Failures Story

 I sat and watched a bit of CNN today, with Clarissa Ward.  At some point, talking over the Biden business and Afghanistan, she hyped-up and asked....."If this isn’t failure, what does failure look like exactly?"

I worked in various military-related organizations in my life, and we had projects which were deemed by members of the unit as 'failures'.  Some of us (not myself) even got medals for the 'failed' projects.  Some folks even got promoted (even Captains to Major) by accomplishing a doomed and utter failure.

I sat and looked at a renovation project....probably involving $50,000 in funding....where the end-work could not be used as projected, and simply became a storage room.

I could point at a dozen construction projects in the DC area, where tens of millions were spent, and were utter disasters at the half-way point....requiring tens of extra millions to renovate the screw-ups.

There's a hotel/BX project at Ramstein.....which came to be a serious crappy project.  The opera-house in Hamburg, went way over the original estimate because of failures.  The BER airport in Berlin?  Massive failures.  The Stuttgart-21 railway project.....massive failures.

I'm sure that I could sit down with twenty folks and probably identify well over 300 failed situations.  

CNN itself?  Well....it's a failed news media organization.

Trying to get President Biden to admit his decision doomed this whole Afghanistan thing?  No, he has no will-power to go and admit this.  

So it's just something better left lying on the street....like dog-crap.  Don't pick it up.....don't worry about it, and don't hype color or texture of the dog-crap.  Just leave it.  

Something To Make You Pause Over

 When you consider twenty-odd years of US-war on the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the ISIS thugs in Syria and Iraq, and various Muslim groups in Africa, with the Saudi-war itself in Yemen....there are tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of dead Islamic guys.

This 2021 Taliban group?  The CIA says....there were around 80,000 Taliban warriors who made the 'win' in Afghanistan possible.  How accurate were the CIA on this assessment or any other assessment here in 2021?  You really can't say.  They might be 100-percent correct.....they might be 60-percent correct.

Here's the thing....how many of the Taliban crew were originally Afghan Army members, and simply defected over to the Taliban?  It wouldn't surprise me if in six months....the CIA come to admit almost half of the Taliban membership for this drive into Kabul.....were former Afghan Army folks (disenchanted with the corruption of the Afghan state).  

If that was the case, you'd probably ask a lot of questions about what went on for that entire twenty-year period, with no one really willing to answer questions. 

Poll Story

 I sat and read a piece today over a new poll from Rasmussen Reports.

So, here's the deal....ten percent of people who identify as Democrats....say now that they regret their vote for Joe Biden in 2020.

Yeah.  One out of ten.  Now, maybe the poll asked the question in a funny way and half of them just didn't grasp what was meant.  Maybe they were even under the influence of narcotics, booze, or paranoid schizophrenia.  

We are eight months into this Biden-era, and it's a bit shocking that ten percent admit this already.  Getting into mid-summer of 2022?  I would imagine it might be twenty percent by then.

But here's the odd thing....from these same polling folks, they broke it out to minority status, and blacks came up to around 14-percent admitting they were regretful over their vote for Biden as well.

So out of every nine blacks who were hyped-up and voted for Biden....one of them has regrets now?  Yeah.  They aren't saying they would have voted for Trump....just that there's regret over Biden.  

If you had a black co-worker or friend in this category?  You can console them and offer up a beer.  

Afghanistan, Biden and Observations

 1.  I went back yesterday and watched the Monday evening Biden 'talk'.  It's an odd thing...I counted just in a five-minute period, about twenty-five moments where he was about to say something 'else', caught himself, and corrected.  Maybe it was the speed of the text machine in front of him, some personal style of his, or just being tired, but it was noticeable.

2.  Why have these reporters in the room, and pretend it was a news conference....when he would finish and just walk out of the room?  Unknown.  I would imagine they were all standing there at the end...wondering why the hell they got the phone-call to show up.....when nothing could be asked.

3.  Yesterday, President Biden said 15,000 Americans (non-military, non-embassy) may be in Afghanistan still in the end, with no way out.  An accurate number?  Well...no one can be sure about this.  Just in journalists, it wouldn't shock me if there were fifty-odd Americans walking around.  Contractors?  I seriously doubt if any of them remain.

4.  This 'good Taliban' suggestion?  It's probably multiplied over the past twenty-four hours.  I know....it sounds like 'good Nazis' or 'good KKK members'. 

5.  Serious use of smart-phones and Twitter by the Taliban?  This has been brought up a number of times.  A lot of the messages received by the public....come from Taliban leadership via Twitter.  Twitter wasn't around in the 1990s, and the cellphone technology was just beginning to really take off.  It's an odd factor in this whole game.

6.  The idea that the Russians or Chinese are supporting the Taliban this time around?  The rumor is continuing to be pushed.  

7.  When the Americans left Bagram Air Base on 5 July (Monday), in the evening hours without saying a word to the locals....that was the moment when everyone (the Afghans, the Germans, the Brits, etc) should have realized how messy and unplanned the next two months were.  That was the moment to pack up in Kabul and get a plane out of the country.

8.  If this mess elevates to the point where a thousand Americans are left after the rescue concludes, and are arrested/detained/held?  This will mean 'talks' and some 'gift' for the Taliban.  In this scenario, I would suggest that President Biden's strategy will have reached a point where impeachment or the 25th Amendment will be openly discussed.  At the very least, back in June....he should have asked for an evacuation plan to be prepared, and positioned enough troops to carry it out.  

9.  Where is VP Harris?  In Vietnam, visiting.

10.  On the bizarre scale....this ramped up and I'd give it a 'solid-TEN'.  As weak as President Carter was, and the severe marginalized skills of President Harding....you are just left wondering how the remaining 3.3 years of Biden can go.  You almost need a full-time person standing there and asking him to explain why his decisions go this way, and force him to evaluate priorities in a totally different way.  It's ridiculous to suggest that you need to teach a 78-year old guy but that's the simple blunt truth.