America's loss in Afghanistan, is the End of America as the sole Super Power.

[MisterBeale]

Biden worse the Don, but wingers don’t see it.

I am getting to the point, where I'm of the opinion that it almost seems like there are forces behind the scenes that play these narratives off of each other.

Could Biden be worse than Don if there were no Don? Could Trump be so awful, if there were no Hillary?

The whole thing is starting to look like a staged nightmare.

Like the folks behind this mess, and behind what is going on in other nations, are creating managed chaos, directing the world, in such a way, as to create more desire for global institutions and global government, rather than less control and more desire for local control.

I mean, just look at this thread. It is supposed to be how the bureaucracy has not acted in the interest of the American Public, our leaders don't give a shit, and no one will be held accountable. Yet, instead, it has devolved into a pissing match about different nation's desires, and who did what to whom, and whose interests are best served by what. And the fact is, multi-national billionaires, international banking interests, and global oligarchs discuss all these issues, and probably have already divided up that pie a long time ago, and now they have only to decide how to get their respective populations to hate one another so they can justify their budgets and have a bogey man to distract their own populations from their own corruption.


When we have that knee jerk desire to compare one side to that other, I don't think it helps, it plays into the hands of those that are manipulating us.

Fuck them all.

 

[gipper]

I am getting to the point, where I'm of the opinion that it almost seems like there are forces behind the scenes that play these narratives off of each other.

Could Biden be worse than Don if there were no Don? Could Trump be so awful, if there were no Hillary?

The whole thing is starting to look like a staged nightmare.

Like the folks behind this mess, and behind what is going on in other nations, are creating managed chaos, directing the world, in such a way, as to create more desire for global institutions and global government, rather than less control and more desire for local control.

I mean, just look at this thread. It is supposed to be how the bureaucracy has not acted in the interest of the American Public, our leaders don't give a shit, and no one will be held accountable. Yet, instead, it has devolved into a pissing match about different nation's desires, and who did what to whom, and whose interests are best served by what. And the fact is, multi-national billionaires, international banking interests, and global oligarchs discuss all these issues, and probably have already divided up that pie a long time ago, and now they have only to decide how to get their respective populations to hate one another so they can justify their budgets and have a bogey man to distract their own populations from their own corruption.


When we have that knee jerk desire to compare one side to that other, I don't think it helps, it plays into the hands of those that are manipulating us.

Fuck them all.

Agreed. The politicians of both parties are all pretty much the same. They all do the bidding of the oligarchs and big corporations, but could care less about the people. This to me is apparent, but so many Americans are bogged down in the quagmire of the two criminal gangs they can’t see it. Arguing over meaningless shit, while the oligarchs further enrich and empower themselves.

If there were some way to push forward a third party that addressed the will of the people, things might change. I’m skeptical that can ever occur.

 

[ESay]

IMO? I believe the majority of the posts in this thread have missed the point of this thread, or we are so old, and have lived the majority of our lives in a paradigm of the US being so economically, and militarily powerful, it is beyond our imagination to conceive of how the interlocking directorate and the military-industrial-establishment, completely unresponsive to the will of the voters, regardless of which party is in power, continues to do what it is going to do, for profit and power, regardless of what is in the best interest of the nation.

Folks just don't really care anymore.

And? IMO? They don't use much critical thought when the elite journalist corporate media, which are their cheerleaders, produce propaganda to support their corruption. It is a good thing they keep the collateral damage down and the casualty rates low. Where have all the war protests been?

Back during Korea and Vietnam, we knew who was funding the opposing forces, the media and investigative reporters dug into that, and told the public. But the Taliban? How often do you hear stories about how they get their funding and their arms and equipment? Anyone that plays war simulations will tell you, a war or insurgency is fought on supply, food, weapons, etc. The American revolution constantly was short on clothing, equipment, food, ammunition, artillery, ect. Yet? Hardly any reports are produced about how this insurgency fights the most well equipped fighting force on the planet. . . and defeats it? Maybe those reports are hard to come by with "embedded reporters?"

Was this war ever even meant to be won?

Or was it really meant to be the doom of America?

Or is it a portent of something even more dire?

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What are you complaining for? That things have become too complicated that you don't get who finance the Taliban, as an example?

Or that the US have lost its role as a single superpower (it needs to say that this role existed only for 30 years after the Soviets' break up).

Or that politicians put their own interests above the country's ones and the media cover the things up? (It would be quite pathetic to claim it hadn't been the case since the dawn of civilization).

 

[FA_Q2]

Great column by Hedges, as usual.

Once we lose reserve currency it’s all over. With a demented neocon in the WH, I fear the lose will be sooner rather than later. The consequences won’t be pretty. Few Americans have any understanding of what’s likely to happen, even though history is full of dying empires.

Well, sure if that happens but if it does it will have literally nothing to do with the Afghanistan war.

Your thread title is just silly. If it said "America losing the world's reserve currency is the end of America and the world's super power" I would agree. As of this point, there is little chance of that as well because there is nothing else to go to and we wield a crap ton of economic power. Our military might is not the main reason we are the worlds superpower, our economic power is. That it translates to military power is just a given.

The idea we lost in Afghanistan is also a rather specious concept in general. We lost there because we have no actual goal - 'losing' has been a forgone conclusion for the past 10 years. It is definitionally impossible to win when you do not have a win condition. Afghanistan also did not 'win' anything, they are dirt poor, far more so than before we got there and they were dirt poor then as well, and have gained absolutely nothing. There is no nation on earth that would want to be in Afghanistan's shoes in relation to the US.

 

[zaangalewa]

The period of the Cold War when I was here, the strategy was to stop or deter Soviet invasion with a strong conventional force. Hence all the M-1s Reagan bought.

That was an impressive tank and we bought a lot of them, very expensive.

I, for one, am very glad that invasion never happened. THe Cold War was a dark time, but we go though it.


Our leadership was far from perfect, Lord Knows, But hey, we are all here today. So, that's a Win.


We could not have done it without you. Thanks for your help.







Don't care. My point stands. YOur beef is with your leaders. I agree with you on this issue. We should not be military allies any more.

Did I ever say so?

And America should spend less on the military.





YOu do. With your constant complaining.




Yes. I want US to leave. YOu seem to want that too. Why the weird attitude? Are you in pain because we agree?





What was Germany's position on NATO expansion?

No idea. I fear no German has any idea any longer what our army is doing - what's by the way an effect of the NATO and the "will of the USA" that Germany has to "overtake responsibility". So we reduced our army by throwing out stupid unprofessional draftees and replaced them with professional stupids.

Meanwhile we defended for 20 years Germany against the attacking Afghan hordes with our submarine and a German defense comedian minister made the unforgotten joke "Germany has to be defended in the Hindu Kush!" - a sentence from advertising strategists, which would had sounded much more interesting if an Austrian German with the Scandinavian forename "Adolf" had used it. So everyone had only to laugh - what not had been the intention of this joke.

But now our soldiers had won - whatever they had won - because they came back after 3 month ... ah sorry: 20 years. And now come Afghan hordes (and Syrian hordes and other hordes) over Belarus - sent from the the smiling dictator with the name Lukashenko and his everlasting joke "I cut off the hands of everyone who not votes for me".

More I'm not able to tell now, because there is always the danger to find somewhere a rest of the joke, which made the Brits to the winners of world war 1+2 and the losers of their empire.



PS: Germans - use earplugs to listen!

 

[zaangalewa]

Some Germans but after the Second Great War and the invasion of East Germany that lasted for decades and caused a wall my gut tell me not all of Germany would agree.

As for German and Russian love and Catherine the Great, well yes she was Prussian but actually if I remember correctly she was born in Poland with more of Swedish lineage than German but she was also related to the Germans also. ...

Her father was an Ascanian (high nobility from the Saxons) - her mother was a sister from the Swedish king. As far as I can see were all her ancestors from her mother's side Swedes, Danes or Germans. With Poland she had nothing to do. Stettin was conquered from the allies in world war 2 and given as a present from the allies to Poland. The Germans there were murdered or displaced and some system relevant Germans were forced to stay there, to become Polish and forced to work for the Polish Soviets. The Poles which live today there came after world war 2 to Stettin.

 

[surada]

I read an interesting Article tonight. As I am reading it, I was thinking of this video;



In this video, the global oligarchs explicitly tell us, the U.S. will not be the world's sole power. . . to this end, it will mean destroying the US as the holder of the world's reserve currency.

Chris Hedges: US Collective Suicide​

July 28, 2021
The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable.

Chris Hedges: US Collective Suicide

The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable. By Chris Hedges ScheerPost.com The debacle in Afghanistan, which will unravel into chaos with lightning speed over the next few weeks and ensure the return o

consortiumnews.com

". . . The two decades of combat, the one trillion dollars spent, the 100,000 troops deployed to subdue Afghanistan, the high-tech gadgets, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and GBU-30 bombs and the Global Hawk drones with high-resolution cameras, Special Operations Command composed of elite rangers, SEALs and air commandos, black sites, torture, electronic surveillance, satellites, attack aircraft, mercenary armies, infusions of millions of dollars to buy off and bribe the local elites and train an Afghan army of 350,000 that has never exhibited the will to fight, failed to defeat a guerrilla army of 60,000 that funded itself through opium production and extortion in one of the poorest countries on earth.

<snip>

Mark Twain, who was a fierce opponent of the efforts to plant the seeds of empire in Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, wrote an imagined history of America in the 20thcentury where its “lust for conquest” had destroyed “the Great Republic…[because] trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake.”

Twain knew that foreign occupations, designed to enrich the ruling elites, use occupied populations as laboratory rats to perfect techniques of control that soon migrate back to the homeland. It was the brutal colonial policing practices in the Philippines, which included a vast spy network along with routine beatings, torture and executions, which became the model for centralized domestic policing and intelligence gathering in the United States. Israeli’s arms, surveillance and drone industries test their products on the Palestinians.

<snip>

The death blow to the American empire will, as McCoy writes, be the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This loss will plunge the United States into a crippling, and prolonged depression. It will force a massive contraction of the global military footprint.

The ugly, squalid face of empire, with the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency, will become familiar at home. The bleak economic landscape, with its decay and hopelessness, will accelerate an array of violent and self-destructive pathologies including mass shootings, hate crimes, opioid and heroin overdoses, morbid obesity, suicides, gambling and alcoholism.

The state will increasingly dispense with the fiction of the rule of law to rely exclusively on militarized police, essentially internal armies of occupation, and the prisons and jails, which already hold 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States represents less than 5 percent of global population.

Our demise will probably come more swiftly than we imagine. When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, empires become “brittle.” An economy heavily dependent on massive government subsidies to produce primarily weapons and munitions, as well as fund military adventurism, will go into a tailspin with a heavily depreciated dollar, falling to perhaps a third of its former value. Prices will dramatically rise because of the steep increase in the cost of imports. Wages in real terms will decline.

The devaluation of Treasury bonds will make paying for our massive deficits onerous, perhaps impossible. The unemployment level will climb to depression era levels. Social assistance programs, because of a contracting budget, will be sharply curtailed or eliminated. This dystopian world will fuel the rage and hyper nationalism that put Donald Trump in the White House. It will spawn an authoritarian state to keep order and, I expect, a Christianized fascism.. . . "


This is all stuff that I have been very slowly coming to realize will happen, as this is what led to the rise of the dictators in Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia. . . sad to see the oligarchs use their mechanations to do it to both China and the US.

It would not surprise me to see them orchestrate a war either. . . .

American Empire? We went into Afghanistan to try and save ENRON and their white elephant project in Dabhol.

 

[MinTrut]

I read an interesting Article tonight. As I am reading it, I was thinking of this video;



In this video, the global oligarchs explicitly tell us, the U.S. will not be the world's sole power. . . to this end, it will mean destroying the US as the holder of the world's reserve currency.

Chris Hedges: US Collective Suicide​

July 28, 2021
The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable.

Chris Hedges: US Collective Suicide

The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable. By Chris Hedges ScheerPost.com The debacle in Afghanistan, which will unravel into chaos with lightning speed over the next few weeks and ensure the return o

consortiumnews.com

". . . The two decades of combat, the one trillion dollars spent, the 100,000 troops deployed to subdue Afghanistan, the high-tech gadgets, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and GBU-30 bombs and the Global Hawk drones with high-resolution cameras, Special Operations Command composed of elite rangers, SEALs and air commandos, black sites, torture, electronic surveillance, satellites, attack aircraft, mercenary armies, infusions of millions of dollars to buy off and bribe the local elites and train an Afghan army of 350,000 that has never exhibited the will to fight, failed to defeat a guerrilla army of 60,000 that funded itself through opium production and extortion in one of the poorest countries on earth.

<snip>

Mark Twain, who was a fierce opponent of the efforts to plant the seeds of empire in Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, wrote an imagined history of America in the 20thcentury where its “lust for conquest” had destroyed “the Great Republic…[because] trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake.”

Twain knew that foreign occupations, designed to enrich the ruling elites, use occupied populations as laboratory rats to perfect techniques of control that soon migrate back to the homeland. It was the brutal colonial policing practices in the Philippines, which included a vast spy network along with routine beatings, torture and executions, which became the model for centralized domestic policing and intelligence gathering in the United States. Israeli’s arms, surveillance and drone industries test their products on the Palestinians.

<snip>

The death blow to the American empire will, as McCoy writes, be the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This loss will plunge the United States into a crippling, and prolonged depression. It will force a massive contraction of the global military footprint.

The ugly, squalid face of empire, with the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency, will become familiar at home. The bleak economic landscape, with its decay and hopelessness, will accelerate an array of violent and self-destructive pathologies including mass shootings, hate crimes, opioid and heroin overdoses, morbid obesity, suicides, gambling and alcoholism.

The state will increasingly dispense with the fiction of the rule of law to rely exclusively on militarized police, essentially internal armies of occupation, and the prisons and jails, which already hold 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States represents less than 5 percent of global population.

Our demise will probably come more swiftly than we imagine. When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, empires become “brittle.” An economy heavily dependent on massive government subsidies to produce primarily weapons and munitions, as well as fund military adventurism, will go into a tailspin with a heavily depreciated dollar, falling to perhaps a third of its former value. Prices will dramatically rise because of the steep increase in the cost of imports. Wages in real terms will decline.

The devaluation of Treasury bonds will make paying for our massive deficits onerous, perhaps impossible. The unemployment level will climb to depression era levels. Social assistance programs, because of a contracting budget, will be sharply curtailed or eliminated. This dystopian world will fuel the rage and hyper nationalism that put Donald Trump in the White House. It will spawn an authoritarian state to keep order and, I expect, a Christianized fascism.. . . "


This is all stuff that I have been very slowly coming to realize will happen, as this is what led to the rise of the dictators in Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia. . . sad to see the oligarchs use their mechanations to do it to both China and the US.

It would not surprise me to see them orchestrate a war either. . . .

The mass eviction crisis now unfolding will also serve to accelerate this collapse...

 

[zaangalewa]

...

Empty phrase. Quote: «Die Form unseres Regiments ist democratisch» (=The form of our government is democratic) Switzerland, 1618. Democracy is much older there - but this sentence is about 2*200 years old and still exists democracy there and no one doubts that Switzerland will be forever a democratic country.

Welten vergehen, stellt man sich denen, die sie vergehen lassen wollen, nicht früh und entschieden in den Weg.
Saša Stanišić

 

[Correll]

Did I ever say so?

If that was not your intent, then you did it wrong.

No idea. I fear no German has any idea any longer what our army is doing -

The Military would have no say in the German Position on nato expansion. And that is the question as to whether or not your leadership was stupid or not. NATO expansion was stupid. Especially as your nation increases trade with Russia.

 

[rightwinger]

We never should have taken over the country in the first place

That was our loss

 

[Correll]

We never should have taken over the country in the first place

That was our loss

Our options were limited when they would not hand over Osama bin Laden.


The mistake was when we tried to nation build. We should have just put some local strong man in charge of Kabul, declared him "President" or more aptly "King" and a pile of money and weapons, and left.

 

[JWBooth]

Our options were limited when they would not hand over Osama bin Laden.


The mistake was when we tried to nation build. We should have just put some local strong man in charge of Kabul, declared him "President" or more aptly "King" and a pile of money and weapons, and left.

Very early on the Taliban offered up Bin Ladin on a silver platter and the shrub refused it.

 

[Correll]

Very early on the Taliban offered up Bin Ladin on a silver platter and the shrub refused it.

No, they didn't.

 

[JWBooth]

No, they didn't.

Yep, Oct. 2001

 

[MisterBeale]

No, they didn't.

Yeah, actually they did.

All they wanted, was some proof that he actually did they deed. . . not circumstantial proof of the sort that the Trump supporters have of election interference, but concrete proof. It's one thing for UN-elected bureaucrats to make a claim for policy directives, it is an entirely different thing for them to back it up with proof. The bureaucracies do, and often times have, lied to achieve their policy directives.


I wonder if you know the difference? Or if you just believe every bit of government and corporate propaganda the shovel into your noggin?

When there were guerrilla attacks against military targets, OBL admitted he was involved. Yet with 9/11? He denied all involvement.

SO? The Taliban leaders wanted just SOMETHING, not suspicions or crap that intel. agencies could set up any patsy to take a fall for.

They knew he OBL was, and knew that it wasn't the type of thing he would do.

They also had an extensive history of working with America's intel agencies going back to the Soviet era.


You really have no idea of what you are talking about.

 

[MisterBeale]

What are you complaining for? That things have become too complicated that you don't get who finance the Taliban, as an example?

Or that the US have lost its role as a single superpower (it needs to say that this role existed only for 30 years after the Soviets' break up).

Or that politicians put their own interests above the country's ones and the media cover the things up? (It would be quite pathetic to claim it hadn't been the case since the dawn of civilization).

I a lot of folks became wealthy off of the Afgan policy, and it weakened the US economy and society.

No one will be held to account.

Did you miss post #109?

 

[MisterBeale]

American Empire? We went into Afghanistan to try and save ENRON and their white elephant project in Dabhol.

Those are some interesting accusations.

I am not saying you are wrong, and many big events often have multiple stake holders supporting the action. I would be interested in a link to a investigative report on such information if you have it.

 

[surada]

Those are some interesting accusations.

I am not saying you are wrong, and many big events often have multiple stake holders supporting the action. I would be interested in a link to a investigative report on such information if you have it.

Juan Cole has the best in depth report on Enron and what happened.

First thing you have to know is that Bush jr didn't know anything about the oil/gas business. He may have been coking and and drinking when he busted Arbusto..

Enron and 9-11: Connecting the Dots – Brutal Proof

 

[MisterBeale]

The mass eviction crisis now unfolding will also serve to accelerate this collapse...

I find it very interesting that the world's largest multinational investment management corporations are buying up all the real-estate at higher than market value, and we have more empty units than we have homeless folks in America.


There is definitely something weird going on. . . it almost seems like a conspiracy against the masses in the States.

This is something that I have a hard time finding news on in the controlled press. There was a story about in FT and Bloomberg, but both are pay-walled.

You need this context, to understand the economically dirigisme (which is the economic model of fascism.) Right before the "pandemic," the world's economy was headed in the crapper, and the federal government made some deals with Blackrock.

There Is More to BlackRock Than You Might Imagine - LewRockwell

A virtually unregulated investment firm today exercises more political and financial influence than the Federal Reserve and most governments on this planet. The firm, BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, invests a staggering $9 trillion in client funds worldwide, a sum more than...

www.lewrockwell.com

BlackRock Authored the Federal Reserve's Bailout Plan Before There Was a Crisis

The Fed plans to leverage the $454 billion from the COVID-19 stimulus program, the CARES Act, into a $4.54 trillion bailout plan.

needtoknow.news

And now? The establishment press is trying to convince folks that this investment corp. is not the problem behind the housing crises.

BlackRock Is Not Ruining the U.S. Housing Market

The real villain isn’t a faceless Wall Street Goliath; it’s your neighbors and local governments stopping the construction of new units.

www.theatlantic.com

When ever independent analysis tells us they are causing homelessness and the end of the American dream.

Blackrock is buying up US homes like no tomorrow - Strange Sounds

Did you know that Blackrock is currently buying up US homes like no tomorrow? Here are the reasons why... People and societal control...

strangesounds.org

BlackRock Buying Up Residential America. – Civilian Intelligence Network

civilianintelligencenetwork.ca

Corporations Like Blackrock Are Buying Up Thousands of Houses, Pricing Americans Out of the Market - DailyVeracity

According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, roughly 200 investment firms are buying tens of…

www.dailyveracity.com