Afghanistan withdrawal not a failure?

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A former U.S. official doesn’t view the Afghanistan withdrawal as an ‘intelligence failure’!

Sue Gordon, who served as a top U.S. intelligence official under both the Trump and Obama administrations, said Sunday that she would not characterize the American withdrawal from Afghanistan “as an intelligence failure”, despite widespread criticism about how the Trump and Biden administrations, the U.S. military, and the intelligence community failed to anticipate how swiftly the Taliban would overrun the Afghan government and security forces and take control of Kabul.

During a TV appearance on Sunday Gordon said she thinks throughout the U.S.’s 20-year involvement in Afghanistan, the intelligence community remained “pretty clear-eyed” about what was happening on the ground. And she believes that didn’t really change last month, arguing that a leaked transcript of President Biden’s last conversation with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani makes it seem clear the former knew the situation was “fraught.” She did, however, acknowledge that “they apparently didn’t have precision in their estimate on the speed of the loss.”. (The Week, 7 Sept 2021)

My comment: I have been asked several times “what use is the study of history?” Had American politicians known any history they would never have committed so many men and so much taxpayer money to Afghanistan, the “graveyard of empires”. Twice the British were thrown out. The second time a lone, exhausted British officer on a near-dead horse was the sole survivor of an Afghan war! Then there were the Russians. Is Ms. Gordon saying the US intelligence thought the anti-Taliban “fighters” were committed and competent? Then she and her colleagues were kidding themselves and the US Government. Obvious nonsense. It was their job to measure the resilience and commitment of the Afghan government forces. Can we ever trust them again?

Epicurus might have advised the President to let the medieval Afghans severely alone. Let them find their own ataraxia amid the incomprehensible readings and interpretations of a religion that treats women as slaves.

The “good news” about gossip

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Don’t feel guilty about engaging in office gossip, “As long as it’s not malicious, it can serve practical, positive purposes.”

A 2019 study found that workers gossip an average of 52 minutes a day. Most of the conversations “weren’t positive or negative, but neutral.” This chatter can help people make sense of their environment, says management expert Shannon Taylor, and check if they’re “perceiving the world in the same way as other colleagues and co-workers.” Talking about a strong-arming boss or a lazy team member can warn people about “dangerous others,” says psychologist Elena Martinescu, and bring colleagues closer as they “realize they have shared values and experiences.” Overall, Martinescu says, “gossip is a good thing.” (Bryan Lufkin, BBC)

My comment: It’s gossip, ill-informed, that makes social media so destructive. What is vaccine refusal but gossip dressed up as health warning, in effect killing thousands who believe it and endangering the lives of unsuspecting friends and neighbours. Mind your own business, I say, and live in peace with your conscience.

Verdict on Brexit – and the current British government

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Some things are almost beyond parody. Lord Frost says the government will hire an external adviser to identify post-Brexit opportunities. We have high hopes of outside input into this process,” he says.

The government of the United Kingdom, almost five years after the Brexit referendum, wants help on identifying post-Brexit opportunities!  The natural response to this is, of course, to laugh like a drain – and to then despair.

But it also worth reflecting upon. One of the strengths (if that is the correct word) of the Leave campaign was that it was primal in its message – and what is primal is usually inexact, if not vague. So Brexit was forced through.

But for every strength there is a weakness.  And at this point of the process, those who have forced Brexit through are saying,in effect: ‘what now?’

Those who were opposed to Brexit will scoff and hope that such an implicit admission discredits the cause of Brexit.

But the idea that had power because of a lack of detail will usually not falter because of a lack of detail.  There was never any particular plan for Brexit: it was instead a political roar of anguish and defiance and (for many) misdirection.

David Frost could go even further and say freely and expressly: We want outside input in identifying opportunities because we don’t have a clue what to do next. Those who supported Brexit would either shrug or nod at the sentiment.

Those with an idee fixe will seldom falter because of a lack of detail. There was never any particularised plan for Brexit: it was instead a political roar of anguish and defiance and (for many) misdirection.

And as a wise person once said: there are no problems, only opportunities – it is just that some opportunities are unreachable – or impractical.
(17 May 2021, Law and Policy blog, David Allen Greene).

My one-word comment: “Pathetic”

Re-cycling plastic

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To The Economist
Europe and America have been shipping their collected plastic waste en masse to Asia and wrongly assuming that it is recycled there. Nothing could be further from the truth: it is dumped.

After China halted imports of Western plastic waste in 2017, it seems that Malaysia is following – in 2020 Malaysia returned a total of 3,737 metric tonnes of unwanted waste to 13 countries, including 43 containers to France, 42 to the UK, 17 to the United States. As a consequence, plastic waste will go to underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia with even lower environmental standards. There is now a greater chance that these plastics will be dumped and litter the ocean.

In Europe, waste policy has a focus on households separating their waste. As a result, it is expected that much less plastic will disappear in an incinerator. However, these targets and the increase in the related taxes mean that the quality of the plastic waste is becoming increasingly poor.

In terms of carbon emissions, the benefit of plastic recycling compared with plastic incineration is very modest. It would take an average household 60 years of plastic separation to compensate for the carbon emissions of a single plane trip from Amsterdam to Los Angeles.

Burning plastic seems like a mortal sin. But it is better for the environment to set fire to low-grade plastics in efficient incinerators. Machines can use infrared techniques to extract plastic from the residual waste. Because machines take out the good types of plastic, the quality of the plastic to be recycled increases.
(Raymond Gradus, professor of public economics and administration, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)

My comment: We recycle plastics, imagining that we are doing a (little) bit to help the environment. In a thousand years it will prove to long distant descendants, who will dig the stuff up or still picking up detritus on beaches, that we were a truly mindless and undisciplined lot, unfit for the planet…. on the other hand, what are we supposed to do with all the packaging junk?