Lyin' Four Stars undermined the Afghanistan peace deal — societal implications

18 March 2021

Today, we meander-ramble a bit

Can an unregulated capitalistic fake-democracy work?

Doesn't seem so.

In that regard, are firing squads too good for . . .

. . . constitutionally insubordinate American four stars?

From the GrayZone

Gareth Porter's words:

The subversion of the peace agreement with the Taliban initiated by the US military leadership in Washington and Afghanistan began almost as soon as Trump’s personal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated a tentative deal in November 2019.

The campaign to undermine [Trump's] presidential authority was actively supported by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

Esper claimed the peace deal allowed the US military to defend Afghan forces, blatantly contradicting the agreement’s text.

Esper’s promise of continued US military support, made public in Congressional testimony days later, gave the Afghan government a clear incentive to refuse any concessions to the Taliban.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promptly refused to go ahead with a promised prisoner exchange until formal negotiations with the Taliban had begun.

The Taliban responded by initiating a series of attacks on government troops at checkpoints in contested areas.

The US military . . . responded with an airstrike against Taliban forces . . . .

The combination of Esper’s assurance to the Afghan government and the US airstrike showed the hand of the Pentagon and military leadership.

It was clear they had no intention of passively accepting a deal to withdraw . . . and would do whatever they could to unravel it.

Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, further highlighted the Pentagon’s opposition to the deal when he declared in congressional testimony that troop withdrawals would be determined by “conditions on the ground.”

In other words, it was up to the judgment of military commanders, rather than the terms of the agreement, to determine when U.S. troops would be withdrawn.

This subversion of the Commander in Chief's lawful authority . . .

. . . represents rabid defiance against the Constitution's required civilian-over-military command chain.

The structural haplessness of the American presidency is continually revealed in the US military's quasi-potentates continual flaunting of their anti-legal treason — "treason" here being used very loosely — in the American public's face.

Although We the People seem to accept that the Military Industrial Complex can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants — no legitimate democracy, or societally effective president, can survive such conditions.

More seriously than I indicated yesterday, I venture (today) that it really is time to force the American military into being obedient to the civilian command chain.

Realistically speaking, such a cleansing would probably require a Presidential special operations team to act similarly to Rome's (originally loyal) Praetorian Guard.

Uniformed underminers of presidential authority would quietly disappear from the scene. Troublesome folk in America's always parasitic system would, we can intuit, benefit from drug cartel-like talkings to:

We know where you live.

If one does not innately think along these lines, one is unsuited to becoming a society-benefiting head to a major world state.

A significant problem in the United States is our societally shared misunderstanding of how 'real' power should work. We place too much emphasis on what money will buy, and too little on the application of persuasive, internally applied or-else 'democratic' force.

We are, at heart, a nation of led by greedy bourgeois burgher-mentalities, and not a People of purposeful slap-the-bastids grit. Ergo, the corporate and Fat Cat-profiting slant of everything that gets done (or not done) here.

In this regard, the two most meaningful distinctions between China and the United States are:

the former's visible emphasis on the arguable 'good' of the whole

as well as

Chinese totalitarians' willingness to force arguably beneficent outcomes against 'selfish' internal opposition.

I tentatively predict that the Chinese model is ultimately going to bury our sloppily avaricious, society-destroying American one.

For a look at the societal mechanics of why, see:

Ian G. R. Shaw and Marv Waterstone, Wageless Life: A Manifesto for a Future beyond Capitalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2019)

In this pessimistic regard, Bill Maher's dissection of America's "silly people" syndrome — see here — is persuasively pertinent.

Indeed, every open-minded visitor to China (that I have read or talked to) reports essentially the same things:

China gets impressively valuable things done promptly

and

America can't do squat — except murder brown people for strategically nonsensical reasons.

As I have observed before, there is a quasi-Biblical parable looming in that cultural contrast.

History tells us how breaches of command chain are properly handled

One need only look at how totalitarians enforce their will.

Democracies occasionally exhibit the same ability. Recall President Obama's firing (forced resignation) of the unintentionally insubordinate General Stanley McChrystal.

The moral? — Change-oriented leadership must understand power to be effective

A US president who fails to impose his or her elected will on America's overweening military commanders and corporate CEOs will — inevitably — fail in fulfilling his and her duties to We the People.

At present, the United States represents the worst of command chain models. We are governed by a pillaging corporatized blob that lacks society-nurturing wisdom of even the most basic kind.

When an American leader does not understand Power's nature and flow, as President Trump did not, he and she will fail in accomplishing what we ostensibly elected them to do.

'Root the vermin out' is Power's always pertinent requirement.

The United States could use a whole lot of vermin elimination.

We can begin by purging insubordinate four stars. Pose the carrot of immediate retirement now — versus — the stick of something nastily less desirable in the miscreant's not too distant future.

It is delivering 'The Nasty' that is the key. If one does not know how — or lacks will and means — one is gobbled up.

Successful democracy, paradoxically, requires an Enforcer.

Vermin everywhere.

What is a wise householder to do?

It's the 'what' that defeats the Failing American Experiment.

PeteFree.com

Lyin' Four Stars undermined the Afghanistan peace deal — societal implications