Clay Jones for August 27, 2021

But your overlords demand military spending!!!

Since the putative “next time enemy” has a lot of our best stuff, we’ll have to spend $trillions ASAP to overcome their lead.

/s

Funny how the Republican’s didn’t complain while the Republicans were selling, perhaps even buying Afghanistan military weapons and vehicles.

60 planeloads of US military equipment were flown out by May 4. “Stars and Stripes”

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/60-planeloads-of-us-military-equipment-leave-afghanistan-as-drawdown-begins-centcom-says-1.672257

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Just a month before the US withdrawal, it continued to supply the Afghan army with expensive aircraft. The Afghan army touted the arrival of 35 Black Hawks and three Super Tocano in July.

(Yeah, so we completely abandoned the Afghan army — NOT!) Remember that by Jan 15, 2021, there were only 2500 US troops in Afghanistan. Not enough to win a war even against the Taliban. That was Trump’s draw-down, not Biden’s.

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Elias Yousif, deputy director of the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, told The Hill that images of the Taliban with control of the American-made weaponry was a “status symbol”.

“It’s a psychological win,” Mr Yousif said

Mr Yousif said the Taliban wouldn’t have the expertise to use the highly technical aircraft, even if it could coax Afghan pilots to fly them.

The aircraft required constant and costly maintenance to keep them in the skies.

“Ironically, the fact that our equipment breaks down so often is a life-saver here,” a US official told Reuters.

==

When the US abandoned its Bagram base in July without even informing the Afghan army commander, it left behind an estimated 3.5 million items.

The Associated Press reported that this included thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles.

General Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s commander, told AP that the US also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but took heavy weapons with them.

Non-weapon items included tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and meals.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/afghanistan-us-military-weapons-withdrawal-b1906175.html

Like Lewis Black said, the other day, in his ‘Rant’, (paraphrasing), we should have just given the Taliban a bunch of weapons and equipment, twenty years ago, and said, ‘Here, now take over the country!’ .

Republicans have one overwhelming reason to increase defense spending. They get huge ‘campaign contributions’ from defense contractors. That is their reason.

Gear up spending to fight China and UFO’s.

With all the professional warriors in Afgagistan, you would think, a few would remember their training.

‘’When retreating, leave no resources for the enemies use.’’

Darth Cheney and his puppet-boy shrub saw what happened to The Russians in Afghanistan… and they STILL sent troops there. “Sheesh”.

And YES, since we spend more on the Military then the next 10 Countries COMBINED, it IS time to cut the DoD’s budget. LONG PAST IT, actually. Use that money to either draw down the national debt, or use it to improve OUR infrastructure, rather then some other country who will not appreciate it!

I thought I read we destroyed all weapons and etc before we left?

The munitions companies did and do very well indeed. Money before people, it’s their way. Doesn’t matter who the buyers are.

A current general calling for less military spending? Well, it’s a nice fantasy.

The more likely result will be ""We need more money, to fight against those people using that pile of weaponry we left".

spot on

Cut military spending? It ain’t going to happen. The rebumblican need the money. Campaigns and retirement in the good old days can be expensive.

You need to add a self destruct switch on all the equipment you send overseas.. so when you inevitably abandon it.. useless. Keep some of those dubious nations you sell to in line as well.

My suspension of disbelief won’t work for me here. There’s no image conceivable that would get that response from a General.

The ‘military mind’ is obviously stupid.

Has anyone seen the Taliban in a tank or jet plane? We have the codes to immobilize those weapons.

I shouldn’t really have to point this out, of course, but: Not all military spending has the slightest thing to do with national defense. Not all national defense spending has to do with the military. (Eisenhower knew that infrastructure is a vital part of national defense—thus the federal highway system.) Military spending will never be dropped far enough to notice—how many “peace dividends” actually ever materialized? The problem is that the companies producing weapons and weapons systems deliberately spread the manufacture of different components throughout many different Congressional districts around the nation. They know that members of Congress won’t vote to kill even dysfunctional weapons (or ones NOT wanted by the Pentagon) because their districts need the jobs, and they need the votes.

wanting a democracy and being willing to fight for it are two different things

Tells us that we need to do some better planning… and maybe not enter war situations that we think we might be able to solve despite generations of warring there…

Eisenhower foresaw the military industrial complex was going to be America’s biggest enemy with their war profiteering.

The DoD could use some trimming.

“The United States, whose military spending was rapidly reducing between 1985 and 1993 and remained flat between 1993 and 1999, has dramatically increased it after September 11, 2001, to fund conflicts like the War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend

Yes, we do.