What Do We Get For Efforts in Afghanistan?

America is in an isolationist mood right now.  Lots of people are asking, “What do we get out of our efforts in Afghanistan?”  My answer is that we prevent the slaughter we're seeing now in Syria and Iraq.  The effects of our withdrawal can be seen in the disasters that happened as a result.

In Iraq, we left in a hurry so we could declare the tide of war had receded. Al Qaeda in Iraq renamed itself ISIS and seized a parts of Syria and Iraq.  They slaughtered Christians and Yazidis, saving only females of breeding age for sex slave auctions.  In the Iraqi Army, all of the senior officers the US trained were replaced by politically reliable but cowardly hacks.  They abandoned their units and fled before ISIS even got close.  Without officers or orders, the Iraqi Army ran away too.  ISIS is now using the weapons they captured from the Iraqi Army disintegration.

There were 100,000 dead Syrian civilians before we paid attention to Bashir al Assad.  Then Barry the Brilliant cancelled plans to destroy Assad's air force on the ground.  Now there are an additional 100,000 or more dead Syrian civilians.  Bashir al Assad's air force dropped improvised, shrapnel loaded barrel bombs on them.  There are millions of refugees fleeing the choice of barrel bombs or ISIS.

We could see the same in Afghanistan or worse, if we leave now.

Big News: Bombed Hospital or Taliban Attrocities?

The lead story today is that two bombs dropped by a US Air Force plane hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.  Why is everyone ready to assume the US military bombed the hospital on purpose? We do more than any other military in the world to avoid hitting civilian targets. Our munitions and targeting are as accurate as we can make them. Our enemies generally intend to kill civilians. While the Taliban was in control of Kunduz they murdered and raped hundreds of civilians. Many were killed because they were family members of police or soldiers, or because they provided health care for women. Why is the outrage reserved for a targeting mistake, rather than the Taliban atrocities?

Amnesty International accuses the Taliban of atrocities against defenseless civilians, including mass rape and murder. This is war crimes on a massive scale. Maybe this isn't important because the Taliban raped and killed only Asian women and children? Well, that's racist. Maybe it's not important because that's what we expect the Taliban to do? Well, that's the bigotry of low expectations if I ever heard it. Maybe it's just the usual liberal priorities. Liberals don't care how many innocent people get raped and murdered, as long as domestic spending isn't cut and no American voters are harmed.

It’s likely American air strikes in Kunduz are being coordinated by a mix of forward air controllers (FACs) from multiple countries, including some Afghan Special Forces. This is because rules of engagement from President Obama generally restrict US Special Forces from engaging in combat. These FACs are being shot at while they coordinate the air strikes. If they read or say a coordinate wrong, the strike hits the wrong building. Two bombs could be dropped in a single pass of one aircraft.  It’s also possible that Taliban gunmen were firing from the hospital because they were hoping for an incident just like what happened.  Before the Pravda Press proclaims a war crime, perhaps they need to know something about military operations in a combat zone. They might also want to wait until the actual facts come out. So far, everything beyond the bombing itself is just speculation.

https://www.amnesty.org/.../afghanistan-harrowing.../

The Difference Between Free Speech and Buying Votes

There’s a big difference between buying ads to explain your political positions and buying elections.  To help you understand this, let me explain how elections are actually bought. It's by literally bribing voters to vote for you.

I'll start with this historical example. Originally, Senators were chosen by state legislators. In 1899, William A. Clark, a millionaire "Copper King," bribed the Montana state legislature to elect him as US Senator. That's buying an election. It's also a big part of why voters, rather than legislatures, select Senators.

The traditional Chicago election includes a lot of "walking around money," which is used to bribe voters directly or to bribe people who have a lot of influence on voters. The classical direct vote buying method was chain voting. The man with the money hands the voter a marked ballot. The voter goes into the polling place, gets an unmarked ballot and puts the marked ballot in the voting box. Outside the polling place the voter hands the man with the money an unmarked ballot and gets paid.

What Sheldon Adelson does is the same thing George Soros, Tom Steyer or the AFLCIO does. They buy political ads, pay for political pamphlets and pay staffers to make phone calls and walk door to door to get out the vote. All of this is free speech, whether you agree with the message or not. If you don't like it, back the Democrat's attempt to amend the Bill of Rights.

Why The Republican Base is Angry

On the Republican side, the anger is about the leadership's failure to even state a case. Harry Reid filibusters everything in sight, but Republican leaders are not on every talk show complaining about the Democrats' Senate obstructionism. The House passes 5 out of 12 appropriation bills. The Senate passed 0, again due to Democrats' obstructionism. Republican leaders sound like crickets on this subject. Why do we have to pass one big continuing resolution year after year? Because the Democrats refuse to pass any smaller bills funding pieces of the government. Why do the Democrats want to pass one big bill? Because then they can hold the whole government hostage to get every little thing they want. During the last government shutdown, Republicans in the House passed several funding bills for pieces of the government. All of them got filibustered. Because the Democrats want to shut down whatever will inconvenience voters the most, especially Republican voters.

The Pravda Press will never say anything about the Democrats' tactics. The "mainstream" reporters are all Democrats. That's how they get to be "mainstream" reporters. No out of the closet Republicans are allowed. Without Republican leaders who will get in front of TV cameras and explain over and over and over why we end up with one big bill every year, nothing is going to change.

Democratic budget tactics are relatively subtle. I don't see how Republican leadership expects the facts to get out unless they explain repeatedly what's going on. Much more obvious things are hushed up. Press coverage is so biased in not covering events which would contradict the liberal narrative that about 9 out of 10 people don't realize that South Carolina elected a black tea party Republican Senator in 2014, the first black US Senator ever elected from South Carolina, where the electorate is over 65% white. And 99 out of 100 don't know that former doctor Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder for killing 3 babies in his abortion mill and manslaughter for killing one of his patients. All the facts that fit the narrative is the new motto of the Pravda Press.

Republican Leadership has to realize that they need to get out more to counter the narrative the Pravda Press spreads for the Democrats. It doesn't matter whether it's fair or not. It's reality. If we don't start talking, we will keep getting rolled at the end of the fiscal year by Democrats who take the whole federal government hostage.