#it says the views on them turned with the resurgence of dog fights but i also know that latinos and black ppl tended to own them for protect

[4kadhd]

Reading up in the history of pits and its fucking wild, Huskies and malamute were stigmatized way back when while pits were loved and now its switched, fucking crazy

[echo-three-one]

Whatever It Takes

A sequel to "A Forgotten Memory"

Alex is once again tasked to continue his mission in pursuing the threat that had caused hundreds of missing persons turn up dazed the next day. But now he isn't alone, join him along with the elite Task Force 141 as they hunt down Nero, discover the secrets behind his plans and put an end to this memory erasing nightmare.

Chapter 1 to another story made by Ray (echo-three-one) Comments and Reviews appreciated! I hope you enjoy! Love you all ❤️

"Resurgence"

"Alex"

CIA Warcom

Boracay Island, Philippines

Alex basked himself on the warm sandy beaches of the Philippines. He wasn't able to enjoy his vacation after the Nero mission, because he was sent immediately to Urzikstan and Verdansk immediately followed. And now that all of those were over, he now laid down on a beach chair and let the ocean breeze blow on his relaxed state.

Philippines was a nice country, the people were hospitable, the food was delicious and unique and the scenery was beyond amazing. Despite his metal leg, people still looked up at him the way they look at tourists and he was all of the hospitality and attention from his fellow Americans who are also on vacation to locals who were just amazed on how the leg works.

It's been a lot of months ever since Samantha forgot him, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they'll meet again, that's why no matter many women try to show interest in him, he shrugs them off politely by pretending he has a girlfriend. A simple lie that he built for himself in hopes of a miracle of meeting her again.

He always brought her letter with him, some edges of it got burnt from the time he manually detonated a C4 explosive to destroy a gas factory, It was almost torn and faded, but he couldn't leave it somewhere safe. He wanted it to be with him wherever he goes. 

'Don't you dare forget about me'

His phone rang. He quickly fished it from a small pouch he bought that the locals made and immediately answered.

"This is Alex speaking." he chimed.

"I'm sorry to bother you at this time of day Alex, but I have a feeling you'd want to jump in on this." a British accent so familiar informed him over the other side of the line, It was none other than Captain John Price or Bravo Six, a comrade he once fought with back in Urzikstan.

"I'm all ears." he said, sitting up straight and letting his metal leg sink in the sand.

"Looks like your boy Nero is back on the grid. That Sneaky bastard kidnapped the Daughter of the Head of Defense, again." Price relayed.

Alex's heart thumped faster, his breathing became quick. He wished to meet her again but not like this. Not her being in harm's way all over again.

"Shit. Count me in. But.." he hesitated. He wanted to help but remembered he disobeyed CIA orders back in Urzikstan, making him unable to provide support.

"I've talked to Laswell. She's creating a special assignment for you."

"What does that mean?"

"It means welcome to the 141, Alex." Price said as he cut off the call, followed by a message regarding his departure to their base.

~

Alex can't help but worry about Samantha's condition. They've played with her memories multiple times and he thought that it would all be over after she decided to alter everything about them. Guess the enemy didn't know and they're still after her.

The soldier leaned on to the small circular glass pane as he looked at the clouds pass by. His hands were fidgeting each other while his non-metal foot bounced up and down at a fast rate. His seatmate, who happens to be a teenager, noticed his distracting leg movement but ignored it as rock music blasted from his ears. He was a completely different Alex right now and he believed that he'll be back to normal as soon as he sees Samantha safe and within his grasp.

When you have a heavy metal stick as a leg, customs is going to be the most annoying place in the world. Everyone looked at Alex as soon as he passes the metal detector and everyone else's eyes were on him. Of course with a few more safety checks and a whole lot of explaining, Alex was good to go. 

"So, you're the one they call Alex" the heavily British accented driver mused, breaking the silence of their ride to the 141 base. He was looking at him via the rearview mirror, chewing on what Alex hoped to be gum.

"Yep. That's me." he replied, turning to the view of the British streets which confused him a lot as it was the opposite of American or even Global streets.

"Heard they thought you were dead back there. In Georgia." he added. He was quite the chatterbox but CIA Agents are all about the information.

"Yeah. Tried to manually detonate the C4. After that… I just ran for my life." Alex answered, his head was realizing why he did it. What pushed him to think that he could make it out alive. Was it because it's for the greater good? The idea of freeing Farah's country from the harm of the gas? The idea of a chance to meet Samantha all over again? Or something he couldn't explain.

"Well, we're glad to have you back, Alex. But it's a shame it's no longer in the CIA." the driver waved as Alex opened the door and unloaded his stuff.

"As long as it's still about saving the world." he replied, making the driver smile. 

"That's what we do, right?" he agreed as he entered in his car leaving Alex in front a quiet gray building, the Task Force 141 Base, his new home.

Alex pushed the heavy doors open revealing a large hall, multiple round sofas were embedded to the ground and a huge staircase that split left and right greeted him. Multiple heads turned as he opened the said door and slowly walked his way to the nearest person who happened to be panting from exhaustion by the sofa. His metal leg clanked on his every step as the soldiers begin to recognize him. They smiled as soon as Alex's eyes met theirs and some even waved, Alex met them from several missions from the past, some were from the Demon Dogs and his previous designations, Delta Force.

"Where's the briefing room in this huge building?" he asked the soldier in a black t shirt drenched in sweat as he spun his towel trying to keep up with his breathing. He didn't speak but he nodded in acknowledgement and pointed to the hallway on the left. Alex left him a thanks and he walked his way to the direction where he pointed.

Just a few steps after the beginning of the hallway, the people from the main hall cheered and laughed, this made Alex turn around and he saw a young blonde man with spiky hair dash across him, he looked like he's on his way to your destination as well.

"Excuse me! Sir!" he yelled and Alex immediately halted. The young man panted in front of him and took a few seconds to breathe before he countinued his words.

"I'm Gary Sanderson, and I was supposed to guide you to the briefing room. You must be Alex." he reached out a hand and Alex shook it, quietly making your way to the room.

The huge door slid open and they found themselves in a dimly lit room, a huge screen loomed just by the wall and chairs were placed around a long circular table. Alex could spot a few familiar faces, faces he once saw and fought alongside with in Verdansk. There was the balaclava boy, Ghost, the Mohawk Man, Soap, their Captain, John Price and a few big heads from the United States. There were also new faces like Gary, who was now discussing something with another new soldier, a female soldier who sat by Price and a few new more who were already sitting on the chairs. There's also someone missing, Kyle Garrick, he pondered where he was.

The former CIA quickly saw Gary rush to Price's seat and whispered something causing him to lean on his chair, stand up and walk to his side. 

"Glad to see you back in the fight, Alex." he muttered, patting Alex's shoulder.

"I won't skip out on this mission, this one's close to home." he replied, patting his back in return.

"Yeah, heard this was your last mission before the Russian Gas." 

"Yeah. It's a loose end on my side." Alex nodded, crossing his arms.

"Good thing Shepherd had some sense in him. Not unlike your CIA heads, huh?" 

Alex nodded. He remembered he did an illegal thing against the CIA, and that was siding with Farah's forces, who were reclassified as global terror groups at that time. He silently thanked he could still step back in the fight along with the good guys even after that event.

"Yeah. I might have to thank him soon enough." Alex murmured and Price guided him to the briefing which was about to start in a few minutes.

~

"Before we start our mission briefing, I'd like to welcome each and everyone of you to the 141. A group of the most elite warriors from around the world tasked to eliminate terrorist threats lurking in the shadows. One of which, goes by the name Nero…" General Shepherd's voice was deep and serious, while the screen showed a photo of the guy they're after. His face looked punchable, as manifested by the way Alex clenched his fists while he stared at his soulless eyes.

"… whose goal is still unknown. He poses a threat as he has been out in American soil, which we believe is the one behind the multiple missing and reappearing person cases across the country." he continued, eyeing Alex. He knew a little bit about the case, maybe because he read his report.

"Since he poses no evidence of terrorist activity as of now, we are assigned to rescue and locate the daughter of Richard Coleman, America's Head of National Defense. We don't know why she was kidnapped but we believed it is or ransom or threatening purposes." The general explained, pacing back and forth, his shadow covered the screen.

Alex wanted to say something. Something about the details surrounding the case. It was written on his report. But then again, maybe the general already knew about the alteration, and since Samantha doesn't remember any IP Address, it was no longer worth noting.

Samantha's face was projected on the screen. Alex's heart began to beat faster, she looked different now, a little chubbier, longer hair and her smile felt happier. It was heartbreaking that she got caught in the crossfire again. After all those efforts of making her life normal.

'If our paths would cross again, I hope you'll remember me the way I remembered you before I take this operation, A good memory that's supposed to last forever. '

'Don't you dare forget about me.'

Her words echoed in his mind, using the same voice she had when they were together. 

"I will save you again if I had to.." he promised to her mentally, as he tightened the clench he was already doing.

"Our intel reports that twelve hours ago, local informants spotted an unknown flying vehicle just by the Georgian Border, local authorities confirmed that this wasn't one of their aircraft and we believe it could be the getaway vehicle of Samantha Coleman and her captors… We are still looking on to this so for the meantime I want each and one of you to be fully alert and ready for deployment."

Everyone else fell silent. It meant they agreed at what the high ranking official said. A few more words were exchanged such as new additions to the team, aside from Alex. He didn't seem to focus much on the second part of the brief as his mind worried a lot about Samantha. If his instincts were right, she's probably sedated once again, taking a trip down her own memory lane.

Chapter 2 : F.N.G.

[kristofffaust]

The Growth of Nihilism in the Contemporary United States: a brief essay on a somewhat optimistic take on nihilist ideology.

Pictured: Existentialist anarchist Jean-Paul Sartre and his longtime domestic partner, existentialist feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

***

“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

“All oppression creates a state of war.” — Simone de Beauvoir

***

Foreward: This is meant to be a polemic against commonly accepted post-modern takes on nihilism. I find the postmodern take on nihilism a somewhat cyclical and tedious affair, and, quite frankly, their professed monopoly on existentialism is nauseating. Question everything, even if it agrees with your accepted worldview, especially if it agrees with your accepted worldview.

This is an observation on why nihilism has seen such a rapid resurgence in the modern and what it could mean if used differently than the historical stereotypes beholden to it. Indeed, if nihilism is a form of reclaimed agency, then blindly following the pre-existing dogma that nihilism is inherently destructive is, in effect, surrendering your agency to an external ideal and, quite frankly, the most anti-existentialist thing one could do.

Conversely, this is not a profession that nihilism is an entirely benign and benevolent philosophy, but that viewing it as strictly one or the other is narrow-minded and lazy. I acknowledge, with tongue-in-cheek humor, that the average nihilist would deny the existence of either category.

I guess one could say this is an attempt to profess that absurdism and nihilism are two sides of the same coin and as reliant as they are antagonistic towards each other.

***

Nihilism is a subcategory of existentialism and sister ideology to absurdism. Existentialism believes if nothing in life holds any intrinsic value, nothing in this reality matters outside of our subjective experience. As a result, our agency is our responsibility and nobody else’s. Pure nihilism, also known as cosmic nihilism, professes if nothing matters, any action we take in this life doesn’t matter in turn, so why bother. Absurdism, often attributed with existential nihilism, affirms that since nothing matters, nothing is telling us that we can’t enjoy life. This article will focus on cosmic nihilism as it stands with existential nihilism and how our current global and political climate has served as the perfect incubator for a resurgence of both. I argue that nihilism isn’t an inherent negative despite the reputation it carries. Unfortunately, I have to start with the negative as it is generally the negative which births nihilism in the first place.

Nihilism is a recurring and pervasive theme in the millennial generation. When the layers peel back, it’s easy to see how this happened. We were born on the mountain of Apocrypha with nowhere to turn. We manifested in the period between Boomer idealism and the total implosion of ‘traditional’ Amerikan ideology. Our elders taught us that the only thing we should want out of life is to get married, have children, go to college, and get a desk job. Life conditioned us to believe that our worth is directly tied to our income. We grew up thinking that we could do and achieve anything as long as we realized a dystopian dream of the perfect little citizen.

Fast forward now that we’re all in our 30’s. Only a handful of us is successful with families. Most of us divorced from our spouses at least once, if we make it to marriage at all. Most of us, who didn’t sell our souls to Uncle Sam, who had gotten college degrees are now up to our necks in debt which we will never be able to repay. Those who pursued labor jobs struggle to make ends meet because the average salary of the most commonplace millennial jobs is insufficient to live comfortably. Most of us realized we inherited the trauma of our parents and their parents and, as a result, are terrified of having children who will inherit our trauma in turn. Mental health is a privilege, even though those in the direst need of mental health come from underprivileged backgrounds. The list goes on. Indeed, there are positives of the millennial generation, but those exposed to the negative see little else. David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix give way to Cannibal Corpse, SlipKnoT, Dying Fetus, and a multitude of other extreme genres which were unheard of before the millennial generation.

Now, we can turn our analysis towards the ironic positives of nihilism. Nihilism serves as a powerful panacea to the torment of daily existence. When an individual recognizes that nothing in the universe matters and holds zero intrinsic value, suddenly, the suffering ceases to be consequential. The pain doesn’t matter. What are emotions but a complex chemical reaction engineered to elicit a specific response from our fleshy meat suits? Our mistakes don’t matter. In the infinite expanse of time, any mistakes we make in this life eventually disperse like so much dust in the wind. The only thing that truly matters is the cognizance of our current existence and the experience we glean from it at the moment. For instance, why do I write these essays which nobody bothers reading anyway? Well, why not. Whether I write them or don’t write them, in the end, holds no intrinsic value. Consequently, to write the essay is equally valid as abstaining from writing.

To be extant is the only accurate declaration we can make. Thus every stimulus we feel, every sight we take in, every smell we experience, if it’s all equally worthless, then by extension, it all holds equal value. Feel nothing if you so choose. That nothing still requires a something to stand in negation to it. Thus your exalted nothing in effect becomes something and back to nothing again [for a more exhaustive explanation of this principle, I recommend Hegel’s admittedly dense read ‘Science of Logic’].

Nihilism does not have to be destructive. I argue that reckless destruction underutilizes the power of nihilism. If we are all imprisoned in this unforgiving reality, why not make the experience less painful for each other. To induce pain upon others means that the individual has placed value in control and, by extension, ceases to be a nihilist. To completely erase the pain from existence is infinitely more nihilist in the act of devaluing something considered critical to life. Of course, the pain never ceases, but this shouldn’t bother the true nihilist. If the nihilist doesn’t matter, then why not devote your life towards devaluing that which attempts to rob agency from others? It can be a lonely and thankless road, which makes it just as good as any road. Nihilism is an expression of existentialism which is the exaltation that the only objective truth that manifests is your subjective reality. If we should destroy, we should destroy the authoritarian act of robbing another of their agency.

Or maybe it doesn’t matter in the end, and the nihilist can exist in their bubble and waste away. Such is your choice in the end.

“Will you perish like a dog, or will you fight?”

Ave Satanas

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Call him whatever you want — but don’t call him inconsistent. Bernie Sanders has been on message for more than half a century. And while liberals scramble from scandal to scandal under President Trump, Sanders is like a slow-moving tank rumbling through enemy lines.

And it’s his powerful message that carried Sanders from obscurity to become America’s most popular politician. His 2016 presidential campaign started with some haphazard remarks delivered to an empty National Mall. Bernie stood calmly behind a podium, said a few words about inequality, and then walked out of frame as if nothing had happened.

His political life started in obscurity too, in the dying remnants of the Socialist Party of America. He threw himself into civil rights and labor struggles through the 1960s, but by the end of the decade the native New Yorker retreated to rural life in Vermont. His first foray into electoral politics there yielded results familiar to the American left — 2.2 percent of the vote, in a 1972 Senate special election.

But Bernie was dogged and his message was simple, denouncing “the world of Richard Nixon, and the millionaires and billionaires whom he represents.” Even back then he was reminding audiences that, “This is the world of the 2 percent of the population that owns more than one third of the personally held wealth in America.”

His words were too clear not to resonate. Though his electoral itinerary was dotted with noble failures throughout the 1970s, he triumphed in his campaign as an independent socialist running for Burlington mayor at the height of Reaganism. In the thirty years since, the contours of Bernie’s appeal haven’t changed: inequality in America is a yawning chasm and only a coalition of working people can close it. In 2016, when he married this message to a program of single-payer health care, tuition-free college, and a $15 national minimum wage, it won the support of millions. Most of them had never heard much about socialism, but were ready for a politics that put their needs first.

Almost all of the US left embraced the Bernie movement, but there were questions over just what he meant by “socialism.” The senator would invoke the legacy of Eugene V.Debs in the same breath as the Danish welfare state. But far from being “just” a modern social democrat, Sanders’s path to reform was through confrontation with elites. Rather than saying we were all going to work together to make a better America, Sanders declared that we were going to take what’s ours from the same “millionaires and billionaires” that he’d denounced a half-century ago.

Bernie Sanders, the ultimate political survivor, gave American socialism a lifeline by returning it to its roots: class struggle and a class base.

But even with millions supporting him, he came up just short in 2016. The optimism of his campaign gave way, first to the cold calculation of Clinton liberalism and then to the wasteland of the Trump presidency. Yet its importance endures in American politics, whose lexicon now includes socialism and class politics for the first time in decades, and whose leading figures have been forced to debate the centerpiece demand of Bernie’s campaign: Medicare for All.

Bernie is the Left’s only logical choice for a 2020 presidential candidate. Though he may share some of the same policy goals as progressives like Elizabeth Warren, his confrontational vision of social change makes him a more dangerous foe to the establishment. Sanders is far better positioned than he was three years ago, with widespread name recognition, a young activist base, and a huge number of small donors.

But even if he does run and win in 2020 — a distinct possibility, in the view of this publication — it will mark the beginning of the fight, not its end. A Sanders presidency would face a hostile Congress and tremendous pressure from elites. Without mobilization from social movements and a rank-and-file resurgence within labor, it’s hard to imagine his program being put into place.

Though gaining power appears possible for the Left for the first time in generations, making good on the promise of power seems less likely. Yet a Sanders presidency would bring an end to American socialism’s long years in the wilderness. We’ve become accustomed to marginality; now we may have an opportunity to shape not just a presidential term or two, but decades of world politics.

Debs, whose portrait still hangs in Bernie’s Senate office, used to say that he was no Moses, that those who followed him had to lead themselves to the promised land. To win even desperately needed reforms — let alone loftier triumphs — we’ll need to build movements beyond the Sanders campaign. But as we do, we shouldn’t forget the debt of gratitude we owe the senator from Vermont.

Bernie Sanders isn’t the easiest interviewee — his well-known message discipline was on display in the interview that follows. But he was gracious enough to speak with Jacobin for this issue.

Bhaskar Sankara:

The Right controls all branches of government — why the push around Medicare for All now when the chance of passage seems so fleeting?

Bernie Sanders:

I have no illusions that under a Republican Senate, a very right-wing House, and an extremely right-wing president, we’re suddenly going to see a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system passed.

We are bringing this up today to force a conversation about why we are the only major country in the world that does not guarantee health care to all. Our health care system is in crisis. More than 30 million people are uninsured and even more can’t afford outrageously high deductibles and co-payments. But the crisis we are discussing today is not only about health care. It is a political crisis which speaks to the incredible power of the insurance companies, the drug companies, and all those who make billions off of the current system.

Legislation which deals with one-sixth of our economy is complex and nobody, including myself, has all the answers. Unlike the Republican leadership, which tried to pass massive and destructive health care reform without one public hearing, our job now is to take this legislation to every state in the country. We want to hear from medical providers, hospitals, patient advocates, and ordinary citizens as to how we can make this bill even stronger and more effective. We want to hear from the American people.

This struggle will not be won overnight and ultimately will not be won here on Capitol Hill, but through grassroots activism all across this country. We can’t wait until 2021 to start this fight. The reality is that when millions of Americans stand up and fight back there is nothing we cannot accomplish. At that point, we will finally do what we should have accomplished decades ago, and that is to provide quality health care to every man, woman, and child in this country as a right.

Bhaskar Sankara:

What alternative models do you see for the United States abroad?

Bernie Sanders:

I recently traveled to Toronto to better understand how they are able to guarantee health care to all people as a right. What I learned on that trip, and that I hope my colleagues in the US Congress will understand, is that we are spending twice as much on health care per person as they are spending in Canada, yet we have far worse outcomes. Canadians live nearly three years longer than Americans, even though they spend just 11 percent of their GDP on health care in contrast to the nearly 18 percent we spend in the United States.

So I say to my conservative friends, people who don’t like to waste money: How are we not looking at our neighbors to the north for ideas on how to improve our health care system?

Is the Canadian health care system, perfect? No. It is true that there are sometimes wait times for hip replacements, cataract surgery, or nonemergency advanced imaging. They also need to do a better job covering prescription drugs. However, in the United States, tens of millions of Americans are turned away from these procedures because they can’t afford them.

But when Canadians are sick, when they give birth, when they get cancer or have a heart attack, they can get the care they need without being forced into bankruptcy. That is all too often a reality for people in America.

We have much to learn from Canada and other major countries around the world who have long understood health care is a right, not a privilege.

(Continue Reading)

[placetobenation]

Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or, occasionally, profound. Views expressed in the Wednesday Walk do not necessarily reflect those of anyone but the writer.

All of the articles I’ve seen about Hawaiian monk seals snorting dead eels are very judgmental, and I would just like to say that I respect the seals’ aesthetic choices and think they look just great.

This Week in anniversaries, this week marks 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s still up to all of us to live up to its ideals.

Also in anniversaries, it’s been 50 years since Earthrise was taken.

Also ALSO in anniversaries, this week also marks 25 years of DooM. John Romero marked the occasion by announcing the upcoming release of his own personal nine-level wad file, joining the fan-modding community that never stopped making new content.

Also also too in anniversaries, 50 years (and a few days) ago, Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a lot of the fundamental aspects of how we interact with computers today, and what they do for us.

The shifting retro trends that’ve brought us the 21st-century vinyl resurgence might as well do the same thing for water beds. Why not?

Every time someone tries to intercede in the food-identification debates, they muddy the waters further. Let this be a lesson in lexical inflexibility. According to this schema, a hot dog isn’t a sandwich…it’s a taco.

Honestly, a lot of jobs would be a lot more fun if they were more like they are in stock photos. Mine, for instance, seems very exciting!

Any given jigsaw puzzle manufacturer will usually use the same die-cut pattern for all of their puzzles — which makes the pieces hot-swappable between different puzzles. Which means that an intrepid artist can bring us puzzle montage.

In 1861, an illustrated history of the US revolution was published in Japan, and it’s kind of amazing. The page where John Adams pulls out his sword to fight a giant snake makes me think that a large-scale anime adaptation of the founding of the US might be the next natural step in historical recontextualization following the success of Hamilton.

This Week in Linguistics: If you took the vowels in English, all of which have multiple pronunciations depending on context, and forced them into consistency by choosing one pronunciation for each, what you get is very interesting, nearly incomprehensible without subtitles, and…a vaguely Scandinavian accent? Or maybe vaguely French at times?

We often romanticize artists who suffer and/or die for their art, which we really shouldn’t. (If you haven’t already, go open Netflix and look up Nanette for Hannah Gadsby’s record-correcting on Van Gogh and other artists. It’s one of the least important reasons to watch Nanette, but hey, whatever gets you in the door.) Gillian Genser has spent 15 years creating sculptures out of mussel shells she ground into shape, unaware that water pollution made the shells toxic, and they were slowly depositing debilitating doses of heavy metals into her body.

It seems it’s time for all of us to be done with Neil deGrasse Tyson. In a slightly better world we’d be replacing every abusive creep with the people they bullied out of their professions.

I refuse to believe that this is a video of a bubble freezing. Obviously it shows the creation of a crystal ball that turned out to be too powerful to sustain itself on our plane. Like, come on now. Someday one shall be born who can summon and harness it.

[spooky-froll]

You’ve heard it all before: there were the various “surges” (though once upon a time sold as paths to victory, not simply to break a “stalemate”); there were the insider, or “green-on-blue,” attacks in which Afghans trained, advised, and often armed by the U.S. turned their weapons on their mentors (two such incidents in the last month resulted in three dead American soldiers and more wounded); there were the Afghan ghost soldiers, ghost police, ghost students, and ghost teachers (all existing only on paper, the money for them ponied up by U.S. taxpayers but always in someone else’s pocket); and there was that never-ending national “reconstruction” program that long ago outspent the famed Marshall Plan, which helped put all of Western Europe back on its feet after World War II.  It included projects for roads to nowhere, gas stations built in the middle of nowhere, and those Pentagon-produced, forest-patterned camouflage outfits for the Afghan army in a land only 2.1% forested. (The design was, it turns out, favored by the Afghan defense minister of the moment and his fashion statement cost U.S. taxpayers a mere $28 million more than it would have cost to produce other freely available, more appropriate designs.)  And that, of course, is just to begin the distinctly bumpy drive down America’s Afghan highway to nowhere.  Don’t even speak to me, for instance, about the $8.5 billion that the U.S. sunk into efforts to suppress the opium crop in a country where the drug trade now flourishes.

And considering those failed surges, those repeated insider attacks, those ghost soldiers and ghost roads and ghost drug programs in the longest conflict in American history, the one that most people in this country have turned into a ghost war (and that neither of the candidates for president in 2016 even bothered to discuss on the campaign trail), what do you suppose Donald Trump’s generals have in mind when it comes to the future?

For that, let me turn you over to a man who, in 2011, in one of those surge moments, fought in Afghanistan: TomDispatch regular Army Major Danny Sjursen, author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Let him remind you of how that war once looked from the ground up and of what lessons were carefully not drawn from such experiences. Let him consider the eagerness of the generals to whom our new president has ceded decision-making on U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to... well, let’s not say “surge,” since that word now has such negative connotations, but send thousands more U.S. troops into that country in a... well, what about a “resurge” in already vain hopes of... well... an American resurgence in that country.

 Tread Carefully   The Folly of the Next Afghan “Surge” By Danny Sjursen

We walked in a single file. Not because it was tactically sound. It wasn’t -- at least according to standard infantry doctrine. Patrolling southern Afghanistan in column formation limited maneuverability, made it difficult to mass fire, and exposed us to enfilading machine-gun bursts. Still, in 2011, in the Pashmul District of Kandahar Province, single file was our best bet.

The reason was simple enough: improvised bombs not just along roads but seemingly everywhere.  Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Who knew?

That’s right, the local “Taliban” -- a term so nebulous it’s basically lost all meaning -- had managed to drastically alter U.S. Army tactics with crude, homemade explosives stored in plastic jugs. And believe me, this was a huge problem. Cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to bury, those anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, soon littered the “roads,” footpaths, and farmland surrounding our isolated outpost. To a greater extent than a number of commanders willingly admitted, the enemy had managed to nullify our many technological advantages for a few pennies on the dollar (or maybe, since we’re talking about the Pentagon, it was pennies on the millions of dollars).

Truth be told, it was never really about our high-tech gear.   Instead, American units came to rely on superior training and discipline, as well as initiative and maneuverability, to best their opponents.  And yet those deadly IEDs often seemed to even the score, being both difficult to detect and brutally effective. So there we were, after too many bloody lessons, meandering along in carnival-like, Pied Piper-style columns. Bomb-sniffing dogs often led the way, followed by a couple of soldiers carrying mine detectors, followed by a few explosives experts. Only then came the first foot soldiers, rifles at the ready. Anything else was, if not suicide, then at least grotesquely ill-advised.

And mind you, our improvised approach didn’t always work either. To those of us out there, each patrol felt like an ad hoc round of Russian roulette.  In that way, those IEDs completely changed how we operated, slowing movement, discouraging extra patrols, and distancing us from what was then considered the ultimate “prize”: the local villagers, or what was left of them anyway.  In a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign, which is what the U.S. military was running in Afghanistan in those years, that was the definition of defeat.

Strategic Problems in Microcosm

My own unit faced a dilemma common to dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of other American units in Afghanistan. Every patrol was slow, cumbersome, and risky. The natural inclination, if you cared about your boys, was to do less. But effective COIN operations require securing territory and gaining the trust of the civilians living there. You simply can’t do that from inside a well-protected American base. One obvious option was to live in the villages -- which we eventually did -- but that required dividing up the company into smaller groups and securing a second, third, maybe fourth location, which quickly became problematic, at least for my 82-man cavalry troop (when at full strength). And, of course, there were no less than five villages in my area of responsibility.

I realize, writing this now, that there’s no way I can make the situation sound quite as dicey as it actually was.  How, for instance, were we to “secure and empower” a village population that was, by then, all but nonexistent?  Years, even decades, of hard fighting, air strikes, and damaged crops had left many of those villages in that part of Kandahar Province little more than ghost towns, while cities elsewhere in the country teemed with uprooted and dissatisfied peasant refugees from the countryside.

Sometimes, it felt as if we were fighting over nothing more than a few dozen deserted mud huts.  And like it or not, such absurdity exemplified America’s war in Afghanistan.  It still does.  That was the view from the bottom.  Matters weren’t -- and aren't -- measurably better at the top.  As easily as one reconnaissance troop could be derailed, so the entire enterprise, which rested on similarly shaky foundations, could be unsettled.

At a moment when the generals to whom President Trump recently delegated decision-making powers on U.S. troop strength in that country consider a new Afghan “surge,” it might be worth looking backward and zooming out just a bit. Remember, the very idea of “winning” the Afghan War, which left my unit in that collection of mud huts, rested (and still rests) on a few rather grandiose assumptions.

The first of these surely is that the Afghans actually want (or ever wanted) us there; the second, that the country was and still is vital to our national security; and the third, that 10,000, 50,000, or even 100,000 foreign troops ever were or now could be capable of “pacifying” an insurgency, or rather a growing set of insurgencies, or securing 33 million souls, or facilitating a stable, representative government in a heterogeneous, mountainous, landlocked country with little history of democracy.

The first of these points is at least debatable. As you might imagine, any kind of accurate polling is quite difficult, if not impossible, outside the few major population centers in that isolated country.  Though many Afghans, particularly urban ones, may favor a continued U.S. military presence, others clearly wonder what good a new influx of foreigners will do in their endlessly war-torn nation.  As one high-ranking Afghan official recently lamented, thinking undoubtedly of the first use in his land of the largest non-nuclear bomb on the planet, “Is the plan just to use our country as a testing ground for bombs?" And keep in mind that the striking rise in territory the Taliban now controls, the most since they were driven from power in 2001, suggests that the U.S. presence is hardly welcomed everywhere.

The second assumption is far more difficult to argue or justify.  To say the least, classifying a war in far-away Afghanistan as “vital” relies on a rather pliable definition of the term.  If that passes muster -- if bolstering the Afghan military to the tune of (at least) tens of billions of dollars annually and thousands of new boots-on-the-ground in order to deny safe haven to “terrorists” is truly “vital” -- then logically the current U.S. presences in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen are critical as well and should be similarly fortified.  And what about the growing terror groups in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia, and so on?  We’re talking about a truly expensive proposition here -- in blood and treasure.  But is it true?  Rational analysis suggests it is not.  After all, on average about seven Americans were killed by Islamist terrorists on U.S. soil annually from 2005 to 2015.  That puts terrorism deaths right up there with shark attacks and lightning strikes.  The fear is real, the actual danger... less so.

As for the third point, it’s simply preposterous. One look at U.S. military attempts at “nation-building” or post-conflict stabilization and pacification in Iraq, Libya, or -- dare I say -- Syria should settle the issue. It’s often said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Yet here we are, 14 years after the folly of invading Iraq and many of the same voices -- inside and outside the administration -- are clamoring for one more “surge” in Afghanistan (and, of course, will be clamoring for the predictable surges to follow across the Greater Middle East).

The very idea that the U.S. military had the ability to usher in a secure Afghanistan is grounded in a number of preconditions that proved to be little more than fantasies.  First, there would have to be a capable, reasonably corruption-free local governing partner and military.  That’s a nonstarter.  Afghanistan’s corrupt, unpopular national unity government is little better than the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam in the 1960s and that American war didn’t turn out so well, did it?  Then there’s the question of longevity.  When it comes to the U.S. military presence there, soon to head into its 16th year, how long is long enough?  Several mainstream voices, including former Afghan commander General David Petraeus, are now talking about at least a “generation” more to successfully pacify Afghanistan.  Is that really feasible given America’s growing resource constraints and the ever expanding set of dangerous “ungoverned spaces” worldwide?

And what could a new surge actually do?  The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is essentially a fragmented series of self-contained bases, each of which needs to be supplied and secured.  In a country of its size, with a limited transportation infrastructure, even the 4,000-5,000 extra troops the Pentagon is reportedly considering sending right now won’t go very far.

Now, zoom out again.  Apply the same calculus to the U.S. position across the Greater Middle East and you face what we might start calling the Afghan paradox, or my own quandary safeguarding five villages with only 82 men writ large.  Do the math.  The U.S. military is already struggling to keep up with its commitments.  At what point is Washington simply spinning its proverbial wheels?  I’ll tell you when -- yesterday.

Now, think about those three questionable Afghan assumptions and one uncomfortable actuality leaps forth. The only guiding force left in the American strategic arsenal is inertia.

What Surge 4.0 Won’t Do -- I Promise...

Remember something: this won’t be America’s first Afghan “surge.”  Or its second, or even its third.  No, this will be the U.S. military’s fourth crack at it.  Who feels lucky?  First came President George W. Bush’s "quiet" surge back in 2008.  Next, just one month into his first term, newly minted President Barack Obama sent 17,000 more troops to fight his so-called good war (unlike the bad one in Iraq) in southern Afghanistan.  After a testy strategic review, he then committed 30,000 additional soldiers to the “real” surge a year later.  That’s what brought me (and the rest of B Troop, 4-4 Cavalry) to Pashmul district in 2011.  We left -- most of us -- more than five years ago, but of course about 8,800 American military personnel remain today and they are the basis for the surge to come.

To be fair, Surge 4.0 might initially deliver certain modest gains (just as each of the other three did in their day).  Realistically, more trainers, air support, and logistics personnel could indeed stabilize some Afghan military units for some limited amount of time.  Sixteen years into the conflict, with 10% as many American troops on the ground as at the war’s peak, and after a decade-plus of training, Afghan security forces are still being battered by the insurgents.  In the last years, they’ve been experiencing record casualties, along with the usual massive stream of desertions and the legions of “ghost soldiers” who can neither die nor desert because they don’t exist, although their salaries do (in the pockets of their commanders or other lucky Afghans).  And that’s earned them a “stalemate,” which has left the Taliban and other insurgent groups in control of a significant part of the country.  And if all goes well (which isn’t exactly a surefire thing), that’s likely to be the best that Surge 4.0 can produce: a long, painful tie.

Peel back the onion’s layers just a bit more and the ostensible reasons for America’s Afghan War vanish along with all the explanatory smoke and mirrors. After all, there are two things the upcoming “mini-surge” will emphatically not do:

*It won’t change a failing strategic formula.

Imagine that formula this way: American trainers + Afghan soldiers + loads of cash + (unspecified) time = a stable Afghan government and lessening Taliban influence.

It hasn’t worked yet, of course, but -- so the surge-believers assure us -- that’s because we need more: more troops, more money, more time.  Like so many loyal Reaganites, their answers are always supply-side ones and none of them ever seems to wonder whether, almost 16 years later, the formula itself might not be fatally flawed.

According to news reports, no solution being considered by the current administration will even deal with the following interlocking set of problems: Afghanistan is a large, mountainous, landlocked, ethno-religiously heterogeneous, poor country led by a deeply corrupt government with a deeply corrupt military.  In a place long known as a “graveyard of empires,” the United States military and the Afghan Security Forces continue to wage what one eminent historian has termed “fortified compound warfare.”  Essentially, Washington and its local allies continue to grapple with relatively conventional threats from exceedingly mobile Taliban fighters across a porous border with Pakistan, a country that has offered not-so-furtive support and a safe haven for those adversaries.  And the Washington response to this has largely been to lock its soldiers inside those fortified compounds (and focus on protecting them against “insider attacks” by those Afghans it works with and trains).  It hasn’t worked.  It can’t.  It won’t.

Consider an analogous example.  In Vietnam, the United States never solved the double conundrum of enemy safe havens and a futile search for legitimacy.  The Vietcong guerillas and North Vietnamese Army used nearby Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to rest, refit, and replenish. U.S. troops meanwhile lacked legitimacy because their corrupt South Vietnamese partners lacked it.

Sound familiar?  We face the same two problems in Afghanistan: a Pakistani safe haven and a corrupt, unpopular central government in Kabul.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, in any future troop surge will effectively change that.

*It won’t pass the logical fallacy test.

The minute you really think about it, the whole argument for a surge or mini-surge instantly slides down a philosophical slippery slope.

If the war is really about denying terrorists safe havens in ungoverned or poorly governed territory, then why not surge more troops into Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan (where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin-Laden are believed to be safely ensconced), Iraq, Syria, Chechnya, Dagestan (where one of the Boston Marathon bombers was radicalized), or for that matter Paris or London.  Every one of those places has harbored and/or is harboring terrorists.  Maybe instead of surging yet again in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the real answer is to begin to realize that all the U.S. military in its present mode of operation can do to change that reality is make it worse.  After all, the last 15 years offer a vision of how it continually surges and in the process only creates yet more ungovernable lands and territories.

So much of the effort, now as in previous years, rests on an evident desire among military and political types in Washington to wage the war they know, the one their army is built for: battles for terrain, fights that can be tracked and measured on maps, the sort of stuff that staff officers (like me) can display on ever more-complicated PowerPoint slides.  Military men and traditional policymakers are far less comfortable with ideological warfare, the sort of contest where their instinctual proclivity to “do something” is often counterproductive.

As U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24 -- General David Petraeus’ highly touted counterinsurgency “bible” -- wisely opined: “Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.”  It’s high time to follow such advice (even if it’s not the advice that Petraeus himself is offering anymore).

As for me, call me a deep-dyed skeptic when it comes to what 4,000 or 5,000 more U.S. troops can do to secure or stabilize a country where most of the village elders I met couldn’t tell you how old they were.  A little foreign policy humility goes a long way toward not heading down that slippery slope.  Why, then, do Americans continue to deceive themselves?  Why do they continue to believe that even 100,000 boys from Indiana and Alabama could alter Afghan society in a way Washington would like?  Or any other foreign land for that matter?

I suppose some generals and policymakers are just plain gamblers.   But before putting your money on the next Afghan surge, it might be worth flashing back to the limitations, struggles, and sacrifices of just one small unit in one tiny, contested district of southern Afghanistan in 2011...

Lonely Pashmul

So, on we walked -- single file, step by treacherous step -- for nearly a year.  Most days things worked out.  Until they didn’t.   Unfortunately, some soldiers found bombs the hard way: three dead, dozens wounded, one triple amputee.  So it went and so we kept on going.  Always onward. Ever forward. For America? Afghanistan? Each other? No matter.  And so it seems other Americans will keep on going in 2017, 2018, 2019...

Lift foot. Hold breath. Step. Exhale.

Keep walking... to defeat... but together.