The Yankee Kush

Like most Americans, I started paying close attention to Afghanistan in the weeks and months after September 11, 2001.

I had been well aware of the country before that, beginning with the Soviet invasion in late 1979. I remember reading the reports in the World News section of The Washington Post about the arming and training of the Afghan mujahideen by the CIA in their efforts to thwart the Russians. Some of the greybeards in the Taliban and al-Qaeda got their explosives training from American intelligence operatives thirty-five or forty years ago.

I was also aware of Osama bin Laden before 9/11. I read about him in reports about the Khobar Towers bombing in June of 1996, the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August of 1998, and the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000. I knew that he was reputed to be holed up in Afghanistan, and our military leaders were itching to go in there and take him out.

After the Twin Towers fell I started reading intensively about what I now call the Great Jihad. I had read Among the Believers by V.S. Naipaul back in 1981, when it first came out, so I was aware of the inevitability of the clash between Islam and the West. After 9-11 I read additional works on Islam, beginning with The Sword of the Prophet by Srdja Trifković (whom I had the good fortune to meet and work with years later). When Jihad Watch started up, it became an invaluable resource for understanding Islam.

Before Dymphna and I founded Gates of Vienna, I hung around on various right-of-center blogs and forums. In the first few months after 9-11 it seemed that everyone was on the same page. It’s hard to credit now, but back then Andrew Sullivan, Jonah Goldberg, Roger Simon, Mark Steyn, and Glenn Reynolds were all more or less in agreement.

By 2004 or 2005 that had changed. The party-line Republicans heeded the words of George W. Bush and observed the distinction between “Islam” and “Islamism”. Pakistan was our “staunch ally”. The despots of Qatar and Saudi Arabia were our “friends”. Condoleezza Rice referred to Islam as the “religion of peace and love”, as if this were San Francisco in 1967. I think that was when I permanently disassociated myself from the Republican Party. When my liberal acquaintances referred to me as a Republican, I would say indignantly: “I’m not a Republican — I hate Republicans! The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.”

I diverged from the mainstream and became a right-wing extremist, and more specifically an Islamophobe. That put me beyond the pale, and eventually got this blog kicked out of Pajamas Media.

Watching the situation in Afghanistan evolve over the next twenty years made me into the cynic I am today. Remember Mullah Omar? Osama bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One, and Mullah Omar was Public Enemy Number Two. Despite having the greatest military in history and absolute control over Afghanistan, the United States could not go in, pull him out of his hole, and “bring him to justice”. It was obvious that high-level corruption was at work, that we had cut a deal with one or more tribal mobs allowing the Mullah to remain unscathed.

And then there was the tradition of bacha bazi, the nancy boys of Islam. The time-honored Afghan custom of sodomizing pre-pubescent boys was allowed to continue unchecked, and our soldiers were ordered to turn a blind eye to it, even when it occurred on American military bases.

And then there was the opium. Not only did poppy production remain unimpeded, it even increased. The CIA took effective control of the opium trade, making sure that the lucrative racket stayed in the hands of its favored allies in organized crime.

And then there was Pakistan, which had always been the Taliban’s best friend. Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape from Tora Bora — more corruption at work — and hole up in Pakistan for another ten years. The Pakistani intelligence services knew exactly where he was, and there he was allowed to remain until he outlived his usefulness and our staunch ally gave him up.

All those trillions of dollars poured into the bottomless sandbox. So many valiant soldiers deprived of life and limb. So much baksheesh handed over to tribal chieftains and mullahs and provincial satraps to pay for their harems and their little boys and their lives of luxury.

I remember those heady days after the ousting of the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Right-wing commentators exulted in the fact that the Soviets had been unable to defeat the mujahideen after nine years of counter-insurgency, while we had finished the job in just a few weeks.

Only we didn’t. We decided that we had to win hearts and minds, and harvest the poppies, and enrich the tribal leaders. We lingered for another twenty years, and any time skeptics objected to this exercise in futility, why, there was always another school to build, more girls to educate, more degrees in gender studies to hand out. How could we leave, when the LGBTQIs of Afghanistan were still oppressed by the patriarchy?

They bled us white, and now the Russians are laughing at us, because we spent a thousand times as much in the Hindu Kush as they did, and departed with our tails between our legs anyway twenty years later.

Afghanistan is often referred to as the “graveyard of empires”. First Alexander the Great, then the British Empire, then the Soviet Empire, and now the American Empire.

Let’s face it, though: American hegemony may have found its final resting place beneath the tarmac of Kabul Airport, but it had been receiving end-of-life care in the hospice for a long time before that. The Taliban simply pulled the plug on our life support and put us out of our misery.

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The Hindu Kush is a range of vast mountains that abuts the Himalayas and bends southwest through Pakistan into Afghanistan. A high-altitude pass through the range serves as the principal route between the high plains of Afghanistan and the fertile lowlands of the Indus Valley. According to accounts from Muslim antiquity, the name means “Hindu-killer”, and refers to the fact that most of the Hindu slaves who were brought up from the lowlands by their Islamic masters died en route in the bitter cold of the high passes.

By calling this post “The Yankee Kush” I mean no disrespect to Southerners (of whom I am one). When angry foreigners scream “Yankee go home!” at us, they don’t just mean the boys from New York and Boston and Chicago, but also include the boys from Biloxi and Richmond and Memphis. Foreigners don’t understand the sectional animosities of the USA, and pay no heed to them.

When I lived in England in the 1960s, my schoolmates referred to me as a “Yank”. During my early days there, I sometimes said indignantly: “But I’m not a Yankee! I’m from Virginia!” Unfortunately, such distinctions were meaningless to the Brits. Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, Alabama — it was all the same to them. Except for Texas — for some reason, they seemed to understand that Texans were different.

34 thoughts on “The Yankee Kush

  1. I agree completely with you that the final resting place of American hegemony lies beneath the tarmac of Kabul Airport.

    I never saw Kabul although a year of my life was pissed away in Bagram. I wouldn’t say completely wasted, since my TS clearance at that time and relatively low rank meant that during my stint at ISAF HQ I saw the same slides and secret briefings and heard the discussions of a roomful of general officers, colonels, and political poombahs since they saw me as only a piece of office equipment who happened to be able to advance Power Point slides. Let’s just say my idealism and geopolitical ignorance was irretrievably lost during those daily presentations.

    My time in Afghanistan and long separation from my young and beautiful foreign born wife also was the beginning of the end of my marriage, although it took years to run its course. The die was cast there.

    I went a step further than you though; my disillusionment eventually led to questioning the foundational event of the War on Terror, the real truth of the 9-11 attacks. Granted, there is a tremendous amount of disinformation and misdirection when it comes to theories and supposed facts. Likely a good deal of it is with the support of various intelligence agencies and with the extremely powerful persons within the shadow government who made it happen in plain view of the world which saw what they wanted to believe and reached the conclusions which were quite conveniently provided for them. Once you accept that the actual destruction of the WTC was not the work of a bunch of Islamic terrorists, and was quite impossible for a number of physical reasons but provided a outwardly simple explanation for the collapse, the subsequent events which transpired immediately afterwards and in the years to follow make much more sense.

    • As an engineer major at uni, I ould not rationalize the WTC events. soft Aluminium airplanes do not cut through 24 inch steel girders…..

      The moment one realizes that 9-11 raises more questions than the official explanations answer one begins to suspect lies from on high.

      The 1880’s saw the founding of the Rhodes Circle and its evolution into the CFR/Chatham House etc. are these the puppeteers?

      Try this video:-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M&t=15s

      • God knows I’m no expert on architecture or structures (apart from enjoying them aesthetically), but I recall reading that the Twin Towers were not as robust as would have been mandatory in,say, western Europe then?

      • MC:
        Study harder at engineering. You seem to have skipped over some very important material regarding kinetic energy.
        Several hundreds of thousands of pounds of “soft aluminum” WILL cut through 24 inch steel girders when moving along at 300 to 400 miles per hour. Also concrete and glass and just about everything having the misfortune to be in its way.
        Good luck with your studies but if you can’t grok such things as E=MC/2, life is going to be unforgiving in the engineering trade.

        • What a strange reply…..

          The applicable formula is Force = mass x acceleration applied to the ratio of the hardness of a hollow duraluminium sfructure to the hardness of 24 inches of solid construction steel.

          The wings would have ripped off on the outside of the building (even trees will take the wings off an aeroplane) b

          E = MC squared (not halved) is the theoretical value for the energy in matter – (special theory of relativity) was this an atomic explosion then?

        • And the heat of burning jet fuel. i think Popular Mechanics published something on how the Twin Towers pancaked.

          • Further, as a former minion of the US State Department, I am convinced that the only secrets the USA can keep are the academic records of its supposedly “most intelligent president ever” (the O). Had the collapse of the twin towers been a government plot, all the details would’ve been leaked long ago, and all over the major media.

          • As a former minion of a OGA Kepha is very correct. The buildings were brought down with aircraft whether anyone likes it or not.

      • The towers turned into dust, even when falling down they were turning into dust, which is visible on some of the videos. So apart from the fact that such structures don’t just collapse in 12 seconds, the basic question should be, “Where did the towers go?”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjhqNbjR6_Q

      • The steel frames were not cut but had all the bolts sheared because an airplane weighing 139 tons hit the towers at close to 500 mph.The frames were blasted into the towers,leaving a cartoon-like shape of a plane.The plane did not cut through any steel,only the aluminium cladding leaving a wing shape indentation.

      • As this is not my site and at risk of possibly offending or upsetting the Baron, I will refrain from elaborating on this post thread. Perhaps it might be the subject of a future post someday from the Baron. I find the subject and indeed the idea that persons within the US government or with ties to it likely colluded, planned, and executed the destruction of the WTC towers and purposely killed 3000+ Americans to be highly controversial and can provokes strong reactions. It was only after my eyes had been opened in the briefings in which I sat regarding what was told to the public vs what those sitting around that room actually discussed that I started to question my own beliefs about 9-11.

        Anyway, this site

        https://www.ae911truth.org/

        is a very good place to start and comes from experts in material sciences, engineering, architecture, forensic investigation, etc.

  2. And neither did I know in the past that there was a difference between English Welsh and Scottish I knew there was some bitterness actually great and deep bitterness between the Irish and the English and that the Irish martyrs would be allowed to make a moving patriotic speech ….. Wonderful speeches just before they were hanged . And I used to go to the library and look for those speeches read them several times.

    We always thought that the Texans were different through the movies/films that they were tough people that they were honorable people ready to fight for their women and honor all the time fearless. That they would shoot from the hip. People who would never accept an insult from a Muslim. . Today it is probably different very different. If you can defend your honor and women you cannot defend your country.

    Why did USA lose in Afghanistan …. because they went there to use old weapons and that the weapon industry will get more money to make new weapons Afghanis go to war because they have faith in their cause it’s a deep faith and unshaking and unshakeable faith compared to the Americans who are faithless baseless groundless they fabricate simpletons’ reasons like democracy human rights to go to war fabricated lies that only the elites believe in them. Poor poor classes. Exploited everywhere. Human nature is the same no matter which system or which party rules.

    • The Micks might have had nice poetic nonsense to go with their little rebellion, the Brits still hung them and the English are here and those Micks ain’t.
      We lost Asscrackistan because our so called betters thought that you can bribe your way and win them with hearts and minds insanity instead of the tried and true methods of Carthage. Every one of these chair warriors should be hanged for their treachery, stupidity and dumbassery.

  3. Being from Ozztralya moit, you buggers will always be yanks to us. At least those of us that are still white.

    I have a few yank buddies and even lived there for a time. Lovely people and Cali was once a wonderful place.

    I saw the towers coming down from a desk in Tokyo. Keen eyed observers around me at the time said it didn’t look right. They were right.

    When the US fobbed off any attempts to show what really happened to JFK the die was cast. Since those who did it got away with the murder of a president by ignoring calls for transparency, that mode has been employed ever since.

    Why Australia joined the yanks is anyone’s guess. One thing for sure, real aussies , just like real yanks were sold out. We now look forward to thousands of child rapists coming to our country from Afghanistan when many of us will be fined 5000 bucks just for venturing outside.

    The world is one effect up place and has been for a long time. As per the film of the same title: Everything is a rich man’s trick”.

    • Don’t worry cobber, if the ‘vaccine’ is indeed a mass elimination event, you will need every one of them as hewers of wood and carriers of water – just boil the water before you drink it!

  4. There is also the embarrassing fact that the American-backed government has lasted only two weeks, the Soviet one lasted three years after they pulled out.

    • Well the bloody Ruskies were winning until we got involved and sent them stinger missiles to shoot down their choppers. How bloody short sighted were we? LOL

  5. My first experience with Islam was when I was 13 years old.
    We had a new Classmate from Turkey/Anatolia, and to make the boy Amir more comfortable our group invited him one by one to our homes.
    That was fine, there was no trouble at all.
    Amir invited me in return to his home for Lunch, there was only his father, Amir and me at the table, his mother and sister were cooking and serving only.
    Needless to say it was a very uncomfortable Lunch, Amir’s father and mother didn’t speak one word of German.
    Also I noticed that the plates and cutlery were mismatched, but I didn’t think anything about that at first, since not everyone has a full set of matching Crockery for use during the week-days.
    When I left, after I helped Amir with his Homework, I noticed that I had forgotten my Denim Jacket and I went back to fetch it.
    As I came near the house they lived in I saw Amir’s mother throwing the items I had used during lunch into the trash.
    I was not impressed and I never went back there.
    Some weeks later I bought at a second Hand bookstore a Koran.
    After reading that I never looked kindly at Islam.
    Islam is a shackle on the stride of Mankind and like Marxism, it suffocates the human spirit.

    • I learned at 10 what islam was about after getting into a fight with 4 bloody turks in Vienna. My Grandfather then told me that we had our fight with the bloshi’s and lost, you he said will have your fight with the bloody muslims, and you cannot afford to lose, and he was right.

  6. Biden’s statement to the non-military personnel who were stationed in and around Kabul, “You are on your own,” should be grounds for his impeachment inasmuch as the commander-in-chief willfully abandoned American personnel to the enemy and certain death without cause. Actually, Biden should be hung for treason against the office of the President and Constitution, but I won’t be holding my breath for that one.
    Christians had two laws, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Nowadays Americans have only one law, “Love myself with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.” And if their neighbor has anything that they love they simply take it.
    Jah, alles en underland.

  7. One cannot lose that which one never had.

    The U.S. was and is an unwelcome visitor in Afghanistan. Same with the Persians, the Brits, the Russians and everyone else.

      • Actually, it was Hulegu Khan, who slaughtered the inhabitants of herat, Balkh, and Mazar-e-Sharif, and piled their skulls in pyramids. His men also made sure that a lot of Afghanistan would look like them for the next 900 years (think the Hazaras). However, his tactics would get US soldiers court-martialed.

        • Hence Kepha is why we will always lose against the savages of islam. Until we get Medieval with them, everything else is chaff.

        • I always appreciate your posts Kepha.

          When looking at the Hazaras I always thought of Genghis, well, I guess because he was the first great Khan. Now I will think of Hulegu.

          Thanks for the brief history lesson. 🙂

    • If the US fought afghanistan like Germany in ww2,afghans would be history. Blame the suits

  8. Hello Baron,
    when I read your comment ” The CIA took effective control of the opium trade,”
    I was reminded of the movie 2 Guns.
    There is a scene where a cartel boss tells the DEA and Navy agent that every cartel has to pay 7% of its revenue to the CIA to operate unmolested.
    Sometimes fiction is more truth than the truth we are told.

    2 Guns: You just ripped off the CIA, You said drop by anytime
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr4VN8bxeQE

  9. I have mixed feelings. It’s extremely difficult seeing people so desperate so as the cling onto aircraft taking off only to fall to their death. I never made a promise that we would allow in thousands of potential Islamist into our nation who could potentially become part of the stealth jihad against our liberties. Having lived in Istanbul I know it’s not all of them, but read my lips, “no “sharia law” in America period ” The left would call me a hater but many of these refugees will not tolerate much of what the left stands for.

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