If Biden Actually Withdraws Troops from Afghanistan by 9/11, He’ll Have Done Something Good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan

“During communist rule, the PDPA government reformed the education system; education was stressed for both sexes, and widespread literacy programmes were set up.[139] By 1988, women made up 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University; 440,000 female students were enrolled in different educational institutions and 80,000 more in literacy programs.[140][need quotation to verify][better source needed] Despite improvements, large percentage of the population remained illiterate.[141] Beginning with the Soviet intervention in 1979, successive wars virtually destroyed the nation’s education system.[141] Most teachers fled during the wars to neighboring countries.[141]”

Biden will never be the progressive that the USA needs at this moment, but I hope that he does more good than bad while in office. I believe he could be persuaded to do a lot more good if we had a strong progressive wing within the Democratic Party, but we do not, unfortunately. I hope he follows through with this promise.

Mark Pontin,

I think most to the point was that last summer’s massive street actions across the U.S., together with 1/6 and the mopes putting Trump in the White House in the first place has woken some of the U.S. ruling class up to the fact that they’re skating on thin ice after leaving so many of the proles with absolutely nothing to lose.

I agree, though I am still surprised that they finally did “get it” and have begun to reckon with the arrogant folly of leaving the country’s youth with both the least to lose, in regards to benefiting from the current system, and the most to lose, in regards to decreased quality of life and lifespans, if they continue to allow it to be imposed upon them.

Z

@ Z —

I reside in the San Francisco Bay Area where Kamala the Kop got her political start and has such an electoral base as she has. She ain’t popular here.

I’m skeptical about your theory regarding her benign influence.

Because she’s not been benign before — au contraire, her history makes the Newsoms and Pelosis of the California Democrat establishment look almost good — and besides that she’s a VP, and Darth Cheney is the only one of those who’s ever been of consequence hitherto (well, short of a U.S. president needing to be replaced by their VP).

It may be she functions as a representative keeping Joe in line with what his handlers want — the handler’s handler, so to speak. Who are Joe’s ultimate handlers and owners? We’d all love to know.

Z … you smoking way too much of that kamala.

It’s been really hard for anti-Dems to fathom let alone accept any good that might have come or is to come from the Biden regime, just as it was nearly impossible for anti-Rs and anti-Trumpers to accept or fathom any good that might have come from the Trump regime.

Nihilists, of course, see no good in any regime.

The question is whether the good outweighs the awful, and so far, I can’t tell. There’s plenty of awful, but there’s a lot of good, too, and not just in “tone” or style.

Biden is clearly not the audio-animatronic figure or wax corpse he’s been made out to be among some of the political fabulists, but how much of what we see going on and assume is going on behind the curtain is directed by Biden is hard to say just as it was with Trump or Obama or B Clinton or GWB or go as far back as you want. You never know, and even the post-mortem hagiographies won’t tell you true.

As for Kamala, there’s no telling. As DA, AG and Senator she was clearly on a meteoric career path, but substance wise, there was no there there. Still isn’t that I can see. Blank slate. Blank stare. Nothin’ there.

Or is there?

We will know them by their works and little else. So far their works have been less than needed, more than expected, and mostly on the better side than worse.

Lord knows that I detest Biden, but good if he does it. I said the same thing about Trump.

Good. If. He. Does. It.

We’ve been down this road before.

When Biden made the announcement about withdrawing support from KSA invasion of Yemen I thought then that he might have received a briefing from Defense and the Joint Chiefs about how much our overseas involvements are really costing us. I know Biden ain’t too bright, but his working class roots are for real, however much betrayed over the years, and I think he does know how to count them pennies and nickels.

Some in DC may have deluded themselves–I hope it is a delusion and not a trade off–that they have reluctantly to give up the fantasy of ruling Afghanistan in order to have their cherished project of invading Iran.

There may also be some markers being set down. The Bidens saw how Obama was treated by Netanyahoo, and I am wondering, in line with the feminist coup referred to above, if Jill plus Kamala ain’t about to let that happen again. Jill, because she is protective of her man, and Kamala because she is not going to have her ambitions and prestige compromised by neo-con intriguers.

The theoretical withdrawal won’t increase opium production (which is also grown in Mexico). The last time the Taliban ran the country opium production was essentially eliminated, though that might not hold this time. The warlords we’ve supported tend to be the drug runners. If we had really wanted to stabilize and develop Afghanistan we would have made sure they got a UN opium production exemption in order to legitimize the crop and its benefits to the nation. Economically it has long been an important crop because it keeps, trumping the lack of transport infrastructure. Most afghan poppy fields are double cropped. Poppies are planted in the fall and overwinter, with spring melt they jump and the latex is harvested in time to plant vegetables for local consumption. South Asia doesn’t have enough opiate medications for legitimate medical needs. Afghanistan could have grown and processed legal opium for the near abroad market rather than the heroin black market. You know who grows most of the legal opium? France and Australia.

As to SuperKop Kamala’s ” lack of record” . . . she has left a trail of poison slime all over California. Her record is very clear and may be judged by the smell it leaves behind.

And it was her granting of immunity and impunity to Steve Mnuchin which marked her as Wall Street’s Choice to succeed President Joe.

If she is the DemParty nominee, I hope that Tulsi Gabbard will run through the Republican Party primary season so I can vote for Gabbard in the Rep Primary in Michigan. If by some bizarre accident Gabbard were to become the Republican nominee, I would vote for Gabbard to keep the vile Wall Street Clintonite filth Draculamala Harris from getting elected.

The initial reaction to the Biden vow to remove all US troops from Afghanistan by the 20th Anniversary drop dead date is largely positive throughout the Establishment — media, permanent government, Pentagon, Deep State, whatever. There is no push back that I can see yet. Not that it isn’t there. We never really know what kind of pushing and squeezing is taking place in the corridors of power. But word is troops are already being reassigned/removed/drawn down pretty much as they were during the latter stages of the Trump regime though they won’t all be gone by May 1. What happens to the NATO forces, the ever-present aerial killing machines, and the special assignment wet workers is not yet clear, if it ever will be.

Afghanistan is absolutely a failed state, something recognized clearly both before and after the announcement of the invasion following 9/11/2001. To the anti-war left, this was a perfect opportunity to “bomb them with butter; bribe them with hope” something that has not been done to this day. The idea was not to invade and slaughter and commit endless atrocities which would never be forgiven and only lead to an endless cycle of revenge. No, send food, medicine, and whatever the people of Afghanistan need in whatever amount they need, build the people up, and begin the long process of correcting the foreign policy errors of decades if not centuries. Everybody has got it wrong, and nobody ever seems to want to get it right.

Realistically, why is Afghanistan a “state” at all? But that aside, the US foreign policy since 9/11 has been catastrophic, something that was well understood it would be at the time the Afghan operation was being stood up, and there was at least a chance to think outside the box in response to the Saudi-generated attacks against the United States. But no, it didn’t happen.

Deep cynicism about what any government leader says regarding Afghanistan is understandable.

Meanwhile Kamala’s actions and inaction as DA and AG in California and criticisms thereof are well known and were a big part of what got her deplatformed during the presidential primary. But she’s not in those roles, nor is she the grandstanding senator she played for a while, and the question is what she up to as VP, something not entirely clear at all. She is by all accounts no eminence grise a la Cheney, and if she’s operating the Biden-puppet, it’s not obvious. If anything, given her long public record, she’d naturally be alarmed at many of Biden’s actions and statements, no? In fact, Biden himself would be alarmed at what he’s been doing and saying as president given his actions and inactions as senator.

No, this looks like something else entirely. What it is remains to be seen, but if good things are happening for large numbers of people, best to let them I say.

Afghanistan. Opium, minerals, strategic location. Follow the money and twisted agendas of the players from whichever side of the board they play. Heap big mess . . . KH, too. Scary, tragic and oh so predictable.
I wonder if pornsters are posting KH breast pics on their sites. Not doing a search.
Anyway, Afghanistan Afghanistan how screwed you are, have been and will be . . .

I have read that parts of the Afghan mountains contain valuable minerals and ores of various sorts. And that China is interested in them.

Here are links to a couple of stories about how that is going or not going.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/27/afghanistan-china-spy-ring-mcc-mining-negotiations-mineral-wealth/

https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/the-story-behind-chinas-long-stalled-mine-in-afghanistan/

Now . . . China would not want to do any mining in the midst of social disorder and unrest. So I suggest the following scenario on a ‘what if’ basis. ‘What if’ the reason America is still fighting in Afghanistan is because the ChinaGov quietly told the AmericaGov that unless America stays in Afghanistan and keeps fighting, China will quietly dump all-at-once all the U S Treasury Debt Instruments it has. Under this scenario, we are fighting to Keep Afghanistan Chinese. Or to make it that way. And maybe the ChinaGov has decided to allow us to leave, for whatever the reason.

It’s just a thought.

Anyway, if America leaves, then China can do whatever is convenient to keep the Metal Mountains quiet and peaceful so China can mine copper and whatever else China wants to mind. And if the Pashtuns don’t like it, China can round them all up and take them all on a long Concentration Labor Camping Holiday till the Pashtuns decide they like it just fine.

And it wouldn’t bother me a bit if that’s what China decides to do. China is the Rising Hegemon now. Too bad, so sad. Deal with it.

China currently holds around $1.1 trillion in Treasuries. So it dumps them all. What happens? Well, first it would have to find buyers. It would probably have to sell them at a loss and might not be able to get rid of them all even then. So how much does China want to lose? The yuan would appreciate against the dollar. So Chinese exports to the US would become more expensive and less attractive. At the same time, US investments in a more expensive China would become less attractive.

Now you could say that China flooding the Treasuries market would make it harder for the US to sell new Treasuries. And that would be true, but not critical. I don’t agree with MMT on very much, but the US has a fiat currency and doesn’t need to finance its debt through Treasuries. It just structures or pretends that the dollar isn’t fiat. But with the Trump tax cut, the covid relief bills, and things opening up making Treasuries less attractive as a flight to safety, the Fed has not done such a great job of selling all the Treasuries the government has been putting out. All that happens is that they go on the Fed’s balance sheet. This has gone from about $3 trillion to $7 trillion, not all from Treasuries.. This has been so devastating that you wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it.

China could certainly do things that would disrupt financial and economic markets. The downside is that any disruption would be more costly to China than the US.

I don’t know that the ChinaGov would ever dump treasuries or not. But the ChinaGov could always make the quiet threat privately. How would I ever know? I am not a fly on the walls of the Great and the Good.

Anyway, its just a thought and purely speculative.

Bruce W.: “I could use a side-hustle.”

Be nice. Biden, his staff, and his handlers do at least seem to grasp that the Shining City On the Hill ™ has a seriously discontented population and are making an effort to look like they’re turning the page.

So Z is huffing the hopium pipe. I don’t blame him.

But while Big Business is on board for right now, there are systemic reasons why neither an infrastructure package of $2 trillion nor even $28 trillion, like they gave the banks after the 2008 crash, are likely to turn this ship around. The fact is, America’s owners would actually have to change the way they do business. They aren’t ready to do that.

Withdrawal of troops by September 11. Oh the symbolism! Seems less likely just for that little theatrical flourish though I hope I’m wrong.

A bit surprised that some of you folks seem to believe that the “donor class” has significant influence on the day-to-day operations at the Biden White House. I doubt that’s the case. It may have been during Donald T’s four year circus run when Sheldon Adelson could probably just call Trump on his cellphone and have him commit to signing off on the murder of a Iranian military official during Trump’s walk from the 8th hole greens to the tees on 9th, but that is not the case with most administrations. This is not the case with the Biden Administration. It wasn’t the case in Obama’s either.

Bob Rubin got Obama to kiss the ring during his 2008 democratic party primary run by having him publicly commit to cut entitlements during a Hamilton Project speech to big donors, but he also made damn sure that he had people in the White House to represent his interests. He basically hand-picked Obama’s economic team and had Rahm run the show to make sure Citi and Wall Street were made whole and then some.

You get stuff done inside. You can’t run a sane and nominally functional government having billionaires calling in from their yachts to weigh in on matters. Just imagine Biden asking around to his staff: What did Haim say? Anyone hear from Larry Finks yet today? Was Tom Steyer a yay or nay?

No, the donor class’s greatest influence, greatest leverage over a politician, is generally during their campaign. That’s why they vet them and they may have bet big on the ID pol value of Kamala and she could have decided it is presently in her best interests to build support with the public rather than cater to them.

The donors do “signal” what they want though through their mouthpieces in the media to give the politicians cues and try to promote their positions, but it’s well within the laws of physics for the politicians to ignore them once they get into office.

The donor class has been running Larry Summers out to promote their views but this time it may have backfired on them because there’s not a more qualified person in the world to incite a fem d’etat in the White House than Larry “Women are Genetically Dumber than Men” Summers.

Z

Speaking of cool women leaders who keep us on track instead of being bellicose like men, the vote to destroy Libya was brought to you by Hillary, Susan Rice and Stephanie Power who won the vote to invade 51 to 49, overcoming the hesitancy of those awful men in the Obama administration who had doubts about it.

I worked for women like them back in the day. Far from pushing the men they worked with to be less macho and mindless, they went the other way. They felt obliged to prove themselves by being even more butch than the men they worked for. Opportunist is not a synonym for feminist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4uotsKHuNQ

The link is an interview with Lyle Goldstein, research professor and founding director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.

Much as I enjoyed the cartoons in the link that Plague Species shared, Furry’s analysis of Putin’s motives sounds like it came from MSNBC. So this link to the Naval War College is offered to provide a more detailed picture of what Russia and China are thinking and doing.

One clear fact that emerges is that China will be taking Taiwan back. It’s a question of when not if. Right now they are watching how things go in Hong Kong to decide if they will be able to reclaim Taiwan peacefully of if they will need force. If they have to use force, professor Goldstein says Taiwan will be able to hold out about two weeks.

Maybe that makes what we do in Afghanistan even more crucial. When China takes back Taiwan, we had better hope that our civilian misleaders are smart enough not to launch a hot war over it. Maybe showing that we have enough sense to withdraw from Afghanistan now will set a precedent for being sensible in the future when the risks and the temptations to be foolish will be greater.

“The history of the island of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of a culture based on agriculture around 3000 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today’s Taiwanese indigenous peoples. The island was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed by an influx of Hoklo people including Hakka immigrants from the Fujian and Guangdong areas of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. The Spanish built a settlement in the north for a brief period but were driven out by the Dutch in 1642.

In 1662, Koxinga, a loyalist of the Ming dynasty who had lost control of mainland China in 1644, defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His forces were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683, and parts of Taiwan became increasingly integrated into the Qing empire. Following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded the island, along with Penghu, to the Empire of Japan. Taiwan produced rice and sugar to be exported to the Empire of Japan, and also served as a base for the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II. Japanese imperial education was implemented in Taiwan and many Taiwanese also fought for Japan during the war.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan

So, with a history spanning 5,000 years of independence, China had PARTIAL control of Taiwan between the years 1683 and 1895, a period of 212 years, a period only slightly longer than Europeans PARTIALLY “ruled” the island and considerably shorter than the period of time England held Ireland. And by PARTIAL, we’re talking less than 10% of the island. Only an ignoramus of history would see China’s “reclamation” of Taiwan as anything other than naked colonialism.

Should England “reclaim” Ireland? Well clearly, some here think such an outcome “just”. I think not. Taiwan is not part of China…anymore than Ireland is “part” of England. Only eurocentric colonialists and CCP members view it as “part” of China.

lead story on krystal and saagar this morning

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/548363-rising-april-15-2021

and this

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/15/blinken-in-afghanistan-to-sell-biden-troop-withdrawal-481795

shorter Hugh: strawmen are us!

Hugh equates Russia and China as land grabbing empires. One presumes he was taught this in school so let’s look at the numbers so we don’t share his ignorance.

At the end of the cold war, Russia, which was known as the Soviet Union or USSR, lost 23.8 percent of its national territory, 48.5 percent of its population, 41 of the GDP, 39.4 percent of its industrial potential [nearly half of US potential], as well as 44.6 percent of its military capability due to the division of the Soviet Armed Forces among the former Soviet republics.

At the end of the cold war China lost nothing, indeed it has been gaining colonies at a fairly rapid clip. The procedure is simple, claim that territories that are held, at one point in history, however briefly by a Han-Chinese Empire, then conquer and annex. In September 1949 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made it a top priority to incorporate Tibet, Taiwan, Hainan Island, and the Pescadores into the PRC through force or concession. Since Tibet was unlikely to voluntarily give up its independence, Mao, in December 1949 ordered that preparations be made to invade Tibet and force the Tibetan Government to concede Tibet’ dissolution. Communist China has claimed various portions of India, Vietnam, Philippines, USSR, Mongolia et al in series of disputes based at one time or another. All these land claims are based on the racist idea that Han-Chinese-Empires transcend time and place. And these Chinese territorial claims have been largely ratified by Nixon/Carter/Bush-I/Clinton/Bush-II/Obama/Biden…what Hugh refers to as “the hate America crowd”.

Because of his poor schooling, Hugh was not informed of these international developments, which is why he can glibly compare China to Russia. His ignorance is not to be laughed at, it’s to be pitied!

Bruce,

the idea that Kamala, Plan B, is a revolutionary socialist waiting in the wings (in disguise?) preposterous.

That is preposterous. Who’s been saying that?

Z

@someofparts,

Yes. God made a scroll button.

Ché Pasa, the basic message of Trump, McConnell, and the Republican party to spending money on ordinary Americans is “We hate you, and hope you die.” As for Biden, I hope he gets some good things done. For me, I look on him as an Establishment guy. So I try not to read any real changes of heart into what he does and prepare to be disappointed.

I’ll add a couple of things.

Firstly, I know a little about this stuff because I used to have to write about it for a living. See forex —

https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/01/08/163958/how-i-learned-to-keep-worrying-even-if-north-korea-didnt-test-an-h-bomb/

Secondly, I’ve digressed a little from the ostensible subject of Ian’s OP here. But not as much as it may seem, because all this is relevant to the U.S., its imperial decline, and the end of the Pax Americana.

Here’s why. For its Cold War allies to believe the U.S. nuclear umbrella would be extended to them — that is, the U.S. would get into a nuclear war that might destroy it if a country on the other side of the world got flattened by the USSR or the ROC — was always a stretch credibility-wise. Establishing credibility on that score was always problematic for the U.S. and was actually the underlying rationale for the “domino theory,” as the simplified version fed to the proles was called.

Now, peering into the near-future as U.S. credibility and the Pax Americana end, one possible result is that in a 21st century with a few big dogs — predominantly Han China, a resurgent Russia, a much diminished U.S. (if it survives) — and many smaller, technologically capable states, those smaller states may resort to their own independent nuclear deterrents. For that matter, what price a Catalan independence movement with its own nukes?

The Little Boy Hiroshima bomb was a uranium device using a simple gun design. There was not enough uranium ready for a second device. So for the Fat Man Nagasaki bomb plutonium was used. It was a much more difficult design. For the first device you’re basically shooting one uranium mass into another. For the second you have to have a precisely timed explosive compression around the plutonium core. An H bomb riffs off this by using an inner plutonium or uranium core with lithium as a source for its tritium.

“During the Cold War, the U.S. deliberately extended its ‘nuclear umbrella’ to allies to discourage them from having their own nuclear deterrent program.”

Seems like someone forgot to tell the French and British.