Two weeks ago I opined, solemnly, that the Biden Afghanistan surrender and withdrawal seemed to have been managed by girls. I was referring to an enlightening article by one Andrew Stiles, to the same effect.
As it happened, and as commenters quickly pointed out, the Stiles article was labeled satire. This could have meant two things. One, that it was being offered tongue-in-cheek. Two, that branding it satire was a good way to keep the cancel culture mobs from your door.
Now, we have an intriguing anatomy of the Afghanistan failure, offered by one Matt Stoller. According to Stoller, the war effort failed because it was conducted by McKinsey consultant types and people who had learned leadership skills from our best business schools.
And, today’s business schools are all-in with enhancing the awesome power of empathy. As one Yao Puzong discovered while attending the Stanford version, instruction had nothing to do with competing to win, but was all about how charitable work was the only real work. Worse yet, students were supposed to learn how to get in touch with their feelings.
As though to prove the point, a recent Harvard Business Review article claimed that professors now decamp in major corporations in order to teach the assembled drones the power of wonder and awe. Say what? In truth, I am all for wonder and awe. They are especially useful as descriptions of what we can feel when in the presence of great art. Yet, if you put them on the battlefield, alongside empathy, your troops are in for some serious trouble. It is a good thing not to think that what works in the theatre or museum is also a principle that you can use for conducting a war. And yet, that is precisely what we did in Afghanistan.
If you recall the picture of the earnest feminist trying to explain the principles of gender equity to a group of Afghan women by teaching about Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal work, you know what I mean.
Anyway, Stoller does not emphasize the fact that the military is now being run by men whose minds have been girlified. And yet, his analysis leads inexorably to that conclusion. America is now fully in touch with its feminine side. It oozes empathy and wants nothing more than to care for people. When the going gets tough, it cuts and runs.
Stoller begins by describing a film about the Afghanistan War. I have not seen the movie, so I will rely on his description:
In 2017, Netflix put out a satirical movie on the conflict in Afghanistan. It was titled War Machine, and it starred Brad Pitt as an exuberant and deluded U.S. General named Glen McMahon.
In War Machine, McMahan comes to Afghanistan with a spirited can do attitude and a frat house of hard-partying yes-men, after having ‘kicked Al Qaeda in the sack’ running special operations in Iraq. He is obsessed with inspirational speeches and weird bureaucratic box-ticking, under the amorphous concept of leadership. This kind of leadership, though, isn’t actually working with wisdom and foresight, but is more like management consulting. Prior to arriving in Afghanistan, for instance, McMahan created a system, with the acronym SNORPP to coordinate military assets. At night, he cozies down to read books on management excellence, the kind that Harvard Business Review publishes as sort of Chicken Soup for the Executive’s Soul. He is also the author of a fictional book with the amazing title, “One Leg At a Time: Just Like Everybody Else.”
This is precisely the point. People who have never exercised leadership pretending to be leaders by applying what they read in fatuous books. And yet, relying on the awesome strength of empowered women, McMahan concludes that killing is bad:
McMahan constantly makes awkward speeches that make no sense, with the tone used by untrusted executives at corporate retreats. “We are here to build, to protect, to support the civilian population,” he told his troops. “To that end, we must avoid killing it at all costs. We cannot help them and kill them at the same time, it just ain’t humanly possible.”
Stoller continues:
I bring War Machine up because of today’s debate over Afghanistan. While there is a lot of back and forth about whether intelligence agencies knew that the Taliban would take over, or what would happen if we left, or whether the withdrawal could be done more competently, all you had to do to know that this war was a shitshow based on deception and idiocy at all levels was to turn on Netflix and watch this movie. Or you could read any number of inspector general reports, leaked documents, articles, talk to any number of veterans, or use common sense, which, polling showed, most Americans did.
Afghanistan was war by management consultants. In truth, I have nothing against management consultants, but most of them have very little experience on the ground. They opine and meditate. Surely, the group currently running American policy fulfills that expectation:
In other words, the war in Afghanistan is like seeing management consultants come to your badly managed software company where everyone knows the problem is the boss’s indecisiveness and cowardice, except it’s violent and people die.
Our military leaders are all in with wokeness. They were in with it before it became fashionable. And also, they do not believe in facts. They did not believe in objective reality. They made it up as they went along. It was not a battlefield problem; it was a public relations and mind control problem:
I mean, U.S. military leaders, like bad consultants or executives, lied about Afghanistan to the point it was routine. Here are just a few quotes from generals and DOD spokesmen over the years on the strength of the Afghan military, which collapsed almost instantly after the U.S. left.
In 2011, General David Petraeus stated, “Investments in leader development, literacy, marksmanship and institutions have yielded significant dividends. In fact, in the hard fighting west of Kandahar in late 2010, Afghan forces comprised some 60% of the overall force and they fought with skill and courage.”
In 2015, General John Campbell said that the the Afghan Army had “proven themselves to be increasingly capable,” that they had “grown and matured in less than a decade into a modern, professional force,” and, further, that they had “proven that they can and will take the tactical fight from here.”
In 2017, General John Nicholson stated that Afghan security forces had “prevailed in combat against an externally enabled enemy,” and that the army’s “ability to face simultaneity and complexity on the battlefield signals growth in capability.”
On July 11, 2021, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that the Afghan army has “much more capacity than they’ve ever had before, much more capability,” and asserted, “they know how to defend their country.”
Anyway, when the Netflix movie appeared, one of Stanley McCrystal’s aides took serious offense. Her name was Whitney Kassel:
In this review, Kassel noted the movie made her so upset that she started cursing, because, while there were of course mistakes, the film was totally unfair to McChrystal and demeaned the entire mission of building a safe Afghanistan. Kassel, like most of these elites, didn’t get the joke, because she is the joke.
I see the discourse on the withdrawal as a super-sized version of this Kassel’s review. The ‘Blob,’ that loose network of diplomats, ex-diplomats, generals, lobbyists, defense contractors, fancy lawyers, famous journalists, and insiders see the obvious desire for withdrawal as similar to how Kassel saw the truth-telling of Hastings and the Netflix movie.
They are angry and embarrassed that they can’t hide their failures anymore. Their entire sense of self was bound up in the idea of an illusion of an unbeatable all-powerful America, even when they, like General Glen “the Glanimal” McMahon were the only ones who believed it.
Stoller takes no prisoners:
None of these tens of thousands of Ivy league encrusted PR savvy highly credentialed prestigious people actually know how to do anything useful. They can write books on leadership, or do powerpoints, or leak stories, but the hard logistics of actually using resources to achieve something important are foreign to them, masked by unlimited budgets and public relations. It is, as someone told me in 2019 about the consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble, where “very few white-collar workers at P&G really did anything” except take credit for the work of others.
And finally:
More fundamentally, the people who are in charge of the governing institutions in our society are simply divorced from the underlying logistics of what makes them work. Everything, from the Boeing 737 Max to the opioid epidemic to the waste inside most big corporations to war, has been McKinsey-ified. And it’s all covered up with moral outrage, partisanship and culture warring, public relations, and management wisdom bullshit.
Q. E. D.
3 comments:
I am glad that you found Stoller. He is worth reading.
Makes me nostalgic for the days when "We had to destroy the village to save it", or "We can see the light at the end of the tunnel".
The US exit plan had no other better option
They had to evac at the stroke of midnight.If they had quit before that,the Taliban Tsunami would have come,much sooner.The aim was to surprise - and it sent a clear signal to Ghani,that it was EOD !
Securing Bagram would have required several more US soldiers vs Kabul airport.The US
aim was to save the human life of the soldiers - equipments can be manufactured again and again !
Choosing the funnel of the Kabul airport,was also a good option and the TINA option.The aim was to create a stampede and chaos,with women and babies under the light of the CNN crew ! The US evacd 100000 civilians from Kabul ! Who are these people ?
They were CIA,Int,Spies,US allies and moles,Blackwater and NATO Merecenaries !
So for the US,it was Mission accomplished !
There is 1 more reason to chose Kabul.If Taliban had shot down an aircraft in Kabul airport - it would close the airport to civilian and aid flights - which would be a PR and Logistics disaster, for Taliban.Bagram was always a fair target ! If you have multiple USAF landings and takeoff in Bagram,statistical probability of a hit by ISIS or Taliban - would be much higher !
Also the stampede drama,could not be played out at Bagram - as it is not a funnel !
Even leaving behind the equipment,is a sound option ! The aim of the US was to leave the Taliban,with tech and equip to run a united nation - so that there are NO safe zones,for Daesh and Qaeda ! That is Y the US is not supporting Masood, in Panjshir ! But if the Panjshir fighters hold out - and then spread the resistance - then the US might change its
stand ! As of now,they are watching the Taliban actions - ONLY ON QAEDA AND DAESH ! Panjshir is well stocked,for many months !
Although Pakistan SSG and PAF and drones are in Panjshir - the US and its lapdog (India) are MUM.There is nothing that the Indians can do now - as Taliban has sealed all the land borders.Afghanistan has NO ADS,and so,IAF can airdrop supplies to Masood - but the
Indian weasels will NOT ! They are petrified of what will happen,in Kashmir !
It is impossible to evac 10,000 four wheeled US army contraptions by land ! Even by air,it would be foolish,and would need a long time and massive airlifts - which at that time,would have become Taliban targets,and would have destroyed the morale of the ANA.
The stealth choppers could have been air evacd,but that would also have destroyed the morale,of the ANA.
The US had to keep the ANA moral up and running,till the last week,and save the lives of US citizens and US assets - which they did - successfully.
Taliban have used the US army armour and logistics,to take Panjshir capital - as the US expected and INTENDED ! So the US had held up its end of the bargain.The US is now waiting to see the Taliban actions on Qaeda and Daesh.Masood and his merry men,are safe in the mountains - for now,until the Taliban has its airforce.They are also waiting and watching for the Taliban capabilities,in nation building,and fissures with the Haqqanis - and so,is Satlin look alike,Rashid Dostum.
ALL IN ALL- IT IS A WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN !
WIN FOR TALIBAN
WIN FOR USA
WIN FOR MASOOD
WIN FOR PRC
WIN FOR PAKISTAN
ONLY LOSER IS INDIA - WHICH NEVER BELONGED TO AFGHANISTAN ! A NATION WHICH CANNOT MAKE TOILETS FOR ITS OWN SHOULD NOT POKE ITS NOSE INTO THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER NATIONS ! INDIA HAS NO LOCUS IN AFGHANISTAN ! dindooohindoo
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