Unforeseen Contingencies

The Afghanistan war predates this blog, so I certainly didn't post on it when it began, but my position was quite clear at the time.  If the government has any legitimate role at all, the primary one is protection of Americans' lives, liberty, and property.  The attacks on September 11, 2001 certainly warranted violent government response -- indeed, the government had a duty to respond.  And the fact that the thoroughly loathsome Taliban government of Afghanistan gave haven to the equally loathsome Al Qaeda meant that the Taliban was also a perfectly legitimate and warranted target.  I said so at the time.

I also said, though, that I suspected the United States government would not follow through, that instead of utterly destroying these enemies and winning the war, they would bog down in police actions and nation building and do a half-assed job... and lose.

Unfortunately, I was right.  I wish I had been completely wrong.  As it is, things went better than I predicted.  It was insane to have (we're told) left it to locals to catch Osama bin Laden, and George W. Bush's completely unwarranted war in Iraq diverted effort from Afghanistan, where it was legitimate.  Even so, the U.S. intervention managed to bring a measure of stability and freedom, such as it was, to parts of Afghanistan, and to keep the Taliban at bay.  The refusal to go after our enemies in Pakistan, including in the Pakistani ISI and other parts of the government, guaranteed no real victory could occur.  But there was a modicum of success, and Afghanistan seemed possibly more hopeful than I imagined.

Unfortunately, the present sudden collapse and incredible shambles are worse than anything I had imagined possible.  The Biden* administration's "lack of planning" for withdrawal seems almost intentional.  The hasty closing of Bagram and the denial of maintenance for the Afghan Air Force aircraft certainly were not oversights. A number of writers -- I won't link -- have suggested intent.  Glenn Greenwald thinks the deep state is getting revenge on Biden for ending the war; others say the withdrawal was designed by the leftists running the administration to hurt America.  These discussions of intent are interesting but not resolvable at this point.  It's more productive to think about the meaning of what is happening.

1. America has been defeated by the Taliban.  The Taliban dictates terms to the President* of the United States, and the U.S. accepts them.

2. A very large number of Americans and other Westerners and their Afghan workers and allies are at the mercy of the Taliban.  There will be a bloodbath for Afghanis and very likely many hostages and deaths among the Americans and other foreigners.

3. America's enemies have America on the ropes.  They recognize America has a senile president and is run by a cabal of incompetents (or more likely competing cabals).  Now is the time for our enemies to move.  These enemies include, but are not limited to, China, Russia, Iran, and the Davos-type globalists and mandarins of the international bureaucracies.

These things are obvious, and very bad.  But wait, there's more!  The next is less certain, but very likely.

4. Our own leftists and deep state will turn on the American people, lashing out with draconian policies and violence.  Pax Americana is collapsing, and scapegoats must be sacrificed.  Wuflu panic is still promoted and crazed vaxx policies floated, spending and taxation grow wildly, economic and other regulation explodes, and the literally insane doctrines of critical race theory and transgenderism and Green New Dealism are becoming the law of the land.  All of these radical changes bode terrible consequences. Things are still relatively normal in most places... just as they were in Afghanistan a week or two ago.  If something terrible happens here, I suspect it will happen very fast.

Much of this chaos is understandable.  Too few people understand the principles of liberty and and ethical society, and take our civilization for granted.  And too many are working to destroy it, both our enemies at home and abroad.

Regarding our enemies on the left, Ace of Spades HQ has an excellent piece on cultural marxism "Why Don't We Do Our Own 'Long March?'"  The bottom line is something that I've often thought of: if liberty-minded people prevail, antilibertarians will be free to speak and try to spread their ideas.  If antilibertarians prevail, libertarians (real ones, not the "woke" libertarian fakes) will be silenced.

Let's hope that I am completely wrong.

// posted by Charles N. Steele @ 20:11