October 07, 2021
The catastrophe that is only beginning in Afghanistan, is the result of incompetence based in strategic narcissism, or the tendency for American leaders to define the world only in relation to the United States, and to assume that what they decide to do is decisive in securing a positive outcome.
But others, including adversaries and enemies, also enjoy authorship over the future. In Afghanistan, policies and strategies across two decades were based on what U.S. leaders preferred rather than what the situation demanded. Strategic narcissism led to self-delusion, and self-delusion provided a rationale for self-defeat.
A fundamental lesson of Afghanistan is that wars are interactive and that progress in war and diplomacy is never linear. That is why the war in Afghanistan and the broader war against jihadist terrorist organizations is not over; it is entering a new, more dangerous era. Containing the catastrophe in Afghanistan and learning from it will require U.S. leaders to confront the truth of our experience in Afghanistan and stop pretending.
Stop pretending that our surrender to the Taliban in February 2020 and subsequent concessions to that terrorist organization—which strengthened our enemies and weakened our Afghan allies—were not the principal reasons for a lost war and its consequences.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
04:30 PM
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And our tactics were dreadful; winning hearts and minds rather than the war.
But McMasters knifed Trump in the back on several occasions, you may remember Dana, so I'm not so keen on him.
That said it doesn't make him wrong.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 08, 2021 07:03 AM (SV0Nb)
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 08, 2021 03:46 PM (A0QQk)
My late best friend's sister was married to one of Trump's VP's. He made huge amounts of money and lived lavishly, but he eventually quit (or got fired). I remember when my friend got to go to stay for a week at a Trump hotel in Puerto Rico for free. Nice while you can get it.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 09, 2021 05:51 AM (nJOER)
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 09, 2021 10:13 PM (A0QQk)
As you know I worked in real estate here in St. Louis. My coworker moved to New York for a while - and couldn't get a job. He was too nice a guy and everyone told him to come back to St. Louis (or go back to Oklahoma where he was originally from) because the New York market would eat him alive, they said.
He eventually did come back. He loved New York but just hated that aspect of it.
Trump cut his teeth in the most cutthroat industry in the most cutthroat town on the planet.
Yeah; he had to winnow out a lot of bad employees to get to the good ones. And indeed he was under a microscope.
And the media never understood that Trump thrives in chaos and uses it as a tool to keep his enemies at bay; they can't get a clear shot at him when he's always in motion, and that includes his people.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 11, 2021 07:27 AM (Vzqto)
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