Gravediggers.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains
just roll on your rifle and blow out your brains
and go to your Gawd like a soldier
  -- Rudyard Kipling

As of this morning, the government of Afghanistan collapsed, with president Ghani and his advisors fleeing to Tajikistan.

This mess is presently falling apart faster than we or the rest of the world can respond to it, and with the Kabul International Airport under some level of attack, only military aircraft can be used in the evacuation at the moment in an environment almost certain to degenerate into rough field conditions in short order.

And trust me, it's not very comfortable or a hell of a lot of fun being on a Galaxy, a Globemaster III or a Hercules under normal peacetime conditions. I can't imagine being on one that's taking off, let alone landing to pick people up, under any amount of fire.

It looks like the fall of Saigon, on steroids, but with Chinooks and Globemaster III's instead of Hueys and ships. I don't know how the fuck NATO and the US are going to get our people out of there, much less our Afghan allies...and if I had to guess, on top of that we're ALL going to be looking at an epic-level refugee crisis soon enough. Everybody with the guts, the money or the skills to get out who hasn't already is likely trying frantically to find a way to do just that. 

I'm serious. It's not going to be easy or any fun.

Probably a lot of their people (and more than likely some of ours) are going to have to trek over mountains and across deserts to get out...and most of the Afghans who can even get out will be the people with the connections, family in other countries, money and modern skills to make it in the world.

And quite likely a lot of wealthier Afghans are going to spend their fortunes just to escape and have to claw their way back up from whatever they can get, but I suppose working as a dishwasher or an oil change guy or a translator beats the ever-living FUCK out of being dead...and yes, worse can absolutely happen. Religious fanatics of all types desire to immanentize their particular shitty little eschaton, and I know from personal experience that some fanatic's idea of heaven is almost certainly everybody else's idea of hell.

Don't ask what the common people, much less the poor, people like me who have the skills to make it but not the monetary or physical means to get there are about to go through. You don't want to know. 

I'm here to tell you any disabled veteran of the Afghan National Army...and many of those who are not...at this point, is pretty much fucked.

And I guarantee it'll be worse with the Taliban basically extorting money and goods and outright stealing from a lot of those same people...and that's going to be compounded by the country's legit economy, both internal and international trade, pretty much grinding to a halt and collapsing. We can, however, expect that the drug trade, human trafficking, and whatever other crimes the Taliban are committing or allowing (for a cut of the profits) will very shortly hit some boom times.

It's a very safe bet, though, that the "Conservatives" most responsible for this goddamned mess...both the Trump administration and its supporters that threw the Afghan people to the wolves and the Bush 43 people who got us into this shit in the first place, have washed their hands of the situation.

Except when they can use it as a stick with which to beat the other side, or when they find out they can use desperate, needy Afghan refugees for cheap labor (as I said yesterday.)

I'm here to tell you that the David French, Max Boot and Rick Wilson types who are supportive of the Afghan people are absolutely in the minority. Most of these idiots (Trump Supporters or otherwise) could absolutely give a fuck about Afghanistan.

And the military-industrial complex has already made their money, which seems to have been the whole fucking point of us being there in the first place if you think about it.

I mean, seriously, the Bush administration made no secret of their intention to set Afghanistan up for a permanent US occupation. Their government and military were dependent on ours, equipped and organized to modern standards the locals often lacked the technical skills to maintain on their own. US contractors fixed the aircraft, equipment and vehicles and maintained the logistics of their military. US funding paid the police and troops and when we were there, we had to make sure they got paid...and even at the best of times corruption was rife.

Afghanistan under the regime we set up was democratic, globalized and so plugged into the world community it couldn't stand on its own two feet without us.

And then under Trump, America took a turn toward isolationism and first, left the Afghans holding the bag...then Trump actively threw them to the wolves. 

Of course, conservatives had been looking to divest themselves of this mess since they decided Iraq was a newer, prettier, more oily sort of toy to play with and decided we were going to invade there, too.

And I'm here to tell you, they had hopes of using Afghanistan and Iraq as springboards to attack Iran as well...as if that wouldn't have turned out to be a complete disaster.

And that was, to a great extent, the American center-right. Mere Bush-era Ghouls...almost liberals by comparison with the MAGA nuts and in fact often called exactly that by these fucking people.

Don't think that, as with the coup in Myanmar, that the American far-right (particularly the religious nuts) isn't looking on the Taliban, green with absolute envy right now.

Don't think these fucking people won't try to find a way to turn America into some kind of gonzo Afghanistan, only with more guns and way the hell more drugs.

They've been telling us exactly that since January 6th, and they're doing so with increasing fervency now. They have fever dreams of civil wars and ethnic conflicts and all type of shit. I'm serious. Why the hell do you think these motherfuckers were and are mismanaging the COVID-19 response so badly?

Their whole bit right now is trying to find a way to crash American, if not global civilization.

Because they think they'll be the king in his castle, or the warlord with all the guns, thugs and drugs. Not the serfs picking poppy bulbs in the fields or the catamite strapped to the back of the truck until the local Potentate gets horny. Or ya know, just plain dead. They all think the bad stuff will only happen to other people.

And I guarantee you these motherfuckers will praise the Taliban and DEMAND that we deny assistance or asylum to our Afghan allies or refugees (until they find out they can put them to work for minimum wage.) Hell, people are already saying this type of shit.

We blew up Afghanistan, don't we at least owe the Afghans a safe place to come to, if they want to come here?

It seems to me that this is a moral obligation at this point.

And I'd take any one person who trekked over mountains and walked across deserts to get here over ten Americans who were born here and don't appreciate this country or understand its purpose. I'd take one refugee over any hundred of the far-right nuts who are trying to burn this country down.

It's said that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.

But right now we've got a whole hell of a lot of gravediggers looking to bury us.

Not over there...but right here at home. People who call themselves Americans...but who would happily destroy America just to make their political rivals mad.

Think about that for a second.

And if you're not willing to do something about it, look around you at what's happening in the world today and tremble.

Because just like the soldiers of the Afghan National Army...if we don't stand up and fight, then this fall is in our future too.

It's really that simple.

If you're not willing to fight for it, take the word 'Freedom' out of your vocabulary. ~Malcolm X.