The all things Political Topic - When the sun Rises, the shadows must retreat Fleeing in fear from the Fires of dawn

[Guard Dog]

52 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

You had a dog for a long time right? A retriever or something? 

Yeah that was a while ago. Then it was beware of the dog signs and now this. The dog was Cosmo. He passed away along time ago.

[Gorth]

The Polish government apparently doesn't like media they can't control

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58180761

Poland's parliament has passed a new media bill that opponents say is an attempt to silence a TV channel critical of the government.

The government says the law is needed to stop hostile foreign powers taking control of its broadcasters.

 

The "hostile foreign power" may get upset though.

 

But critics say it is an attempt to push US company Discovery to sell the country's biggest TV network, TVN.

The law threatens to sour relations with the US, a key ally, and deepen EU concern over media freedom in Poland.

 

Maybe somebody should show the Polish leadership a history book. The US has a proven track record of throwing allies to the wolves the moment the relationship isn't beneficial enough. I'm sure Putin would love a Poland all alone in the world.

[Gromnir]

15 minutes ago, Gorth said:

The Polish government apparently doesn't like media they can't control

 

with your recent russia post, you triggered all too predictable whataboutism. am stare at the highway accident curious what your new post will trigger.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Gromnir]

am knowing is a double post, but is complete different and has another twitter link, so apologies in advance.

am knowing this feels to many at this point like same old, same old. why is this different than all the other examples we know o' where trump tried to compel white house lawyers, military leaders or doj officials to do his illegal bidding? senator grassley would have you believe that because those lawyers, leaders and officials didn't comply, there is no crime, which is ridiculous. the problem has always been clear evidence o' intent to do illegal. the thing is, the instant case is a bit different and if you get pretty much any o' those doj officials who advised mr. pak regarding wh intentions to fire him that the wh did indeed make it know they would fire pak if he failed to contest the election results, you got clear evidence o' intent.

nowadays, is near impossible to recognize a smoking gun even if you can smell gunpowder and you see a victim crumple to the floor with a bloody chest wound. this ain't the smoking gun, but somebody is gonna interview who in doj advised pak, which is gonna necessarily lead to wh connections.

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, Gorth said:

Maybe somebody should show the Polish leadership a history book. The US has a proven track record of throwing allies to the wolves the moment the relationship isn't beneficial enough.

Poland is nowhere near the level where the US would cut them loose. Far too useful as a proxy in Europe and as a stalwart attack dog v Russia.

(Compare with Turkey/ Erdogan, the US isn't anywhere near cutting them loose despite their shenanigans being a lot worse, for much the same reasons. Different leadership in either and the whole situation changes)

[Gorth]

4 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

(Compare with Turkey/ Erdogan, the US isn't anywhere near cutting them loose despite their shenanigans being a lot worse, for much the same reasons. Different leadership in either and the whole situation changes)

The US doesn't need to cut Turkey loose... they seem to have managed quite on their own to distance themselves and trying to play the middle between Russia and US (as far as I can see).

[Zoraptor]

Erdogan definitely tries to play the US and Russia against each other. He's not going to do any of the stuff that would really cut Turkey loose like quit NATO though, and the US has no desire to try and force them out when all they really have to do is wait for Erdogan's mistakes to catch up with him (and at the moment there's only ~5% between Erdo's AKP and the CHP in opinion polls). Same with Poland, whatever the issues are they'd prefer to wait them out if at all possible, and the issues aren't that serious compared to even just the S-400/ F-35 issue.

[Skarpen]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

The Polish government apparently doesn't like media they can't control

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58180761

Poland's parliament has passed a new media bill that opponents say is an attempt to silence a TV channel critical of the government.

The government says the law is needed to stop hostile foreign powers taking control of its broadcasters.

 

The "hostile foreign power" may get upset though.

 

But critics say it is an attempt to push US company Discovery to sell the country's biggest TV network, TVN.

The law threatens to sour relations with the US, a key ally, and deepen EU concern over media freedom in Poland.

 

Maybe somebody should show the Polish leadership a history book. The US has a proven track record of throwing allies to the wolves the moment the relationship isn't beneficial enough. I'm sure Putin would love a Poland all alone in the world.

The legislation prevents concessions for media that are more than 50% owned by shareholders outside the EU zone (EU plus some other countries) . Several other EU countries already have such legislation for years, including Germany, UK and France. Some even more restrictive. 

The problem seems to be that at the moment it will affect one station (TVN) that is mostly owned by US based company. 

Regardless, the bill passed only the lower chamber of parliament (Sejm). Most probably the higher chamber (Senat) will revoke. 

[pmp10]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

Maybe somebody should show the Polish leadership a history book. The US has a proven track record of throwing allies to the wolves the moment the relationship isn't beneficial enough. I'm sure Putin would love a Poland all alone in the world.

That history book would show Poland to be effectively isolated since the 18th century so not much changes there.
But maybe we could stop calling that parasitic relationship an 'alliance'. 

[Gromnir]

 

[Skarpen]

8 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

 

This was way more problematic then the bill itself. Not the first time though they pulled something like this. The ruling party seems nervous because there is a tension inside the party. Might be that they will lose the majority in the coming days and we will have earlier elections. Fingers crossed. 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Skarpen

[Malcador]

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/u-s-to-temporarily-send-3000-troops-to-protect-evacuate-diplomats-from-kabul

Lovely mess.

[Guard Dog]

34 minutes ago, Malcador said:

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/u-s-to-temporarily-send-3000-troops-to-protect-evacuate-diplomats-from-kabul

Lovely mess.

I expect the Taliban would’ve taken the country over a week after the US left. Now it might be a week before.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

I expect the Taliban would’ve taken the country over a week after the US left. Now it might be a week before.

gonna need to send troops to evacuate the embassy.

would be funny if it were not so ugly.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Zoraptor]

At this rate a week before the US leaves might be being generous.

Two more provincial capitals fall in Afghanistan, including its 3rd largest city Herat. The only real positives, such as they are, are that Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif are still holding out so far.

The government is clearly trying to do what the Iraqi government did with the Hashd/ PMU vs ISIS when their western trained army disintegrated by trying to arm the general populace. But there's no Iran or Soleimani equivalents in Afghanistan- or at least none on the government side as the obvious comparison would be Pakistan, for the Taliban- very little willingness among the ethnics to fight, only a small shia minority (also the only ethnic group willing to fight, and notably the Taleban have made little progress in Hazara areas) and due to the conservative nature of rural areas and the Taliban such recruits as they'll get will mostly be inexperienced urban types. Hashd/ PMU, and for that matter the Syrian rebels, worked because they already tended to have training from previous conscription.

[Guard Dog]

The moment the Taliban topples the government and takes over the country every dollar spent there and every life lost there will have been for nothing. Let that be a lesson for a future generations. The time will probably come when it is necessary to go in and kick another country‘s ass. Although that certainly should be a very last resort. But staying there afterwards and trying to turn them into something they cannot be is a fools errand. They should’ve partitioned the damn country and giving it back to the individual clans. I don’t think there has ever been a centralized government that controlled more than the area immediately around Kabul for a long period of time.

[Zoraptor]

Looks like Kandahar is taken now too- still nothing official, but the number of pro gov people saying there has been a 'tactical retreat' of ANA forces in the last hour or so is... significant, and precisely what has been the immediate precursor to other losses being announced. So that would potentially be the 2nd and 3rd largest city falling within a few hours of each other.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

The moment the Taliban topples the government and takes over the country every dollar spent there and every life lost there will have been for nothing. Let that be a lesson for a future generations. 

indeed, but lesson could be opposite o' what you have learned. a few thousand US troops 'coulda staved off the current humanitarian crisis for a long time and am thinking is tough to argue americans 'round the world will be safer once the US is complete gone from afghanistan. the real lesson, arguably, is that nation building can't be done on the cheap; usa keeps making that mistake. gd won't like to hear, but if your goal is nation building then more troops and treasure is the solution. however, if you wanna prevent what you have been seeing the past few weeks, and if you believe the security benefits o' preventing groups such as the taliban from gaining/regaining control o' nations such as afghanistan, then there is at least a good argument the real lesson learned here is kinda opposite o' what gd believes.

am not having a dog in this race. however, am recognizing that as much as obama wanted to get out o' afghanistan, he were persuaded by the intelligence he were receiving that the long-term costs to americans were too high to get out and get out cleanly were impossible. imagine some kinda illuminati conspiracy where the clintons, george soros, and the faceless boogeymen o' the military industrial complex managed to muscle obama into maintaining an afghanistan presence is not plausible. obama lost considerable political clout keeping troops in afghanistan, and he did anyway. whatever imagined future body county he saw in his nightmares if the US withdrew from afghanistan, it were enough to dissuade a guy who had promised his voters he would do just that.

converse, while is true US combat deaths in afghanistan had dropped to handful kinda numbers in recent years, those is nevertheless deaths which is difficult to place on a balance w/o needing a particular heavy counterweight to validate. how many us marines or soldiers need die in a year in afghanistan 'cause o' unspecific future security concerns which the pentagon and President either cannot or will not share with those asked to die. 

regardless, what gd sees as a clear lesson am betting will not be viewed 'quite so narrow by those needing make the same choices in the future. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps only read this article moments following our posting, but while am certain gd will find unconvincing, it might cement the notion that the afghanistan lessons is not gonna be viewed through an identical lens. 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Gromnir

[Malcador]

Taliban playing on recruit difficulty.

[Gromnir]

Justice Amy Coney Barrett Rejects Indiana Students’ Bid to Block COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

in the should be a surprise to nobody category. 

Led by lead plaintiff Ryan Klaassen, the eight students argued that the vaccine mandates violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, a theory that has failed before every court that heard it. The emphatic defeats had not been unexpected, since the Supreme Court has found vaccine mandates legal for more than a century.

“To answer the question today, the court travels back in time to 1905: a time before the modern tiers of constitutional analysis (strict scrutiny and rational basis) and one rampaged by the smallpox epidemic,” U.S. District Judge Damon R. Leichty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in June, citing the case of Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“In that year, the United States Supreme Court issued a leading decision in answer to this question,” Leichty added.

Three GOP-appointed judges soon concurred that century-old settled law was still binding.

U.S. Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, appointed by Ronald Reagan to the Seventh Circuit, noted that there cannot be a constitutional problem with state-enforced vaccine mandates, which have been permissible since the time of smallpox.

“To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public health measures, have been common in this nation,” Easterbrook wrote.

...

btw, the lawyer for the indiana u students were no slouch. 

The students’ attorney James Bopp Jr.—a Republican power broker behind the landmark Supreme Court precedent Citizens United, which paved the way for the rise of super PACs in political financing—promptly filed an emergency application for an injunction on Aug. 6. Barrett put the kibosh on that request on Thursday.

whatever issues folks have with vaccine and mask mandates, hopes the Court will declare such unconstitutional becomes increasing unlikely, which is kinda impressive considering how such were always a presumptive non-starter.

HA! Good Fun!

[Zoraptor]

The fundamental problem with an argument for NATO staying in Afghanistan is the lack of improvement or any prospect of it. This collapse would have happened 5 years ago, or ten years ago. To put it in perspective, the supposedly reviled pro Soviet regime of Najibullah lasted ~3 years after the Soviet withdrawal, the Ghani government may not even make it to the point of US withdrawal. If they stayed for another twenty years, would there have been any difference? Probably not, if the ANA simply doesn't want to fight/ the Taliban is so strong and that doesn't change.

It isn't really a troop numbers or money thing, at least within the realms of realistic expectations. Technically of course the US could have sent a million troops and spent a trillion dollars a year and it may have made a difference, but that was also never going to happen in any realistic scenario. Sending lots of troops has been tried before too, and all it did was suppress things (eg Soviet intervention, and The Surge in Iraq. Indeed, The Surge could only be sold by explicitly making it a short sharp shock type deployment intended to be temporary). Some of the things you really need like education and cultural mores cannot be given/ changed simply by throwing money or force at them.

'Nation building' has only worked in countries which were already what might paternalistically be called 'advanced' such as Germany and Japan, and the term is a bit of a misnomer as they both had a very strong national identity to start with.

The only realistic argument to stay is the geopolitical one- better to fight your enemies overseas than at home and you don't want to surrender the whole region to your geopolitical enemies (along with the prestige hit of seeing a client collapse spectacularly). But if there's no improvement those costs are going to be paid at some point anyway.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Zoraptor

[Hurlshort]

I'm at a loss about Afghanistan. I don't really understand how to win the ideological part of such a war. The Taliban are terrible and it is hard to understand how people embrace that kind of rule in such large numbers. But barging in with Western rule and ideas seems to be pretty dang ineffective, so clearly we need a new strategy.

[Gromnir]

there is no fundamental difference in nation building efforts 'tween so-called advanced nations and afghanistan save for cost to modernize. japan had its manufacturing infrastructure largely demolished. repairing japan's infrastructure were costly. cost to develop necessary infrastructure in afghanistan would also be costly. education and roads. the tribalism endemic in nations such as libya and afghanistan is indeed a unique problem, but not as significant as one might expect, rand studies make kinda clear the difference 'tween success and failure in policing occupied populations is a willingness to use enough troops and to invest enough treasure wisely. is kinda threshold numbers where there has been success compared to failure, and afghanistan and iraq is examples o' going extreme cheap compared to the success stories.

compare nato efforts in bosnia to nation building in afghanistan and iraq and the differences is clear, if perhaps unexpected. is 'bout sending enough troops and spending enough money. long term is cheaper to invest the money and troops wisely in the first few years as 'posed to decades o' relative drips and drabs, but how do you legitimize those costs to the american voting public? 

surge numbers as a counter example explains the problem. US commitment were never gonna reach the levels required. surge felt like a huge investment, but given the population o' iraq were nowhere near enough. 3x as many troops as were allocated post invasion were needed based on conservative end o' rand estimates... which again, as has been stated, is the genuine crime o' the bush administration as they knew what numbers and monies were required from the start.  just so is clear, the numbers pentagon and rand were giving the wh pre invasion o' iraq were that initially in the range o' 500k troops would need remain in iraq as a police force and those numbers would diminish significant over a period o' 3-5 years. 500k. not an unexpected number given the US had 350k troops in japan and the US had never actual invaded mainland japan. iraq surge numbers were 20k in 2007.

the costs o' nation building is known and results may be achieved with the requisite investment o' troops and money. however, if the US were to communicate those costs honest to the public, then is doubtful any would support such efforts. converse, explain that nation building is too expensive, but following initial invasion a relative small investment o' troops and an admitted perpetual presence, enough could be done to prevent talibans from returning to power, am suspecting the "forever war" option would not embraced with any more vigor.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited August 13, 2021 by Gromnir

[Gromnir]

29 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

I'm at a loss about Afghanistan. I don't really understand how to win the ideological part of such a war. The Taliban are terrible and it is hard to understand how people embrace that kind of rule in such large numbers. But barging in with Western rule and ideas seems to be pretty dang ineffective, so clearly we need a new strategy.

if the goal were to prevent the taliban from being in power, then the strategy were actual pretty dang effective. however, is decades o' US involvement with no end in sight  worth the cost in american lives and us monies to keep the taliban from gaining power? am suspecting there  is a few afghanistan citizens who currently think the cost were worth the investment. am suspecting is getting tougher for americans to look at the internet and tv video without wondering if this withdrawal coulda' been handled different. am pretty confident most US non-command level military who served in afghanistan is gonna suggest the costs have been way too great.

am admitted conflicted similar to hurl, but a smidge different we s'pose. am recognizing the value in a diminished goal following an invasion o' someplace like afghanistan. am just not certain the US public could ever be convinced that invasion and a functional perpetual presence is worth the kinda fuzzy and unspecific goals achieved by doing not save prevent the taliban from returning. am knowing some will be offended by the comparison, but is a bit like trying to convince peoples o' the need to address climate change. sure, the intelligence folks may give the president convincing reports explaining all kinda possible nightmare scenarios if the taliban returns, but  how do you convince people o' the significance o' a maybe future threat? 

the thing is, we wouldn't recognize the human costs our troops need pay in the name o' some potential future threat if it reached up and bit us in the arse. Gromnir telling nineteen and twenty year old versions o' shady and gd that their sacrifice is worth the cost feels kinda pathetic.

again, no real dog in this race, but am thinking the real change needed is government being honest 'bout goals and costs. nation building in afghanistan, if it ever were a genuine goal, were attainable, but the costs is way beyond what were ever presented to the public. converse, if after 9/11 the goal for afghanistan were communicated honest as a long term effort to achieve a stalemate with the taliban which would cripple their efforts to engage in and promote global terrorism, am thinking it woulda' been a hard sell but not impossible. woulda' been honest though.

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Gromnir

[rjshae]

3 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

The moment the Taliban topples the government and takes over the country every dollar spent there and every life lost there will have been for nothing. Let that be a lesson for a future generations. The time will probably come when it is necessary to go in and kick another country‘s ass. Although that certainly should be a very last resort. But staying there afterwards and trying to turn them into something they cannot be is a fools errand. They should’ve partitioned the damn country and giving it back to the individual clans. I don’t think there has ever been a centralized government that controlled more than the area immediately around Kabul for a long period of time.

It seems like every time the US gets involved in an extended war, mission creep becomes inevitable. We tried to do too much here as well, investing ourselves in the nation's women's issues, for example. I don't agree though that the money was completely wasted. With time, perhaps they will come around just like Vietnam did. We're almost certainly leaving the country in a better condition than we found it. If things fall apart, that's on the Taliban.