The Real Questions On Kabul’s Rapid Fall

Lawmakers unwilling to admit their own errors, claim to be shocked at the Taliban’s rapid coup of Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul, its capitol city, and a very public takeover of the nation’s presidential palace, are feigning dismay at what they blame as “failures” either by/from the intelligence community, or military, or both.

The “Blame Game” is a long-running, well-known, and popular political pastime among the Beltway insiders crowd. And, if you’re an elected official, regardless your party affiliation, lack thereof, or political philosophy, you’re a Beltway Insider.

As I opined in a previous entry,

I applaud POTUS BIDEN for ceasing the 20-year failed social experiment of the sociocultural-political elites – those with high-powered degrees from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and others (no disrespect to the institutions, or to education) — who built their careers, increased their fortunes, and padded their CV’s playing “nation building” with practically unlimited American tax dollars (we’ve burned a TOTAL of at least $2.6 TRILLION on that good-for-nothing wasteland hell-hole — money that COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER SPENT HELPING OUR NATION, OUR PEOPLE), using the “expendable” lives of men and women from rural America and elsewhere far removed from the ivory-towered intelligentsia, all in the erstwhile hopes that somehow, they could foist upon a people a liberal democracy — by force, if necessary — who have no interest in such a type of government.

Our nation is upon a dangerous precipice, of having fallen sway to the narrow handful of ivory-towered Ivy-Leagued sociocultural-political elites who have attended expensive “name brand” private universities and elitist schools, rather than being driven by law and policy made by the nation’s grass-roots — folks who have sweated during the summers to earn money to pay for their education, or earned it through service to our nation and the GI Bill — everyday folks who went to public universities, and practically anonymous schools in the land of the free and home of the brave, or were tradesmen and women, farmers, small business owners, salt of the Earth type folks.

One only need examine our nation’s Supreme Court to see what’s happened. A clear majority of the justices in its history — 39 — have been graduates of either Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. Ten other law schools have produced 2 justices, while yet 12 others have produced 1 justice. That’s 32 justices from non-Ivy League law schools.

Again, regardless one’s political affiliation, or lack thereof, it’s quite abundantly clear that, even with one of the most recent additions — Amy Coney Barrett, who first graduated the private Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa, and then Notre Dame Law School on a “full ride” scholarship, a private Catholic university and law school — her views are still, quite possibly, more in line with the sociocultural-poitical elites of the 8 Ivy League schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Princeton, Yale), than not.

• Chief Justice John Roberts — Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law
• Associate Justice Clarence Thomas — College of the Holy Cross undergrad, Yale Law
• Associate Justice Stephen Breyer — Stanford undergrad, Oxford, Harvard Law
• Associate Justice Samuel Alito — Princeton undergrad, Yale Law
• Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor — Princeton University undergrad, Yale Law
• Associate Justice Elena Kagan — Princeton University undergrad, Harvard Law
• Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch — Columbia University undergrad, Harvard Law, Oxford PhD
• Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh — Yale undergrad, Yale Law
• Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett — Rhodes College undergrad, Notre Dame Law

SCORE:
Harvard – 4
Yale – 4
Notre Dame – 1

---

Afghanistan Disaster Puts Intelligence Under Scrutiny

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/568475-afghanistan-disaster-puts-intelligence-under-scrutiny

Katrina Mulligan, who has held national security roles at the National Security Council and the Department of Justice, said lawmakers should be asking bigger picture questions, not about intelligence, but how the U.S. uses the military.

“The real question here isn’t ‘Why did intelligence get it wrong?,’ it’s really, ‘What were the assumptions that policymakers were making when they made the decisions that they made? How did we get nation building so wrong?’ And, ‘What does it mean in the future for how we think about how we use our own forces?”

There’s a long-running joke which states that “military intelligence” is an oxymoron.