My Blog Week: August 15 to August 21

A Word on the Week

Helpful Friends

If we were not leaving Afghanistan, what would we be doing? Staying, presumably, and with identical fruitlessness. Or, we could ask, in what type of situation can you take decisive action, put a definite end to something accustomed, and not precipitate strong reactions? The political character of the pundit lamentations is apparent. Not only because the world offers numerous crises to show a pattern of behavior over, consistent with rhetoric, but that withdrawing, by the Biden administration, was discussed; it was pledged to. Few among current critics stepped in (none I know of) with an early counter-plan to circumvent chaos and suffering. 

To be blunt…and also apropos of hand-rubbing deplorals that China or Russia might now move to claim Afghanistan’s mineral wealth…the country is in a seismically active zone. It takes no psychic powers to predict a major earthquake, and another sometime after that, etc. That obstacle to easy wealth, if historical precedent (lack of this ever happening) were no clue, is a tea leaf that can be read even today.

America can’t be a colonial power in Afghanistan. We weren’t able to help the Afghanis create an economy based on their country’s natural resources. If this goal was not part of the military mandate, it only furthers the argument that the help needed isn’t military. And a country’s failure takes nothing from its right to sovereignty; otherwise America ought to be wary of invasion.

Certain senators have been fulminating on fiscal responsibility as reason to reject Biden’s infrastructure initiatives. Huge military savings should be a relief to them. So, both for the expedition of projects, and that the widest berth possible between the chaotic beginning and a degree of settling in, needs politically for the Democrats to coincide with the widest berth possible between now and 2022, Biden chose the moment he had to choose. 

Then at last, think of any southern (US) state. If in mid-July, when the pandemic was ebbing, you had done an inventory and found that of ICU beds, some percentage were occupied, the state’s match of resources to demand might have looked healthy. When the entire state turns purple, or whatever color signifies rifest infection rates, the same amount of resources is spread dangerously thin. The Taliban, in their strongholds, ruled only their strongholds…now they’re ruling the whole country. Defensive positions are tougher than offensive ones. You can’t remove your resources from cities it’s your job to administer down to the most minute of practicalities, and go fight on the road alone, when an enemy turns a checkpoint into a choke-point, and your supplies are threatened. You have to occupy the city, attend every nut and bolt of governing the city, and go fight on the road. The mobility of the resistance should be an advantage to their bedeviling of the Taliban. Plus, they may get help.