Crisis and Cure: Writing Both Political and Personal

Demons... Like everyone else who’s remotely sane, I’ve been horrified by the mass murder of American soldiers and innocent Afghan civilians in Kabul on Thursday, 26 August, 2021. As of the time I’m writing this, the toll was 170 dead and 155 injured. That number is sure to grow higher as time goes on and we get more information. But what I find fascinating is that the organization taking credit for the attack is not the Taliban but rather “ISIS-K,” an off-shoot of the Islamic State that ran parts of Syria and Iraq until recently. The “K,” I gather, is for Khorasan, a region in Central Asia known for its cultural importance in several different Islamic civilizations. However, the idea that it was ISIS-K and not the Taliban who launched the attacks is interesting. Of course, we don’t know for certain that ISIS-K really was behind them, and we don’t know the degree to which the Taliban might have used the organization (or just its name) to conceal its own hand in the murders.   But, whate

This is a terrifying article from the AP. What are earth motivates people to bw so violent over simple countermeasures meant to do nothing more than protect their children and themselves? Maybe the most potent line: " Across the country, anti-vaccine and anti-mask demonstrations are taking scary and violent turns, and educators, medical professionals and public figures have been stunned at the level at which they have been vilified for even stating their opinion. And they have been terrified over how far protesters will go in confronting leaders outside their homes and in their workplaces." Definitely give it a glance. https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-2eba81ebe3bd54b3bcde890b8cf11c70

by Elaine Parmenter   I’m embarrassed.   And angry.   With the Biden administration.   What were they thinking to remove the troops from Afghanistan and THEN   to try to figure out how to help US citizens, permanent residents and Afghan friends and helpers exit the country?   Any housewife knows to straighten up   and send the kids outside before she begins cleaning the house!   Was it the administration’s advisors or a stubborn old president who decided to close down shop and then figure out what to do about   people who would be in harm’s way? This is personal for me. Forty seven years ago this summer I was living in Kabul, Afghanistan and working as Training Director for the Peace Corps.   I know that may seem a long time ago to you and it is, but when I saw video of people on the streets of Kabul this past week, it didn’t look much different.   Except there were more tall buildings.   Most of the men were dressed in long shirts, baggy pants and turbans then and now.   Most women we

F**k you, you hypocritical b*stards. There’s an infuriating article over on The Hill’s website today. It seems that the Republican members of Congress want President Biden impeached or otherwise removed from office after the deaths of 13 service members in Afghanistan. Specifically, says the article, “ They’re calling for his resignation, impeachment and even for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to end his presidency .” In a word, f**k you, Congressional Republicans. F**k you and d*mn you. Yeah, the deaths of 13 service members is sad and tragic, but, come on! It wasn’t Biden’s fault. And for you to call for his impeachment after it was Republicans…like Bush and Rumsfeld…who screwed up the war in the first place is hypocrisy of the highest sort. But, then, hypocrisy is your forte, isn’t it?   You watched over a half million Americans died from Covid while your Orange Duce did pretty much nothing…and you pretended everything was just peachy, even as the ICUs …and morgues…filled to capac

 I am not now and never will be in this picture.  By Michael Jay Tucker Here’s a wild one. Do you remember Richard Grenell? Okay, to be truthful with you, I didn’t either. But he was Trump’s ambassador to Germany. Then, after that, he was the acting director of National Intelligence. Or, to put it another way, he was one of America’s top spy chiefs. But, here’s the thing. Jeff Stein, writing in the Daily Beast , has revealed that Grenell has long had a close relationship with Serbian government officials (see “Spy Talk: Ex-Trump Spy Chief Cozies Up to Serbia’s Pro-Moscow Strongman”) and, by extension, to Serbia’s populist autocrat, Aleksandar Vučić, who is not exactly a big fan of stuff like Democracy and the United States.(1) Okay, but things get weirder still. Stein says that Grenell also has connections to Hungary’s populist authoritarian president, Victor Orban, who is the current darling of the American Right. Most famously, Fox host Tucker Carlson visited Orban recently and then

 Found on Twitter and Reddit....

War Incarnate By Luke Haines Without having to be up-to-the-minute, it's safe to say that the current situation in Afghanistan is a blundering shitshow of historic proportions.   At the time of writing, American troops have pulled out of their twenty-year misadventure, the Taliban have re-taken the country at a stroll, thousands of refugees are desperately trying to flee on a very limited number of planes, and today someone has bombed the airport where these people were clustered. By the time you read this, things may have found ways to get even worse.  There will be plenty of finger pointing to go around, of course. The Republican party will use America's embarrassing slinking away as a cudgel with which to beat Joe Biden. Biden, in turn, could point out that the departure date was set seemingly at random by Donald Trump with no forward planning. Trump would be within his rights to point out that Barack Obama had just spent eight long years plowing money and lives into an unwi

The Taliban... If you had any illusions about just what kind of regime the Taliban represent, you may officially put them aside. According to several news-reports, the new Afghan government is “hunting” down female judges and may very well try to kill them. A woman in authority, and a judge to boot, is anathema to the Talibani, and apparently the jihadists are searching for them “door to door.”(1) (2) The only small good news in this story is that an informal alliance of American female judges and other legal professionals have banded together in an heroic attempt to get these women out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. (3)   Let’s all wish them the very best of luck. Sources  1. See “Taliban Fighters Are Going Door-to-Door to Hunt Down Female Judges, Says Report ‘WE ARE IN DANGER’, by Barbie Latza Nadeau, Correspondent-At-Large, Aug 25, 2021, The Daily Beast, https://www.thedailybeast.com/taliban-fighters-are-going-door-to-door-to-hunt-down-female-judges-says-report 2. “Taliban thre

 Kaivan Shroff, the Democratic strategist and pundit, is reporting that the political media company Politico will be acquired by Axel Springer, a German company which also owns Bild . The story is also being reported by a variety of other news outlets. Bild has been called the "Fox News of Germany." Or, in other words, phooey. Like we didn't have enough Fox News already. The German company also owns Bild, which many say is the German version of Fox News. — Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) August 26, 2021  Dang!

 Scary article in FP on the climate and the Middle East. Seems the area is being uniquely hit by global warming. Already, parts of it are becoming "literally uninhabitable," which means more war, more refugees, and more...well...everything.  Which is all powerful motivation for us to address climate change now, while there is still time. Check out: " The Middle East Is Becoming Literally Uninhabitabl e" By Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/24/the-middle-east-is-becoming-literally-uninhabitable/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits What we could face...

Note: This piece is also on my personal blog page which is here:  https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog . Please give it a glance when you get a chance. By Michael Jay Tucker Okay, I promise, this will be the last column I’ll do on Afghanistan, at least for a little while. But, I’m doing my best to find glimmers of light in the gloom. I want to find a few hopeful notes. So… Glimmers of light in the darkness... First, I’m delighted to see that the International Community in general, and America in particular, does seem to be stepping up to help get people who are in danger out of the country. I know that the Biden administration will come under rather a lot of fire for its handling of the collapse of the Afghan state, but at least now it does seem to be stepping up to deal with the consequences. That’s a relief. (1) Along those same lines, I note with particular interest one small story. To wit, the Afghan girl’s robotics team that so recently made headlines with their engineering prowe

Erik Prince, if you don’t know him, is the chap who ran one of the world’s most successful “military services companies,” Blackwater Security (it has had other names). He was also a friend of Donald Trump and apparently, at least at one time, attempted to convince the President to transfer military activities in Afghanistan to a private, mercenary army that he would organize. (1) Now, Mr. Prince seems to be in the emergency air transport business. He is reported to have told the Wall Street Journal that he is charging $6,500 a seat for tickets out of Afghanistan. (2) That is a rather tidy profit.   And maybe a little embarrassing for us all.   Sources: 1. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/05/heres-the-blueprint-for-erik-princes-5-billion-plan-to-privatize-the-afghanistan-war/ 2. WSJ, partly behind paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-kabul-private-rescue-efforts-grow-desperate-as-time-to-evacuate-afghans-runs-out-11629875097

 

 Note: this is also on my personal blog on my webpage here:  https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/post/maccabees-again . Give it a glance when you have a chance.     By Michael Jay Tucker I realized that my last entry on Afghanistan might have been a little unclear. You’ll recall that I said that the Taliban’s victory there might be a problem for the Talibani themselves, and perhaps even for all of Islam, in that it might give Jihadists too great a confidence in their affairs. I should explain that. There are multiple historical precedents. For example, Prussia and then, later, Germany had known nothing but military success since Bismarck, and so assumed that it could easily take-on the French, the British, and the Russians at the same time in the First World War. This proved, of course, not to be the case. Or, too, there is our own sacrosanct selves, the United States of America. We came out of the Second World War very much a victor, and suffered from the delusion that we could intervene