Going off track again: According to an Associated Press story, two now conveniently retired generals who no longer have to answer to their commander-in-chief, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie,
publicly exposed for the first time the strain and differences the military leaders had with the Biden administration in the final days of the war. Two of those key differences included that the military had advised that the U.S. keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability and a concern that the State Department was not moving fast enough to get an evacuation started.
While in 2021 McKenzie testified that he believed that the sudden collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government was rooted in the Trump-Taliban “agreement,” and just a week ago took “full responsibility” for the Abbey Gate fiasco at the Kabul Airport, he nevertheless joined Milley in passing the buck to the Biden administration regarding the botched evacuation, despite the fact that the AP noted was “severely constrained by previous withdrawal agreements negotiated by former President Donald Trump" and that the military's "top commanders said they had enough resources to handle the evacuation.”
For Republicans, the yet another hearing three years on concerning the Kabul evacuation is just another political stunt to try to damage Biden while ignoring the Trump administration’s yet one more half-hearted and failed attempt at appeasement with our enemies until he became bored and left U.S. interests vulnerable, the mess they created to be cleaned-up by someone else (see Iran and North Korea) if it still could be.
Georgetown University professor Paul Miller observed that Trump’s policies in Afghanistan was a grab-bag of previous failed efforts. After first vowing to leave the country, Trump suddenly decided he was going to “win” the war. Miller noted that “Trump had no real sense of what was at stake in the war or why to stay” and that again, once he become “bored” and decided to get out of Afghanistan, he decided to be a “deal maker” and “negotiate” with the Taliban without any preconditions.
In fact, instead of demanding a “ceasefire,” Trump only asked the Taliban not to attack U.S. troops:
Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban that obliged the U.S, to withdrawal all military forces within 14 months in exchange for a pledge by the Taliban that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for attacks against the United States or its allies—a pledge for which there were no enforcement mechanisms in the agreement—and to begin talks with the Afghan government toward a ceasefire and political settlement. The agreement did not oblige the Taliban to denounce al-Qaeda, acknowledge their responsibility for the 2001 attacks, or take proactive military or law enforcement action against them. It contained only a weak pledge by the Taliban “not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds … transit Afghanistan,” or use Afghan passports.
Miller noted that the Taliban’s deputy leader was allowed an op-ed in the New York Times in which he made no mention of Al-Qaeda or regret for 9-11, suggesting that the activities of unnamed “warmongering players” had been “exaggerated” by the West. Furthermore, Miller noted that “the U.N.—hardly a “warmongering player”—publicly judged that the Taliban retained ties to al-Qaeda after signing the peace deal, but the Trump administration withdrew U.S. troops anyway, bringing the level down to 2,500 at the end of Trump’s term, the lowest since 2002.”
The result was that while Taliban forces left U.S. forces alone, the Trump administration—and the U.S. military in Afghanistan—allowed the Taliban to infiltrated every corner of the corner of the country unmolested, allowing it to attack the weak Afghan army which was much less than what it was on paper, and apt to scatter once engaged without U.S. assistance. Like the U.S. supporting for 20 years of corrupt actors in the Kabul government, it also allowed regional commanders to pocket untold amounts of U.S. taxpayer money that was supposed to go to recruiting and arming nonexistent Afghan soldiers.
Miller’s claims that the Biden administration could have reversed course and sent in reinforcements to “stabilize” the corrupt Kabul government that had little popular support outside the city. But it was too late for that once the Trump administration allowed the Taliban to roam free; the Obama administration had already deployed 100,000 troops in the country to no effect, and whose fault was that except the military commanders on the ground who had to play with the hand they were dealt?
The failure of U.S. forces to “win” the war—failing to learn the lessons of the failed Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s—was largely rooted in the failure to understand that Afghanistan was less a “country” but a loose conglomeration of tribal units who didn’t like to be told what to do. The failure to spend money on those things that could be seen or used in the countryside, such as infrastructure, hospitals and schools also did not create a mechanism for which tribal units could see benefit from an alternative way of being. Yes, in the cities there was a mite of changes that educated people (particularly women) did benefit from, but the “war” could only be “won” in the countryside—where the Trump administration's "peace plan" only allowed the Taliban to roam free and become stronger.
But the Afghan war was destined to fail from the start, when the Bush administration became bored with Afghanistan, failing to root out all the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists before leaving for what Bush apparently hoped that 9-11 would really draw public support for: the Iraq War, based on the lies of WMDs and al-Qaeda “links.”
The U.S. could have destroyed the Taliban and al-Qaeda had it put in the military resources that were needed in the beginning; instead, by 2006 when Bush decided to turn his attention to pacifying the country, or at least make it “safe” for the Kabul government, it was too late without a far more massive undertaking in personnel and equipment, and enlarging the federal deficit even more.
And then there was this Sunday’s Face the Nation program, which shows us once again that the so-called “liberal” mainstream media talks about immigrants and not with them, giving free reign to bigots to describe them as they wish, feeding into the “invasion” and “vermin” narrative without ever once trying to report on the circumstances that migrants are fleeing from—apparently because the mainstream media in this country doesn’t want to be accused of being “humane.”
While current Border Patrol chief Jason Owens tried to cover himself by noting that the “millions” of people apprehended at checkpoints are “good people,” we get the impression he only believes this because they are "good about" make it easier for the border patrol to prepare them for deportation proceedings. What he really wants you to know is this:
"That number is a large number, but what's keeping me up at night is the 140,000 known got-aways," Owens said in his first exclusive interview as Border Patrol chief, referring to migrants who are detected by cameras and sensors crossing into the U.S. illegally, but not apprehended. "Why are they risking their lives and crossing in areas where we can't get to?" Owens asked. "Why are they hiding? What do they have to hide? What are they bringing in? What is their intent? Where are they coming from? We simply don't know the answers to those questions. Those things for us are what represent the threat to our communities." The situation, Owens added, amounts to "a national security threat."
As we can see, Owens answers his own question about these people: they know if they fall into his hands they have little chance of “legally” being in the country. As mentioned before, these are likely people who know the “score.” They are not “threats” to your community, they are the “other immigrants” who according to the Brookings Institute study are the hidden reason why the U.S. economy has evaded recession and is actually growing faster than expected, because they are filling jobs that otherwise would go unfilled, and they know where the work is without being “hindered” by the border patrol.
But back to Owens. Who is he really?
When he was working as the chief of the Maine/Canada border,
ProPublica reported on a Facebook page in 2019 called “10-15,” which is supposed to
mean “aliens in custody.” It observed that among many other things
The three-year-old group, which has roughly 9,500 members, shared derogatory comments about Latina lawmakers who plan to visit a controversial Texas detention facility on Monday, calling them ‘scum buckets’ and ‘hoes.’
One image posted by the group showed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in “oral sex” with a migrant with the caption “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special Starring AOC.” Here, Trump is forcing her head toward his crotch:
We learn that
Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.
In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.”
Like these people:
I guess some people don't like to feel "guilty" about their lack human decency. Text messages obtained from one border agent’s phone described migrants as “gnats,” “wild ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman.” There was also “repeated” messages “about burning the migrants up.”
Owens, as reported by the Maine advocacy publication Beacon, is a charter member of this group. Outside of attempting to portray himself as not being a complete inhuman beast on “mainstream” news programs, Owens has made it know that he regards migrants in general as “threats” to this country and boasted of the number of “criminals” arrested. But as NBC News reported in 2019, the vast majority of federal arrests were by the border patrol and ICE of non-citizens for non-criminal immigration offenses—and that percentage without doubt has skyrocketed.
Owens knows this, and because he cannot know if those migrants who trek across dangerous points are actually “criminals” or not, he just wants to think they are because he can’t get his hands on them, just yet. We know what he “really” thinks of the migrants and those who treat them with on ounce of human respect from the "group" he belongs to. And why do people like him do border patrol work? Because it’s “fun” rounding up “wild ass shitbags,” unless some of them get away, and then they are a “national security threat.”
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