Hopes for peace in Afghanistan continue to get delayed, but with a deal
seemly always just on the horizon, the Pentagon is finding new things to
do in Afghanistan. Not trying to win the war, because that ship sailed
long ago.
But 18 years into the war, the Pentagon has found Afghanistan as a nice
proving ground for a lot of different new military technology, hoping to
show that new artificial intelligence efforts and cloud computing can make information-sharing in an occupation more efficient.
The Afghan War has gone really badly, of course, and better than what
they had isn’t a tall order. In addition to the computer upgrades
they’re getting, US Army forces are also being given pocket-sized drones to deploy for the first time.
The drones, like the AI, aren’t meant as a serious bid to turn around
the long lost and almost-over war. Rather, they’re to allow the Pentagon
to say these things have been tested in war conditions, for their
funding going forward and use in America’s presumptive future wars.
i think that whenever there is a war companies are lining up to test their new stuff. In Afghanistan that would have been 2001. Could be worse. companies could have been planning wars as part of their new product releases… I think they’re not even doing that in Israel yet.
This might help make our quagmires shorter. Maybe if we had this technology from the start we could have done Afghanistan in maybe 15 years and saved a couple of bucks. We should be thanking the Pentagon for such forward thinking.
Colonialism has a long shelf-life.
Gotta close the “drone-gap” with the russkies, or somebody….
Generals can never handle defeat unless carted off dead, or captured by the enemy and thrown in jail. They were forced to handle it in Vietnam, but even there they just blamed everyone else for “not allowing them to win”. They couldn’t handle it in Korea at the hands of the Chinese, so that now the Korean non-war continues fully 65 years after they got their asses kicked. As they will never be able to accept it in Afghanistan. So now Afghanistan becomes a weapons proving ground and revenue center … until Trump decides there’s political advantage to pulling out, or Tulsi Gabbard becomes the first woman president.
[Little side note: Watching Andrew Yang yesterday on YouTube, I couldn’t help revisiting an idea — brilliant idea, if I don’t say so myself — for a Trump political genius move /tactic for 2020. Among the crazy herd of Dem candidates, Yang and Gabbard strike me as massively talented. They will be/would be good for the country in positions of power and responsibility. But neither of them will get the nomination. The Dem establishment knows their donor class wants nothing to do with them. But they have very substantial support among the voters. So what if Trump looks at the Dem candidates as a sort of “farm team” for his administration. Then, when the Dem primary is over, the general election looming, and Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang are disposed of in favor of Elizabeth Warren, or Joe “Hillary with a penis” Biden, Trump fires Bolton and Pompeo and “drafts” Gabbard for Secretary of State, and Yang for some generation-of-the-future advisory position … would that be a killer move or what? I mean, dial down the Trump-hate a little bit — he’ll be gone by 2024 in any event — and then what? Gabbard, groomed by four years in the SoS slot, as the first woman president? Dream the impossible dream … or maybe, just maybe, the possible dream?]
Maybe, I suspect this has crossed trumps’…erm…massive brain. But, his base is firmly “I hate liberals”, and that is too engrained to reverse. No base, no 2020…..
I should have taken copy rights out on “Hillary with a penis”. Or when I said Biden was Hillary with saggier boobs.
Yup, biden is a tool, at least the dems have variety.
Biden is just another milquetoast white male corporate Dem. Dime a dozen. Sorry you have Hillary Derangement Syndrome, tho.
I had no use for the warmongering bitch before she said: “We came, we saw, he died”(chuckle, chuckle). That was the icing on the cake. Similar to having no use for Donnie Dollars before he condoned torture and suggested killing “terrorists” family members. But I’ll wear that compliment of having HDS as much as I do when people compliment me for having TDS. Thank you.
And sitting here thinking about it, I came up with something similar. Elizabeth “Hillary with a personality” Warren.
Donald “Hillary with smaller hands” Trump.
One of my regrets in the era of Trump is that so many people on the other side are unable to retain their sense of humor. Life is too short. If your own personal circumstances aren’t a catastrophe — like in Syria, Libya, Palestine, or Afghanistan — it’s important to maintain perspective and a good humor. The sovereign psychopaths at the top of the power hierarchy fill the world with death and destruction. Maybe some day we’ll put a leash (and choke chain) on the bastards. Till then, try to stay safe, keep smiling, and do the best that you can for your friends and loved ones … and by all means keep smiling. This too shall pass.
Best wishes to you and yours, wars.
No. Even if Trump somehow picked Gabbard for anything (and there’s no way he would,) there’s also no way in hell she’d ever accept. Trump is toxic, especially given his legendarily misogynistic past, and the fact that he almost single-handedly kept the whole Birther bullsh*t movement alive. No thanks.
“use in America’s presumptive future wars”
You mean, for use against US civilians once the US finally collapses in one way or another. As someone once said, a large military sooner or later always turns against the home population.
This is what happens when you give a bureaucracy, namely, the Pentagon, a blank check for decades to blow as much money as they want, with zero accountability. If we’d given it to HUD, we’d all be living in McMansions with poorly installed gutters and cracked foundations, but them’s the breaks.
“But 18 years into the war, the Pentagon has found Afghanistan as a nice proving ground for a lot of different new military technology”
First it is an occupation not a WAR…Afghanistan has become guinea pig country for Pentagon pleasure and income source for CIA drug money exchange!