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The Mismanagement of Savagery
This deserves a lengthy treatement — a short one will have to do.
In 2004, Abu Bakr Naji, a suspected al-Qaeda strategist, published an online manuscript entitled, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass, which was translated into English in 2006 by William McCants, a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.
— Mackenzie Institute
The full document (translated) may be found here in a handy online reader.
The Mackenzie overview describes it as “… not so much an operational guide for establishing a caliphate; rather, it is more an Islamist justification for the use of violence.” I somewhat disagree. It is not a tactical handbook, but parts of it constitute an excellent operational handbook. Some of this gentle disagreement may be due to different contexts of jargon, though.
In 2008, the US Army was already sick and tired of being sick and tired, and Afghanistan was a dangerous backwater where we conducted nation-building in combat conditions. Green Lights Mean Go, and when it came to Afghan National Security Force (ANSF, including Army, Police, and so forth) capability assessments, green lights on PowerPoint meant Yankee Go Home. The Bush surge was not canceled by Obama, and part of this was to support a planned ANSF surge. End-strength targets for the ANSF were raised, and the doors to the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC, national boot camp) were thrown open. KMTC inducted multiples greater than previously for initial training. This of course stressed the system. Selectivity would go down — everybody knew it.
The Taliban are not stupid — they are highly intelligent, and they consistently display better judgment than we do. You can say that this is due to our administrative blah blah, but the result is that they are better at this than we are. The Taliban quietly sprinkled sleepers into the input stream, and the result was sleepers graduating into the ANA and ANP. This was not difficult to predict — I was not alone in pointing out this likelihood back in 2008. In 2009, one of those sleepers was activated on my camp, and we lost some of our people — I have written of this before.
Now consider the effect that the Taliban’s “deadline” will have on our ability to vet “refugees” streaming in, being airlifted onto bases and into hometowns across America.
We are being stampeded into simply shoveling people onto airplanes and settling them in the States. They are better at this than we are.
Don’t chide me about “all X” or “working hard” or any of that. You know it, I know it — everybody knows it. That’s not relevant.
What is relevant is this mass importation will pay off down the road for our intelligent adversary. And the media, government, big tech, and so forth will deny, censor, and propagandize.
The Americans in Afghanistan are only one side of this problem. The Taliban in America are the other. A few horrifying attacks are all it will take for the Taliban to further destabilize this “country”, or what is left of it. A man with a knife and the will to use it. That’s all.
Well, there’s more, but that’s all I can stand for one day.
Published in Islamist Terrorism
How do you see Taliban coming in? Will they slip through the hurried vetting process? It’s unlikely they worked with the U.S. military prior to this debacle, so they won’t be on an approved list.
Economy Plus.
Susan, I don’t believe that there’s any real vetting process before the Afghans get on the planes. I doubt that there is an “approved list.” Our government is barely competent at this in the best of times. In the chaos we’re seeing on our TV and computer screens, their competence approaches zero.
I’m pretty sure you’re right! What was I thinking?! I really think we should give them embossed invitations at this rate . . .
Yup.
We should take them to a third country (say, Saudi…just spitballing here) and then thoroughly vet them there. Heck, we may be doing that already (I’ve seen reports from Doha, etc., that some are being taken there), but it would be good if we actually knew what State, etc., are doing.
It would be nice if State knew what State was doing. I’ve heard that Doha and Kabul Airport are a humanitarian disaster.
Agree. I’ve said something similar, although not a succinctly (what a surprise) a few times myself. The guys at the top are smart, educated, vicious barbarians, and they know exactly how to push our buttons and get us running around in small circles until we disappear up our own behinds. Not to mention their long-standing contempt for the current Commander-in-Chief.
They could quite easily have waited a few weeks (after all, they’ve already waited 20 years for this moment) until the US and allies were completely gone, and then marched on Kabul. But, no. Better to do it while the US is still in-country so as to show how weak we are, how futile the last twenty years have been, and then humiliate us publicly, while demonstrating that we remain in Afghanistan right now only at their pleasure.
Remain in Mexico.
Another reason now to CC. Never know when an Ala Akbar will break out.
The footprint of the Kabul airport has been whittle down to about eight square kilometers, or 4.8 square miles, which most of that is dedicated to runway and flight line. I can attest that even during the best of times, it’s a logistic nightmare trying to take care of basic needs (food, water, trash and waste removal) this time of year there. It appears we can get food and water flown in, but waste removal is now disrupted, and thousands if not tens of thousands of people are now corralled into one spot, I can imagine that the situation is bad and getting worse. We appear to be in a semi-siege situation.
If AUAB is where the intermediate stop is, that place was hard-pressed to support the normal base population. Facilities built by local contractors with no quality, Toilets, showers, sinks always gross. Now the actual military facilities were nice. But the living conditions for anybody assigned less than x number of months, or not on the high priority list of tenant commands — forget it. Disgusting, take-your-health-in-your-hands facilities.
We used to move people through there in group sizes from 10-200, with 30-40 being normal. And that was with everybody in a place designed for living, if poorly. Not field conditions, but aspects were pretty sketchy. I read somewhere that we now have hundreds of people milling about in hangars which famously do not feature a whole lotta bathroom space. etc.
But . . . but . . . but Psaki said the vetting process in place is “extensive.” So there’s that.
She meant to say expensive, but that liberal diction, the affected campus patois must have gotten in the way.