Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: December 2018

Is the Afghan War Lost?

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On December 10, 2018

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Danny Sjursen makes the case at the American Conservative.

The piece as a whole is worth reading, but the bottom line is that the Afghan government’s own military and police are hopeless: They are losing to the Taliban. The US military, with current force levels, cannot hold most of the country. Unless the US is willing to surge again, it will lose the war.

And even if it surges, that won’t win the war, it will only delay the inevitable.

Before the Afghan war, I remember reading an interview with the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, which I’ve since been unable to find. He said, paraphrased, “You will invade. You will take the cities. We will retreat to the countryside. You will not be able to destroy us. You will eventually leave and we will win.”

It struck me as prophetic at the time, and it has played out exactly as he expected.

The US is incapable of “nation building,” serious insurgency warfare, and is bad at occupation. (This wasn’t always the case, but it is now.)

The strategy, if there was to be a war at all, should always have been to go in, accomplish limited goals, and be out within three months–six at the most.

(This is somewhat true of Iraq, where the US should have knocked over Saddam, had a proscription list, and picked its Colonel to lead the country, leaving within six months. The difference is that a Colonel might have stood a chance in Iraq, no one but the Taliban is going to rule Afghanistan without ongoing foreign support.)

The US was always going “lose” in Afghanistan if it did not limit its goals sharply. The only question is how many people will die before the US gets tired of the ulcer and leaves.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Our Germophobic, Plastic-addicted Society

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On December 7, 2018

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Recently saw this picture, and had to laugh, because you’d never see this today in the West.


Every sandwich, today, would be individually wrapped, at the least in plastic wrap, but probably with a hard plastic container as well.

We are a bunch of germophobes, but it serves us ill. When I was a child in Malaysia, there was a rule among the ex-pats. The kids who were kept from all contact with “local” germs, were sick as heck. (One friend had his toys boiled regularly. He was sick all the time.) Those of us who were allowed to have normal contact, had no more illnesses than the locals (less, because we were properly inoculated and so on.)

Meanwhile we have vast stretches of ocean which are clogged by plastic. Plastic is showing up in both marine and terrestrial wildlife, and making its way into our own food-chain.

 

The rule for all consumer goods, and indeed, all manufacturing, should be that if it doesn’t degrade, or the manufacturer doesn’t guarantee recycling, with a bond posted to ensure performance and lack of strategic bankruptcy, it doesn’t get made. In those rare (and they should be very rare), cases where as a society, we want to make an exception, waivers should be required, and they should be paid for: the cost should be multiple of the monetary damage they do by not being recyclable. (At least two times, and multiple because monetary damage is not the only damage.)

Add to this laws and enforcement of laws banning “planned obsolescence” and we might be well on our way to un-fucking our environment. Or, I suppose, we could continue to prioritize short-term profit, neurotic fear of germs, and convenience. I mean, who gives a shit if our children and grandchildren have a planetary environment which can support life at the worst, or an environment which is incredibly unhealthy (which plastic’s estrogenic effects have already created)?

(Note: I’m in the hospital (serious, but unlikely to kill me), so things like comment moderation may not happen until I’m out, or may be delayed. Likewise, typos and other errors are unlikely to be fixed.)

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Admin Notice

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On December 3, 2018

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I’m going to the hospital for major, but unlikely to be serious, surgery. I’ll most likely be in for ten days to two weeks, with two months recovery after that. I go in Tuesday.

The odds of death are about 1 percent. In that unlikely event, all my writing goes into the commons (with attribution), not to any heirs, and people may scrape this site or whatever. Those with preview copies of “Construction of Reality” should share them in case of death. People with author rights can post here if they want until the domain registration expires. (This is only if I die, eh? No posting or commons-ing without permission (posting permission has been given to Mandos) until you hear I have died or I’m brain dead or something.)

More likely, I’ll be fine, just not enjoying myself much. I’ve put some posts in the queue for the two weeks I’m likely to be in the hospital. Moderation of comments may be non-existent, so if you get caught in moderation (an automated process, remember) please bear up. Other people with modding rights might check in, but they might not.

I’ll likely hang out on Twitter a bit while in the hospital if you want updates–hospital is borrring!–@iwelsh. I certainly hope all my readers will be having a better time than I’m likely to be!

The French Yellow Jacket Protests

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On December 2, 2018

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So, there are major protests across France, protesting Macron’s policies. Macron has raised fuel taxes and removed worker protections, among other things. He is a neoliberal’s neoliberal, who believes in free labor markets (a.k.a. markets where workers can be easily fired, made to work overtime, and so on.)

His popularity rating is 20 percent, there is no chance that he will be re-elected, and he is unlikely to give in to any protests–both because he is a true believer and because his future is assured if he pushes through as much destruction of France’s social state as possible. He will be rewarded by the rich.

Some of the protests have been somewhat violent (I am not all that impressed by property violence as “terrible”), and, of course, the French police have brutally beaten many protestors. It always amuses me to watch the so-called brave surrounding a man to kick him while he’s down. Any man who participates in such a beating outs himself as a coward, the same as any man who tortures someone who cannot resist.

While it seems unlikely, it wouldn’t bother me if the current French state was overthrown.

More likely, what will matter is whether La Pen or Melenchon (who is a real left-winger) wins the next election. Hopefully the French are not so stupid as to vote for another pretty neoliberal.

Little that has been done by Macron, or other neoliberal twats, cannot be undone if a government is elected with a mandate to do so.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Deportation

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On December 2, 2018

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**MANDOS POST**

I notice there’s been a sort of low-key, left-wing argument going on lately about open borders. I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that when it comes to the movement of people, I consider myself an open borders supporter, and by no means consider that an inherently “neoliberal” position as some people claim, depending on your definition of neoliberalism (something that is rarely fully resolved…).

There are a lot of reasons why I take the open borders position for humans — despite being less positive about the flow of goods and capital, to say the least. Some of those are arguable, such as the impact on wages and so forth. But there’s one show-stopper issue for me with the concept of enforced national borders — the enforcement part. Enforcing national borders necessarily requires a concept of deportation. Why? Because until we have a Star Trek force field and magical entry authorization detectors and a flawless, uncorrupt border control system, “unwanted” people will always get in. And then the border only means anything if you can remove those who cross it illegally.

But removing them requires not only a police force given the responsibility of exercising physical violence to control a non-violent crime, it also necessarily requires the entire apparatus of the carceral and surveillance state. For example: Due process must be given in order to deportation power prevent abuses (very common), but this requires preventing the object of deportation from “running to ground” to avoid enforcement of a negative outcome. Which requires jails, courts, and so on, and for nation-states of any size, all these things at quite a large scale. In order to catch border-violating individuals, a surveillance state of great power and detail (indeed, such as now exists and expands) must be implemented. Indeed, if it is not, then the worst wage effects of an undocumented labour class ensue quite logically.

Do I need to explain why a comprehensive carceral and surveillance state is a very bad thing, and indeed, how bad it is?

For this reason, I find it hard to take left-wing critiques of free movement and defenses of borders seriously until they engage with the topic of enforcement and particularly the mechanics of deportation. It is all well and good to say that people shouldn’t have to leave their communities of origin for employment, for important family reasons, or for their own amusement, and here we would all like to see, I hope, a world in which that is the case. It’s another thing to argue for a regime that works to stop people from moving, for whatever reason. And I suspect the overlords of the world are, as a group (if not individually), just fine with either regime, at least depending on the ascendant faction.

The Life and Death of George Bush, Sr.: The Best of a Bad Bunch

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On December 1, 2018

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Well, he’s dead at 94. He lived a long time, appears to have chosen his wife badly, and had kids of whom he may have been proud.

He was the best of the Republican Presidents from Reagan on, but still, overall, not very good.

His decision not to go to Baghdad was incorrect, and it allowed lot of Saddam’s enemies to get crushed after he encouraged them to rise. It would have been simple enough, even, to use American air-power to keep the Republican Guard down, and the rebellion would have succeeded. That would have avoided that big mess under his son, Bush, Jr., who appears to have wanted to get Saddam to avenge his father.

The Gulf War was questionable on its face, as Kuwait was created, basically, to keep oil from Iraq, and under the control of a small, very corrupt elite. The execution of the Iraq war included a lot of destruction of civilian infrastructure, including sewage systems. It was a war crime and led to a lot of death and suffering.

Meanwhile, Bush, Sr. was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal: clearly illegal. He won the ’88 election on the back of the Willie Horton ad, a clearly racially incendiary strategy.

He did do a decent job of shepherding the end of the USSR (the aftermath of which was fucked up beyond belief by Clinton, which has lead directly to the current US/Russia problems).

The best of a bad bunch, I suppose. Better than Reagan, his own son, or Trump, that’s for sure.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

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