circle who turned out to be Vietnam Vets. He never knew they served and they didn’t know he had because none of them talked about participating in what was then an unpopular war.
The second anomaly was the number of derelicts who showed up in tattered jungle utilities claiming to be former LRRP’s or SF or SEAL’s or Force Recon. In his book Burkett talks about long range reconnaissance teams (LRRP’s) coming into his fire-base to sleep, refit, re-hydrate and then slip back out into the night. The traits he saw in those men were absent from the derelicts presenting themselves to the Texas commission. So Mr. Burkett submitted freedom of information act (FOIA) requests for the service records on these self proclaimed Rambo’s and guess what? None were what they claimed to be and a majority had never even served in the armed forces.
Back in 2005 CBS news did some actual reporting on this phenomenon which is more common then one would suspect:
…but the phony tales spun by modern impostors — especially those who claim Vietnam service — are no laughing matter. These are the frauds who, every Veterans’ Day, show up at parades and at the Vietnam memorial in Washington in their rag-tag fatigues and flea market medals, telling credulous reporters that Agent Orange or Post Traumatic Stress ruined their lives, and that memories of slitting children’s throats keeps them awake nights. All too often, these suffering “veterans” never set foot in Vietnam — and yet, the images they offer have permanently shaped the way Americans view soldiers from this war: As slovenly, drug-addled baby-killers who loiter on America’s streets when they’re not committing violent crimes. Phony Vietnam vets typically tell tales of Vietnam horrors to explain and excuse their failed lives, Burkett says, and naive journalists uncritically lap them up. Much research proves that — far from being homeless, alcohol-drenched failures — most Vietnam vets are healthy, mentally stable, successful men who deserve their country’s respect.
The fact that military service has once again become respectable means America is currently fielding a bumper crop of frauds claiming to have fought somewhere or other — and they have the medals to prove it. Last May, FBI Special Agent Thomas Cottone, Jr. told the Wall Street Journal that for every actual Navy SEAL today, there are at least 300 imposters. And more than twice as many people say they’ve received the Medal of Honor than the 124 living recipients who actually earned it.
In 2006 the Stolen Valor Act, based in part by the book, was signed into law making it a crime to lie about being a military hero. In 2012 that law was struck down by the 9th Circuit Court as being a violation of the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court followed up with a ruling that said fraudulently wearing medals of valor was also covered by the 1st Amendment. The rampant fraud thus continues to this day under the protection of a constitution the frauds did nothing to defend.
I also have a problem with the remark “thank you for your service”. The reason that kind gesture of support is unsettling is it’s premise. Often I hear on TV or read in the print that the military is “over there” to keep the enemy from being “over here”. But the enemy is here.
Homegrown Jihadi’s John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, in October 2002, paralyzed the greater Washington DC area for 3 weeks with a carbine and a white van. Our military could not have stopped the Islamic extremist who were already here but it could have reduced the number coming in from abroad if only we had killed OBL in 2001 and come home.
The military has not battled a foe who represents an existential threat to America or our way of life since WWII. All the fighting we have done for the last 16 years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya has not made the population of America safer; it has made us less safe. We are less safe because Jihadi’s use our fighting strength in Muslim lands as a way to recruit. In their recruitment propaganda they are David and we are Goliath; they are the underdog and we the gigantic bully who seeks to dominate and them eradicate Islam. The ranks of suicidal, militant Jihadists have grown as a result of our efforts to fight it overseas.
Common sense measures to mitigate the threat of Islamic terrorism are dead on arrival today. The Democratic party and their adjuncts in the legacy media and academia hysterically smeared a proposed 90 day pause on immigration from seven countries designed to tighten screening of immigrants from those countries as a ‘Muslim ban’.
The largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia; only one of the seven countries identified for that pause (Iran at number 7) were in the top ten Muslim majority countries in the world. That pause was well within the authority of an Executive Order but the liberal judiciary insisted on interpreting what they thought was inside the presidents head, not the law.
Trump’s order “speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination,” Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote. He said the order conflicts with the First Amendment’s ban on “laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
Not every citizen from those seven countries is a Muslim. Islam is not a monolithic religion anyway. Shia’s do not practice Islam like Sunni’s; Wahhabi Islam is not the same as the interpretations of Salafism. Cultures absorb religion, religion does not absorb cultures which is why, in Afghanistan today, the people still celebrate Zoroaster holidays like Naw-Ruz. How similar are the practice of Catholicism to Baptists in America today? They’re not remotely the same but for some reason, to our elites, all forms of Islam are the same. Any attempt to differentiate among them is ‘Islamaphobia’ a word best defined (by Andrew Cummings) as “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
The enemy we face comes directly from the exportation of the Wahhabi variation of Islam. President Trump is the first world leader to throw down the gauntlet in his speech last week where he told the Gulf Arabs, the exporters of Wahhabi Islam:
The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries, and for their children. It is a choice between two futures – and it is a choice America cannot make for you. A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out. DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.”
The ninety day pause in immigration that President Trump proposed targeted countries known to export the Wahhabi strain of Islam. It was a reasonable move by a man who takes the protection of American citizens seriously. You could argue there should have been more countries, not less, on that list but you can’t argue that the intent was clear and just.
We have more to worry about that Islamic Terrorism. President Trump is finally addressing the threat of North Korea before they develop a multi stage rocket system to deliver their nukes. Preventing the NORKs from developing a delivery system that gives them the ability to strike us is critical if we are to prevent the specter of nuclear war. Yet the press focuses not on that but on an allegation that the President told another world leader we had two nuke subs in the area. What does that even mean? Was he saying we have two subs within striking range of North Korea? Every sub we have can strike North Korea from any ocean in the world. They don’t need to be close – so why all the hysteria?
Our youth are not being educated in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic which, when combined with instruction on logic, reason and the history of western civilization enables citizens to participate in rational civic discourse. They are being indoctrinated into a world view that negates the positive contributions of western civilization and replaces it with the soft virtue of victimology. Our children are being taught that ‘truth’ is a cultural construct rendering them unable to understand the basic truth that not all cultures are equal, not all cultural diversity good.
Despite of the enormous influence of toxic progressive-ism in America we are still fielding the finest armed forces the world has ever known. None of the problems I am writing about are the fault of the American soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. Those of us who have served should be thanking you for our service. Not many Americans can qualify to join the armed forces today. Of those that do and choose to serve the vast majority find their time under arms to be a privilege. We serve with men and women who (for the most part) are smart, fit, motivated and serious. There are no comparable experiences available to civilians. Service is a privilege few understand and fewer still appreciate but those who serve know they were the lucky ones.
The military men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice in War deserve the respect that comes with a national holiday set aside to honor them. They do not deserve to have their legacies tarnished by frauds. They do not deserve to have their sacrifices made moot by political and military leaders who deal, not with reality, but the expedient of the progressive liberal Narrative.
There are several men who will be remembered in my prayers tonight and not all of them are Americans. But they were all warriors; they lived the virtues of discipline, courage and self-sacrifice. They never failed to move towards the sound of guns. They were better men than me and I was blessed to have known them. I will honor them in my own way today skipping ceremonies officiated by self serving politicians and constitutionally protected frauds.
Carry On – The New Normal
Last night England experienced another terrorist attack; this time a suicide bomber who targeted a large crowd of young concert goers in Manchester. The media has focused on the targets being children which is curious. There have been thousands of children beaten, raped and brutalized by Muslim (mainly Pakistani) grooming gangs for years in England without a peep from the British media. In fact, the most recent grooming gang scandal happened right outside Manchester in the hamlet of Roachdale. That not one person in England has been held to account for those crimes against humanity speaks to how dismal life must be for white British female teens who belong to the lower classes.
Political leaders from Berlin to LA have sent the reassuring message that they “stand with the people of Manchester“. That’s great; let’s add the colored lights and social media UK flag filters and it will no doubt help. Right?
The response in the UK is predictable kabuki theater. They have dispatched 5000 soldiers into the streets to replace the police who are busy rounding up the usual suspects. The usual suspect the police round up after terrorist attacks are British citizens who have posted remarks critical of Islam on their social media accounts.
The British press has, as usual jumped on the prospect of a wave of anti-Muslim attacks to warn their fellow citizens not to do what, to date, they have never done. Newsweek immediately jumped on that band wagon too with this article stating that:
In December 2016, the Muslim Council of Britain urged British politicians to urgently address Islamophobia in the face of growing attacks against Muslims in the U.K. Figures released in October 2016 showed that hate crimes against Muslims in London had increased 65 percent on the previous year.
If you go to the link about this 65% increase you’ll find a BBC article that states that there was a 65% increase and nothing more than that. What are these hate crimes? The BBC doesn’t say and I suspect they are social media posts like the one pasted above and nothing more. Are Muslim women wearing the hijab being hassled in the streets? That would be bad but not as bad as being tortured, sodomized, raped and forced into prostitution; a fate that has befallen thousands of white girls in England while the authorities turned a blind eye.
There are going to be more of these attacks, they will increase in severity and there is nothing any of us can do to stop them. In Europe the ruling classes refuse to define the problem as Islamic Terrorism which was true in America too until President Trump was elected. When the President recommended a prudent course of action; temporarily suspending visa’s from seven countries known to export Islamic terrorism until we could find a better way to vet visa applicants, the liberal press and their adjuncts in the Democratic party erupted in outrage at what they claim to be racism and ‘Islamophobia’ whatever the hell that means.
Islam is a religion that has adherents from every ethnic group in the world. They come in all shapes, sizes and colors which would preclude allegations of racism one would think. But our leaders don’t think and in the name of liberal progressive virtue they will refuse to adapt any common sense measure to protect their citizens. That dynamic will not change no matter how many more of their citizens are massacred by bombs, guns, trucks and the sword.
What our leaders will do is to continue restricting our freedoms and forcing group punishments, like the American TSA screenings at airports, which accomplish nothing other than harassing the traveling public. They will close the barn door after the cows have fled by deploying troops into the streets as if that will accomplish a damn thing.
Where is this leading us? As he has so often done in the past Richard Fernandez, blogging at the Belmont Club, lays it out for us. I’ll give him the last word.
Government is losing its credibility as an effective protector. Under these circumstances “carrying on exactly as before” is likely to have a meaning opposite to Independent’s intention. For most people it will mean continuing to batten down the hatches and rebuilding the trust networks so foolishly discarded when they put their trust in the State. The vision of future may prove to be not the borderless EU after all — but Israel. If government fails to protect people they are likely to fall back on tribalism and wire instead….
If we are to prevent a new medievalism finding the right balance between an open society and maintaining loyalty and allegiance is necessary. It is a difficult task under any circumstances. But rarely has anyone failed more dismally at it than the leaders of our multi-culti world. By stigmatizing calls for reasonable loyalty as bigotry they have climbed out on a limb and sawed themselves off; by their dogmatic insistence on mindless inclusion they’ve foreclosed all attempts to bring things back to even keel. They have reduced themselves to the level of hapless bystanders, unable to either prevent or explain an onslaught they themselves — were they honest enough to admit it — should have foreseen.
Friendly Fire
As reported in the update to my last post the Army has started a friendly fire investigation into the two most recent deaths in Afghanistan. Why would the they start a friendly fire investigation when the soldiers who were there are adamant that enemy fire killed sergeants Rogers and Thomas? That’s a question with two answers; the first being the pentagon is required, by law, to notify next of kin if there exists the slightest chance that their loved one was killed by friendly fire. The second reason is the Pat Tillman case which also involved the Army Rangers and was one of the more disgraceful cover-ups in the last 15 years. Or so I thought until I looked into the matter over the weekend.
The Pat Tillman case is worth examining not just because of the cover-up the incompetence of the staff officers who sent Pat’s platoon on the ‘clearing villages’ mission in the first place was a story too. Pat Tillman was killed during a multi day sweep of villages on the Pakistani border of Khost province. They were ordered to search villages for Taliban fighters or weapons and to do so on a strict timeline dictated from on high.
Let me inject some reality into that mission. The maps being used back then, just like the maps used today, seldom identify villages by their correct name or location. What appears to be secondary roads on these maps are most often dry stream beds or goat trails. Instructing men to clear villages that don’t exist using roads that don’t exist is the epitome of 2nd generation military thinking.
If 40 Rangers go into the a village and search every dwelling (an unspeakable insult to highlander Pashtuns) finding no weapons is the village clear? If they come under fire while leaving the village are the villagers Taliban? The answer to both questions is no. The mission was a fools errand that could not have accomplished anything other than getting the villagers on the war path and our men wounded or killed for no reason.
It is difficult to track down the Tillman story today because of all the legacy media garbage that populates the search term. 60 minutes did a segment on him which told the viewer nothing other than his mother was pissed. ESPN did a segment which I assume was crap but I won’t watch ESPN propaganda so I’m not sure. The only good source I found over the weekend was the book Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer. He got to the story late and took four years to research and write the book so when it came out it was OBE (military slang for overcome by events) and few paid attention to it.
The ensuing cover-up should have ended the careers of the generals who created the story and put it into play. I was talking to some of my Marine buddies years later and they hated General McChrystal because his blatantly unethical behavior in signing off on a fairy tale (that he himself concocted) made it impossible for them to get the Silver Star awarded to men who had earned it.
Did you know Pat Tillman was part of the Jessica Lynch rescue package? Me either; that fact was uncovered by Krackauer; he was part of the quick reaction force standing by in reserve and did not participate in the mission because the reserve was not needed. The reason they were not needed was the Iraqi fighters had left Nasiriyah days earlier. Lynch had been well cared for by the Iraq staff of the hospital she had ended up in after sustaining serious injuries when her vehicle crashed. The story behind that incident is a parents worst nightmare – having a child in combat who is poorly trained and incompetently led.
The large rescue to get Lynch was not only unnecessary but stage managed by a Bush administration official named Jim Wilkinson to deflect attention from the fact that 17 of the 18 Marines killed in the battle for that town were killed by friendly fire. Two A-10’s from the Ohio National Guard killed them during repeated strafing runs. Wilkinson was able to shunt special operational forces into the area and have them cool their heals until he could get a special operations media team there to cover the rescue. How a junior White House staffer could do that and why the generals he was brow beating didn’t throat punch him remains a mystery.
Another mystery is why the cover-up of the Marine friendly fire incident remains in place to this day despite the fact that one of the Marines on the ground, who had been attacked by Air Force A-10’s during the Gulf war, knew exactly what was happening as soon as he heard the chain guns. I’ve heard that sound too (coming from a range thank God) and it is not a sound you’ll ever forget.
In all three of these cases the men on the ground knew what had happened and knew the official stories were lies designed to cover the asses of senior officers and political figures. Jessica Lynch never fired a round, did not battle with Iraqi soldiers and could not have fought after her truck crashed knocking her unconscious. She was not abused or raped but instead protected by the hospital staff from the Iraq military and that staff tried several time to give her back but were thwarted by Marine sentries who would not let them approach their lines.
The slaughter of Marines from Charlie company 1st Battalion 2nd Marines was recognized as friendly fire instantly by the survivors yet it took a year for the investigation to be completed and the results were a bold face lie. The Rangers with Pat Tillman knew he was killed by friendly fire within 90 seconds of it happening yet were ordered not to tell anyone, to include his brother, who was a member of the platoon but was not close enough to witness the act. That, by the way, is an unlawful order that no military man was obligated to follow and I would hope that were I in their shoes I would have enough balls to ignore it out of hand.
There were a ton of irregularities in all these investigations that should have sent up red star clusters to the media and senior leadership. But in all three cases the senior leadership participated in the lie and there were no competent media (for example C.J. Chivers of the New York Times) on hand to look into the story. There are few (if any these days) members of the media who could even understand what it was they were looking at which is why I’m trying so hard to get back to Afghanistan.
An optimist would conclud the Army has finally learned it’s lesson about cover-ups and now follows the letter of the law regarding potential friendly fire incidents. I’m not an optimist and sense something is not right with this story.
So what do we know? News reports generated from pentagon press releases tell us 50 Rangers and 40 Afghan Commandos took part in this mission. It was a raid targeting Abdul Hasib, the self-described “Emir” of ISIS-K who reportedly runs their tactical operations.
I have long argued night raids in Afghanistan were counterproductive but have no problem with this night raid because the local folks living in the Mamand valley of Achin district departed long ago. This raid was targeting a known commander who was holed up in a series of compounds we knew to be inhabited by bad guys. We could have dropped another MOAB on him (just to make a statement) or used any of a hundred other weaponeering choices to destroy those compounds and all who were in them. But instead we chose to do a raid with Rangers and Afghan Commandos. Why?
Why did we use that option? I have no idea but fear the answer will be every bit as unsatisfactory as the answer to why Pat Tillman was combing through the valleys of Khost province chasing wild geese. The American public still holds our military in high esteem thanks to the the generation who served ahead of them. In the 70’s, when I was a teen, the military was universally despised for being liars and hypocrites. The men serving back then did not deserve the antipathy that washed over them from the Carter White House, the congress, the press and academia. The men serving now are not maintaining the trust passed down to them and if the lying, obfuscation and meaningless missions continue they will deserve every bit of the scorn the country they are supposed to be serving will be heaping on them.
There is no way to determine what the hell is going on over there without competent reporters on the ground digging up truth and reporting that in context. That is why I’m trying so hard to fund an embed back there but I cannot do that without your support. If you can please consider a donation to the Baba Tim Go Fund Me page in support of accurate reporting from the front lines.
