McDonalds And The Fall of Kabul

“Here’s to failure!” – The Producers

Well, I guess that solves that problem.

The collapse of Afghanistan’s armed forces was total and complete.  Taliban soldiers entered city after city with little to no resistance.  As I write this, a tragic failure is unfolding in Kabul:  the last McDonalds® grill in Afghanistan is now shut down.

Beware the special sauce.

That actually (really) is the problem.  I was watching a movie the last night called The Outpost, which was about the battle of Kamdesh during the late Afghanistan War.  In one scene, the commander of the Army unit was negotiating with the native Afghanistan villagers.  “I can give you money, contracts, if you help me.”

He was talking in a mud hut with people who certainly use money.  But the people that he was talking with valued many, many things more than mere money:  in this case, religion and honor.  In the scene, however, the Afghan men lay down their arms so they can get contracts.  Who doesn’t like and want more money?

In reality, those same men had been shooting at the Americans, and would be shooting at them again the next time there was an attack.  They didn’t want more money.  And why not?  The contracts and money, to them, were of ephemeral value.  Besides, would that money even be worth anything?

Ohhhh!

The government in Afghanistan wasn’t created by the people of Afghanistan.  The United States showed up, and got a coalition of people rejected from the Mad Max remake because they were too intense.  It really was an accomplishment to get these people to stop killing each other for an afternoon or so.

Having done that, the State Department pretended that it was Kentucky instead of Kandahar and set up a government more suited to Alabama than to Afghanistan.  The Spartans won and made Sparta.  The Romans won and made Rome.  The Americans conquered a continent and made the United States.

The Afghanistan government?  It was written up in memos in the State Department in Washington, D.C. and was as native to Afghanistan as PEZ® or ¡Jeb! Bush.  The war in Afghanistan was won by boys from Kentucky and Alabama, so why not use those rules?

Well, one simple reason.  They don’t work in Afghanistan.

Finally, a place where ¡Jeb! can win.

In the end, the victory of the Taliban this weekend was because they were fighting a religious war.  And not only was it a religious war, it was a religious war fought by a culture that prized the warrior ethic.  The Afghanis have been fighting off and on against each other and anyone else for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  There’s never been a lot of thought about building an Industrial Park or at Tech Incubator Campus.  Nope.  It’s blood, rocks, and brutal weather.

Those kinds of people are scary.  To them, extreme violence is a religious sacrament.  Death in combat?  That’s a formula for sweet martyrdom and a promise of eternal bliss.

Hmmm, reminds me of the Vikings?

What was the leadership of the opponent of this death cult of warriors?

Well, this is an entirely different type of cult.

The weak and secular government composed of warlords that had been trying to kill each other before 2001. The Kabul coalition government was like putting a dozen feral cats in a burlap sack, shaking it real hard, and pretending it was a functioning government.  I don’t know if they had incentives like a 401k, but I’m sure they had appropriate state-run defined benefit pension plans that will pay off when they retire in 2057.

Ooops.

Incentives matter.

I was discussing the Fall of Kabul with The Mrs.  Her response was short and was exactly what I would have expected.  “What did we think that we were doing over there, anyway?  We should have gone in, knocked out Al Qaeda, and left.”

The Mrs. is, of course, correct.  Von Clausewitz observed this 200 some-odd years ago when he was writing his book On War that winning a war consisted of two parts.  The first part was getting the other guy’s troops to stop fighting.  Von Clausewitz classified that as, and I quote, “es ist easy-peasy.”  Beating the troops of the enemy was really the easy part.  To win a war, however, you had to remove the will of the whole people to fight.

Biden monitors the evacuation in the War Room.

After World War II, the war was over not because the military bits were done fighting.  It’s that pretty much everybody was tired of fighting, most especially the Germans and especially the Japanese, who discovered to their dismay that they weren’t radiation proof.

It is true that one French general had said, “I have not yet begun to fight, and I probably won’t start, that sounds messy.”  Please don’t mention the Italians, because then I’d need a scorecard.  Their hearts weren’t in it from the beginning.

The Mrs. followed up with, “Why on Earth have we been there for 20 years?”

McDonalds™.

Well, this obviously means war.

Well, not exactly McDonalds®, but the same thinking that McDonalds© represents:  the worship of markets and material things.  As a nation we were convinced that if we give people around the world a McDonalds™ and professional sports and air conditioning they’ll be just like us and want to make PowerPoints© for a living and live in overpriced housing in crowded cities.

But they’re not like us.  That’s our mistake in thinking that everyone wants Netflix® and chill.  Nope.

The intelligence failure at the heart of this will haunt Joe Biden for the rest of his life.  Last month, Sleepy Joe said, “Under no circumstances are you going to see people taken by helicopter from the roof of the United States Embassy in Afghanistan.”

Well, I guess that will leave a mark.

Yesterday he followed up with the most cowardly thing ever said by a politician that I can recall, he denied he had any responsibility for the largest American miscalculation since Custer said, “Aw hell, how many Indians could there be?”

Nope.  Biden said he is completely and utterly not responsible for anything related to Collapsistan.

If this were Highlights® Magazine, I’d ask you to spot the differences.  (Hint:  they’re the same picture.)

There are some things he could pass the buck on, but this is not one of them.  Does Pretender in Chief Biden bear full responsibility for what is happening right now?  Yes.  It’s a military matter that he’s been aware of for years.  He had choices.  He could have evacuated American civilians months ago.  He could have put our embassy into a minimal staff situation and sent all of the LGBT flags and Black Lives Matter® posters home weeks ago.

Bringing the things that the Afghani people really wanted.

He didn’t.  To the extent there is responsibility for keeping Americans in danger, it is his, and his alone.

But this is a pattern, not a single point.  Oddly a quick Internet search also found this, when I typed in “Biden Denies Responsibility”:

  • Biden Denies Dems’ Responsibility For Crime Wave
  • Biden Denies Responsibility For Border Surge (illegal aliens, not a Taco Bell® run for the border)
  • Biden Denies He Has A Hooker And Crack Loving Son Named Hunter

Looks like we’re back to Hidin’ with Biden!

It’s like Joe Biden isn’t involved in his life at all, and certainly isn’t interested in the consequences of his decisions and actions.  Or, if I might be more charitable, his dementia-fogged mind might have him reliving being 18, so he hasn’t done all of those awful things yet.  I hear he asks Kamala for the keys to the Studebaker© so he can run down to Pop’s Malt Shoppe and hang out with Archie and the gang.

Kamala already took credit that she and Joe were running the show..

Thankfully, the Pretender in Chief had his priority straight:  the Marines had been called on to cook at the McDonalds© (see, it’s all about McDonalds™) at the airport in Kabul.  The Marines have also been called upon to do that less important task of guarding the airport as chaotic mobs of people desperately try to get on any plane that’s leaving.

I wonder if anyone will try to make political points with this?

Just like the battle for Kamdesh ended up with American soldiers (and two Latvians) on helicopters leaving while the base was bombed by B-1 bombers to destroy the ammo left behind, the war in Afghanistan ends with Americans on planes leaving while the government collapses.

Unless Washington somehow uses this failure to justify going back in (which I don’t think is possible) this is the very end of the Afghan War.  What is left now is the beginning of the aftermath.

But no more bacon cheeseburgers for you in the Helmand Province.

(It’s a Star Trek joke.)

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

87 thoughts on “McDonalds And The Fall of Kabul”

    1. Bullshit its because the opuim grew there and now china says no money to muslims, we give you fentanyl cheaper

  2. Spot on, sir. Exactly on point.
    I don’t blame Joe the Usurper for the Taliban winning. That was always going to happen. I blame him for the pure, undiluted Hopium that resulted in a complete lack of foresight and planning. They should have removed the staffers weeks, if not months ago. We should have drawn the military down slowly, protecting smaller and smaller rings, until all the American civilians had left.

    But no. The military pulled out in the middle of the night. (Biden probably wishes that he had, too, about 3 months after Hunter’s birthday every year.) The State Department, ever a beacon of irresponsible insanity, offered money to negotiate with the Taliban, and honestly believed that Kabul would stand until the end of the year. (The Brits thought it would hold out until the end of the month.) So they made no preparations at all for the possibility that something else might happen.

    1. I would have never guessed the gay atheist marxists in charge of this… situation… could be so completely incompetent. They had no idea what made the Taliban tick, and they have no idea what makes Americans tick either.

    2. That would be Opium not Hopium. Now it will all be chinese fentanyl for the useless eaters

    3. Yup. It was that miscalculation that was always the problem. “We’ll pay you to fight” is never a great motive.

  4. Laugh out loud
    Sorry for my fallen brethren who served in the sandbox but, Mr.Wilder tore this up
    I fear for my nation

    2. You still believe you have a nation? Of what? What we had is long gone. If we start RIGHT NOW we MIGHT be able to get a lot of it back. Time is short.
      Lots of hard work to be done. Nut cutting time.
      IdahoHunter

  6. I must confess: I’m a Bad American. Pretty much rooting for the Taliban since 2002.

    No, I’m not Muslim. I’m a Christian. I wouldn’t care to live under a Taliban regime, nor any Islamic one of any flavor.

    But that’s why there are different parts of the world. And, more to the point, different countries. So, there’s a simple way to avoid Taliban rule: don’t go to Afghanistan. It’s not that hard.

    Truth to tell, for all that I don’t want to be ruled by Talibans, being ruled by White-hating sodomites pretty much sucks, too. I think my choice is to be ruled by God. That’s how I’m trying to live.

    So, since the Vietnam parallels are very obvious, I’ll say that my view of the Taliban is pretty much parallel to Lefty’s view of the Viet Cong, back in the day. Kind of rootin’ for them. A Bad American — that’s me.

    1. You sound like vox add Jews and Boomers to his list and he could be elected in the stan. No Christian wants muslims to win sir, they are killing Christians by the hundreds DAILY
      http://www.persecution.com

          1. The useful takeaway posted on SG:

            Satan has a good line in letting one set of tools grow so vile that another set looks Good: has some virtue/fights evil. Just so long as they keep Christ out.

            Illegitimi non carborundum

  7. With Afghanistan in the rear view mirror, the question for America is now:

    “Will we beat the Russian world record of 35 months for dissolution of the Nation after troop withdrawal from Afghanistan?”

    15 February 1989:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan#/media/File:RIAN_archive_58833_Withdrawal_of_Soviet_troops_from_Afghanistan.jpg

    25 December 1991:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR6MJD_PgLA

    As we have just seen, national collapse can happen quickly. The clock is ticking….

    https://www.usdebtclock.org/

    1. Ratio’d for the doggos, and not, surprisingly, just by the we-hate-people crew, more on the “these dogs are brave, loyal, useful, friendly, unlike the alternatives, so yes.”

      Also, weirdly, no women or kids. My dad was part of the crew rescuing civilians from Saigon, and his boat deck was crammed with them. Once a helicopter ran out of fuel they pushed it into the ocean, and used the deck space for families.

      2. 3,000 Afghans were dumped in Virginia a few weeks ago. The VP of Kneepads welcomed them to America.

  12. Has anyone considered how devastating this is going to be to the finances of the CIA? Crack prices are going to go up for sure. Fortunately, Hunter Biden can jack up his art prices and cover the spread. Remember that 10% for the Big Guy.

    1. Nah. Crack is still holding steady.
      Heroin futures are already up as fears of future shortages rush panic buying.

  13. From Rabobank:

    “…be aware that when/if the penny drops, it will be you, your portfolio, and/or your supply chain on that Kabul airport tarmac, metaphorically. And a year from now can become six weeks can become 72 hours can become Sunday afternoon. When markets are closed.

    And as we all rely on QE to solve all structural problems, consider that 20 years ago, the US rolled into the Greater Middle East guns blazing with plans to remake it in its own image; today it is retreating with socio-economic polarization, cronyism, populism, and “careerist phony baloney land” starting to make *it* look Middle Eastern; and if the current trend is projected forward 20 years, some doomsters wonder if the US may not by then be retreating from parts of itself.

    But, remember: It’s just Afghanistan; It’s a long way away; We never wanted to go on holiday there anyway; They don’t even buy much cheese. And stock indices might go up a fraction of a percent today, bond yields might move a few basis points, and the US dollar may shift a fraction. Focus on the important stuff!”

    https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-quantitative-easing-definition-and-explanation-3305881

  14. Somewhere in the past, the guaranteed results of going “Neanderthal” on enemies was dropped from the agenda. The only sound reason I can think for this is there’s a huge money-making opportunity for those that sale the instruments of war. Use the word “attrition” instead of “destroy” to arrive at some bizarre scenario that is beyond reality. In the end, the enemy has plenty of time to adjust, refocus, plan for the future, and compile stockpiles for the future day of reckoning. Meanwhile, some poor bastard from small-town Iowa gets his balls blown off, and rides home with his buddy that’s in a body bag.

  16. Quote of the Century via Steyne online.
    “General Thoroughly Modern Milley”. (after his picture above)

    and the tweet that said something about America spending more time protecting the gay pride flag from the embassy.

    Also saw a short time ago where bidet has shut down all .gov social media due to comments.

    “The intelligence failure at the heart of this will haunt Joe Biden for the rest of his life”.
    Won’t bother him a bit, he is a sociopath. A brain dead one at that. He and cameltoe are the fall persons that’s why they put them in there. The almost smart democrats that ran said hell no.

  17. The Saigon photo and the Kabul photo are nothing alike!

    Saigon: CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter
    Kabul: CH-47 Chinook helicopter

  18. It is a sad situation the fault of which lies squarely on K street, the neocon war mongers and the CEO of Traitors Inc., Pedo joe. Your memes of Dumbo watching himself on the big screen and the Star Trek NG meme of the civilization that speaks in metaphor add the perfect amount of salt to the wounds of these psychopaths. Well done, as usual, John.

  19. People need to stop thinking Leftists are incompetent. The Afghan war was a massive success for them: trillions in tax dollars siphoned off to the MIC, with some sweet kickbacks for the politicians, and a few hundred billion in opium profits for the CIA. All for the cheap cost of a few thousand dead white males, which is a bonus not a cost for many Leftists.

    What we need to ask now is how does leaving Afghanistan benefit them more than those profits? Because they aren’t leaving because they don’t think they can win, they knew from the start they couldn’t win; that’s the whole point of a Forever War, to never end so the profits can keep rolling in.

    A few possibilities:
    The planes evacuating Kabul hadn’t even landed yet when “experts” began warning that the Taliban would be attacking the continental US, so I’m betting there will be attacks on US soil that lead to strident calls to give up even more of our freedom. When the “experts” warn us of something, it usually means they are planning on doing what they are warning us about to create a casus belli, and want to make it sound more plausible. example: “experts” saying hacking attempts would increase, therefore we need to give up internet freedom. Shortly thereafter hacking attempts happen that get national news coverage.

    Our economy is even worse than we think, and this is an attempt to stave off collapse a bit longer.

    Afghans will threaten their neighbors and increase instability, leading to calls for us to bolster up their neighbors to the tune of trillions. Perhaps Pakistan will become Israel 2.0, requiring gazillions of dollars (with a % kicked back to politicians, of course.)

    1. Addendum:
      It looks like another benefit of withdrawal for the elites is a call for mass immigration from our “allies” amongst the Afghan population. 30k are already scheduled to go to TX and WI, so I’m sure the rest will also be sent to purple/ red states.

      1. Conservatives need to jump on this as an opportunity since it is going to happen whether we want it to or not. Show up at every Afghan emigrants door with a welcome and and explanation of how it was the American desire for everyone to be free that led us to Afghanistan. Too bad those lousy D’s messed it up by playing politics. Oh and here’s how you succeed. Work hard, vote for small government, etc.

    2. Every Hummer left there, every weapon, represented profit to the MIC. You’re right – they’re not dumb.

    3. People confuse the term “incompetent” with “disconnected from reality”, and also underestimate how much thise up us blessed to be living in some shadow of Christendom are protected from the consequences of our choices.

      You have to ask your interlocutor what they mean by the words they use.

  21. Throughout the Afghanistan war, time and again, U.S. leaders had followed the Byng Principle, just as in Vietnam.

    Fighting not to win, but to avoid losing is stupid strategy and never works. But that’s what happens when cowards are in charge.

    There is a solution. It’s the same solution followed by the British Navy in 1757 when they executed Admiral Byng by firing squad aboard his very own flagship while at anchor on the Thames. His crime, “Not doing his utmost” to defeat the French, which led to the French capture of Minorca, and his failure to aggressively defend his fleet in a followup naval engagement.

    His execution “inspired” naval officers up and down the line to act aggressively lest they be accused of following what came to be known as “The Byng Principle” which was a reluctance to take action such that “nothing is to be undertaken where there is risk or danger.”

    This was the precise incident that inspired Voltaire’s line that the British needed to execute an admiral now and then “in order to encourage the others.”

    I can, with little effort, think of many current Byngs in high places greatly in need of similar encouragement.

    3. I know one.

      Can we substitute three days in the stocks pelted with feces and compost?

      It’s a softer world.

  22. Well, the fall of Kabul puts one bright and shining lie to rest.
    Now, about the “national debt doesn’t matter” story?
    The “inflation is transitory” tale?
    The “They’ll think of Something (to resolve the energy predicament)” …?

    The truth is long overdue.

  23. As told on NPR this morning, when the Russians left, the Taliban were welcomed as an improvement over the regional warlords. When the Americans came in, the new national government’s taxes “shook people down during the day, while the Taliban shook them down during the night”.

    In the USA, we fought a Civil War in the 19th century to impose a change of culture upon the southern states. How long did THAT take to get smoothed out? 20 years for culture change in Afghanistan is too long for us to maintain, but also far too short for success.

  24. Civil War 2.0 will be different than the first Civil War because the enemy is everywhere.

    Hopefully, Americans will agree that the elites, soldiers, Gestapo, and politicians are the enemy and the Civil War doesn’t become a race war or a war between Nazis and Commies.

    1. I was in Vienna during Der Gulf Krieg and the bloviating reporters there were as inane as any back home.

      It was my first clue that there existed a strata of persons with the same worldview, role, and metaphysical dysfunction.

      I’m sorry it took me so very long to put 2 and 2 together.

  29. And the reason* I came back to the post:

    *Sad faces*
    “Kabul when the McDonalds fell”

    Teenager:
    “Wilder with the memes”

    *groans, eyerolls*

    (*got distracted by the commentariat: good job, folks)

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