EH here. I wish I could post entire articles by Dmitry Orlov because he's one of the most insightful writers out there, imo, but you have to throw him a few bucks a month to read him. I am posting the last three paragraphs of his latest article and hope he will forgive me and perhaps even consider it a promotional act. Also you could buy his books, which I'm sure are excellent, although I've yet to read them. But if you don't have the cash you can look him up on YouTube and watch his interviews.
Orlov is a Christian born in the Soviet Union, which he considered an excellent system, even having good things to say about Stalin. Socialists should read him on the issue for practical advice on how such a system could work again. He describes himself thus: "Writer/essayist, engineer, linguist, sailor."
What he says in the following paragraphs is specific to the Afghanistan withdrawal but applies to lies in general, and given that our tolerance to lies here in the US is an instance of the proverbial chicken coming home to roost on multiple levels, worth considering.
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The
American retreat from Afghanistan was inevitable, but what has amazed
and appalled the entire world is the simply unimaginable boneheadedness
ham-handedness of the operation at every level. Compared to the Soviet
withdrawal, it is a profound national humiliation. The Soviets withdrew
in battle order, flags flying, and left behind a functional government
that stayed in power for another three years, successfully resisting
Western efforts at overthrowing it, and only fell when Soviet support
stopped because the USSR had collapsed—essentially because of
Gorbachev’s treason. But the Afghanis remember and still like the
Russians, still call them “Shuravi” (Soviets) and are grateful to Russia
for everything that it had built there. The Russian embassy in Kabul is
fully staffed and functioning normally, maintaining well-established
channels of communication with the Taliban. In contrast, over their
20-year occupation the Americans have built nothing, destroyed much, and
are by now almost universally hated and despised.
I believe
that the extreme and apparent incompetence of the Americans in
Afghanistan is the result of the corrosive effect of lies. A foundation
of lies is inevitably a shaky one and can only be kept from crumbling
under carefully controlled circumstances. For instance, a certain shady
oligarch may promote a certain vaccine as effective against a certain
virus whereas his real intention is to stop population growth by making
women sterile. This works because corporate structures can be organized
around a management strategy known as mushroom theory (keep them in the
dark and feed them shit). But it doesn’t work for an entire sprawling
military empire, where the truth inevitably leaks out, contradictions
mount, morale plummets. One lie always deserves another, and then the
making of mistakes, the efforts to fix mistakes and the efforts to hide
mistakes all become largely interchangeable. At one point the CIA’s
terrorists were battling the Pentagon’s terrorists in Syria. That was
really awkward and hard to hide. Luckily, the Russians fixed that
problem by bombing them all into oblivion.
The Afghanistan
occupation started with the horrendous lies of Nineleven, continued with
the ridiculous, contrived excuses for the invasion and then went on for
20 long years, each much like the previous, with each year’s lies
piling on top of the previous years’ lies. America had to stay because
of the terrorism caused by the terrorists whom they first organized to
fight the Soviets, then kept as pets. And now speaking the truth in
America is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater. Poor old Joe
Biden, his brain ticking ever more loudly, struggling to form a coherent
sentence, laboring under the crushing load of these lies, can do no
better than assume the fetal position right in the middle of a press
conference. Can you imagine what Bedlam would break out if he were to
suddenly stop lying? I shudder to think! Stocking up on thorazine
beforehand would seem prudent. But such a bout of American glasnost’
seems all but inevitable. Sooner or later the truth will spill over this
giant dam brimming with lies. The ensuing flood is sure to sweep away
everything in its path.
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