Short story: our delusional elites are done and should be mocked at every opportunity.
You may be wondering why I’m writing about Afghanistan on a Substack called Web 3.0 Digest. I actually think it’s relevant though, not just because it’s a very major current event, but also because a big premise of this Substack is how I believe we are going to enter a new era or “First Turning” if you’ve read the book The Fourth Turning by William Strauss (if you haven’t, buy it now; should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in this Web 3.0 space). Moreover, it’s my Substack so I’ll write about whatever I want on here :) especially given that I have some friends who served there very recently.
What I mean by this and its relevance to a Substack like this, and I will elaborate on the “turnings”, is that the same group of elites and “experts” who told you “two weeks to stop the spread”, the same “experts” who told you that Afghanistan’s government may be clunky but they’ll stand up to the Taliban, those same weirdos are also saying that inflation is nothing to worry about and is “transitory” to use the words of the US Fed.
Hmm.
I’ll first address my thoughts on Afghanistan, and then I’ll get to the turnings.
Afghanistan
Short answer: At a certain point, if the Afghan government and military isn’t willing to fight for their own country, we can’t necessarily do it for them anymore, after 20 years.
Long answer: I stand by that statement…but it’s also a lot more complicated than that, and we made a number of big missteps along the way that likely helped prevent the Afghan National Army and host government from achieving legitimacy. And, there were some in the ANA including their special operations forces (SOF) who did stand and fight.
I do want to note though that I’ve heard stories about the ANA that shock even me. If you wonder what I’m talking about, ask people who have actually deployed and worked as embedded trainers with them. Don’t listen to just the press releases by top brass. Listen to people who actually worked with the ANA. I want to draw a distinction though, since if you follow military Instagram, you’ll see stories of people like Tim Kennedy who worked with the Afghan equivalent of special operations forces, so his view is going to be tilted more positively, as he worked with substantially more competent units. I’d ask you though to listen to people who worked with rank and file ordinary, non-SOF Afghan National Army or police. SOF isn’t enough to hold a country together, because there simply aren’t enough of them.
Our delusional "expert" class needs to be mocked at every opportunity for telling the American public for years "we're making progress lol." That includes the State Department, the Intelligence Community (why do we even have a CIA, DIA, NSA, etc. if they can't figure this out), a lot of top brass who rose through the ranks simply just by staying in longer (you know what I mean if you served), and also the media for buying their story or ignoring it entirely and talking instead about, say, the Kardashians or whatever nonsense is trending on Twitter.
The ones advocating a new intervention haven't addressed how this time would be different, would get the ANA to actually fight for their own country (seriously, talk to people who worked as embedded trainers with the ANA, not the SOF ANA but conventional), and moreover none of these "experts" will do any of the fighting. No skin in the game.
What we could have done differently?
The only things I think that could have been done differently probably needed to happen in the early 2000s at the start: Told Pakistan a big FU, ignored all their propaganda that they're "really on our side" and that we'd aggressively go after Taliban safe havens inside their territory and just accept whatever collateral fallout that results accordingly. Cut Pakistan out of the logistics chain entirely and make a deal with Russia to build a logistics chain through the north (keep in mind relations with Russia were actually a lot better in the early 2000s than they are now). We may have ended up with the same result at some point, but at least maybe that could have denied freedom of maneuver for the Taliban in Pakistan when that was a well known problem...where did we find OBL again? What happened with the Kunduz Airlift again? (If you really want to get angry, read up about that)
The neocon fantasies of 1945 Germany need to get thrown in the trash. 1945 Germany isn’t a good parallel, since Germany could default back to its parliamentary state after the Nazis were deposted. Afghanistan doesn’t have such a parallel. The neoliberal fantasies of Kabul having the social norms of London or New York also need to get thrown in the trash. Some weirdo on Twitter is going to take this out of context and say that I support the Taliban or their extremist norms; I’m not even going to reply to something that ridiculous and I’m just going to block whoever wants to misrepresent my position. Nonetheless, the messiah complex of that expert class that they can remake countries in their image just didn’t work.
“But but but what if we built more schools/hospitals/put a Starbucks on every corner there and teach classes on how to be web developers?”
What if they don’t want it?
“But they SHOULD want it!!!”
Ok…but what if they don’t?
I’m going to harp on this but I really need to hammer this point home. Our elites wanted to remake the social makeup of Afghanistan, which isn’t so much a modern nation-state as it is a patchwork of tribes who don’t all necessarily like each other, into the norms and mores of New York or London when…they just don’t want it.
I think Michael Malice said it best:
He’s being sarcastic, but unfortunately, I think there are some in our “expert” class that are delusional enough to actually think this.
We’d offend their local norms and mores, and spoiler alert, Pashtun tribesmen just simply don’t care about HR lectures on inclusion or worry if someone starts a Twitter hashtag against them.
Perhaps we should do a Change.org petition to ask the Taliban to stop? Maybe we need an infomercial with some actress to “raise awareness?”
But the thing is, it gets worse. A LOT worse. We’d step on their toes on a number of issues, but on one big issue that we absolutely SHOULD have put our foot down and worked to reform their culture, we didn’t. I’m specifically talking about “bacha bazi”, or put more simply, child rape—especially at the hands of the Afghan government forces.
In fact, we punished a Special Forces Soldier for beating up an Afghan cop who was raping a child. The Taliban are crazy sociopaths, but one thing they did was crack down on bacha bazi. In the eyes of the populous, NATO and their Afghan government counterparts might bring schools…but the Taliban says that they’ll protect the kids. Again, this is no endorsement of the Taliban. I’m just saying that this is how hardcore real life works.
Here’s the article on the Special Forces Soldier. It’s not an easy read. https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article38047149.html
If this happened in the United States and a local cop was sexually assaulting someone, if the FBI saw this, you’d expect that the FBI agent would arrest the cop and that there would be a trial of some sort. You wouldn’t expect the FBI agent to take the cop out back with the Maglites and go Dirty Harry style.
THERE IS NO SUCH INFRASTRUCTURE IN AFGHANISTAN. So yes, beating up an Afghan cop isn’t what you’d do in, say, Salt Lake City or Denver, but this is not Salt Lake City or Denver. That’s just the unpleasant reality of war. Talk to some people who actually deployed to that part of the world (for the record, I did not, and my DD 214 is posted publicly on my website) and ask their opinion on Afghanistan’s infrastructure and culture, even if that flies completely in the face of the “expert” opinion of people in DC or New York opining on Afghanistan from the comfort of their air conditioned offices while drinking lattes.
There is a lot more that I could discuss about Afghanistan, including Operation: Anaconda, the Kunduz Airlift (if you need to get some anger and aggression before leg day in the gym, read up on this and how we DIDN’T air strike it), or how some of our NATO allies didn’t step up to their NATO obligations (Canada to its credit absolutely did and then some; some of our European allies, not so much).
That said, this is not meant to be an exhaustive post on the entire history of the Afghanistan conflict, and I think I’ve made my point on how the State Department/CIA/think tank “expert” class failed.
This leads me to the Fourth Turning.
The turnings
What we’re seeing is the post-World War 2 order starting to fall apart. Most of our present day institutions, including things like the United Nations, all still stem from World War 2, almost 80 years ago now. The end of World War 2 and the establishment of those institutions was the first turning.
First turning: Institutions and traditions established. Post-WW2 order.
Second turning: Institutions challenged. 1960s-1970s civil and social turmoil, Vietnam, civil right activism and recognition.
Third turning: Institutions adjusted, revised, and reinforced after the challenge. 1980s American revival, fall of the Soviet Union, Gulf War victory, 1990s tech golden age.
Fourth turning: The most turbulent. The institutions from the first turning are now stale, people are now in power through nepotism instead of competence, and the institutions start to fall apart…until a new first turning that creates new institutions for a new cycle.
Each turning is about a 20 year time horizon, and the whole time cycle is about 80 to 100 years. Seriously, check out the book. It’s great for putting a lot of historical events in context and seeing the patterns in history. I think one of the most important things to study as an investor, besides economics, is history.
What’s interesting about the book is that it lists some example things that could bring about a fourth turning. Those examples include:
A large scale terrorist attack
A major economic crisis
A pandemic
Hmm.
This book was also written in the late 1990s by the way, before 9/11, the 2008 crisis, and before COVID. I’m just saying.
What this means for us
The old institutions, many of which still stem from the immediate time period after World War 2, are now plainly falling apart, and in my humble opinion, the “expert” class that screwed up Afghanistan needs to be mocked at every opportunity, as do the “experts” who assure us that inflation is transitory.
This is now opportunities for ambitious, forward thinking people to start building our own institutions, and perhaps we can shape the next first turning and next cycle.
Web 3.0 is big part of it, and the overall spirit of this Substack is the coming of the new first turning.
-Alex Cook
great article, agree with all of it, after working with British soldiers that attempted to stop it and then were reprimanded by officers, was particularly hard to listen to how much they used hate having to be cordial with these monsters. I think we need to attack culture more, we need to not care about offending people because it is their culture.