Taliban Debutante Ball

 

Disturbing but not surprising news from Jack Posobiec on Twitter:

“BREAKING: The Taliban has invited 6 countries to take part in the formal announcement of their new government: Turkey, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar.
Are you paying attention yet?” –06 September 2021

Indeed, just like Mister P, many of us have been paying attention.  Turkey has been an enemy for quite some time despite oft-repeated protestations by the usual compromised suspects, and our major base of operations in the middle east is “hosted” in Qatar.  The Cam Ranh Bay of Pigs proceeds apace, and soon it will be our Qatar base which is forfeit if things do not change.  Perhaps it is inevitable — our influence is approaching negative territory.  It may soon be profitable for loosely affiliated countries to flat-out oppose the inept, duplicitous infidel country Way Over There.  Pakistan was our “frenemy” allowing access to Afghanistan since the Russians shut down our northern route through Kyrgyzstan.  The only Afghan border countries not included in the announcement are the TUTistans, Turkmenistan, Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan-stan, and Tajikistan.  Those are all closed off by Russia.  Kashmir (contested by Pakistan and India) does not matter in this context — it might as well be the moon.

Look forward to a de facto partition of Afghanistan, with Iran holding sway over the north and Pakistan holding sway over the south.  Why would the Taliban be okay with this?  Well, they won’t — not officially — but Afghanistan is not their goal — it is a tool.  The Taliban is the new candidate for Caliphate, and will compete directly with Iran for this purpose.  So they’ll never ever get along, cry the experts, but it not so complicated as all that.  The Sunnis and the Shiites, the Taliban and the Mullahs, the Seveners and the Twelvers, and yes, the Arabs and the Persians will find common cause while they need to.

On or about the 21st of June 2010, then-President Barack Obama proclaimed that all US troops would be out of Afghanistan by 2014.  It took seven MORE years to bring the thing to an end, but now the third term of Obama has brought the thing to an end indeed, and now the bad guys rule.  Of course, the thing was hopeless from the 22nd of June onward.  All we needed in order to prevail was to convince the good guys and the bad guys alike that we would not cede the contest to the enemy of civilization and decency.  But cede it we did, and the intelligent enemy had only to wait us out, which of course, they did.  The only way to break their will was to convince them all that we would not abandon our friends — which we have now done in encyclopedic manner.  Obama is our Neville Chamberlain, even if things take longer these days than simply waving a note from Herr Hitler.  Religion of Peace in Our Time.  From 2010 onward, it has been apparent that the United States is no longer the country it once was — that we would never prevail in any contest beyond our borders unless and until the good guys won a critical fight within our borders, which we have now lost.

I figure that Iran will be the Taliban’s best frenemy, with Pakistan a close second.   Iran and Pakistan will handle the dirty business, with Russian and Chinese money flowing through them under the table, and of course flowing directly from these UN Security Council permanent members for any above-board purposes.  Oh, and there will be American money.  If there is one thing we know about our Marxo-fascist government, it is that we will pay our Islamo-fascist enemies well, lest they be unable to threaten Americans into doing what the deep state wants.

I assume that the Taliban have already negotiated the terms of support, and are not simply casting their invitations to the wind and hoping that their chosen guests will show.  Turkey and Qatar are not our friends — they have been paid all along with benefits outstripping their utility.  Qatar will take the longest to “make the turn”, and may enjoy playing us for a while longer (they have played us well for a decade at least), but I do not imagine that they will fail to make the turn.  They are being invited to a seat at the table of the Caliph.  How does one refuse?

I don’t say that I predicted any of this in detail.  At the same time, I lay claim to a long line of dire pronunciations of doom and gloom occasioned by the re-election of Barack Obama in the wake of Benghazi, and the unchallenged successes like Lois Lerner’s banal weaponizing of the politicized organs of government against our Republic.

Benghazi is still the key to this mess, Hillary’s illegal e-mail server is the key to Benghazi, and they got away with all of it.  Our present ills are the linear descendants of the same problems writ small over the previous decade.  Perhaps I commit the error post hoc ergo propter hoc, but there is more to it than that.  Like an overture to a symphony of corruption, they prototype their offenses and learn, while we make disagreeable marks on our program notes.  Then they develop their themes, and bring it all home in the third act.  There is so much to say, and it is of course all connected, and it just sounds silly if you lay it all out.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Oh, but once you see it, you cannot un-see it.  As my friend BabbaZee used to say of evil in the world: “I see you.”  And as Don Henley said, “Things are gonna get mighty rough here in Gomorrah-by-the-Sea”.

I’ll talk later of where hope lies.  It is remote enough that it need not concern us overmuch now.

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  1. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Were you surprised that North Korea was not on the list of “invitees”?  In some ways they’d be a natural; nuclear armed, unpredictable, a total wildcard.

    • #1
  2. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Were you surprised that North Korea was not on the list of “invitees”? In some ways they’d be a natural; nuclear armed, unpredictable, a total wildcard.

    Interesting — I did not even think about it.  In hindsight, I guess I would say that nK is not large enough an infidel to justify inclusion (what with being infidels and all), and at any rate, with Pakistan, Iran, and China — they alorady have any benefits they might gain from North Korea, without the drawbacks.

    China and Russia are too big to hold their infidel status against them.  The mutual anti-American bent shared by most (all?) of these folks  seems enough to get some work done in the here and now.

    • #2
  3. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    BDB: Turkey, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar.

    I have my scorecard and I still can’t tell the teams. Sometimes, those six are united in fighting the civilized world or in fighting the uncivilized world. Other times they are on opposite sides.

    Now, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, India, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan will be doubting support from the US. They represent a very significant financial and technological resource. They could finance a significant fraction of the Russian military industry. They should be in a position to peel Russia out of the unholy semi-alliance with Iran and China.

    • #3
  4. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Were you surprised that North Korea was not on the list of “invitees”? In some ways they’d be a natural; nuclear armed, unpredictable, a total wildcard.

    And Oman. And Houthi Yemen. And Iraq (to really rub our noses in it).

    • #4
  5. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Qatar is a surprise . . .

    • #5
  6. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Stad (View Comment):

    Qatar is a surprise . . .

    They must have something the Taliban wants.

    • #6
  7. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Qatar is a surprise . . .

    They must have something the Taliban wants.

    They have our regional hard point for power projection.  Delete Qatar, and you delete the US in the mideast.

    • #7
  8. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    From Aljazeera:

    The Taliban has appointed Mohammad Hasan Akhund, a close aide to the group’s late founder Mullah Omar, as head of Afghanistan’s new caretaker government, weeks after it took control of the country in a rapid offensive.

    The list of cabinet members announced by chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Tuesday was dominated by members of the group’s old guard, with no women included….

    Charles Stratford said many of the appointments involved “old faces”.

    “It’s also important to say that a lot of these names, the vast majority of them are actually Pashtun and are not taking into consideration, arguably critics would say, the vast great ethnic diversity of this country.”

    Obaidullah Baheer, of the American University of Afghanistan, said it did not do “their cause for international recognition any favours”.

    “The amount of time spent wasn’t on discussing or negotiating inclusivity or potential power sharing with other political parties. That time was spent on knowing how to split that pie amongst their own ranks,”

    • #8
  9. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Zafar (View Comment):

    From Aljazeera:

    The Taliban has appointed Mohammad Hasan Akhund, a close aide to the group’s late founder Mullah Omar, as head of Afghanistan’s new caretaker government, weeks after it took control of the country in a rapid offensive.

    The list of cabinet members announced by chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Tuesday was dominated by members of the group’s old guard, with no women included….

    Charles Stratford said many of the appointments involved “old faces”.

    “It’s also important to say that a lot of these names, the vast majority of them are actually Pashtun and are not taking into consideration, arguably critics would say, the vast great ethnic diversity of this country.”

    Obaidullah Baheer, of the American University of Afghanistan, said it did not do “their cause for international recognition any favours”.

    “The amount of time spent wasn’t on discussing or negotiating inclusivity or potential power sharing with other political parties. That time was spent on knowing how to split that pie amongst their own ranks,”

    Stunning that people like Stratford and baheer, whomever either of them are, still use words like “diversity” and “inclusivity” in reporting on real-world events.  These people have been totally left behind by reality.

    Good scoop!

    • #9
  10. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    They’re just contrasting what the Taliban said they would do with what they are actually doing. Yes, no surprise, but that’s a reporter’s job. 

    • #10
  11. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Were you surprised that North Korea was not on the list of “invitees”? In some ways they’d be a natural; nuclear armed, unpredictable, a total wildcard.

    NK is a Chinese catspaw,  Oman and the Houthis are Iran’s. The invitees are major players (or potential allies to be wooed; Qatar as @bdb pointed out, is  our regional hard point for power projection, as well as being a major funder of jihad.) Couple Qatar’s strategic position and China’s bases in Pakistan and Djibouti being well positioned to control both major choke points for maritime oil transport from the Middle East, and Qatar’s inclusion makes a lot of sense.

    ctlaw (View Comment):
    Now, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, India, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan will be doubting support from the US

    As well they should. Meanwhile, the Chinese have replaced the USA as major customers for Saudi oil and are locking up long term contracts with the KSA. China also controls much of the world’s lithium supplies, (at least 30% currently and are actively working on more) and their American collaborators are destroying the fossil fuel independence the USA won under Trump and moving key sectors of the US economy to further dependence on lithium.

     

     

    • #11
  12. RyanFalcone Member
    RyanFalcone
    @RyanFalcone

    Cuba/Venezuela/N Korea = Pissed.

    • #12
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