So here's something that's been on my mind for some time: negative income tax. I don't really have a strong opinion on this, because I'm still reading about it and trying to understand it. Here's what I find puzzling about it: it's usually assumed to be a left-wing thing (it's essentially the same thing as universal basic income), but the funny thing about it is that it was defended by no less of a right wing figure than Milton Friedman. And what's even more confusing is that other right wingers attacked Friedman because of this, while some left wingers showed support for this concept.
So here's something that's been on my mind for some time: negative income tax. I don't really have a strong opinion on this, because I'm still reading about it and trying to understand it. Here's what I find puzzling about it: it's usually assumed to be a left-wing thing (it's essentially the same thing as universal basic income), but the funny thing about it is that it was defended by no less of a right wing figure than Milton Friedman. And what's even more confusing is that other right wingers attacked Friedman because of this, while some left wingers showed support for this concept.
So, what is your take on negative income tax?
It really isn't all that dissimilar to the child tax credit, which was expanded with the latest COVID-19 relief bill. It really doesn't surprise me that Milton Friedman would be for it, because he was an economist whose goal was seeing his ideas succeed. His ideas were more destructive than about 99% of human beings, but that is partially because of the people who appropriated them as gospel. Which gets us to.......the GOP. Who don't care about his ideas so much as using those ideas to engage in one of their favorite pastimes, which is shitting on poor people at every opportunity. But I mean, the whole "universal basic income" thing that was floated by Andrew Yang in the primaries was just this in a roundabout way. The 3 rounds of stimulus during the pandemic is the closest we've ever come, and likely ever will.
As is often the case for me, Josh Marshall at TPM sums up the end of our misguided 20-year disaster in Afghanistan. I've bolded the most important point:
Yesterday I wrote this: “In the coming days or weeks we’re likely to see a situation in which the government only controls Kabul. If you’re in the Afghan army how hard are you going to fight in that final battle? Why fight? The question answers itself.”
As we can see this morning, not days or weeks but hours. Overnight in the United States the army and government of Afghanistan melted away and remaining authorities are in the process over turning over power to a transitional Taliban government. It’s over.
People are lining up to say that this is all on Joe Biden, that he “lost” Afghanistan, that he mismanaged or failed to manage the US withdrawal, that this is “on him”. In the calculus of US military-political culture that’s likely right. But I see it quite differently. This seems to me like the ultimate vindication of his decision.
I’ll come back to some other points on the Times but in an analysis piece out this morning they quote retired General Douglas Lute who ran the Afghanistan desk under Bush and Obama. “Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal. Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement. But the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.”
What we have seen over the last couple weeks shows decisively and irrefutably that the entire politico-military project in Afghanistan was a sham. Lots of criticism from this or that person, look at what’s happened to everything we built, look what’s been squandered. But what you built was the Afghan state and the military. What we’re seeing here shows you built nothing. We built nothing. The Taliban haven’t so much conquered the post-2002 Afghan state as nudged it over. There was simply nothing there.
I’ve seen lots of US vets, diplomats and military hands on Twitter over the last few days. And I can see this comes as a gut punch to so many. We’ve had a couple generations of young Americans fighting there: more than 2,300 dead, many more traumatic brain injuries, brutal effort. As I noted yesterday we have a profound obligation to protect the Afghans who worked with us and are now imperiled by that association. We can and should honor that effort and sacrifice. But that doesn’t change the picture we can see here clearly in front of us.
The Beltway press is up in arms about this decision. Which isn't surprising since they've never taken a single look in the mirror at their culpability in getting us into this mess and ESPECIALLY Iraq in the first place. The jingoistic "our American ego is bruised" feelings you will witness in the next few days is but a small sample of the bullshit they gobbled up from the Bush Administration and regurgitated to the populace at large, becoming nothing more than a propaganda outfit for war, war and more war until at least late 2005 when it was clear both endeavors were unmitigated disasters that should have never been undertaken.
I don't blame Trump and his hypothetical exit plan either. This is on George W. Bush. And, quite frankly, despite the sense you'll get from watching cable news and reading mainstream outlets on social media, I suspect this decision is solidly in line with public opinion.
If anybody is curious about the topic of Afghanistan and the Taliban, years ago I read this book The Bookseller of Kabul. Pretty cheap on Amazon if you're interested. Captures in a very compelling way what daily life is like for a relatively progressive family living under the Taliban's regime, with a strong focus on the lives of the women.
As is often the case for me, Josh Marshall at TPM sums up the end of our misguided 20-year disaster in Afghanistan. I've bolded the most important point:
Yesterday I wrote this: “In the coming days or weeks we’re likely to see a situation in which the government only controls Kabul. If you’re in the Afghan army how hard are you going to fight in that final battle? Why fight? The question answers itself.”
As we can see this morning, not days or weeks but hours. Overnight in the United States the army and government of Afghanistan melted away and remaining authorities are in the process over turning over power to a transitional Taliban government. It’s over.
People are lining up to say that this is all on Joe Biden, that he “lost” Afghanistan, that he mismanaged or failed to manage the US withdrawal, that this is “on him”. In the calculus of US military-political culture that’s likely right. But I see it quite differently. This seems to me like the ultimate vindication of his decision.
I’ll come back to some other points on the Times but in an analysis piece out this morning they quote retired General Douglas Lute who ran the Afghanistan desk under Bush and Obama. “Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal. Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement. But the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.”
What we have seen over the last couple weeks shows decisively and irrefutably that the entire politico-military project in Afghanistan was a sham. Lots of criticism from this or that person, look at what’s happened to everything we built, look what’s been squandered. But what you built was the Afghan state and the military. What we’re seeing here shows you built nothing. We built nothing. The Taliban haven’t so much conquered the post-2002 Afghan state as nudged it over. There was simply nothing there.
I’ve seen lots of US vets, diplomats and military hands on Twitter over the last few days. And I can see this comes as a gut punch to so many. We’ve had a couple generations of young Americans fighting there: more than 2,300 dead, many more traumatic brain injuries, brutal effort. As I noted yesterday we have a profound obligation to protect the Afghans who worked with us and are now imperiled by that association. We can and should honor that effort and sacrifice. But that doesn’t change the picture we can see here clearly in front of us.
The Beltway press is up in arms about this decision. Which isn't surprising since they've never taken a single look in the mirror at their culpability in getting us into this mess and ESPECIALLY Iraq in the first place. The jingoistic "our American ego is bruised" feelings you will witness in the next few days is but a small sample of the bullshit they gobbled up from the Bush Administration and regurgitated to the populace at large, becoming nothing more than a propaganda outfit for war, war and more war until at least late 2005 when it was clear both endeavors were unmitigated disasters that should have never been undertaken.
I don't blame Trump and his hypothetical exit plan either. This is on George W. Bush. And, quite frankly, despite the sense you'll get from watching cable news and reading mainstream outlets on social media, I suspect this decision is solidly in line with public opinion.
Yeah, this debacle was multi-billions of dollars well spent. The only hope I have is that we have some embedded assets now that would be able to contribute when the inevitable terrorist organizations start popping up in Afghanistan. What a friggin' joke!
Afghanistan is going to be viewed in line with the Vietnam war when history gets a hold of it. Both Trump and Biden should both be lauded for seeing it that way and making efforts to pull out of country. I think Trump took some missteps (inviting the Taliban to Camp David for one big one) that blundered a peaceful exit and transition of power that left Biden unable to do more than he is doing now, but I do not blame either of them for what is happening in the country at the moment.
The biggest boondoggle about it was the western civilizations who took part in the occupancy from the beginning, pushed their own 'tried and true' government and military structure on the country, when it's culture, geography and societies ran counter to western democracy norms. Nationalism isn't a strong concept with Afghanistan's people, yet, it's needed to build a strong defensive national military.
Hopefully the US has learnt not to push their ideologies on the rest of the world and prevent the next decades long war from happening.
Afghanistan is going to be viewed in line with the Vietnam war when history gets a hold of it. Both Trump and Biden should both be lauded for seeing it that way and making efforts to pull out of country. I think Trump took some missteps (inviting the Taliban to Camp David for one big one) that blundered a peaceful exit and transition of power that left Biden unable to do more than he is doing now, but I do not blame either of them for what is happening in the country at the moment.
The biggest boondoggle about it was the western civilizations who took part in the occupancy from the beginning, pushed their own 'tried and true' government and military structure on the country, when it's culture, geography and societies ran counter to western democracy norms. Nationalism isn't a strong concept with Afghanistan's people, yet, it's needed to build a strong defensive national military.
Hopefully the US has learnt not to push their ideologies on the rest of the world and prevent the next decades long war from happening.
And get the folks that helped us out of there before they're slaughtered...
It is utterly amazing to me that everyone is more than willing to blame Biden for going through with this, and Trump for nearly hosting negotiations with the Taliban and clearly setting the stage for this, yet Liz Cheney is invited on TV to condemm the decision, yet there isn't even a hint of a discussion about her father and his boss. They've basically been completly absolved, or, to be more accurate, erased from the history of this conflict. No one lets LBJ or Nixon off the hook for Vietnam and Cambodia, and no one blames Ford for leaving. Not in a historical sense. But the exact opposite dynamic is taking place now. It's as if the media wants Americans to have no memory of anything that happened over 365 days ago.
I'm definitely more of a "resistance lib" than one of the progressives who uses the term as a pejorative, but one thing many liberals got 1000% wrong (and I've been harping on this whole time) is letting Trump awfulness rehabilitate George W. Bush, and propping up and giving platforms to so many of his neo-con syncophants in the media because they became "never Trump" Republicans.
We were baited, and we took the bait. Now look at us. Nevermind the fact that Trump's takeover of the GOP and all that resulted probably could not have taken place when it did without the relentless nationalistic propoganda of the Bush years leaving some awful fertile soil to plant authoritarian seeds in.
During the Iraq War, a common phrase those in the liberal blogosphere used was "Friedman Unit". This was in reference to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman becoming a running joke among many of us, because he would constantly churn out columns stating that "we just need another six months, and everything will turn around". We've been in Afghanistan for 40 Friedman units, and clearly accomplished absolutely nothing. And his clones in the media are trotting out the same nonsense he was writing in 2005 this morning about Afghanistan. "Just one more year, just five more years".
Biden got some predictions about how quickly it would fall apart wrong speaking about this six weeks ago, and he'll have to own those statements. But I am glad he's sticking to his guns, because apparently, he asked his Generals point blank, if the military isn't ready to stand up yet, when will they be?? They couldn't answer him. And I'm sure the decision was sealed in that moment.
It is utterly amazing to me that everyone is more than willing to blame Biden for going through with this, and Trump for nearly hosting negotiations with the Taliban and clearly setting the stage for this, yet Liz Cheney is invited on TV to condemm the decision, yet there isn't even a hint of a discussion about her father and his boss. They've basically been completly absolved, or, to be more accurate, erased from the history of this conflict. No one lets LBJ or Nixon off the hook for Vietnam and Cambodia, and no one blames Ford for leaving. Not in a historical sense. But the exact opposite dynamic is taking place now. It's as if the media wants Americans to have no memory of anything that happened over 365 days ago.
I'm definitely more of a "resistance lib" than one of the progressives who uses the term as a pejorative, but one thing many liberals got 1000% wrong (and I've been harping on this whole time) is letting Trump awfulness rehabilitate George W. Bush, and propping up and giving platforms to so many of his neo-con syncophants in the media because they became "never Trump" Republicans.
Even the Daily Beast is piling on Biden criticism for this disaster. This might go down in history as an epic mistake...
Edit: I'm not saying I agree with the Biden criticism. I do think if this was going to be the end result, and right now it sure looks like it, why in the Hell did we raise the hopes of all those secular Afghanistanis years ago? And why did we spend $80 billion equipping this sham of a regime?There's no way Biden comes out of this looking good. I'm starting to wonder if he's doing this only because he has no intention of running for a second term. That would be remarkably admirable in a way...
It is utterly amazing to me that everyone is more than willing to blame Biden for going through with this, and Trump for nearly hosting negotiations with the Taliban and clearly setting the stage for this, yet Liz Cheney is invited on TV to condemm the decision, yet there isn't even a hint of a discussion about her father and his boss. They've basically been completly absolved, or, to be more accurate, erased from the history of this conflict. No one lets LBJ or Nixon off the hook for Vietnam and Cambodia, and no one blames Ford for leaving. Not in a historical sense. But the exact opposite dynamic is taking place now. It's as if the media wants Americans to have no memory of anything that happened over 365 days ago.
I'm definitely more of a "resistance lib" than one of the progressives who uses the term as a pejorative, but one thing many liberals got 1000% wrong (and I've been harping on this whole time) is letting Trump awfulness rehabilitate George W. Bush, and propping up and giving platforms to so many of his neo-con syncophants in the media because they became "never Trump" Republicans.
Even the Daily Beast is piling on Biden criticism for this disaster. This might go down in history as an epic mistake...
The first few paragraphs tell the whole story I think. It is not hyperbole to say the Taliban said "we're coming to take Kabul" and the Afghan Army said "sounds good, we'll hold the door open for you". To say they "folded" isn't really a strong enough term. Similar forces in Iraq are maybe a notch less pathetic. Everything about both narratives of building sustainable democracies and militaries was an utter mirage. Complete unmitigated bullshit.
This defeat has a thousand fathers, and Obama, Trump and Biden all deserve to have to claim some of them. But the guy in office from 2000-2008 should be saddled with about 750.
Here's another question, mostly out of curiosity because I'm not from the USA. How well does the food stamp program work? Does it make a lot of difference to lives of poor people? As far as I know, the USA is one of the few countries in the world that uses food stamps. It seems like a good idea, at least in theory, so I find it puzzling that other countries haven't implemented their own versions of that idea. Unless I'm missing something, of course.
Here's another question, mostly out of curiosity because I'm not from the USA. How well does the food stamp program work? Does it make a lot of difference to lives of poor people? As far as I know, the USA is one of the few countries in the world that uses food stamps. It seems like a good idea, at least in theory, so I find it puzzling that other countries haven't implemented their own versions of that idea. Unless I'm missing something, of course.
It's a direct stimulant to the economy, and it's placed on cards so that any "fraud" (which only exists to the extent that any system will have some level of fraud) would have to be carried out in a roundabout way. Moreover, that and WIC (another supplement program) are the only way the children of many poor single mothers are able to eat. I will certainly swallow someone occasionally selling use of their card for a carton of smokes so millions of children don't starve.
Yeah. People can quibble all the want about who "should" receive the blame for something like this, but at the end of the day - Biden officially gave the order and put together the withdraw from Afghanistan knowing that the current Afghan government was incapable of holding onto the country.
I firmly believe we shouldnt have been there, and after we went in, getting out was always going to lead to this point - but someone was going to have to wear that decision around their neck. It's going to be Biden.
If Trump had done it, it would have been him.
I do think it's really gross how there's a resurgence of neoconservative political rhetoric coming out now that this has happened. While the GOP under Trump adopted a lot of awful views, one of the better ones was to be relatively non-interventionist (so much as they ever could be). It's clear they're willing to walk back on that the second they think it's politically advantageous. Maybe not surprising - but still gross.
Edit - at the end of the day, there's a lot of "American Exceptionalism" built into the DNA of this country. Accepting that 20 years was spent in Afghanistan for nothing isnt going to sit well with a lot of people. They're going to blame Biden. It will cost him (and Democrats) electorally. We'll see how bad.
Yeah. People can quibble all the want about who "should" receive the blame for something like this, but at the end of the day - Biden officially gave the order and put together the withdraw from Afghanistan knowing that the current Afghan government was incapable of holding onto the country.
I firmly believe we shouldnt have been there, and after we went in, getting out was always going to lead to this point - but someone was going to have to wear that decision around their neck. It's going to be Biden.
If Trump had done it, it would have been him.
I do think it's really gross how there's a resurgence of neoconservative political rhetoric coming out now that this has happened. While the GOP under Trump adopted a lot of awful views, one of the better ones was to be relatively non-interventionist (so much as they ever could be). It's clear they're willing to walk back on that the second they think it's politically advantageous. Maybe not surprising - but still gross.
Edit - at the end of the day, there's a lot of "American Exceptionalism" built into the DNA of this country. Accepting that 20 years was spent in Afghanistan for nothing isnt going to sit well with a lot of people. They're going to blame Biden. It will cost him (and Democrats) electorally. We'll see how bad.
Most of the people now crowing about the right of women under the Taliban haven't put a single thought into the subject until 24 hours ago. I believe for the vast majority of people, seeing a picture of a helicopter similar to Saigon hurts their, for lack of a better term, "American ego". The real crime in their mind is that America LOOKS bad, not what is going to happen to individual citizens of Afghanistan.
Which is frankly why I don't think this will hurt Biden politically in the long-term. Because no one is going to be talking about this by the time September rolls around, if that long. It's a 50/50 proposition Meet the Press and Face the Nation even have this on a list of subjects a week from now. The American attention span is less the life cycle of a gnat. The vast majority of Americans don't want to be there anymore, and frankly, won't care about this story by August 22, 2021.
The media is going to move the approval numbers on this policy slightly, because when it comes to prolonging wars, all they know how to do is, as Noam Chomsky put it, "manufacture consent". They're too invested, and they were too wrong about all of this for too long to admit their mistake now. So yeah, Biden will get most of the blame in the short term. I highly doubt he is unaware of this. Good for him for moving forward with it anyway.
I'll also point out that even talking about the Afghan government and military is practically an abstract concept in and of itself, which is kinda the whole point I was trying to convey with my first post about this today. It's clear given the events of the last 48 hours that neither really existed in any meaningful way. The current power structure couldn't hold the country because there IS no power structure without an American military presence. To quote Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wall Street:
Fugayzi, fugazi. It's a whazy. It's a woozie. It's fairy dust. It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fucking real.
It is utterly amazing to me that everyone is more than willing to blame Biden for going through with this, and Trump for nearly hosting negotiations with the Taliban and clearly setting the stage for this, yet Liz Cheney is invited on TV to condemm the decision, yet there isn't even a hint of a discussion about her father and his boss. They've basically been completly absolved, or, to be more accurate, erased from the history of this conflict. No one lets LBJ or Nixon off the hook for Vietnam and Cambodia, and no one blames Ford for leaving. Not in a historical sense. But the exact opposite dynamic is taking place now. It's as if the media wants Americans to have no memory of anything that happened over 365 days ago.
I'm definitely more of a "resistance lib" than one of the progressives who uses the term as a pejorative, but one thing many liberals got 1000% wrong (and I've been harping on this whole time) is letting Trump awfulness rehabilitate George W. Bush, and propping up and giving platforms to so many of his neo-con syncophants in the media because they became "never Trump" Republicans.
It's because, unlike Vietnam, which was a slow burn war effort that cultivated in mass public disapproval that the US was still apart of it, the war in Afghanistan was reverse. The general public supported the mission of defeating the Taliban when the war started but has mostly been forgotten about by the general public.
The perception right now is that America failed, and that perception doesn't resonate well with Americans (or American media). The country casts itself as the best at everything, with no real rival, that being defeated by what was described as cave dwellers is counter intuitive of what was suppose to happen and pulling out equates to defeat.
But the US and their allies were defeated in Afghanistan long before this. Hell, the Iraq war was waged to distract from the failures of this one, IMO. But one is not defeated until one gives up. The media and in return the general public could keep ignoring what was happening in the country, while the US kept sending money and equipment and soldiers to carry out the illusion of success. Let's ignore the close to 5500 people killed because of this war in 2020 alone just so a president doesn't have to wear that badge of defeat.
That is how it is being perceived right now though. I highly doubt history will look at it the same way.
@m7600 Foods stamps and WIC (WIC is a supplemental program for pregnant mothers and very young children) works very well most of the time. Its been keeping us fed for about 5 years now. The biggest problem with it is the random blackouts. Occasionally whatever system tracks these benefits just goes down for anywhere from a day to a couple weeks.
It's worth pointing out that, in regards to 9/11, the Taliban were involved only so much as they allowed Bin Laden to wander back and forth through a series of cave systems with impunity. Bin Laden was Saudi, the hijackers were Saudi, and they were funded with Saudi money. But we, of course, were not going to invade Saudi Arabia. So we picked what was viewed as an easy target to satiate the public's need for blood, but who the Russian could have told you was "the graveyard of empires".
It's worth pointing out that, in regards to 9/11, the Taliban were involved only so much as they allowed Bin Laden to wander back and forth through a series of cave systems with impunity. Bin Laden was Saudi, the hijackers were Saudi, and they were funded with Saudi money. But we, of course, were not going to invade Saudi Arabia. So we picked what was viewed as an easy target to satiate the public's need for blood, but who the Russian could have told you was "the graveyard of empires".
It's worth pointing out that, in regards to 9/11, the Taliban were involved only so much as they allowed Bin Laden to wander back and forth through a series of cave systems with impunity. Bin Laden was Saudi, the hijackers were Saudi, and they were funded with Saudi money. But we, of course, were not going to invade Saudi Arabia. So we picked what was viewed as an easy target to satiate the public's need for blood, but who the Russian could have told you was "the graveyard of empires".
And we didn't even take their opium fields...
Eh, we're doing a bang-up job synthetically producing the same thing.
The simple reality is that America hasn't engaged in a legitimate, non-imperialistic, non-defense contractor boondoggle of an armed conflict in about 70 years. I'd say Kosovo was clearly a net positive, but there really wasn't a hell of alot of heavy lifting required to achieve that result. Everything else for the last 3 generations has been an abject disaster. If Americans aren't used to military failures by now, it's because they've been telling themselves fairy tales.
And, hand to god, I think the political press and, by extension, people who obsess about politics care about this about 100x more than your average citizen who doesn't live on Twitter. They haven't cared what we've been doing while we're there for 17 years, so why should we assume they'll care how we leave other than saying "oh, that's finally over??" In some shape or form, the last 3 Presidents have been given a mandate to get the hell out of these conflicts. And now we're seeing follow-through that doesn't involve constant pushbacks, delays and equivocation. Biden choose to rip the band-aid off. You certainly can't call it timid or cowardly.
Biden’s poll results won’t be adversely affected by this. Hard to feel anything but sorrow for female students in Afghanistan right now though, most of them have never known life under the Taliban coalition (ironically enough Taliban means student I think). America, the UK, and other countries should at least be willing to take in refugees from the country. About 70,000 persons were repatriated since 2001 on the grounds that the country was now a safe location for them...
There were a few minor successes in the 90s: Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Kosovo, which may perhaps have given the impression to that generation of politicians that regime change wasn’t as fiendishly complex as it seemed. Now China. Pakistan, Turkey etc. will become the major players in influencing the tribal coalitions again.
Biden's speech on this was defiant and strong, and you can get away with alot of shit in American politics if you say things forcefully with conviction. He took responsibility for not anticipating how fast the Taliban would sweep across the country, and also pointed out that is why we're leaving. Because this is pointless, and his responsibility is the lives of American soldiers he is asking to fight there, and that we aren't doing it anymore. Said the buck stops with him. Someone had to eat a shit sandwich here, and Biden is taking that bullet. Maybe it hurts him, or maybe he understands the American electorate better than we give him credit for:
Nicole Wallace (former Bush speechwriter who has probably done more to atone than most never-Trumpers) said on MSNBC just now that 95% of Americans will agree with his speech and 95% of the Beltway press and foreign policy elite will disagree with it. Obviously, those numbers are wildly exaggerated to make a point, but I think her point stands, and it's exactly what I was getting at late last night. I think there is going to be a huge disconnect here between normal voters and people who base all their opinions on the DC bubble.
Biden's speech on this was defiant and strong, and you can get away with alot of shit in American politics if you say things forcefully with conviction. He took responsibility for not anticipating how fast the Taliban would sweep across the country, and also pointed out that is why we're leaving. Because this is pointless, and his responsibility is the lives of American soldiers he is asking to fight there, and that we aren't doing it anymore. Said the buck stops with him. Someone had to eat a shit sandwich here, and Biden is taking that bullet. Maybe it hurts him, or maybe he understands the American electorate better than we give him credit for:
Nicole Wallace (former Bush speechwriter who has probably done more to atone than most never-Trumpers) said on MSNBC just now that 95% of Americans will agree with his speech and 95% of the Beltway press and foreign policy elite will disagree with it. Obviously, those numbers are wildly exaggerated to make a point, but I think her point stands, and it's exactly what I was getting at late last night. I think there is going to be a huge disconnect here between normal voters and people who base all their opinions on the DC bubble.
Isnt it incredible the difference in tone and rhetoric between Biden and Trump? Could you imagine Trump ever giving a speech like this, where he acknowledges that responsibility ultimately lays with him? I honestly cannot.
I'm still not convinced this wont create a large negative news cycle that will ultimately harm Biden - but kudos to him for handling it head on.
Having lived out of the US now, one thing I'd like to push back on is the tendency to make the US the only protagonists of every story. I don't think the US is completely off the hook here. I definitely think there's a strong case for opening up more room for refugees here. It's the least we can do. But, ultimately, I just don't see how the US could ever create a government that would be consonant with our own values in a country where the society simply does not share our values.
From 2013, but it's one of the few things I've seen with polling data about some key attitudes across the Muslim world. But just flip through the pages and look for the stats out of Afghanistan.
Some highlights to me: 79% support the death penalty for leaving the religion! 85% support stoning as a punishment for adultery. 61% believe Sharia law should apply even to non-Muslims. 39% say attacks against civilians in defense of the religion are justified, one of the highest among the countries polled.
Given these widespread beliefs, I just don't see how there could be a government that successfully married the beliefs of Afghanistan's populace with values that the US and its allies would find palatable. My understanding is that the Taliban isn't actually all that popular there. But what does seem popular is the very conservative and anti-democratic worldview.
Having lived out of the US now, one thing I'd like to push back on is the tendency to make the US the only protagonists of every story. I don't think the US is completely off the hook here. I definitely think there's a strong case for opening up more room for refugees here. It's the least we can do. But, ultimately, I just don't see how the US could ever create a government that would be consonant with our own values in a country where the society simply does not share our values.
From 2013, but it's one of the few things I've seen with polling data about some key attitudes across the Muslim world. But just flip through the pages and look for the stats out of Afghanistan.
Some highlights to me: 79% support the death penalty for leaving the religion! 85% support stoning as a punishment for adultery. 61% believe Sharia law should apply even to non-Muslims. 39% say attacks against civilians in defense of the religion are justified, one of the highest among the countries polled.
Given these widespread beliefs, I just don't see how there could be a government that successfully married the beliefs of Afghanistan's populace with values that the US and its allies would find palatable. My understanding is that the Taliban isn't actually all that popular there. But what does seem popular is the very conservative and anti-democratic worldview.
I didn't really know how to approach the subject before reading this, but it struck me that nearly 100% of the people trying to cling to the planes leaving the tarmac were grown men. There are no woman and children to be found. It's a certainty that the Taliban regards woman as nothing more than objects (at best), but this scene had me wondering just how much the AVERAGE Afghan male is basically in lockstep with most of what they believe about the opposite gender.
This is why I encourage folks to read the Bookseller of Kabul I listed above. The bookseller is a relatively progressive person for an Afghan, but the reader quickly learns that his worldview is still what we would call extremely misogynistic and authoritarian. It's a good insight into what the parameters of political thought are in the country.
Generally speaking while attitudes were changing men were dubious about female participation in politics, but generally supportive of female schooling. About 75% of people feared for their personal safety...
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So, what is your take on negative income tax?
It really isn't all that dissimilar to the child tax credit, which was expanded with the latest COVID-19 relief bill. It really doesn't surprise me that Milton Friedman would be for it, because he was an economist whose goal was seeing his ideas succeed. His ideas were more destructive than about 99% of human beings, but that is partially because of the people who appropriated them as gospel. Which gets us to.......the GOP. Who don't care about his ideas so much as using those ideas to engage in one of their favorite pastimes, which is shitting on poor people at every opportunity. But I mean, the whole "universal basic income" thing that was floated by Andrew Yang in the primaries was just this in a roundabout way. The 3 rounds of stimulus during the pandemic is the closest we've ever come, and likely ever will.
Yesterday I wrote this: “In the coming days or weeks we’re likely to see a situation in which the government only controls Kabul. If you’re in the Afghan army how hard are you going to fight in that final battle? Why fight? The question answers itself.”
As we can see this morning, not days or weeks but hours. Overnight in the United States the army and government of Afghanistan melted away and remaining authorities are in the process over turning over power to a transitional Taliban government. It’s over.
People are lining up to say that this is all on Joe Biden, that he “lost” Afghanistan, that he mismanaged or failed to manage the US withdrawal, that this is “on him”. In the calculus of US military-political culture that’s likely right. But I see it quite differently. This seems to me like the ultimate vindication of his decision.
I’ll come back to some other points on the Times but in an analysis piece out this morning they quote retired General Douglas Lute who ran the Afghanistan desk under Bush and Obama. “Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal. Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement. But the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.”
What we have seen over the last couple weeks shows decisively and irrefutably that the entire politico-military project in Afghanistan was a sham. Lots of criticism from this or that person, look at what’s happened to everything we built, look what’s been squandered. But what you built was the Afghan state and the military. What we’re seeing here shows you built nothing. We built nothing. The Taliban haven’t so much conquered the post-2002 Afghan state as nudged it over. There was simply nothing there.
I’ve seen lots of US vets, diplomats and military hands on Twitter over the last few days. And I can see this comes as a gut punch to so many. We’ve had a couple generations of young Americans fighting there: more than 2,300 dead, many more traumatic brain injuries, brutal effort. As I noted yesterday we have a profound obligation to protect the Afghans who worked with us and are now imperiled by that association. We can and should honor that effort and sacrifice. But that doesn’t change the picture we can see here clearly in front of us.
The Beltway press is up in arms about this decision. Which isn't surprising since they've never taken a single look in the mirror at their culpability in getting us into this mess and ESPECIALLY Iraq in the first place. The jingoistic "our American ego is bruised" feelings you will witness in the next few days is but a small sample of the bullshit they gobbled up from the Bush Administration and regurgitated to the populace at large, becoming nothing more than a propaganda outfit for war, war and more war until at least late 2005 when it was clear both endeavors were unmitigated disasters that should have never been undertaken.
I don't blame Trump and his hypothetical exit plan either. This is on George W. Bush. And, quite frankly, despite the sense you'll get from watching cable news and reading mainstream outlets on social media, I suspect this decision is solidly in line with public opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Bookseller-Kabul-Asne-Seierstad/dp/0316159417/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw9uKIBhA8EiwAYPUS3LebxqP5ajGg8fFkUGUeeTHq9o4o5l7SOcNQq-sfBHRCUU1j3rUIhBoCLcYQAvD_BwE&hvadid=241648267586&hvdev=c&hvlocint=9015727&hvlocphy=9069751&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=14753352022248963053&hvtargid=kwd-135597842&hydadcr=9338_10386088&keywords=bookseller+of+kabul&qid=1629037958&sr=8-1
Yeah, this debacle was multi-billions of dollars well spent. The only hope I have is that we have some embedded assets now that would be able to contribute when the inevitable terrorist organizations start popping up in Afghanistan. What a friggin' joke!
The biggest boondoggle about it was the western civilizations who took part in the occupancy from the beginning, pushed their own 'tried and true' government and military structure on the country, when it's culture, geography and societies ran counter to western democracy norms. Nationalism isn't a strong concept with Afghanistan's people, yet, it's needed to build a strong defensive national military.
Hopefully the US has learnt not to push their ideologies on the rest of the world and prevent the next decades long war from happening.
And get the folks that helped us out of there before they're slaughtered...
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-08-13/osama-bin-ladens-911-catastrophic-success
I'm definitely more of a "resistance lib" than one of the progressives who uses the term as a pejorative, but one thing many liberals got 1000% wrong (and I've been harping on this whole time) is letting Trump awfulness rehabilitate George W. Bush, and propping up and giving platforms to so many of his neo-con syncophants in the media because they became "never Trump" Republicans.
We were baited, and we took the bait. Now look at us. Nevermind the fact that Trump's takeover of the GOP and all that resulted probably could not have taken place when it did without the relentless nationalistic propoganda of the Bush years leaving some awful fertile soil to plant authoritarian seeds in.
During the Iraq War, a common phrase those in the liberal blogosphere used was "Friedman Unit". This was in reference to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman becoming a running joke among many of us, because he would constantly churn out columns stating that "we just need another six months, and everything will turn around". We've been in Afghanistan for 40 Friedman units, and clearly accomplished absolutely nothing. And his clones in the media are trotting out the same nonsense he was writing in 2005 this morning about Afghanistan. "Just one more year, just five more years".
Biden got some predictions about how quickly it would fall apart wrong speaking about this six weeks ago, and he'll have to own those statements. But I am glad he's sticking to his guns, because apparently, he asked his Generals point blank, if the military isn't ready to stand up yet, when will they be?? They couldn't answer him. And I'm sure the decision was sealed in that moment.
Even the Daily Beast is piling on Biden criticism for this disaster. This might go down in history as an epic mistake...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/taliban-at-gates-of-kabul-as-afghanistan-collapses-without-us-support?ref=home
Edit: I'm not saying I agree with the Biden criticism. I do think if this was going to be the end result, and right now it sure looks like it, why in the Hell did we raise the hopes of all those secular Afghanistanis years ago? And why did we spend $80 billion equipping this sham of a regime?There's no way Biden comes out of this looking good. I'm starting to wonder if he's doing this only because he has no intention of running for a second term. That would be remarkably admirable in a way...
The first few paragraphs tell the whole story I think. It is not hyperbole to say the Taliban said "we're coming to take Kabul" and the Afghan Army said "sounds good, we'll hold the door open for you". To say they "folded" isn't really a strong enough term. Similar forces in Iraq are maybe a notch less pathetic. Everything about both narratives of building sustainable democracies and militaries was an utter mirage. Complete unmitigated bullshit.
This defeat has a thousand fathers, and Obama, Trump and Biden all deserve to have to claim some of them. But the guy in office from 2000-2008 should be saddled with about 750.
It's a direct stimulant to the economy, and it's placed on cards so that any "fraud" (which only exists to the extent that any system will have some level of fraud) would have to be carried out in a roundabout way. Moreover, that and WIC (another supplement program) are the only way the children of many poor single mothers are able to eat. I will certainly swallow someone occasionally selling use of their card for a carton of smokes so millions of children don't starve.
I firmly believe we shouldnt have been there, and after we went in, getting out was always going to lead to this point - but someone was going to have to wear that decision around their neck. It's going to be Biden.
If Trump had done it, it would have been him.
I do think it's really gross how there's a resurgence of neoconservative political rhetoric coming out now that this has happened. While the GOP under Trump adopted a lot of awful views, one of the better ones was to be relatively non-interventionist (so much as they ever could be). It's clear they're willing to walk back on that the second they think it's politically advantageous. Maybe not surprising - but still gross.
Edit - at the end of the day, there's a lot of "American Exceptionalism" built into the DNA of this country. Accepting that 20 years was spent in Afghanistan for nothing isnt going to sit well with a lot of people. They're going to blame Biden. It will cost him (and Democrats) electorally. We'll see how bad.
Most of the people now crowing about the right of women under the Taliban haven't put a single thought into the subject until 24 hours ago. I believe for the vast majority of people, seeing a picture of a helicopter similar to Saigon hurts their, for lack of a better term, "American ego". The real crime in their mind is that America LOOKS bad, not what is going to happen to individual citizens of Afghanistan.
Which is frankly why I don't think this will hurt Biden politically in the long-term. Because no one is going to be talking about this by the time September rolls around, if that long. It's a 50/50 proposition Meet the Press and Face the Nation even have this on a list of subjects a week from now. The American attention span is less the life cycle of a gnat. The vast majority of Americans don't want to be there anymore, and frankly, won't care about this story by August 22, 2021.
The media is going to move the approval numbers on this policy slightly, because when it comes to prolonging wars, all they know how to do is, as Noam Chomsky put it, "manufacture consent". They're too invested, and they were too wrong about all of this for too long to admit their mistake now. So yeah, Biden will get most of the blame in the short term. I highly doubt he is unaware of this. Good for him for moving forward with it anyway.
I'll also point out that even talking about the Afghan government and military is practically an abstract concept in and of itself, which is kinda the whole point I was trying to convey with my first post about this today. It's clear given the events of the last 48 hours that neither really existed in any meaningful way. The current power structure couldn't hold the country because there IS no power structure without an American military presence. To quote Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wall Street:
Fugayzi, fugazi. It's a whazy. It's a woozie. It's fairy dust. It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fucking real.
It's because, unlike Vietnam, which was a slow burn war effort that cultivated in mass public disapproval that the US was still apart of it, the war in Afghanistan was reverse. The general public supported the mission of defeating the Taliban when the war started but has mostly been forgotten about by the general public.
The perception right now is that America failed, and that perception doesn't resonate well with Americans (or American media). The country casts itself as the best at everything, with no real rival, that being defeated by what was described as cave dwellers is counter intuitive of what was suppose to happen and pulling out equates to defeat.
But the US and their allies were defeated in Afghanistan long before this. Hell, the Iraq war was waged to distract from the failures of this one, IMO. But one is not defeated until one gives up. The media and in return the general public could keep ignoring what was happening in the country, while the US kept sending money and equipment and soldiers to carry out the illusion of success. Let's ignore the close to 5500 people killed because of this war in 2020 alone just so a president doesn't have to wear that badge of defeat.
That is how it is being perceived right now though. I highly doubt history will look at it the same way.
And we didn't even take their opium fields...
Eh, we're doing a bang-up job synthetically producing the same thing.
And, hand to god, I think the political press and, by extension, people who obsess about politics care about this about 100x more than your average citizen who doesn't live on Twitter. They haven't cared what we've been doing while we're there for 17 years, so why should we assume they'll care how we leave other than saying "oh, that's finally over??" In some shape or form, the last 3 Presidents have been given a mandate to get the hell out of these conflicts. And now we're seeing follow-through that doesn't involve constant pushbacks, delays and equivocation. Biden choose to rip the band-aid off. You certainly can't call it timid or cowardly.
There were a few minor successes in the 90s: Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Kosovo, which may perhaps have given the impression to that generation of politicians that regime change wasn’t as fiendishly complex as it seemed. Now China. Pakistan, Turkey etc. will become the major players in influencing the tribal coalitions again.
Nicole Wallace (former Bush speechwriter who has probably done more to atone than most never-Trumpers) said on MSNBC just now that 95% of Americans will agree with his speech and 95% of the Beltway press and foreign policy elite will disagree with it. Obviously, those numbers are wildly exaggerated to make a point, but I think her point stands, and it's exactly what I was getting at late last night. I think there is going to be a huge disconnect here between normal voters and people who base all their opinions on the DC bubble.
Isnt it incredible the difference in tone and rhetoric between Biden and Trump? Could you imagine Trump ever giving a speech like this, where he acknowledges that responsibility ultimately lays with him? I honestly cannot.
I'm still not convinced this wont create a large negative news cycle that will ultimately harm Biden - but kudos to him for handling it head on.
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/
From 2013, but it's one of the few things I've seen with polling data about some key attitudes across the Muslim world. But just flip through the pages and look for the stats out of Afghanistan.
Some highlights to me: 79% support the death penalty for leaving the religion! 85% support stoning as a punishment for adultery. 61% believe Sharia law should apply even to non-Muslims. 39% say attacks against civilians in defense of the religion are justified, one of the highest among the countries polled.
Given these widespread beliefs, I just don't see how there could be a government that successfully married the beliefs of Afghanistan's populace with values that the US and its allies would find palatable. My understanding is that the Taliban isn't actually all that popular there. But what does seem popular is the very conservative and anti-democratic worldview.
I didn't really know how to approach the subject before reading this, but it struck me that nearly 100% of the people trying to cling to the planes leaving the tarmac were grown men. There are no woman and children to be found. It's a certainty that the Taliban regards woman as nothing more than objects (at best), but this scene had me wondering just how much the AVERAGE Afghan male is basically in lockstep with most of what they believe about the opposite gender.
https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019_Afghan_Survey_Executive-Summary.pdf
Generally speaking while attitudes were changing men were dubious about female participation in politics, but generally supportive of female schooling. About 75% of people feared for their personal safety...