Courtesy Of The US, Millions Could Die In Afghanistan. Here’s Why.

I want to put up a short post based on comments and scenes in the last 24 hours.  It’s important to note that Afghanistan is not a small population nation. It has 40 million citizens. Some people say it’s not a nation. That it’s full of remote tribes. Yes, it does have disparate and diverse ethnic tribes. But those tribes have been united in the past and there is no reason to believe they cannot unite again with a distributed form of rule rather than a centralized authoritarian rule instituted by the US. (Because the US can control a central authority. Who cares if it serves remote Afghanis?)  And, there are also major cities in Afghanistan. The characterization as backwater goat herders and incompetent masses serves a purpose from those presenting it as such.  Not the least of which is US elites rationalizing why we failed in Afghanistan. If it weren’t for those dumb goat herders. Sound familiar? Those dumb Trump supporters….

Before US meddling, Afghanistan had a functioning government and universities in many cities that taught science, the arts and expertise its nation needed to survive in a very tough climate. And, it had been surviving since the beginning of time. To the tune of 40 million people. Afghanistan had a functioning government where girls went to school, girls didn’t wear burqas and people weren’t beaten for the reason of the day before Reagan armed a group of radical thugs, the Taliban, who have been terrorizing tribes and cities ever since.  The US has a history of radicalizing the Middle East. Burqas were never seen in many nations that have become radicalized by US neoliberal policy over the past half century. It doesn’t help that the US turns a blind eye to radical Wahhabism exported by US puppet state, Saudi Arabia. Because oil.

Here’s why this is all important.  There are calls from unaccountable Ivy League, academic, media, corporate and political idiots in the US for us to allow millions of Afghanis to emigrate to the US. First off, that isn’t going to fly with citizens in the US who prop up the parasitic corporate state.  US citizens fight the for-profit wars, die in the wars, fund the wars and then the ruling US elites plunder and become rich in the wars. Then elites tell Americans we need to pay the taxes and sacrifice what few jobs exist for war refugees to come to the US when elite pillaging has reached its finality. (More of this bullshit used at the border. But the children.  Our border situation is a mess and children are brutally treated but its US economic policy of NAFTA and CAFTA and propping up puppet governments in the Americas that is often the cause. The US should have a policy to empower democracy in these nations, but that would threaten US corporate pillaging in the Americas.  And, mean governments that can’t be controlled by the US.

But, more importantly, here’s a greater consequence of the idiocy of US elites when one considers society as a complex system as I’ll highlight below.  And, no one is talking about this because the diverse voices of democracy and consequence are not heard in the corporate state where corporate, academic and political mandarins and apparatchiks rule.

The scenes in Afghanistan who masses of people who want to leave. There are certainly various reasons for that. It’s a poor nation and the US handed out money like candy so they see a chance at having a life of greater leisure and an opportunity for a better life. They remember what it was like under the authoritarian Taliban who beat people for pleasure. The list of reasons is long and I probably don’t appreciate many of them. But, if the US and NATO evacuates millions of Afghanis or they end up migrating to refugee camps surrounding the nation, social structure could collapse and millions could die.

I would classify this as human capital flight.  The Taliban inherited a functioning government and educated society when it gained control over the nation decades ago. The Taliban itself has no skills to actually govern beyond forcing government officials, the educated elements of society and the productive citizens to do what they tell them to do.  They don’t know how to distribute power, electricity or water.  They don’t know how to educate children to become productive assets in society.  They don’t understand how to ensure a food supply.  They are simply thugs who insert themselves as a parasite on top of those productive people.  Or, on top of the human capital that they parasitically control.  If a critical mass of that human capital leaves…. where are the skills going to come from to keep civilization going?

This is no different than corporations or the ruling parasitic elites in the US who have inserted themselves into the authoritarian position sucking the life out of US citizens.  A minimum functioning bureaucracy is needed in any society but it should be in service to society, not sucking it dry. As an example, we need a credit system.  But, an all-consuming debt-based credit system like Wall Street run by private entities that sucks both democracy and citizens dry is no different than the Taliban. I’m completely serious on this point.

So, if the true expertise who educates the children, runs the universities, distributes the power, produces the food and the like leave Afghanistan as many in the US and Europe advocate, we could see social collapse.  Or, even if there is a mass refugee migration or a panic that continues to spread for months and there is no functioning government and expertise across a broad range of outcomes either leaves, or succumbs to a panic or other disruptive events, basic services such as electricity, food production, clean water and on and on could could collapse. The global food supply at any given time is 90-120 days. Miss a season of crop planting in Afghanistan and the entire population disappears without outside help. That includes the Taliban.

If this happens, the global community could not likely feed 40 million people. Or, 20 million. Or 10 million.  It would depend on the level of disruption and human capital flight as to how many lives were at risk. The Taliban certainly doesn’t have the talent to do this. They are simply thugs. Maybe a few of them have some skills but it’s not the Mensa Club. Their abilities lie in brute force and control. Telling those with skills what to do. (By the way this is what corporate and banking thugs also do in the US.)

If that comes to pass, what are our options? Let millions die? Or, go back in and restore some degree of civilization? Possibly by sending back the human expertise that western elites want to drain the country of.  Would that even be possible? 

This crisis has much higher risks than anyone is talking about. Colin Powell told George Bush before his pathological invasions that propped up the failing US economy with war and plunder that if you break it, you own it. We broke Afghanistan and now we just want to walk away with no responsibility.  While I do not support a military occupation for another twenty years, we shouldn’t have to.  But, this keystone cop withdrawal endorsed by the military elites, politicians and the state department apparatchiks is another example that shows how grossly incompetent the US parasitic bureaucracy really is. The country was functioning on what would have likely been a $10 billion US budget in 2022.  And, reforms could be instituted that grant regions more power to take control from the US while we continued our support role.  It’s a bald-faced lie that the Afghan army didn’t fight. They’ve died in much, much higher numbers than the US military’s deaths.

The US has been a horror for decades. Watching the horrors of Katrina with citizens floating on a raft of shit, the endless profit-driven wars, the endless loss of life and dismemberment of front-line military personnel, the tens of trillions of bailouts of psychopaths on Wall Street, the ungodly comedy of COVID19 response lining the pockets of the plundering class, the sending of tens of millions of science and manufacturing jobs out of our nation to authoritarian nations to line the pockets of corporations, the shithole educational system that has become that largely because elites don’t want to fund public education, the massive debt enslavement to education, the massive debt enslavement to the corporate military racket, the austerity enforced on us from criminal bankers and corporations that dismembered our government, the toxic shit we call food that makes us sick and fat, the debt enslavement to healthcare corporations, and on and on and on. 

Afghanistan is just the latest in the gross incompetence of the US corporate state.