Former Task Unit Bruiser commander Jocko Willink put out a video recently in which he pretended to be the Commander in Chief of America, and framed a hypothetical correct and proper response to the catastrophe in Afghanistan:
It is a powerful, emotive, effective response, to be sure. That is the kind of patriotic call-to-arms and action that any red-blooded American can get behind. And I have the highest respect for Jocko himself, whose message of extreme ownership, personal responsibility, and dealing with failure and moving forward, is PRECISELY what most people need to hear. We are surrounded by weak, ineffective, useless men who do not own their mistakes.
None of that reduces the probability that Mr. Willink is deeply mistaken about America’s ability to secure a foothold in a country that it fled in shame and disarray.
America’s military is an $800 BILLION paper tiger that has been soaked in battery acid. The American military is now highly risk-averse and totally dependent on high-tech, mind-bogglingly expensive toys that it cannot bear to risk in the fires of actual war. Even if the Fake President were somehow cognitively capable of ordering the US Marines or SPECWARCOM to storm Afghanistan’s major airports and hold them, and then open up corridors for foreign nationals to be evacuated, and then bomb the shit out of any equipment that the Americans left behind, that does NOT mean that it would actually go that way.
Remember that, in war, the other guy always gets a vote too. The Taliban are not a bunch of pushovers. Certainly they are technologically backward and useless at using modern weaponry, tactics, and strategies – but they don’t need them. The most powerful and technologically sophisticated military in the world couldn’t bring them to heel after 20 years, and won’t be able to do it now. The Taliban are willing to fight and die to the last man to defend their belief system, territory, and way of life – barbaric and stupid though that way of life might be.
And you kind of have to admire them for having the guts to do that. Americans certainly don’t have that kind of steely resolve anymore – just look at its southern border and you’ll see what I mean.
And then there’s that whole silly notion of bombing the shit out of the Taliban’s terrorist training camps if they ever build them – which THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL, because Izzlamists. Exactly how are you going to deter them from doing what they do using nothing but Predator drones and Hellfire missiles???
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly in favour of sending Izzlamists to meet their fake moon-god via a Hellfire missile up the arse – they like that sort of thing, being goat-buggerers and kiddie-fiddlers as they are. And indeed I am quite in favour of executing paedophiles (and Communists) as a general rule, simply for the sake of public safety. But that doesn’t mean that such a “strategery”, to coin a Bushism, would actually be effective at stopping them.
The only way to do that is to have an actual credible force on the ground that can enforce the law and kill people and break things. And that force cannot be the US military. America tried occupying the Rockpile for a decade and insisted on outstaying its welcome for a decade more. It didn’t work. The only way to do it is to institute an effective and strong central government that can hold Izzlamists to account, that is legitimate in the eyes of the people.
Good luck with something like that in a country as tribal and divided as Afghanistan. Ain’t gonna happen. Never did happen in hundreds of years.
Furthermore, the entire world has now seen, broadcast on live television with absolutely no room for doubt or question, that the sole hyperpower’s military now depends entirely on a bunch of illiterate goat-humpers for permission to take off and land in order to evacuate its own nationals:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not deny that the U.S. must ask the Taliban for permission to get Americans out of Afghanistan during an interview over the weekend, days before President Joe Biden caved to the jihadis’ August 31 evacuation deadline.
Blinken made it clear on Sunday that the Taliban is calling the shots
During the latest edition of CBS’s Face the Nation, host Maj. Elliott Garrett questioned Blinken over the administration’s disastrous handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which led to the Taliban taking control of the country and declaring victory from Kabul on August 15.
Garrett asked, “Someone in our audience might listen to you, Mr. Secretary, and say, ‘Oh, so we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave.’ True or not true?”
“They are in control of Kabul. That is the reality. That’s the reality that we have to deal with,” Blinken replied.
Garrett followed up, “How comfortable are you with that, Mr. Secretary?”
“What I’m focused on, what we’re all focused on is getting people out and making sure that we’re doing everything possible to do that. And in this case, it is, I think, a requirement of the job is to be in contact with the Taliban, which controls Kabul,” Bliken responded.
That quote tells you everything you need to know.
The US military has B-2 “stealth” bombers (which Russian and Chinese long-wave radar can detect quite readily) that cost, and I’m not making this up, AT LEAST $2 BILLION apeice. It has what both American and foreign military experts agree is the most advanced and capable 5th-generation air supremacy jet in the F-22 Raptor – but each one of those quite excellent planes costs $334 MILLION apiece once you count the R&D costs on top of the actual manufacturing costs. America has a large fleet of Joint Strike Flying Pianos that have essentially zero air-to-ground strike capabilities and no ground-support capacity, which cost at least $135 million each.
The US Army spends much of its training budget on useless and pointless “fitness tests” (which everyone knows don’t test fitness at all, and which will likely be relegated to the dumpster-fire of bad ideas very soon), and on understanding “White Rage”. The Fruit Salad Brigade that inhabits the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel have absolutely no idea how to fight and win wars anymore – but they know very well how to get the next promotion and create the greenest airbase and the most fun-free naval vessel.
This is not a military capable of winning wars. This is a military good for basically acting as a doorstop. Every one of these points indicates a military that, as I have stated often before, is fundamentally unserious about winning wars.
None of that is an insult to the good men who serve their country in the rank and file. Back in WWI, in the aftermath of the disasters at the Somme and Gallipoli, the phrase most often used to describe the way that the idiots in charge of Allied “strategy” (insofar as it could be called such with a straight face) sent their troops to be slaughtered en masse was, of course, “lions led by donkeys”. And you simply don’t get much more ass-faced than the current crop of morons in the Puzzle Palace.
The men that they lead, know how to fight – even at this late hour, even now, there are plenty of American soldiers left. They know what it means to kill people and break things. And they probably are itching to get into the fray and evacuate their fellow Americans from the hellhole that is contemporary Goathumpistan.
But the leaders themselves are hopelessly incompetent morons.
So… what lies ahead? Is there any way out of this situation with honour?
The short answer is: probably not, but there may be ways to delay the final reckoning.
It is hard to observe the fall of the American Empire without drawing parallels to the Fall of the Roman Empire. In reality, that “fall” actually started way back in the 2nd Century, starting with the passing of the last of the Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius. From him onward, the Romans were afflicted with weak, useless, incompetent, and/or extremely corrupt rulers and emperors who wasted the Roman treasury and destroyed the fighting spirit of the legendary Roman legions.
Yet most historians would argue that the Roman Empire only really fell in 476 AD, when the last “Roman” emperor, Romulus Augustulus, simply stepped off the throne – in Ravenna, not Rome, by the way, since the Imperial capital had long since moved after Alaric sacked it in 410 AD – and gave it up to Odoacer.
It is worth remembering that the last “Roman” emperor was about as Roman as I am – his father originated from Pannonia, which is now split between at least 5 different central European countries, including Austria and Hungary. And the first Gothic emperor had himself been an officer in the Roman army.
That outcome is extremely unlikely for the USA. There will be no “gradual” transition of power away from the Federal government, which is corrupt and evil to its core, to something that is marginally less venal, stupid, demented, and incompetent. It’s simply not going to happen. The rupture, when it comes, will be extreme and sudden.
How, then, can that reckoning be delayed?
For this, cast your mind back to 451 AD, and the Battle of Chalons – also known as the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. This was the climactic battle between one of “the Last of the Romans”, Flavius Aetius (who was actually Scythian and/or Gothic by blood), and Attila the Hun. Up to 250,000 men clashed between the two armies in a battle that literally determined the entire fate of Western Europe. Aetius won, and delayed the destruction of the Western Empire by another 25 years or so.
The modern parallel is for a strong and capable general, with massive popular and military support, to take over the US government and dispose of this odd construct of “democracy” with which the Americans have saddled themselves.
I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But I’ve been quite spectacularly wrong before.
Ultimately, strong, competent, capable men will return to power and lead the wreckage of the American Empire back out of the dark and into the light. But it will likely take a generation before we see this. You and I will live to see trials and tribulations unlike anything that we could possibly have imagined in our worst nightmares.
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