This is What Losing Looks Like

"Canada withdrew the bulk of its troops from Afghanistan in 2011, with the Infantry Battle Group withdrawn by the end of July (handover of battle space completed 6 July around 09:00 Afghanistan Standard Time), and all Canadian Forces personnel and equipment withdrawn from Kandahar by the end of December 2011. In September 2008, Conservative leader Stephen Harper pledged this, saying a decade at war is enough, after having extended the withdrawal deadline twice previously. He acknowledged that neither the Canadian public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer in the war and said that only a small group of advisers might remain."

— Wikipedia

Canada entered that war in a pique of stupidity following the 9/11 attacks in late 2001.  A considerable portion of the country was against it, but a combination of fear and hot-headedness seized this country just as it did the United States.  We rushed into that war; the first contingents of regular Canadian troops arrived in Afghanistan in January 2002, just four months after the attack.  It didn't matter that Afghanistan itself wasn't the culprit.  It didn't matter that others throughout history had pursued enemies into Afghanistan and discovered to their humiliation that it was a bad idea.  No one in power was thinking, no one was listening and history was set to repeat itself.  It's like the program was written and locked in, then took 20 years to run.

Canada abandoned America.  There's no other way to put it.  We did not stand with our brothers, we choked and ran.  We tried hard to convince the Americans to run with us but they wouldn't do it.  Obama saw the writing on the wall, knew it was going to end like Saigon and calculated he didn't need the bad press.

This isn't going to be an easy post.  Afghanistan at present isn't tea and cupcakes, so if you'd rather skip the abuse and recriminations that are going to follow, then I suggest you stop reading now.  I've struggled for a week on whether or not to write this post.  I'm doing so because it matters more to me that I describe the issues of the day as I see them, exercising my mind, than pleasing my readers or even my patreon supporters.  This is not a time for coddling.  This is a time for plain talk.  So let's have some.

Let me say up front that I understand why America got into this war; I understand why it stayed in this war; I understand the desire to forestall the consequence and I understand the profitability of remaining — which is a helluva motivator for a world market that is heavily centered around weapons manufacture and sales, not to mention the exploitation of weaker, foreign soil by multinational companies supported by first-world technologically superior nations.  Cominco looks at America, points at Bosnia in 1997 and says "Kill!" and American boots are put on the ground.  Shell Oil and British Petroleum don't like how things are going in Egypt in 1956 and the British dogs dutifully do their duty.  Did you know that Vietnam was producing a million barrels of oil a day in the 1950s?  Probably not ... because it is never mentioned.  The less you know.  Saddam Hussein doesn't play ball with the American oil industry after 1988, after he's installed as dictator in 1980, in order to fight Iran, and of course Iraq becomes a thing.  There's money to be made.  Fuck the locals.  We call it history.

When we want to get out of Iraq, however, we withdraw geographically into a friendly country that conveniently borders Iraq.  Things don't work out entirely in Somalia?  No problem, all the surrounding countries are friendly.  Bosnia we handled, so we didn't have to get out.  Korea gave us no trouble, we secured a big safe block with seaports.  But the invaders did have to get out of Vietnam and it was a total shit-show.  Because when it came time to leave, it had to be done by plane.  No friendly surrounding nations, no seaports with big honking ships we could load with thousands of people.  Nope.  Planes.  And as convenient as planes are, they are shit for moving refugees.

So while Afghanistan was a great place to exploit, it is surrounded by non-friendly countries and NO PORTS.  It is the dumbest, shittiest, least-friendly country to invade and yet, we did it anyway.  Out of stupidity and hurt feelings, like a bully that is punched once in the face, screams and goes apeshit, only to run straight into a wall because he isn't looking where he's going.

You know, it another historical time period it was traditional for armies to stand within shouting distance of one another and taunt each other.  This was done because the army that loses its temper and rushes first is the weaker opponent.  It is far, far easier to kill an enraged, out-of-formation army that's rushing at you than it is to rush at a well-formed, calm, ready enemy.  This is a lesson that America absolutely refuses to learn, possibly because it lives out in the boonies where it didn't have a long history of swordfights going back thousands of years.  The collected entities that the Americans call "Al-Queda" (there is no real organization by that name, but it's convenient for PR journalism) provoked America into a war.  They taunted them.  They blasted two ugly buildings that New Yorkers didn't particularly like and killed less people than die in a day's car accidents and as a result, America spent that nearly eight times as many people again (counting suicides) fighting a war they were never, ever going to win.  Not to mention hundreds of thousands of casualties over there, the firming up of anti-American hatred, and the millions worldwide having to cope with the war dead.  All for the sake of some giant, heartless corporations who made a pile of money remorselessly spending both the dead and the living.

This is what LOSING looks like.

Congratulations.

But no, I'm not done.  While watching the news decry the fuck-fest of trying to move people by airplane and rushing about laying the blame on anyone and everyone, as though that's a useful task ... we're also hearing endless tirades about the horrible, awful things the Taliban are going to do to the Afghan people who helped the Americans in their noble quest to steal money from the country through a hate-justified invasion.  Again, let me remind you:  AFGHANISTAN did not attack New York in 2001; some people in Afghanistan did.  Some of those people were Taliban or got help from the Taliban.  But most of the 21 million people living in Afghanistan in 2000, including many, many self-identified Taliban, were utterly innocent.  That didn't matter.  We saw red, we invaded the whole country, we pointed guns at the whole country, we dismantled the whole country's government and installed our own, while forcing the multiple tribal groups of the area to self-identify as "Afghans," again at the point of a gun, while preaching at home that we were making THEIR country better for THEM.  This is called Hubris, with a capital fucking H.  And if we could, just for one gawddamned minute, stop thinking about people falling out of towers and recognize what a FREAKING FUCKING ATROCITY we committed against innocent people, we might realize why the "Afghan Army" folded in two days and why the plan didn't work.  At all.

I know this is hard for Canadians and Americans alike, but even when we think that our political system is Special-F-Great, this really doesn't mean a lot to other people when we go there and point guns at them, telling them where the bears shit in the woods.  ESPECIALLY when they don't know what the metaphorical bear even is ... which these people, with their own culture and their own values, don't.  These people think other things matter ... and even if we think those other things are bad and evil and disrespectful to our culture, that doesn't matter once we've gone that extra step to bring guns with us and wave them around.  We've burned our credibility to the ground with that bonehead play.

We lost.  We invaded and we lost.  This is what happens.  The invaded people take their country back.

And what's next?  What happened when the Cambodians under the villain Pol Pot pushed out the Europeans?  What happened when Mussolini fell in Italy and the Italian people took their country back?  What did the Russians do when they pushed the Nazis out of Russia and Poland?  What happened when the Americans forced the Nazis out of France?

Don't hit this link if you've got a weak stomach, but have you heard of the Ugly Carnival?   Quote,

"Immediately after World War II, the French people cut the hair of French women who had relationships with Nazi soldiers and humiliated them.  Some of these women were raped by Nazis.  These pictures remain from those sad memories."

Point in fact, however; the French men who collaborated with the Germans; the local fascist authorities who ran the small towns throughout Italy; the various entities, such as the Ukrainians, who threw their lot in with the Nazis in their attack on Russia, weren't humiliated by having their hair cut off.  They were executed.  Because when someone invades your country — and let's again be clear about that when we say YOUR country, not Canada's country or America's country — and it takes ANY number of years to win it back, you don't really give a fuck that the collaborators you're killing were just trying to do what they thought was best.  They're COLLABORATORS.  That is a crime.  According to Dante's Inferno, the WORST crime, since it's reserved for the very bottom level of Hell.  It's called Betrayal, people.  Betrayal of your country, betrayal of your belief system, betrayal of everything sacred.  Try to take all your shit-nonsense about the GOP or the Dems stealing the country and multiply it by 20 years of constant factual evidence that Someone NOT from Your Country actually came in, blew up your capitol building, actually killed all your fucking senators and your vice president, then put Donald Trump on the fucking throne and propped him up.  For 20 years.

Picture that.  Then imagine how very, very, very little you care that the invading country's press is whining up a storm about how hard it is getting all the collaborators out by plane.

I don't think you can do it.  It's almost certain, even when it's plain as Blue Jeebus, you can't see yourself as the bad guys.

But we are.  We are the bad guys.  And this is how it plays out when the bad guys get justice.

Enjoy it, Loser.

And think about how, if we had taken other steps, and NOT invaded Afghanistan, there might have been a chance of selling enough ipods and android phones to the Afghans to convince them that western celebrity culture is just more fun than Islamic fundamentalism.  Because that's how the culture war is being won everywhere else.  That's how the Chinese are going to win in Afghanistan over the next 20 years.  That could have been us.

But our dumb, blind rage fucked that up.