Autopsies on America’s Defeat in Afghanistan Begin; Here is Gerry Maxey's

As this Blog is being written, the Taliban is engaged in a victorious blitzkrieg across Afghanistan, seizing territory, cities and people. It has out-generaled the American backed corrupt government in Kabul. During the first Taliban government, northern Afghanistan remained an anti-Taliban stronghold, through its entire tenure. Taliban prowess was confined to the south, Pashtun areas. 

This time, the Taliban, in a series of brilliant strategic moves attacked and over ran northern Afghanistan first, eliminating the possibility of an anti-Taliban bastion to further advances. 

Afghan soldiers are being slaughtered after they surrender, Afghan men are being hung from lamp poles before trial, Afghan girls are being forced into marriages with Taliban soldiers; Afghan girls are being denied access to schools, or places of employment. Women have been shot on the street for wearing short skirts; and women have been whipped for talking to men on the street( see picture below). 

America’s war in Afghanistan began in September, 2001, when the Bush Administration launched a war of ravanche against the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist government, ruling most of Afghanistan, the Taliban.  

America won that war, and drove the Taliban from power.  

Then America’s Liberal mindset of entertainment dilettantism took over; Hollywood feminist sociology took over and the rationale for war changed from revenge into a crusade to modernize Afghanistan, liberate Afghan women, girls and gays, and to ensure that the songs of Lady Gaga would be played on the street of Kabul. 

The Macedonians had tried to modernize Afghanistan and lost; the British Empire had tried to modernize Afghanistan and lost; the Soviet Union had tried to modernize Afghanistan and lost. But American hubris had Hollywood power on its side; so America was sure it would win. 

This Blogger reached an epiphany in 2009, when the American installed government in Afghanistan invited the most corrupt warlord extant back into the country; that epiphany was that America’s crusade to modernize Afghanistan had lost. 

On Monday, August 24, 2009,  this Blogger published this:"”Afghanistan, the war is lost. It was lost the day President Karzai allowed General Abdul Rashid Dostum to return from exile. ….…... The whole country is a pile of rock and ignorant feudalists, let it go…...GERRY MAXEY”.  

This Blog will be divided into three parts; the first one is a history of this Blogger’s discourses on the war; the second is an edited autopsy of the lost war by a leading Liberal functionary, and finally, this Blogger’s autopsy on why America lost the war in Afghanistan, and the dire revelations of that lost. 

A HISTORY OF GERRY MAXEY, ON THE LOST WAR IN AFGHANISTAN- 

On October 1, 2009. The following  was published: ““Afghanistan is “the graveyard of empires" …Can we still lose the Afghan War? After EIGHT years? Yes. ". 

 

On December  4, 2009, this Blogger published : “As for policy, this escalation of war in Afghanistan is a grievous mistake; we cannot win this war.......GERRY MAXEY.” 

 

On July 7, 2010, this Blogger published this question: "In 2010, Why in the Hell is America Still fighting a Colonial War in Afghanistan?" 

The following is excerpted from that publication: "It is 2010, the age of IPHONES, IPODS, IPADS, Wireless Internet, Sex Changes, Cloning, Birth Control, Designer Babies; in an age in which every tradition known to Man has been or is about to be jettisoned,  we, the most powerful  nation in the history of the world, have kept faith with the most stupid tradition of all, fighting a colonial land  war in Asia.

Can any nation get dumber than that? ….GERRY MAXEY.” 

 

On September 29, 2010, this Blogger published: OBAMA'S WARS, Afghanistan and The McChrystal Plan..............  

What is so telling about the McChrystal Plan, what is so telling about all the military plans offered up to the President is that they had/have nothing to do with defeating the Taliban, in fact the Plans have nothing to do with the Taliban.

The 40,000 troop surge is a joke...to defeat the Taliban would take a Maurice Challe Plan, which would require a minimum of 300,000 troops, on the ground, minimum.

So if the McChrystal Plan does not mean the defeat of the Taliban, what does it mean?

….the McChrystal Plan is NOT about defeating the Taliban; the McChrystal Plan is about EGO, the ego of the American Army. The presented plans could have been written by the German General Staff, the Army must fight on so as not to have its legacy nor institutional memory tarnished by a defeat. This Blog believes that the military hubris displayed in the McChrystal Plan is misguided. 

The McChrystal Plan is all about the American  Army doing better than the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, doing better than the Colonial Brits, doing as well as Alexander The Great. The Plan is a  COMPETITIVE strategy against the benchmark of historical defeats of foreign armies in Afghanistan, not a winning strategy against a specific enemy, the Taliban.

..... To win, a total commitment is needed, which means stripping the standing garrisons of South Korea, Japan and Germany for manpower.  

Strip the garrisons, as Grant did in his winning  drive on Richmond, turn the"surge" into a tsunami. Barring that type of commitment,we must plan an orderly retreat.

....This Afghan War is a political War, and our political partners are corrupt, money laundering drug lords, and worst, drug addicts. We can never win politically. 

 

This Blog understands that no American General wants to be General Boris Gromov, the legendary Hero of the Soviet Union, who was literally the last Soviet soldier out of Afghanistan, but that distaste should not be the driving force of our Military Policy  in Afghanistan.

….the United States is in such disrepair, we no longer have the wherewithal to be a force for decency in the world. We can only survive by our collective wits and the stupidity of our enemies. Don't despair, the Byzantine Empire survived 1,000 years on the same terms ….GERRY MAXEY” 

 

 

On September 7, 2011 this Blogger published:- The End Of America's Kulturkampf In Afghanistan 

 

The following is excerpted from that Blog: “ America must end its Kulturkampf in Afghanistan, immediately.

We cannot win it, so why waste another young man or young woman's life on a futile endeavor?

….America had a just war of revenge against the Taliban, and we did it...but we did not close the deal and now that war of revenge has morphed into an American Kulturkamp( "culture struggle"). America is now engaged in a Kulturkampf with the Taliban, and we are losing…... ….GERALD MAXEY” 

 

On February 27, 2012, this Blogger published: Events Concerning Our Lost Afghan War… 

 

The following is excerpted from that Blog: 

 

“NANCY PELOSI: Well, let me say that I`m not the only one saying it, our  secretary of state -- Secretary Clinton has been forceful and as the whole  Obama administration.But I said, do yourself a favor, have women at the table, because if this is going to be a solution it has to be one that is shaped by women." 

   

My God is every female liberal politician DELUSIONAL?  Afghanistan is not a Rob Reiner Directed sitcom; Afghanistan is not an episode of MODERN FAMILY where all the fighting men are uncoordinated doofuses; Afghanistan is not a GLEE influenced society, in which the men will start singing Broadway hits on demand. Afghanistan is a nation beyond the reach of Modernity, and the Afghan men like it that way, like it that way enough to fight American power for ten years. 

 

…..Are we, is anyone seeing Afghan women taking up arms to defend their rights? As the Mexican women did, as the Vietnamese women did, as Russian women did, as the Nicaraguan women did?  We have yet to see any  Afghan women die as a suicide bomber blowing up oppressive Taliban males. 

 

These are the deaths of Afghan women-"More Afghan women are choosing suicide to escape the violence and brutality of their daily lives, says a human rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department....."Self-immolation is being used by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides," said the report….” 

If you can burn yourself up, you sure as hell should be able to blow up the Taliban, but they don't.  Instead, they wait on American women like Nancy Pelosi to plead their case…. 

If Afghan women want a seat at the table, start killing Taliban.

The reason the United States failed in Afghanistan is easy  to identify; when our mission shifted from killing Taliban, a war of revanche, to fighting for  Modernity,to fighting to uplift Afghan women, our effort was doomed to failure. The Soviet Union, with better and more efficient Afghan allies, in place since the 1920s, lost for the same reason. Modernity will never win in Afghanistan. America lost when our feminist policy makers drank the Kool-Aid of Feminist Fantasying. 

 

If we had stuck with our original mission, of slitting the throats of every Taliban, and leaving them to bleed in the back alleys of Kabul, we would have won the war. Instead, under the influence of feminist policy makers, our existentialist   Casus belli became not a war of revenge, revanche, but a war to make the world safe for Afghan women ……..GERRY MAXEY.” 

On July 9, 2012, this Blogger published a Blog memorializing her dumbness: The War In Kabul Goes Kabuki 

 

The following is excerpted from that Blog: “In Kabul, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton announced  that the Obama Administration has named Afghanistan a Major Non-NATO ally. 

 

….there is nothing more stylized theater than declaring, in the midst of defeat, a corrupt, drug infested nation a major Non-NATO ally. 

 

….The great cultural shock of this Afghan War is that the majority of Afghan fighting men, regardless of what VANITY FAIR, Reality TV, Betty White, Hillary Clinton, Tina Fey, Oprah, Anderson Cooper, Samantha Power, Mrs. Jay Leno, Laura Bush, Lady Gaga, Tina Brown, and the entire cast of GLEE proselytize, do not want modernity. In fact they  do not want modernity so vehemently they will fight, kill and die to keep it out of their children's lives. 

 

One of the key disturbing weaknesses of our State and Defense Establishments is that it is full of modern women and men. They know lecture halls, salons, coffee shops, newsrooms, TV studios, seminars, book tours. But they have never been exposed to atavism or fundamentalism, except academically. They know rationality, but not passion, ridicule but not honor....Our modern Leadership has no instinct for how the irrationals of the world think or react…The Taliban would rather fight and die than listen to Lady Gaga; that is what the Lost Afghan War was all about. 

….Americans must steel ourselves to see images of our Afghan allies, and supporters castrated and lynched after we withdraw.  

 

….The great modern surge of modernity has crested in Kabul, and lapped the Afghans. Now it is in retreat, waning, ebbing. We can survive as a modern Roman Republic/Empire if we refrain from doing more missionary modernism. ….What this debacle in Afghanistan should have taught us and our leadership is this-there are discernible limits to the spiritual and emotional satisfaction modernity brings. 

 

Modernity in any society can only be sustained if the majority of fighting men support it; if Modernity does not have the support of the majority of fighting men,Civil War ensues. 

 

Modernity did not and does not satisfy the Afghan fighting man; that was the crucible in Afghanistan, and as Modernity mutates into Globalization, that may be the same issue which will confront the American Establishment in the near future, in America; because Globalization surely does not satisfy, neither spiritually nor emotionally. 

 

As America leaves, it should give every family in Afghanistan who wants one, an AK-47 so they will at least have a fighting chance when the Taliban comes knocking on their door to balance the books….THE MAXEY CHRONICLES.” 

 

On May 11, 2017, this Blogger published the following: “One of the most dangerous tropes of American society is that people who oppose Modernity are “on the wrong side of History.”  

If that were only true; in 1963, Duke Ellington played a concert in Kabul Afghanistan….In the 1960s Afghanistan was a paradise for Westerners, cheap and exotic. Modernity was rampant. Women had rights, education and miniskirts. 

 

In 1971, Hollywood came calling, noted left winger Dalton Trumbo wrote a screenplay about the Afghan national sport, buzkashi. The film was THE HORSEMEN, and starred Omar Sharif and Jack Palance, Directed by John Frankenheimer. 

 

John Frankenheimer doing a film in Afghanistan, Modernity was triumphant. However, Afghanistan is a Sunni Majority nation, which means all Modernity is a mirage. 

 

Modernity in Afghanistan reached its apex doing the Communist regime of Mohammad Najibullah. He liberated women, educated women, gave women top management and governmental jobs. He had an excellent, Soviet trained Army, filled with Communist believers. 

 

The Sunni Taliban extremists defeated his regime, dragged him from sanctuary in a United Nations compound, castrated him, and brutally lynched him….In 2017, the United States is still fighting the Sunni extremists of the Taliban; America has been fighting the Taliban since 2001, it is now America’s longest war….THE MAXEY CHRONICLES.” 

 

THE INITIAL LIBERAL AUTOPSY OF WHY AMERICA LOST ITS WAR IN AFGHANISTAN- 

 

The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts is noted for:” examining societies and people fractured by conflict. We are asking empirically relevant questions. We are employing rigorous research methodologies. And by collaborating with partners and policymakers, we can inform public policy. Our goal is simple but ambitious: to reduce human suffering and create a world more at peace.”...... The Pearson Institute" 

 

One of the brightest stars of the Pearson Institute  is Carter Malkasian; Dr. Malkasian holds a degree from UC Berkeley and a Doctorate from Oxford University. He was a key, on the ground, advisor to American governance in Afghanistan. 

 

On August 12, 2019,  he gave an interview to PBS, his autopsy on why America lost its Afghan War. 

 

“The US may have done more harm than good in Afghanistan, argues Carter Malkasian in his new book, “The American War in Afghanistan.” Despite efforts to build education, healthcare and infrastructure, the US presence fomented conflict, Malkasian says. Nick Schiffrin spoke with Malkasian about the mistakes US officials made over the twenty year war. 

 

“ William Brangham:…..”Afghanistan….As the country seemingly falls apart amid a U.S. withdrawal, what lessons can be drawn from America's 20-year involvement in that nation? And what were the mistakes made along the way in what has now been America's longest war?Before these astonishing gains made by the Taliban this week, Nick Schifrin sat down with the author of a new book examining America's long involvement in that country. 

 

Nick Schifrin:Why did the U.S. lose in Afghanistan? That is the question asked at the beginning of a new book, "The American War in Afghanistan: A History," by historian Carter Malkasian, who lived in Helmand Province as a State Department political officer, advised former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joe Dunford on Afghanistan, and now joins me in the studio….…..you write that, after 20 years of war: "The U.S. must confront a moral reality. The U.S. may have done more harm than good in Afghanistan." What do you mean? 

 

Carter Malkasian:We went in there hoping to build the country, hoping to improve the country. And, in many, many ways, we did that.Education is better. The number of people in schools are better. The number of people receiving health care is better. And for many people in the country, they have had experiences of living in some kind of stability. 

 

But you have to compare that to that us being there help generate a war. And that war has gone on for 20 years. So, for all the people who have benefited in some way from our presence, there's others who have died, lost loved ones, and have suffered all of the depredations of war. 

 

And that may have been in the end in our interests. To prevent terrorist attacks on the United States, that may have been necessary, but it is a moral reality that we need to confront…..

….Schifrin: Let's fast-forward to 2011 and take a look at a major decision that President Obama made…..Was the surge the mistaken priorities that the U.S. should not have had? 

Carter Malkasian:The surge, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have been undertaken. Putting in another 21,000 troops, then 30,000 troops, for a total of 100,000 troops through 2010-2011, that was extremely expensive, about $100 billion each of those years. And the majority of U.S. casualties occurred during that time. So you look, in retrospect from today, and look at everything that's been lost, whatever was gained in the surge was lost. And then, looking in retrospect, it's hard to say we should have done it. .....At the end of that, President Obama mentions the withdrawal, that we're going to withdraw in a few years. The Taliban would tell some of the elders that, hey, the Americans are going to be leaving soon. 

But I think the criticism of the timeline can be a little bit overblown, because it's not like, without the timeline, that the Taliban were suddenly going to stop fighting, or they were suddenly going to give up. ….the corruption is pervasive. The corruption is part of how Afghanistan exists. There's no doubt that it meant that there were forces on the front line without enough ammunition, without — often without the number of troops that should be there. And there's no doubt that the corruption also created grievances. 

Nick Schifrin:The core of the book, though, it seems you make a more fundamental point perhaps. And I'm going to read a couple sentences that you write: "The very presence of Americans in Afghanistan trod on what it meant to be Afghan. Any Afghan government, however good, however democratic, was going to be imperiled as long as it was aligned with the United States." What do you mean? 

Carter Malkasian: Afghanistan, like most countries, doesn't want to see foreigners on their soil. It probably is a little bit worse when they're not of the same religion. And so, for many Afghan men and women, the U.S. being there was a problem. And that enabled the Taliban to easily paint the government as a government of puppets. You go to the mosque, and the mullah is going to talk probably about jihad and is going to talk about the presence of the foreigners. And you will know your own history as an Afghan as having defeated multiple different occupations. So, this is something that's a part of identity. It's not something that can be easily removed. And that is reason that the Taliban have inspiration and the government often doesn't. 

And I'm not trying to say that people in government often don't fight hard. They often fight very hard. But this is a key difference that exists there. ….if we don't talk about our presence and how that motivated people, we're missing something that's very weighty. And you can see it in the surveys that are conducted. You can hear it from Taliban. You can hear it from government officials who are fighting the Taliban…PBS.” 

GERRY MAXEY’S AUTOPSY- 

When will America ever learn? In America’s defeat in Viet Nam, it pitted its finest academic minds, the best and the brightest from Yale and Harvard, the Bundy boys and the wonder boys of Bob McNamara against ruthless, experienced  guerillas.  In Afghanistan, America repeated its mistakes, and hired academics from Oxford to defeat Sunni fanatics; fanatics driven by the powerful delusion that if they died killing Americans, they would have access to heaven and those comely, sexually promiscuous 72 virgins. 

Academics do not win guerilla wars against either Communists or Sunni fanatics. It took Apache scouts to beat the Apache; it took Kurdish warriors to defeat ISIS; it took French legionnaires, using torture,  to defeat the FLN in the Battle of Algiers. 

Academics want to  win the hearts and minds of the population; the best way to win a guerilla war is to kill as many guerillas as necessary, as quickly as possible; so that they cannot replenish their ranks. And you must take away their will to fight. Sunni fanatics believe that being killed by a woman denies them heaven and perpetual deflowering of virgins; therefore, let women kill the Taliban, hire Kurdish women mercenaries if necessary; then stick their Taliban heads on pikes to show the villagers one means business or better still, play buzkashi with Taliban heads as the ball. 

America would have had a better chance of winning in Afghanistan if it had hired Mafiosos to be wartime consiglieres rather than academics. 

It was not the American presence which upset the Afghan population; it was the American desire to modernize their ancient ways. If the Americans had been there to kill Taliban and not reform Afghan society, it would have won the war. 

And religion was not the disqualifying issue. If America had sent in a bunch of Calvinist killers, Cromwellian Roundhead killers, to kill the Taliban, the chances for a victory would have been greater. America should have sent in, not modernizers but members of churches who are not only people of the Book (ahl al-kitāb) but religious killers who have similar views on social modernity. America would have had a better chance of winning by unleashing killers from the People of the Book; killers who agreed with the Afghan people about opposition to same-sex marriage.

The loss revealed the total inability of the American military to win a war. In twenty years of combat, America did not find, develop or produce either an imaginative or sufficiently ruthless general, who could win a guerrilla war. America has done it before: Generals Jackson, Crook, Miles, Mackenzie  and Arthur MacArthur. 

This elongated defeat illuminated that the modern American Military is rife and over stuffed with pedestrian non-warriors; American Generals are now well versed in transgender rights, female equality, Critical race theory, Lady Gaga’s oeuvre,  and the Sukhomlinov Effect.  This long and costly defeat revealed that the 21^st American Military leadership is less concerned with victory than an adherence to trendy social conformity. For all intents and purposes, American generals in this lost war could have passed for members of the Loudoun Virginia School Board. 

The reason America lost is because its Generals waged war to please Anderson Cooper, Lady Gaga and Stephen Colbert, rather than the Goddess of Victory. Pattons, Ridgways, Taylors and Gavins are now déclassé in the American Military; all they knew was how to win!

This loss revealed that America’s Military command structure no longer comprises fighting generals but sociologists cum MSNBC Commissars. 

There is only one morality in war, win it quickly.  A military which accepts a 20-year guerilla war is not worth its rations.

The loss has no meaning in and of itself; the only meaning the loss has, is that it is a precursor to the future; a future in which America will never win another war because of its socially enlightened military leadership. That future has unspeakable consequences for the comity of the world.

America lost the war in Afghanistan for the most catholic of reasons- no country wins a war with bad Generals.

 

Afghan woman whipped for chatting with a man on the street, FRANCE 24.