Author Archives: soshow

Talk about a gift that keeps on giving; each month reveals yet another beautiful pooch answering nature’s call. Also important: $1 from each “Pooping Pooches 2022” calendar is donated to the Maui Humane Society to support animals in need. This tasteful calendar is available on Etsy and Amazon, but you can also get 500 piece jigsaw puzzle for those long, dark winter evenings!

This year’s latest addition is a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle which can also be purchased on Amazon (not suitable for babies and individuals who have a tendency to put things in their mouth and potentially choke on the pieces).

Just like the calendar, every puzzle sale will also contribute to Maui Humane Society to help animals in need (one poop at a time).

Anyways, if pooping dogs is something you would like to look at for a whole year, you can get this calendar on Etsy or Amazon.

The post 2022 Pooping Dogs Calendar Is Here! (Now With a Puzzle) first appeared on .

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

The Swedish government has announced plans to introduce mandatory Covid-19 passes starting next month, amid rising infection rates in Europe. The passes will be required to attend any indoor event with 100 or more participants.

The upcoming introduction of mandatory coronavirus vaccine passes was announced by Health Minister Lena Hallengren on Wednesday.

Citing the ongoing surge in coronavirus cases across Europe – which has not hit the country itself yet – the minister stressed the need to be ready for the new wave of infections, projected to reach Sweden mid-December.

“The spread is increasing in Europe. We haven’t seen it yet in Sweden, but we are not isolated,” Hallengren told a news conference. “We need to be able to use vaccination certificates.”

Read more

Starting from December 1, the documents confirming a person’s vaccination status will be a requirement to enter any indoor event with 100 or more people in attendance. Sweden already boasts high vaccination rates, with 85% of its citizens aged over 16 having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Over 81% have received two shots or more, public health data shows.

Earlier in the day, the country’s health authorities backtracked on a highly controversial decision to stop testing fully vaccinated people who showed symptoms of Covid. The recommendation was rolled out in October, leading to a 35% decline in Covid-19 tests taken.

“The Public Health Agency has decided to recommend that the regions offer testing to everyone who is 6 years and older who gets symptoms that may be COVID-19,” the health authority said in a statement.

Sweden bucked the trend among European governments in its approach to handling the pandemic, electing not to impose widespread lockdowns. Having relied primarily on voluntary measures and social distancing, the country displayed several times higher death rates per capita than its Nordic neighbors, though it still fared better than many European countries, registering some 1.18 million cases and just over 15,000 coronavirus deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Winston Churchill’s 04 June 1940 speech in which he vowed that he and his countrymen would “fight on the beaches “and would “never surrender” in the face of a seemingly inevitable Nazi invasion is rightly renowned as perhaps history’s most famous address by a wartime leader.  Less well known, however, is the cautionary tone the new Prime Minister struck in that same appearance before the House of Commons, as he sought to temper the joy and relief engendered by the seemingly miraculous extraction of the British army from the beaches of Dunkirk.  “We must,” Churchill warned, “be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.”  “Wars” he admonished, “are not won by evacuations.”

Shortly before the 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden, I was asked by my HQ, my views on mounting an assault on the target we knew as Abbottabad Compound 1, (AC1) given that we were not sure it sheltered the terrorist leader.  After expressing my 95% confidence that the Al Qaeda (AQ) leader was in fact, there, I allegorically added that we must strike as ‘you cannot leave Hitler in his bunker and end the war’.  I was fortuitously, right in my assessment that the murderer of so many innocents was present within AC1.  Sadly, however, his death did not bring our war with radical Islamic terrorism to a conclusion.  As was the case after Dunkirk, our enemy was unwilling to quit the field or to limit his unbounded war aims.

Likewise, we should have no expectation that the withdrawal of our forces from the Afghan theater of combat signals an end to the conflict with terrorists who started that war by attacking us on September 11, 2001.  We cannot unilaterally declare an end to the War on Terror by leaving Afghanistan – however much we might wish to do so – for the very simple reason that our enemies do not share that desire.  As former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta put it, “I understand that we’re trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is, we can leave a battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security.”

The Taliban parading of the American-made weapons and accoutrements of their defeated foes was, in a manner akin to that of ancient Rome, intended not only to celebrate victory.  It was also meant to humiliate the vanquished.   Such triumphal demonstrations – and what will be a galling celebration of the anniversary of 9/11 as their own holiday to follow – will evoke enthusiastic responses from Islamic extremists and will draw many new adherents to the cause that lies at the core of Taliban legitimacy and belief.

As was the case when we left Iraq and later had to go back into the region to crush the ISIS Caliphate that metastasized in the wake of our departure, there is every prospect that the Taliban’s success will breathe new life into Islamic extremist groups.  And there is no reason to believe that the “new” and now much more heavily armed Taliban – an organization that refused to break with AQ over the course of a brutal twenty-year battle, will be any less receptive to working with Islamic terror groups than were their pre-9/11 forebears.

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

“We are going to have to maintain very, very intense  levels of indicators and warnings and observstion and ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance] over that entire region to monitor potential terrorist threats”, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley in a recent interview, adding it will not be easy.

As CIA Director William Burns said during Senate testimony in April, “Our ability to keep (the) threat…in check in Afghanistan from either al Qaeda or ISIS…has benefited greatly from the presence of U.S. and coalition militaries on the ground and in the air fueled by intelligence provided by the CIA and our other intelligence partners.” With the withdrawal of the American military, Burns said, “the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish.”

Much discussed ‘over the horizon’ intelligence collection against Afghan terror targets will not fill the void left by the loss of our ability to monitor and attack terrorist targets from in-country bases.  With Afghanistan bordered by countries unlikely to be willing to host a significant US presence, intelligence collection missions will now have to be launched from bases well beyond the horizon with all that implies for the quantity, quality and timeliness of intelligence collected.  Such operations will also be commensurately more expensive and difficult to mount.  Moreover, the intimate knowledge of our adversaries that we have painstakingly built over the course of nearly 20 years on the ground, began aging the moment we departed Afghanistan.  Absent an intelligence presence on the ground, our ability to collect on terrorist groups operating in and from that country will only degrade further as time goes on.

After acknowledging that we “could see a resurgence of terrorism out of the region in the coming 12-36 months”, Milley went on that we will, “as opportunities present themselves… have to continue to conduct strike operations if there’s a threat to the United States.”  However, as our pre-9/11 experience showed, such remote strikes can delay our terrorist enemies’ plans, but will not deter them from their intent to strike the US homeland.

As such, Secretary Panetta is undoubtedly correct in his conclusion that US involvement in Afghanistan is not over.  “We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS,” Panetta said.  “We’re probably going to have to go back in when al-Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban.”  And, as was the case with our operations to destroy ISIS’s so-called Caliphate after we precipitously left Iraq, there can be no doubt that should we have to go back into Afghanistan, our task will be greatly complicated by the manner in which we left that country, abandoning our allies and bases there.

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will have profound geo-strategic implications for America’s position in the region and in the world.  Our Chinese, Russian and Iranian adversaries will seize the opportunity to fill the void left in the wake of our departure.

The Taliban has already indicated it will engage with China, which covets Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.  Entry into a transactional relationship with the cash-strapped Taliban regime and granting access to Afghan mineral resources – and possibly use of Bagram Air Base – in exchange for financial aid and Chinese support for the Taliban in international organizations would suit Beijing, which would evince no concerns about human rights and the like.

For their part, Central Asian countries will look away from Washington and ever more towards their old masters in Moscow and a rising China to ensure their security and economic well-being.   Islamabad, while publicly celebrating the victory of their Taliban proxies and its role in guiding it, must at the same time worry that the extremism embodied by the victors will gain renewed traction beyond its frontier provinces with all that implies for the security of the Pakistani state.

Caught by surprise by Washington’s decision to leave and the conduct of the withdrawal, even our closest and oldest allies are questioning US resolve.  They will surely think twice before acceding to any future US request to join in joint operations.  Our decision to quit Afghanistan, and its messy execution, will also evoke questions about the validity of American assurances to other nations under threat from aggressors.  It will not have been lost on them that the withdrawal of American air, intelligence, planning expertise and logistical support ensured the collapse of an Afghan Army that was dependent on the US.

Our adversaries, too, will see the chaotic nature of our departure as well as the abandonment of Americans, allied citizens and Afghans to uncertain fates as signs of weakness and enfeeblement.   This possibility is particularly dangerous in that they could seize this moment of US distraction to engage in opportunistic adventurism that could include movement by China against Taiwan; a Russian attempt to resolve its impasse with Ukraine forcibly; stepped-up Iranian prosecution of its proxy war with Israel; or a further ramping up by North Korea of its nuclear program.  Any such eventuality would force the US to respond vigorously or risk further erosion of its international credibility.

Finally, the costs involved in remotely monitoring and trying to deter threats emanating from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan mean that we will be unable to shift intelligence and military resources away from the War on Terror to confront the threat posed by peer competitors to the degree we had hoped.

Aristotle is said to have pronounced, “You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”  Likewise, the courage shown by so many – and the heroic conduct of US military and CIA personnel in particular – in seeking to extract American citizens from Afghanistan and to honor our obligations to Afghans who worked and fought alongside us for so long, cannot obviate the dishonor attendant to having left so many behind.  Bloody Taliban outrages and reprisals against the latter are a certainty.

It will not be long before Kabul’s new rulers recognize that the Americans now under their control, are potentially useful pawns in trying to extract diplomatic, financial and other concessions in exchange for their freedom.  The effectiveness of our efforts hereafter to extract our own people and our Afghan allies from the clutches of the Taliban and how we respond to any attempts to use them as leverage against us, will determine the depth of the stain on our national honor already attendant to the disastrous end of our Afghan campaign.

In that same famous speech, Churchill solemnly told his countrymen that: ‘The Battle of France is over: The Battle of Britain is about to begin.”  He went on that “we would be well advised to gird our loins for the continued warfare to come.”

As we approach the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, we should honor our sacred dead from that horrible day.  But we should likewise prepare ourselves for the battles with Al Qaeda and its murderous kindred of Cain that will surely come.

Recent polls would indicate that Americans support the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, if not the way in which it was conducted.  One wonders how those polled would have responded if the question had been ‘Do you support a withdrawal from Afghanistan even if it markedly increases the chance of terror attacks and atrocities directed at your fellow citizens at home and abroad?’  I fear we will find out soon enough.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

The post Wars are not Won by Evacuations appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

With about 2.3 million people already suffering with serious water, food and pasture shortages in Somalia, a rapidly worsening drought could lead to an “extreme situation” by April next year.  

Read the full story, “Worsening drought affects 2.3 million people in Somalia”, on globalissues.org →

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

When The Washington Post reported this week that CIA Director William Burns slipped into Afghanistan on Monday to meet with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, it was described as the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden Administration.  WaPo cited anonymous sources for the information and the CIA offered no immediate comment on the reporting.  If the reporting is accurate, it doesn’t answer any immediate questions about why the President would dispatch the CIA director for such a meeting.

What we do know, is that the unexpected advances of the Taliban that have dominated the headlines over the past week and a half were initially blamed on an intelligence failure by many.  Early on, Cipher Brief Expert and former Acting Director of CIA John McLaughlin tweeted that “The ‘intelligence failure’ drumbeat is starting. People should be careful about the charge if they have not actually seen/read the intelligence…”

So, what intelligence did the US have that would have led to a different outcome in Kabul and throughout the country?

• The New York Times reported last week that “classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly.” The paper cited current and former US government officials, saying, “By July, many intelligence reports grew pessimistic, questioning whether Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital.”
• On August 15, The Wall Street Journal reported that administration officials said they knew that a “total capitulation of the Taliban was a possibility, and they planned their withdrawal efforts accordingly.” But they also cited an administration official, saying “it wasn’t so much a failure in intelligence in which the administration based its decision, but rather, a change in circumstances brought about by the swift U.S. withdrawal.”

But private sector analysts were watching as well. Here’s an inside look at what The Cipher Brief has been publishing since January with key outtakes from Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey:

Brief: January 25, 2021

“The Afghans themselves are also monitoring the Washington newsfeeds in forensic detail and will be encouraged by Sullivan’s statement. Recently, all too many conversations in Kabul have been about when to leave and which route to take. Some wealthier Afghans already have their money in Dubai and children in foreign universities. Some even have passports and property in the United States, UK or Germany. For those who are less fortunate, the discussions are about which route to take out. The Uzbekistan border is favoured because a visa costs just $30 and there is a variety of onward routes via Turkey or Russia to the West whereas the routes via Iran or Pakistan are more restrictive or liable to interference.”

Brief: March 11, 2021

“Saleh will advise Ghani not to take Taliban or Pakistani promises on trust. Instead, Ghani may decide to call Washington’s bluff. He may doubt that Washington is really willing to abandon Afghanistan on 1^st May with the risk of a rapid Taliban victory jeopardising all the hard-won advances in areas such as women’s rights and counterterrorism over the past 20 years. The spectre of Al Qaida re-establishing camps in Afghanistan would surely be too much for Biden and Blinken.”

“Even if there were no helicopters from the US Embassy roof, the TV pictures of the Taliban entering Kabul, and of Afghan refugees fleeing their advance could evoke memories of Saigon in 1975. The reimposition of Taliban curbs on women would provoke international opprobrium. And subsequent reports of AQ training camps being re-established in Afghanistan would bring back recent and painful memories. After all the blood and treasure expended in Afghanistan that would be a disastrous outcome.”

Brief: April 19, 2021

“The Afghan government may be able to hold on to power for a few years as the Najibullah administration survived after the Soviet departure. However, there is a danger that there will be a sudden dam-burst in confidence with senior officials and politicians leaving en masse and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing westwards through Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics. As the Taliban re-enter Kabul, we could see disturbing scenes of retribution and, in time, the return of Al Qa’ida figures from their hiding-places in the tribal borderlands in Pakistan. Only then will people re-examine this decision and recognise that the Afghan deployments since 2014 have not been that onerous.”

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

Brief: June 1, 2021

“According to my sources, the Taliban are convinced they can take Kabul “within days” of the NATO withdrawal and they believe the Afghan army is “in a shambles and demoralised”. Although the Taliban will not disrupt departing US troops (unless attacked) they are not willing to wait until September to continue their campaign against Kabul government forces.”

“But we should not take much comfort from the Najibullah example. The comparisons with today’s Afghanistan are misleading. Najibullah’s government was able to reach and supply all the major towns by military convoy. The Afghan army was deployed to protect towns and road communications. By contrast, in 2021, only the route between Kabul and Jalalabad is reasonably safe. Convoys cannot get through from Kabul to Kandahar, Kandahar to Herat, or Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghan army is spread across the country in piecemeal district centres (often surrounded by Taliban-controlled countryside) and have to be resupplied by air. This is not a sustainable model.”

“Furthermore, a number of today’s Afghan leaders, officials and military officers have received offers to relocate to the United States, Germany and elsewhere. As the security situation continues to deteriorate, the gradual trickle of departures is likely to gather pace. In such circumstances, the government could implode quite suddenly.”

“To some, this may evoke images of the 1975 fall of Saigon with the big losers being the Afghans who remain, particularly the women, who face a future of uncertainty and anxiety. There could also be a migration crisis reminiscent of Syria in the last decade.”

Brief: June 28, 2021

“One key indicator is that Afghan security forces have begun to surrender to the Taliban. The procedure is quick and simple. Tribal elders are used to deliver a stark message to Afghan troops often holding positions in district centres. The message is often; “The non-believers are leaving Afghanistan. They are defeated. Your leaders are corrupt. You can surrender now, and we will protect you; or you can fight, and we will kill you.” Recently, the Taliban appear to have honoured their promise not to punish Afghan soldiers who surrender. News of this new-found leniency is likely to encourage other units to follow suit and lay down their arms. In several provinces, including in the north, the Taliban are tightening their grip on those cities which are still held by the government. The Taliban will soon be in a position to cut off food supplies and demand their surrender, possibly offering a similarly lenient dispensation to the population. Now that the Taliban possesses captured armoured vehicles and artillery, their ability to exert pressure on the cities is enhanced. In Kabul, a sense of panic has begun to grip the capital. There are desperate attempts to sell family homes but there are no buyers even when houses are on the market at one tenth of their previous value. Some families have departed to Tajikistan, conscious that several of the land border crossing-points with the Central Asian Republics have been captured by Taliban forces in recent weeks.”

Read also Putin’s Calculated Afghanistan Play from Cipher Brief Expert Robert Dannenberg

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today. 

---

Read more expert-driven national security insight, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

 

The post What Intelligence was there on Afghanistan? appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.

During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.

“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.

The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”

I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.

Read more

He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.

In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”

The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

The Swedish government has announced plans to introduce mandatory Covid-19 passes starting next month, amid rising infection rates in Europe. The passes will be required to attend any indoor event with 100 or more participants.

The upcoming introduction of mandatory coronavirus vaccine passes was announced by Health Minister Lena Hallengren on Wednesday.

Citing the ongoing surge in coronavirus cases across Europe – which has not hit the country itself yet – the minister stressed the need to be ready for the new wave of infections, projected to reach Sweden mid-December.

“The spread is increasing in Europe. We haven’t seen it yet in Sweden, but we are not isolated,” Hallengren told a news conference. “We need to be able to use vaccination certificates.”

Read more

Starting from December 1, the documents confirming a person’s vaccination status will be a requirement to enter any indoor event with 100 or more people in attendance. Sweden already boasts high vaccination rates, with 85% of its citizens aged over 16 having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Over 81% have received two shots or more, public health data shows.

Earlier in the day, the country’s health authorities backtracked on a highly controversial decision to stop testing fully vaccinated people who showed symptoms of Covid. The recommendation was rolled out in October, leading to a 35% decline in Covid-19 tests taken.

“The Public Health Agency has decided to recommend that the regions offer testing to everyone who is 6 years and older who gets symptoms that may be COVID-19,” the health authority said in a statement.

Sweden bucked the trend among European governments in its approach to handling the pandemic, electing not to impose widespread lockdowns. Having relied primarily on voluntary measures and social distancing, the country displayed several times higher death rates per capita than its Nordic neighbors, though it still fared better than many European countries, registering some 1.18 million cases and just over 15,000 coronavirus deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

The International Criminal Court has halted an investigation into alleged rights abuses carried out by Philippines authorities as part of a harsh crackdown on the drug trade, saying it is reviewing a deferral request from Manila.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan said the probe was suspended after the Philippines government filed a request to defer the case earlier this month, according to court documents cited by Reuters on Friday. 

“The prosecution has temporarily suspended its investigative activities while it assesses the scope and effect of the deferral request,” he wrote, adding that the court is seeking more information from the government in Manila.

Based in The Hague, the ICC allows states to ask for postponements if they conduct their own investigations into the charges in question. President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration filed its deferral request on November 10, while the country’s Justice Ministry announced its own investigation into the alleged abuses late last month.

Read more

The court initially opened the probe in September over allegations that Philippines police had carried out thousands of extrajudicial executions and used other brutal tactics against suspected drug dealers, and that Duterte gave implicit backing to those actions. Activists have accused authorities of killing innocent people, including children, though the police insist they only use violence in self-defense.

While Duterte has declined to cooperate with the ICC probe, saying it has no authority on the island nation, and even pulled the Philippines out of the international body in 2019, the court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged violations committed by the country while it was still a member.

The president’s chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, confirmed the deferral request in brief comments to Reuters, saying “There is no inconsistency with the request for suspension of action,” though he did not elaborate.

Since its founding some 20 years ago, the ICC has successfully convicted just five people of war crimes or crimes against humanity – all leaders of armed movements in Africa, including in Mali, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Hundreds of major websites returned ‘404: not found’ errors after an apparent problem with Google Cloud. Alphabet said the problem was “partially resolved” after about ten minutes, but it will take time for everything to update.

The site Downdetector began showing a spike in reports of outages starting at 12:40pm Eastern time on Tuesday, affecting Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Spotify, and TikTok, as well as e-commerce sites Target, Etsy, Shopify, and Home Depot, among others.

Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Cloudflare were also affected.

Google’s Status Dashboard reported an unspecified “issue” with the Cloud service starting at 10:10 Pacific, which was causing users to encounter errors when accessing websites. 

“We believe the issue with Cloud Networking is partially resolved,” the company said by 10:17 PST, but it added that “Customers will be unable to apply changes to their load balancers until the issue is fully resolved,” and they did not have an estimate as to when that might be.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

President Joe Biden admitted during his address from the White House this week that, “The scenes we’re seeing in Afghanistan, they’re gut-wrenching, particularly for our veterans, our diplomats, humanitarian workers, for anyone who has spent time on the ground working to support the Afghan people.”

Yet the voices of the veteran community aren’t always heard in mainstream media, which tends to prioritize finger pointing and political bickering instead of focusing on the impact of such events on the people who served there, or the people who lost loved ones there. The depression and rage that flowed through the veteran community – as the US flag came down from the Embassy in Kabul, and as the U.S. failed to secure even a safe route out of the country for its own people, much less the Afghans who have supported the US-led effort there for the past 20 years –  was swift and devastating to many in the veteran community, who often don’t engage with media, but turn to each other for support via chatrooms.

A statement released by former President George Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush read, “Many of you deal with wounds of war, both visible and invisible. And some of your brothers and sisters in arms made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. Each day, we have been humbled by your commitment and your courage. You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies, and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will always honor your contributions.”  

The Cipher Brief reached out to two veteran leaders, Matthew Griffin and Scott Chapman, who wrote a fictitious letter they titled ‘Writing in Taliban’ as a way to share their outrage over recent events and how they believe – based on their unique on-the-ground experience – the Taliban will communicate this ‘victory’ to their followers.

---

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War 

---

Author’s Note:  We’ve spent the past week trying to find a way to communicate our thoughts to the American people in a manner that would intentionally evoke some of the anger, rage, action, and understanding that we feel.  Writing in the voice of a Taliban felt right. If reading our letter from the Taliban makes you angry, cry, or contemplative–then our goal is achieved.  Our hope is that it inspires you to take action by reaching out to your elected officials.  They’ve been repeating the same failed playbook since World War II with your sons, daughters, and tax dollars.  If you want this to keep happening, do nothing.  If you don’t, then do something.  If we all do a little, together we do a lot.

‘Written in Taliban’

OPINION/PERSPECTIVE — The first time I saw you was in the Khyber Pass.  You came with your technology, elite fighters fueled by revenge, and the hubris to believe you could disprove history.

This was a war that you didn’t have the stomach to fight.  But I’m glad you tried.

We bled you the same way we bled the Soviets in our Holy Land.  We bled you the same way the Vietnamese bled you in their homeland.  We did it patiently and deliberately.

Patience.  Something Westerners never learn.

Our history is millennial.  We don’t yearn for an early victory when the Infidel ravages our Holy Land.  Our victory is celebrated decades from now.  We’ve endured, then ravaged every standing military that crossed our borders.   Why?  How?  We’re patient.

In 30 days, we’ll be stronger, richer, and have control over precious natural resources that you need for your pathetic life dictated by comfort.  We will have women, riches, land, guns, and ownership of one of the greatest chapters in military history.

You lose.

If you want to try again, we welcome the challenge.  You will fail regardless of how much money you burn in our deserts. For pity, here is free advice that may contribute to your future success; should you ever decide to invade again.

You recruit your warriors and supporters from a drug addicted, distracted, disillusioned population that’s obsessed with comfort and entertainment.  A population obsessed with altering their mundane reality.  Alcohol, marijuana, pills, and our new favorite — Tide Pods.  Every time your doctors prescribe opiate painkillers, you line our coffers with gold.  Your population’s thirst for our pristine heroin has never been more lucrative for our warrior tribes.   We will keep feeding you poison for as long as you keep your hands out.

If your population wasn’t so spineless, undisciplined, and self-loathing, then you might be able to compile a raiding party with enough tenacity to outthink ours.  Our fighters are born into war.  Raised in it.  It’s a way of life that evades your “first world” nations. They live a life of such immense misery and pain that they’re willing to fight barefoot in the snow for the opportunity to martyr themselves. They yearn for the opportunity to die.  When they do have the blessed opportunity to sacrifice themselves, they sit above Mohammed at the right hand of God.  Blessed in Allah for eternity

What honors do your fighters receive?  Their empty sacrifice is remembered in the form of a “three-day weekend.”  The majority of your population uses this sacred time to get drunk and grow more fat as a way to celebrate their fallen warriors.  Sadly, we pay tribute to their death more honorably.

The colored pieces of cloth you pin on their chests are similar to the jewelry worn by our women.  What good are accolades and vanity if you don’t have the stomach to endure a fight?   We don’t offer the burden of healthcare to our fighters as they often want to die for Allah.  Your fighters fight to live.  Their inability to reconcile the inevitable outcome of our patience leads them to kill themselves.  Your medications, counselors and non-profits will never undo the pain and suffering you’ve forced them to endure.  It will never remove the pain we’ve caused your broken nation.  You are your own worst enemy.

We will give your fighters credit.  Some are creative, tenacious, and fierce. They outgun us in every way possible.  But again, we simply wait them out.  Allah is patient.  You cycle them through our Holy Lands every 3 to 12 months for their combat rotations.  After their tour is complete, they return to the comfort of their warm beds and endless entertainment.  If you left them here, in our Holy Land, with no way out but to win, then you might of have had a chance of success.  The longer you poisoned our Holy Land with your presence, your “rules of engagement” only strengthened our position. There is only one rule in war – that is to win.

Your commanders made you fight with your hands tied behind your back. Your rules also confused our fighters too.  “We’re clearly the enemy; why are they letting us go?”  Thank you for your compassion as it allowed our fighters to kill more Infidels.  We began to feel as if your commanders were on our side.  We’re thankful your most vicious dogs were never allowed off their leash.

Your showcase Generals make us laugh.  You spend millions of dollars flying them around our country, inventing new ways to win while ignoring the guidance of our most capable foes.  Your Generals make decisions to minimize risk to their fragile reputation with the ultimate goal of securing a lucrative retirement–jobs with suppliers that fuel your losing force. A self-serving circle that’s built on the backs of your youngest and most naive fighters.

Your retired Generals “earn” tens of thousands of dollars talking to your political, industrial, and financial leaders about “teams, winning, and discipline.”  It’s a mockery of the war they refused to fight.  It’s a mockery of the Infidel warriors who died in our lands. We urge you to continue following their vacuous personalities so we can further watch your once great nation collapse.

Your statesman and elected officials are spineless, narcissistic, and more cowardly than your Generals.  They crave power over you above all else.  They come to our country, hide behind blast walls, and only heed the word of the indigenous leader they put in power.   I believe your soldiers call this a “self-licking ice cream cone.”

They’ve burned billions of dollars in a wasted effort to bring clean water, electricity, business, education, agriculture, and exports to a region that didn’t ask for it.  You should have saved yourself the effort and simply given the money directly to us.  Don’t worry; your diplomatic friends gave us plenty of your American tax dollars.  If you want to give it another shot with your “soft power,” send those with real experience, not fancy degrees and silver tongues.

Over the next few months, we will make the world understand that you failed worse than any fighting force that’s ever invaded our lands.  Today we celebrate victory.

As you evacuate your embassy, our fighters will be standing in the shade.  Our RPG marksmen will be patient.  We thank you for the parting gifts.  You’ll find surface-to-air missiles staged in the back of Toyota pickup trucks that you purchased for us.  We saw what Extortion 17 did to your nation and the morale of your fighting force.  Do your citizens even remember that victory? We’ll be repeating and improving upon our victory while your citizens and sympathizers evacuate in disgrace.  Every one of your foes around the world will know exactly how to break you. You are welcome to fly your empty drones, target our cell phones, and send your spies.  But they, too, will ultimately fail.  We’ll use their failures to show the world that you’re not all-powerful.  You’re a false front–an empty shell. You lie, cheat, steal, and are easily defeated because you lack the spine to fight.  This is your history now.  We’re grateful Allah gave us the opportunity to show the world how to defeat the Infidels.

We look forward to seeing you again across the battlefield.

Praise be to God,

The Taliban

---

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of veteran views on this issue.  Stay tuned for more and read different informed, national security perspectives in The Cipher Brief

 

The post Written in Taliban: U.S. Veterans Voice Anger Over Afghanistan appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !