Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan

At Amazon, Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History.

Desperation Sets In

The U.S. issued a warning on Afghanistan today, and of course, hopes have been shattered among the people.

At NYT, "Desperation sets in for Afghans after return of Taliban":

For many Afghans, desperation is deepening. At least a quarter of a million people have fled their homes since the end of May as the Taliban marched steadily across the country. About 80 percent of them are women and children, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

At a park in central Kabul on Saturday morning, people who had escaped the Taliban’s march across northern Afghanistan in recent weeks were stuck in dust-blown makeshift settlements, washing their clothes in a stream and unsure of where to turn.

Days after they reached Kabul, the Taliban seized the city of six million, and now they may be stranded without assistance as international aid groups try to evacuate staff members who they worry are at risk of Taliban reprisals.

Known for barring girls from school and chopping off the hands of thieves when the group led the country in the late 1990s, the Taliban have presented conflicting signals of how they intend to govern this time. Top leaders have pledged to protect the rights of women and the free press, even as fighters beat protesters and search for supporters of the former government or its Western allies, according to the United Nations and witnesses.

The former insurgents have also demonstrated little aptitude for administering basic services in a country that is heavily reliant on foreign aid...

Keep reading.

 

'Dumkirk'

Today's cover.

And you know, even in defeat the Britain triumphed and Churchill roused the nation with his "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940.

And the U.S. today, well, you can fill in the blanks ____________________.

You Will Wear Masks Forever

Well, at least in California. And nationwide, well, frankly, I thought I saw a headline somewhere this last week saying the Biden administration is considering one.

Masking and vaccinations by force. Surely, not America?

Well, at least in California.

At LAT, "Delta variant likely to bring a fall and winter of masks, vaccine mandates, anxiety":

The rise of the Delta variant has upended previous optimistic projections of herd immunity and a return to normal life, with many health experts believing mask mandates and tougher vaccine requirements will be needed in the coming months to avoid more serious coronavirus surges.

While there are promising signs that California’s fourth COVID-19 surge may be starting to flatten, the fall and winter will bring new challenges as people stay indoors more often and vaccine immunity begins to wane.

The rapid spread of Delta among the unvaccinated — and the still relatively small number of “breakthrough” cases among the vaccinated — shows that significant increases in inoculations will help stop the spread. In fact, officials are now preparing to provide booster shots to those who already got their first series of vaccinations, saying the extra dose is needed to keep people protected.

Still, “the vaccines themselves are not going to likely be sufficient. And during times of increased transmission, we’ll need other tools available to protect all of us — and particularly those who, at this time, can’t be vaccinated, like our children,” said UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo

California is in a better position than other states because of relatively higher vaccination rates, and there is little appetite for a return to stay-at-home orders. But in settings where more people gather, strategies that can be used to keep COVID-19 controlled include ensuring people are either vaccinated, have a recent negative coronavirus test or both, Bibbins-Domingo said.

“There will be a time when we have our masks off again as transmission goes back down. But I think we’re going to have to be prepared that if we’re in an environment when there’s more virus around, that it is sensible that we have another layer of protection — and that will be masks,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “And I don’t think we’re going to be totally throwing our masks away anytime soon, frankly.”

Policies like mandatory masking and requiring vaccines or regular testing in workplaces “are going to be very important if we are ever going to get over this pandemic,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

It was once thought that as soon as 70% to 85% of a population was vaccinated, communities would reach a high enough level of herd immunity that the threat of COVID-19 would be mostly behind us. Now, “that’s out the window,” Bibbins-Domingo said, and computer models suggest the coronavirus will be with us for the foreseeable future. “Almost certainly, we’ll be dealing with it this winter.”

How long the pandemic will last depends on any new variants that emerge, the ability to adapt the vaccines to them and temporary measures that may be needed to tamp down surges, Bibbins-Domingo said.

There are several key factors that have altered what we previously understood about COVID-19 and underscore just how far off the end of the pandemic still is.

The first is the emergence of the Delta variant — at least twice as transmissible as the previous dominant variant, Alpha, and capable of producing a viral load up to 1,000 times greater in the upper throat.

“The big challenge with Delta is that it’s so much more transmissible than the original strain. ... And really, this is possibly an unprecedented change in terms of the amount of the” shift in the so-called R-naught, or the basic reproductive rate of the coronavirus, Shane Crotty, a vaccine researcher at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, recently told a forum at UC San Francisco.

Originally, a person infected with the ancestral strain of the coronavirus spread it to 2.5 other people on average. But the Delta variant is estimated to spread to five to eight other people. That means that within 10 cycles of transmission of the virus, in a population with no immunity to the virus, instead of fewer than 10,000 people being infected, more than 60 million will be infected, Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert, said at the same UC San Francisco forum.

This is why vaccine mandates will become more important, especially at places of employment, del Rio said. “I think the going phrase that we’re hearing over and over is: ‘No jab, no job.’ And I think mandates are going to make a big difference,” he said.

Second, breakthrough infections — in which fully vaccinated people become infected with COVID-19 — are still uncommon but no longer rare. “I think vaccinated persons are much safer than unvaccinated persons, but they’re not completely safe. Breakthrough infections occur often enough with Delta that you will see them,” del Rio said.

While a vaccinated person with a breakthrough infection can transmit the virus to others, he or she is likely to be infectious for a significantly fewer number of days, del Rio said. “And therefore your contribution to transmission is much lower if you’re vaccinated than if you’re not.”

And that’s why wearing masks indoors remains important. Del Rio said many infectious-diseases doctors never stopped masking indoors, even after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it wasn’t necessary for fully vaccinated people.

Vaccinated people with breakthrough infections have much more mild illnesses because the body is already equipped to defend itself against the virus and likely can avoid lung illnesses or hospitalization, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County. But without prior immunity, the virus can lodge deeper into the body and cause more severe illness, eventually making it very difficult to breathe...

 

They're Liars and Hypocrites, But You Knew That Already

Very passionate essay, from Caitlyn Flanagan, at the Atlantic, "The Week the Left Stopped Caring About Human Rights."

Steve Coll, Directorate S

At Amazon, Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Besieged in the Culture Wars

 At NYT, "The School Culture Wars: ‘You Have Brought Division to Us’":

July and August are supposed to be the quietest months of the school year. But not this time.

In Williamson County, Tenn., protesters outside a packed, hourslong school board meeting last week shouted, “No more masks, no more masks.”

In Loudoun County, Va., a debate over transgender rights brought raucous crowds to school board meetings this summer, culminating last week with dueling parking lot rallies. The board approved a policy that allows transgender students to join sports teams that match their gender identity and requires teachers to use transgender students’ pronouns.

And, in a particular low point for school board-parental relations, a woman railed against critical race theory during a meeting in the Philadelphia area, yelling, “You have brought division to us.” After the allotted time, the school board president walked off the stage, into the audience, and took the

As summer fades into fall, nearly all of the major issues dividing the country have dropped like an anvil on U.S. schools.

“The water pressure is higher than it has ever been and there are more leaks than I have fingers,” said Kevin Boyles, a school board official in Brainerd, Minn., who said he recently received 80 emails in three days about face masks. He described being followed to his car and called “evil” after a board meeting where he supported a commitment to equity. Another time, a man speaking to the board about race quoted the Bible and said he would “dump hot coals on all your heads.”

“You are just trying to keep everything from collapsing,” Mr. Boyles said.

Schools were already facing a crisis of historic proportions. They are reopening just as a highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is tearing through communities. They need to create a safe environment for teachers and students, while helping children who have been through major trauma.

And then there are the education gaps that must be made up: For many of the country’s 56 million schoolchildren, it has been a year of lost learning and widening inequities.

But at this critical moment, many school officials find themselves engulfed in highly partisan battles, which often have distracted from the most urgent issues. The tense environment comes amid a growing movement to recall school board officials, over everything from teachings on race to school closures. Nationwide, there have been at least 58 recall efforts targeting more than 140 officials this year, more than the previous two years combined, according to Ballotpedia.

As a superintendent in Albany, Ore., Melissa Goff first noticed pushback when her district closed classrooms during the pandemic; a slate of candidates ran for school board largely on a platform to open schools.

But by the time students returned this spring, a new flash point had emerged: Should police officers welcome students back to campus? Though it was a local tradition, some parents said their children, sensitive after a year of Black Lives Matter protests, felt afraid.

Ms. Goff asked the police to pull back. Dozens of people — including a school board candidate riding on a military vehicle — protested at the district office, some calling for her resignation.

Then in May, Ms. Goff said she came under fire for a plan to hold vaccine clinics at local high schools. Though she said the clinics were intended to reach low-income families and people of color, Ms. Goff said some people saw the effort as “making kids

get vaccines.” By the summer, a new school board had taken over and Ms. Goff was fired without cause. The school board chair, in an email, said Ms. Goff was not fired for her position on equity and diversity, but pointed to “divisiveness” and “underlying problems created by the district administration.”

Ms. Goff, who has worked in education for 26 years, said she had never seen so many political issues converge on schools. There was not just one contentious issue, she said. “It was every place you turned.”

This is hardly the first time the classroom has become the center of civil strife. From the teaching of evolution in the 1920s to the push for school desegregation in the 1950s, schools have often been a nexus for major societal conflicts.

“Schools are particularly fraught spaces because they represent a potential challenge to the family and the authority of parents,” said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, an associate professor of history at the New School in New York City.

The two biggest divides in schools today are also highly volatile because they challenge fundamental narratives of what it means to be an American. The debate over mask mandates puts two values into conflict, collective responsibility versus personal liberty. And an examination of the country’s history of racism challenges cherished ideas about America’s founding...

This is mind-boggling to me, but no surprise. The tension at my college is the highest it's ever been in over twenty years.

 Still more.

Theresa May Speaks Out (VIDEO)

She's a backbencher now, and, frankly, I'd forgotten about her since her resignation in 2019.

Obviously, she's not too pleased with the debacle in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: What Went Wrong?

Almost everything, it seems. 

At LAT, "News Analysis: What went wrong in Afghanistan?":

WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago, the mission seemed direct, clear and just: Invade Afghanistan and pursue, capture or kill Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and his armed band of followers.

Achieving that goal also included overthrowing the Taliban, and steadily the mission morphed into a vast, complicated experiment to reshape a society that few Americans understood.

After a war stretching over four U.S. presidencies and costing more than a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives, the once-routed Taliban has retaken power in a swift march across Afghanistan, barely meeting resistance, occupying the presidential palace and driving the remaining U.S. troops to a single redoubt: an airport now swamped with Afghans desperate to flee.

Despite its military might, expertise and investment, the United States badly miscalculated the speed and absolutism with which the Taliban would overtake Afghanistan and is handing a battered country back to the very people the U.S. sought to defeat, with any gains in nation-building, education and civil rights in jeopardy.

Why? And who is to blame?

The Afghan army “chose not to fight for its country,” U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday, hours after Taliban militants entered the capital, Kabul, and occupied the president’s residence.

On Wednesday, as criticism of the withdrawal mounted, and finger-pointing and postmortems began, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred while also recognizing broader blame.

Afghan security forces “had the training, the size, the capability to defend their country,” he said at a tense briefing at the Pentagon. “This comes down to the issue of will and leadership. I did not, nor did anyone else, see a collapse of an army that size in 11 days.”

In fact, the reality is much more complicated. Putting all of the blame on the Afghan army, government and people ignores U.S. directives, policy and lack of knowledge. It’s also a hollow analysis of what the United States was trying to do in Afghanistan in the two decades since President George W. Bush launched the initial invasion.

The invasion For years, Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network thrived in Afghanistan under the Taliban, which then ruled most of the country. Shortly after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people, Bush dispatched American troops to Afghanistan to hit the terrorist group where it lived.

It took a decade to finally assassinate Bin Laden, in 2011, in Pakistan. One distraction during that decade was Bush’s ill-fated decision to launch a second war in Iraq, despite the country having no relation to the Sept. 11 attacks. Today, military officials and analysts say the threat from Al Qaeda is diminished but not gone. Al Qaeda franchises have sprung up in parts of Africa, for example, where they did not operate previously. Moreover, according to the United Nations, the Taliban never completely severed its ties to Al Qaeda, despite its pledge to do so.

The Taliban surrendered in December 2001, although many of its forces hid in impenetrable mountain ranges or in neighboring Pakistan and other countries. But the U.S. mission was just beginning. It shifted to “nation-building,” an attempt to construct democratic institutions, to open civil rights for all, including women, and to fashion a system of freedom familiar to the West but unknown in Kabul.

It included missteps, many experts say, that the U.S. military and its civilian partners have often made — misjudging local cultures from Vietnam to Bosnia-Herzegovina, botching realistic goals and making serious errors.

Creating a dependent army

Many observers now are questioning how an army built with nearly a trillion dollars in U.S. and NATO funding over two decades and tons of materiel — from rockets to Humvees — could so quickly collapse. It appears that as the Taliban marched across the country in the last couple of weeks, its fighters met little resistance from the U.S.-trained military.

Reports from several provincial capitals said local elders and tribal chieftains negotiated with advancing Taliban troops, agreeing not to raise arms against them in exchange for a peaceful resolution. Some Afghans say that arrangement extended nationwide.

“The leadership at one point gave up and told the security forces not to resist,” Roya Rahmani, until last month the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., said this week. “Over the last few weeks, they continuously received calls from Kabul asking them to surrender, asking them not to resist.”

Afghan security forces and ground troops were operating without the air power that had been vital in staving off Taliban advances. At some point — it is not clear when — supportive airstrikes stopped. In recent weeks, the U.S. declined to provide most air support, leaving Afghan troops on their own.

Under U.S. tutelage, the Afghan army became increasingly dependent on its American patrons, so withdrawal of that support was devastating.

“They baked dependency into the Afghan forces,” said Laurel Miller, former acting special envoy for Afghanistan now at the International Crisis Group, describing the U.S. strategy.

She said U.S. efforts too frequently ignored facts on the ground, underestimated the sway of powerful regional warlords and failed to sufficiently take into account vast corruption and the collapse in morale among the rank and file as well as deficiencies in Afghan leadership and command.

Miller and others also gave some credit to the Taliban as fighters — fiercely dedicated and zealously motivated. Strategically, the Taliban, as it sought to regroup, concentrated many of its operations in northern Afghanistan, preventing a resurgence of the so-called Northern Alliance — militias that helped initially to defeat the Taliban. It continued to grow stronger even during a massive, temporary troop surge ordered by President Obama.

The U.S. military made a major mistake in trying to create an army replicating U.S. standards, which made little sense in Afghanistan, said James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander with responsibility for Afghanistan.

“I believe we probably trained them in a way that did not prepare them for this kind of moment in the sense that we tried to make them a mini version of ourselves,” he told MSNBC. “Dependent on intelligence, dependent on air cover, that was not as it turns out the force that was needed to defeat the Taliban.”

The levels of corruption in the Afghan military and government were something U.S. officials never came to terms with.

The Biden administration has repeatedly asserted that the Afghan army was a fighting force of 300,000, dwarfing the Taliban. But the payrolls of the Afghan military and police contained thousands of “ghost” soldiers, fighters who did not exist but were listed so officials could abscond with their payments.

A government watchdog, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR, in recent years found a gap between recorded and actual strength levels in the tens of thousands of personnel; in southern pro-Taliban provinces, 50% to 70% of police positions were filled by people who did not exist, the agency found.

The widespread corruption also served to demoralize the Afghan fighting forces, which by many accounts were formidable and relatively professional...

Keep reading.

 

'I Can't Help Myself'

Described by Billboard as a "spirited, fast -paced wailer performed in unique style."

The Four Tops. A phenomenal hit. 

Another live version here, even more excitedly upbeat.

U.S.-Allied Afghan Forces Are in Hiding

Pfft.

Every day I get more and more disgusted with Biden — and that’s saying a lot.

At NYT, "Hunted by the Taliban, U.S.-Allied Afghan Forces Are in Hiding":

#Warning⚠️: Video contains graphic images#Kandahar: Afghans are taken out of their homes and killed by Taliban. Videos have emerged on social media showing scores of dead bodies on roads and streets in the province. #SanctionOnPakistan #SanctionPakisan #Afghan_lives_matter pic.twitter.com/Wao6y9MaiO

— RTA World (@rtaworld) August 13, 2021

Columns of Afghan soldiers in armored vehicles and pickup trucks sped through the desert to reach Iran. Military pilots flew low and fast to the safety of Uzbekistan’s mountains.

Thousands of Afghan security force members managed to make it to other countries over the past few weeks as the Taliban rapidly seized the country. Others managed to negotiate surrenders and went back to their homes — and some kept their weapons and joined the winning side.

They were all part of the sudden atomization of the national security forces that the United States and its allies spent tens of billions of dollars to arm, train and stand against the Taliban, a two-decade effort at institution-building that vanished in just a few days.

But tens of thousands of other Afghan grunts, commandos and spies who fought to the end, despite the talk in Washington that the Afghan forces simply gave up, have been left behind. They are now on the run, hiding and hunted by the Taliban.

Continue reading the main story

“There’s no way out,” said Farid, an Afghan commando, in a text message to an American soldier who fought with him. Farid, who agreed to be identified by his first name only, said he was hiding in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, trapped after the regular army units surrendered around him. “I am praying to be saved.”

Accounts of the Taliban searching for people they believe worked with and fought alongside U.S. and NATO forces are beginning to trickle out, offering a bloody counterpoint to the kinder and gentler face the militants have been trying to present to the world.

The militants are threatening to arrest or punish family members if they cannot find the people they are seeking, according to former Afghan officials, a confidential report prepared for the United Nations and American veterans who have been contacted by desperate Afghans who served alongside them. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to protect friends and loved ones still hiding in Afghanistan.

The officials said the Taliban had been combing through records at the ministry of defense and interior and the headquarters of Afghanistan’s spy service, drawing up lists of operatives to search for. And there are more and more reports that the militants are exacting swift and fatal revenge when they are found.

One former interpreter for American Special Forces said he saw another man gunned down feet from him on the mere suspicion that he had worked with foreign forces.

In the southern city of Kandahar, video posted on social media last week by RTA, Afghanistan’s public broadcaster, showed dozens of bodies left by the road, many of them reportedly Afghan soldiers and officials executed by the Taliban. RTA itself is now in the hands of the Taliban.

How many Afghan soldiers and security officials are on the run is unclear. Dozens of Afghan pilots escaped to Uzbekistan, where 22 planes and 24 helicopters carrying nearly 600 men arrived on Sunday, according to Uzbek officials; an unknown number made it to Iran, former Afghan officials said.

On paper, the Afghan security forces number around 300,000. But because of corruption, desertion and casualties, only a sixth of that number were actually in the fight against the Taliban this year, U.S. officials say.

Thousands surrendered as the Taliban rolled through the country, laying down their weapons after being promised they would not be harmed. The Taliban so far appears to have stuck with those deals — historically a common feature of Afghan warfare — and the militants seemed far more focused on the 18,000 Army commandos, many of whom did not surrender, and officers from the country’s spy service, the National Directorate of Security...

Alexis Ren, Ashley Tavort, and Caroline Vreeland

It's a good day!

Ms. Alexis is on Twitter.

Ashley Tavort is here.

And also Caroline Vreeland here and here.

Clarissa Ward Reporting from Afghanistan (VIDEO)

 He's either foolish or brave. 

Either way, it's been doing phenomenal reporting, even heroic,

At CNN, and Melissa Mackenzie below:

Good grief. @clarissaward is going to need years of therapy after this horror in Afghanistan.

She's doing good work.

God bless her and our soldiers. This is an abomination.

— Melissa Mackenzie (@MelissaTweets) August 20, 2021

Kamala Harris Goes to Ground

She's upside-down in a recent poll.

See, NYP, "Kamala Harris tanking in poll as she goes to ground on Afghan withdrawal."

'The Night House' Review (VIDEO)

Super, scary, scintillating.

A modern-day psychological thriller, and worth your time.

At the L.A. Times, "Review: Rebecca Hall keeps the tension building in ‘The Night House’."

Douglas London, The Recruiter

At Amazon, Douglas London, The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.

London was the CIA's Counterterrorism Chief for South and Southwest Asia befoe his retirement in 2019.

Tucker Carlson Slams Biden on Afghan Refugees (VIDEO)

CNN was hammering Tucker today during their programming. It's like a night and day contrast: CNN's boosting the Democrats (for example, in its reporting on the serious threat from Larry Elder to Governor Newsom in next month's recall election) and Fox News (especially the evening opinion segments, though not exclusively, i.e., Bret Baier) has been eviscerating Biden on the disastrous crisis in Afghanistan.

Below is the long segment that got the folks over at CNN all hot and bothered. Indeed, Don Lemon took on Tucker in last night's segment. These goobers are shaken.

I should note that I'm not against accepting Afghan refugees, as long as they've been comprehensibly vetted for terrorist activity (or any of the slightest collaboration with the Taliban, al Qaeda, or any or all of the many other totalitarian jihadists across the international system). And to note, apparently even President Trump has flip-flopped on the issue of accepting Afghan refugees to the U.S.

At Fox News:

Protests Threaten Taliban Rule (VIDEO)

That's the New York Times' take. 

But if the Taliban are a truly totalitarian force, they won't stand for these protests too long. They'll arrest, torture, imprison, murder, assassinate, and slaughter any and all opponents of the new regime. 

See, "As demonstrations spread, the Taliban face growing challenges in running the nation."

Bernard-Henri, Levy Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

At Amazon, Bernard-Henri, Levy Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

Liz Cheney on 'This Week' (VIDEO)

The defeat in Afghanistan will certainly resonate in international politics for years to come. I'm still gobsmacked yet fascinated about this whole thing, especially how swiftly things fell apart, and the shape of the future for the nation. The Afghan people are worthy of your prays. 

I'm also interested in it from a policy perspective. I'm neoconservative, a dreaded "neocon," to listen to all these pro-isolationism and "Never Trumpers," the majority of whom were warmongering boosters just a few years ago. I saw former Breitbart writer John Nolte on Twitter ragging about how awful U.S. policy has been, but I'd bet if you check the archives there from, say, a decade ago, you'd find all kinds of attacks on President Obama and his own pledge to surge the troops with a firm deadline for a troop withdraw, to say the least.

To be honest, the fact is each and all the last four presidents bear responsibly, but clearly, none more than President Biden.

What to do now? I mean, if I were in charge of course U.S. troops would have stayed. The U.S. would have maintained bases and prisons, and would have had robust air-power to support ground operations, including throughout the hinterlands across the country. A number of commentators have noted that just keeping U.S. forces in country, with no announcement of a troop withdrawal, would have been preferred, and of course we could have temporarily surged troops if things got out of hand. 

Now we'll have to continue fighting there, for one thing, to prevent a humanitarian and regional security nightmare from taking place. This may not be a popular position right now, but it's stupid to argue that the U.S today is more secure today than it was just a week or so ago. 

At the video, Liz Cheney argues that instead of ending the war, U.S. policy --- in both the Trump and Biden administrations --- has guaranteed the war there will continue.

She's not a popular figure in her party, and it'll be interesting to see how she fares in the 2022 midterms, but she's firm and consistent in her positions, and I think she's great.

Watch: