Trump, then Biden Afghanistan Debacle

[Chuck Naill]

It sounded like a pep talk according to the linked Reuters article.

So, you’re a coach or manager, you tell your team that whether they believe it or not, they can win.

[kazoolaw]

Not exactly: whether or not it's true we have to tell people we're winning. Just don't pretend you're surprised later.

[Chuck Naill]

Winning is the final score. You encourage people they can win. If I read what you posted correctly, the government outweighed the Taliban 300k vs 80k ??!?? I won’t dis Biden for trying.

[dneal]

It sounded like a pep talk according to the linked Reuters article.

So, you’re a coach or manager, you tell your team that whether they believe it or not, they can win.

Funny that didn’t apply to the Trump transcript.

[Chuck Naill]

What’s even more funny is you can’t tell the difference. However, this tells me you didn’t read the transcript of the January 6 speech. Wow!!

[dneal]

What’s even more funny is you can’t tell the difference. However, this tells me you didn’t read the transcript of the January 6 speech. Wow!!

Four minutes. I lost the bet to my wife, but at least you gave us a good chuckle.

[Chuck Naill]

What’s even more funny is you can’t tell the difference. However, this tells me you didn’t read the transcript of the January 6 speech. Wow!!

Four minutes. I lost the bet to my wife, but at least you gave us a good chuckle.

I laughed my ass off at her comments last night. Thanks!!

[Chuck Naill]

Did you need me to explain the difference to her? At least you said she got the vaccine.

[Chuck Naill]

Being an English major it may not be that evident…

[Chuck Naill]

Does she expect an ICU bed? Would she kick out the 8 year old who can’t get vaccinated?

[dneal]

Chuck, that is the most pathetic trolling I have seen so far. A series of posts at 1:35, 1:36, 1:37 and 2:15.

I think you are:

tgd fatty.gif

Which is:

So sad (2).jpg

[Chuck Naill]

You are the one who chose to bring your wife and her disrespectful comments into the conversatioin. Of course, there may not even be a wife. I think you are getting disparate.

[dneal]

Chuck, you can't troll me.

[Chuck Naill]

It sure seems I have been lately.

[dneal]

It sure seems I have been lately.

LOL, at least you’re consistent in your delusions.

[Chuck Naill]

It sure seems I have been lately.

LOL, at least you’re consistent in your delusions.

😂😂😂

[kazoolaw]

I think you are getting disparate.

Chuck, you silver tongued devil. I know, we all make mistakes on the keyboard, and have been betrayed by autofill, but this is one made chuckle.

Be well.

[Chuck Naill]

I think you are getting disparate.

Chuck, you silver tongued devil. I know, we all make mistakes on the keyboard, and have been betrayed by autofill, but this is one made chuckle.

Be well.

Good nothing burger…😂😂

[dneal]

Listening to the local libertarian this morning and greasing the tractor got me to thinking a little bit broader about Afghanistan. The personal thoughts have been reconciled.

This really is an obvious failure to deal with a real enemy. Truth is that we were beaten by Pakistan, not the Taliban. We turned a blind eye to it the whole time, because we needed their ground lines of communication to get materiel in. They shut it off for a couple of months, and we flew in everything for the theater. It was painful. Pakistan's support of the Taliban (and Al-Qaeda... where was Osama hiding at?) is patently obvious.

But Pakistan isn't the real enemy. How did Pakistan and Afghanistan get so radicalized in the first place? Saudi Arabia. Read Steven Schwartz, or look him up on YouTube or something. He is a Sufi Muslim (if I recall correctly) who wrote "The Two Faces of Islam". Really what he is discussing is two ends of a theological spectrum in Sunni Islam. A difference of 7th Day Adventists and Methodists - and that will make more sense to the American Christian community so I apologize to our international friends.

That's slanderous really to the 7th Day Adventists, and I'm happy to substitute if there are suggestions; because one end of the spectrum is ideologically fundamentalist Islam. There is a lot of history on it (Wahhabism). It's even woven into the Lawrence of Arabia story. The chief zealots/malcontents were once suppressed by the Ottoman Empire. As it became the "sick man" of Europe, and the British and French began contesting for the Levant and rest of region; it was free to run. Then we found oil, and it funded the spread of strict south-Arabian Hanbali Islam (Turkey and northern Arabs tend to practice Hanafi Islam, much more tolerant and why the Sufi and "whirling dervishes" are in Turkey and not Kuwait.

Saudi petro-dollars have spread Hanbali Islam globally. Pakistan, Indonesia, deep into the Horn of Africa, every Western European country, Russia/Chechnya. Many of those issues (Chechnya) are potentially legitimate. But Hanbali Islam offers disaffected second generation Muslim boys/young men an attractive ideology - not unlike the appeal of communism to western youth. Each is a road to ruin. And we buddy right up to the Saudi's. Whether he knew it or not, Trump's opening up of the American taps and slamming oil prices is an important piece of leverage on SA. I don't think anyone really thought about that, because there's too much money selling them F-15's.

I barely scratched the surface of the history and complexity in those few sentences, but radical, derived from Hanbali Islam, remains a problem. It is coming primarily from Saudi Arabia. They are funding it as I type this. They're making a killing on gas again and spending their money on U.S. technology and European construction. We turn a blind eye to the real problem.

[Chuck Naill]

From a Repuiblican pundit (Brent Stephens) who voted for Biden.

"We are a country that could not keep a demagogue from the White House; could not stop an insurrectionist mob from storming the Capitol; could not win (or at least avoid losing) a war against a morally and technologically retrograde enemy; cannot conquer a disease for which there are safe and effective vaccines; and cannot bring itself to trust the government, the news media, the scientific establishment, the police or any other institution meant to operate for the common good."

"Instead, Biden has become the emblem of the hour: headstrong but shaky, ambitious but inept. He seems to be the last person in America to realize that, whatever the theoretical merits of the decision to withdraw our remaining troops from Afghanistan, the military and intelligence assumptions on which it was built were deeply flawed, the manner in which it was executed was a national humiliation and a moral betrayal, and the timing was catastrophic."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/o...ghanistan.html