Maggie's Farm

Maniac: China will get those minerals, I'm sure.

They get the benefit of being the manufacturer, but the resources will probably enter the global market.

mudbug: And since the CCP is cozying up to the Taliban, they are likely going to be mining it, using it in their products, and selling it to us.

They would probably do so anyway, whether they mined the resources in Afghanistan or not. The U.S. will typically pay for it by producing technological products that the Chinese are less adept at making. You can read about the process in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

mudbug: Not if we controlled Afghanistan.

The U.S. occupied Afghanistan for 20 years, but never controlled it.

B. Hammer: This has to be a plan or the most bungled operation in military history.

Not even close. You could start with Troy's decision to bring the wooden horse into the city as a war trophy.

Cassandra cried, and curs'd th' unhappy hour;
Foretold our fate; but, by the god's decree,
All heard, and none believ'd the prophecy.

B. Hammer: How do you leave billions of dollars of high tech military equipment behind?

Most of the captured weapons were those provided to to the Afghan National Army. As it was, the government was hopelessly corrupt, and the Afghan National Army were co-opted internally, never putting up significant resistance.

The thinking was that the Afghan National Army could hold on, at least for a while. That was a miscalculation, but the fundamental error dates to 2001 with the invasion and its aftermath. Subsequently, presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump didn't want to be responsible for the chaos that disengagement would almost certainly bring. So here you are, at the inevitable and foreseeable end result of 20 years of bad policy.

SK: The near criminal mishandling of this drawdown was NOT inevitable.

The problem with your position is that you don't propose any alternative. Our position is supported by the predictions made way back in 2002 about trying to occupy a country beset by tribalism with a long history of resisting foreign occupation, and installing a corrupt government that abandoned the country at the first sign of trouble while toting bags of cash. The easy political choice was to continue the occupation.

While there were clearly some brave people who were in the Afghan army, brave people do not make an army make.

The moment the Americans made an agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 to leave Afghanistan, the collapse of the Afghan state was inevitable. The Taliban approached local army commanders throughout Afghanistan, who, knowing the Americans were leaving, made the rational choice of accepting those deals. Then the Taliban waited. When the time came, they cashed in their chips.

Whether ten years ago, or ten years from now, or now, the result would have been much the same. Yes, the truth can be painful.

SK: There's not a single thing the Biden admin and the military could have done in the last 8 months to make this thing go even just a little bit more smoothly.

The problem with your position is that you don't propose any alternative. Or are you suggesting harnessing the awesome power of wishful thinking?

A description of the military situation in Afghanistan:

Stargazer: If your think the Afghan army is bad, you should see their navy.

Heh. Should have mentioned, the description concerns the military situation in Afghanistan in 1919.

feeblemind: "Welcome the decline" is the wrong conclusion. 'Ignoring the decline' would be a more accurate phrase.

It's only natural that other nations have a larger say in the world's affairs. The West prospers. The rest of the world develops. How else would you have it be?

The U.S. continues to be essential for global stability, but the gross blunders of the last 20 years in the Middle East have sapped U.S. wealth, strength, and moral authority.

Regardless, the U.S. remains a beacon of liberty and freedom. No other country has the same advantages of a highly educated and motivated workforce, vast natural resources, a culture of entrepreneurship, with a foundation of strong democratic institutions.

ruralcounsel: Maybe because these aren't really vaccines?

Of course they're vaccines. Or do you think variolation is the only True Vaccination™?

Assistant Village Idiot: That the California educational system explicitly rejects the idea of natural gifts and talents is worth noting.

It's a first draft proposal, and the comments make clear there is discussion over the phrasing. If you look at the cited studies, they found that when natural gifts and talents are considered a prerequisite for a field of study, women and minorities often feel they don't belong.

Assistant Village Idiot: So they didn't say what they said and no one thinks that

We never made a universal claim that no one believed that genetics has no influence, only that it is not the consensus view of experts. The question has always been the relative importance of genetics and the environment. Also, initial drafts are not representative of expert opinion, which is the result of a process of examination.

In any case, you are misunderstanding the claim based on the poor wording of a first draft. Rather, studies show that the vast majority of students can learn maths, that it is not something that only the most brilliant students can excel in, and that it is important tool for many different fields of study. Furthermore, women and minorities have often been told they are not good at maths; so promoting maths as only for the most brilliant discourages many people who would otherwise benefit from and possibly excel at the study.