Aiming to lose in Afghanistan

September 22nd, 2009

Obama tells us

I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of …  sending a message that America is here for the duration.

Thereby announcing to our enemies America is not there for the duration.

If you aim to win, you aim to intimidate your enemies, so you always say you are going to fight to the bitter end and turn the place in even more of a barren wasteland than it is already. If you announce in advance that you are going to bug out should things get tough, things are guaranteed to get tough.

Obama is smart enough to know this, so I conclude that for political reasons, he aims to lose in Afghanistan, and aims to justify the defeat by a disturbingly large level of American casualties.

A lot of blogs call for a surge, a bunch of blogs are outraged Obama is not retreating already but the great wrong is staying there without intent to win.

Posted in party politics, war | 2 Comments »

Northwest passage not open for cargo traffic

September 17th, 2009

The situation has not changed, and is not going to change, for global sea ice remains the same as ever it was.  But since the world is supposedly warming, we need regular announcements that the northwest passage is opening.

Eureferendum provides a nice fisking of the latest report of the Northwest Passage opening

Over the last hundred years or so, the Northwest passage has been briefly open from time to time, for sailors willing to take their chances.  Sometimes they get through, if the wind blows the ice in the right direction.  Sometimes they do not.  This makes it worthless for commercial cargo traffic, since if the weather goes bad, you have to turn around, and face a risk of getting stuck in the ice until next summer.  So you cannot transport goods through the Northwest passage on predictable schedule, and for predictable costs.  You can take a tourist trip through – provided your passengers agree not to demand a refund if the ship has to turn around, and provided you call in the icebreakers at the first sign of getting stuck.

Posted in global warming | No Comments »

Darwinian and divine morality

September 15th, 2009

Morality derived from human nature (and thus from Darwin’s sociobiology) differs from divine law as expressed in the New Testament in significant ways. It is Aristotlean and Randian morality, is fundamentally selfish. Aristotle and Rand tells us to cultivate our own excellence.  Darwin tells us we commit ourselves to conduct that will enable us to get along with others because humans are a social and political animal, we need to cooperate with others to achieve our goals.

Thus one should return good for good and evil for evil. Vengeance is not the Lord’s. He will not repay. One should do good for one’s kin, and forgive them their sins, and good for one’s friends, but not be nearly so forgiving of their sins. All men are not brothers. One should not harm other people without compelling and urgent reason, but the standard of what constitutes compelling and urgent reason is considerably greater for neighbors than it is for distant strangers. All men are not Hebrews.

It is a considerably more manly and muscular morality than that of Christianity.  Transnational progressivism is Christian morality, Americans putting themselves on the cross for Muslims as Christ did, which is why we are losing in Afghanistan. Darwinian morality is classic Greek morality, Xenophon explaining that he had urgent need to slaughter, rape, loot and burn his way across Asia because the incorrigible bad conduct of the savages around him gave him no real alternative.

Posted in politics, war | 2 Comments »

Losing in Afghanistan 3

September 14th, 2009

Aid Watch says:

every sensible economist, political scientist, development worker, and journalist that I know thinks our current course in Afghanistan can have only one outcome — disaster.

Michael Yon tells us we are at war with pretty much the entire Pashtun population.

Global Guerrillas tells us

you can’t change a society through changes in governance or targeted force in any time period of relevance, and if you do try, you will spend yourself into the ground and generate widespread opposition.

The current program is to make Pashtuns into progressive democratic liberals in Washington’s own image. This will fail, and should fail. Pashtuns need to be defeated, not morally uplifted.

Posted in economics | 2 Comments »

There is no Republican party

September 13th, 2009

If the Republican party existed, it would be going after Van Jones’ scalp and the Obama health plan, rather than Glen Beck and Sarah Palin going after them. Glen Beck is not a party member. Sarah Palin holds no party office and is hated by the Republican party leadership with a hatred that verges on madness. The leadership of the Republican party, like the pretended movement in support of Obama’s health plan, is itself merely astroturf manufactured in Washington. Read the rest of this entry »

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The error of Nazism

September 11th, 2009

The Nazis are hated for what they were right about (Darwinism), not for what they were wrong about.   The error of the Nazis is the error of Mencius Moldbug:  Hobbesianism. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in politics, science, war | 8 Comments »

Losing in Afghanistan 2

September 9th, 2009

When the US began its attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan, I said that destroying our enemies anywhere in the world would be easy, but building states would be hard, would most likely fail, for no one understands how a state is built, and the trend of the times is for states to fail.

And today, we again see state building failing.

In an earlier post “terror works” I said of our Afghan policy:

Forming a government in Afghanistan looked remarkably like selling our allies into the hands of our enemies, like Chamberlain selling Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The people who fought for us are outvoted and disarmed, which is why things are now going bad in Afghanistan. It is as if the Czechs had fought and won, and then Chamberlain sold them to Hitler.

Michael Yon is giving us the grunt’s eye view of Afghanistan:

we are fighting the people in general, and not some small group of Taliban … We generate the electricity and the Taliban collects money for wattage.

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Audit the Federal Reserve

September 9th, 2009

The most libertarian member of Congress, Ron Paul, has introduced a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve, you may recall, has been spending trillions off budget, and no one knows how much, or for what, who the beneficiaries are, or what commitments the Federal Reserve has made to foreign governments. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in politics | 1 Comment »

Obama’s public private partnership

September 8th, 2009

Before Obama became president, his big success was handing truckloads of government money to big property developer friends of Obama so that those big property developer friends could benevolently provide housing to the poor.

Your taxes at play

Your taxes at play

Obama told us:

“That’s an example of a smart policy. The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace; but at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts.”

Of course, in practice, government support for developers meant that developers had an incentive to be active in politics, and be good at political activism, but no incentive to be active in preventing the roof from leaking, or the roof from falling in: Government handout, private profit, not “the rules of the marketplace”

And now the people who brought you homes for the poor with the roof falling in are fixing the American financial system with the same methods.

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Losing in Afghanistan

September 7th, 2009

Michael Yon, who should know better than anyone, reports we are losing in Afghanistan.

He suggests the solution is more troops.  I don’t think so.  After all, we originally won in Afghanistan with near zero troops.

Democracy has been a disaster, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  The masses just do not like us much, and tend to elect people that do not like us much – or like freedom, or like democracy, or like capitalism.  And especially, they do not like religious freedom.

The winner in a guerrilla war is the side that most brutally terrorizes the population.  Our troops lack the stomach for what it takes to win a guerrilla war, so more troops will not help.  We already have enough troops to win any conventional battle, and there is not much else to do, other than what our troops are reluctant to do.  It also helps to know the locals, know the language and know the culture – so winning in a guerrilla war means arming the local killers that are on your side, and killing the local killers that are against your side.  And that, of course, means arming the Northern alliance and terrorizing the Pashtuns.

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Posted in politics, war | 1 Comment »

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