#180 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday October 27)
Good morning,
I thought I would provide a few quotes and comments on a few topics:
AFGHANISTAN, REDUX
Afghanistan feels like a bad TV series that went on too long. While not as costly in lives lost, it feels a bit like Viet Nam, but its own tragedy. It started out promising—removing the Taliban from power. It continued until Osama bin Laden was killed and Al Qaeda’s ability to project violence seriously crippled. Yet we remained. And the whole time it was to secure a government that was corrupt and could not stand on its own. The whole time we tried to train an army with loyalty only to tribe—not country—to defend and protect a country that is at best a collection of tribal governments. And that collection of decentralized authority was ripe for another rise by the Taliban. Who was willing to die to stop them? Only we were supplying the military support and funding for a government that didn’t want to fight. Meanwhile, the Taliban was on the ground, well-armed, with a philosophy and a long-term presence and mission. They would always outlast us. It was an exercise in futility for the United States to believe it could subdue this nation, when the Russians and, before that, the British, had failed. and again demonstrates the folly of trying to make a country what it is not and what its people are unwilling to defend.
Subduing another country across oceans is tough work. And while the analogy to the American revolution is a stretch (after all, the American colonies were organized, had an idealistic purpose that put liberty at the center of its ideology, and had a trained militia), it is instructive of the greater problem.
When America was on the cusp of declaring its independence in 1775, Edmund Burke commented on the temporary efficacy of force by the British: “It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.”
NOW THEY COME CLEAN—A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT
Now that Donald Trump is out of office (at least temporarily), the rats are all jumping off the sinking ship. William Barr says that Trump’s claims of fraud were “all bullshit.” Ivanka Trump notes that “Mike Pence is a good man” during the January 6th debacle. “Tell all” books abound about an unhinged man propounding ridiculous theories of election fraud, trying to steal the election through Constitutional and unconstitutional means. All of these people who now think Trump was deranged, dangerous, and/or about to employ the military for nefarious personal objectives were largely silent until January 6th. There wasn’t a patriot among them. They should have quit in principle months or years earlier. But power is a strange thing—a drug that is addictive. Being so near to the power of government was irresistible and competed against the more noble path of principled positioning—even at risk of one’s own career or reputation—all for the sake of their country and their souls.
Mike Pompeo noted in these closing days, “The crazies have taken over.” But as Maureen Dowd notes in her July 18 column in The New York Times, all these folks and others were enablers. As she said, “The crazies hadn’t taken over. They were there all along, enabling the other crazies.”
Have a great day,
Glenn
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