Dragon Dunes of Saint George
Veitnow: Afghanistan and the U.S.
An editorial plea to our fellow American citizens to recognize a most grievous atrocity committed in our name .
A tragic comedy of errors is unfolding and the U.S. citizen is the punchline. After twenty years of war and occupation, the total cost in lives of the war in Afghanistan (as of April 2021) is 2,448 American Service Members and 3,836 U.S. contractors (as reported by the AP and using data gathered by Harvard University’s Kennedy School and from the Brown University.)
The capital costs, based on official data as reported by the BBC is an estimated $822bn (spent between 2001 and 2019). This estimate does not include expenses accrued in Pakistan, which the U.S. used as a base of operations during the Afghan-conflict.
And what did the U.S. secure after all this? “Guarantees and enforcement mechanisms that will prevent the use of the soil of Afghanistan by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies.” A grantee secured from an organization that the US does not even recognize. The ceasefire agreement refers to the other party simply as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban.”
The U.S. tax payer will be paying for this “war” for generations to come, receiving in return a guarantee from an organization we do not recognize and are told not to trust. Does this seem right to you? More glaringly, American families paid the ultimate price, the lives of loved ones they will never see again.
According to the Council of Foreign Relations “The [Taliban] has withstood counterinsurgency operations from the world’s most powerful security alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and three U.S. administrations in a war that has killed more than 6,000 U.S. troops and contractors”
After all that, it estimated that the Taliban, has between fifty-eight thousand to one-hundred thousand full-time fighters and that it is stronger now than at any point in the last twenty years. Add to that, the United Nations recently reported that the Taliban still maintains a strong alliance with al-Qaeda.
The UN further reports the Taliban still receives resources and training from al-Qaeda in exchange for protection. An estimated two hundred to five hundred al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be in Afghanistan with leaders believed to be based in regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
As of this writing, the Taliban have retaken most of, and are on the verge of securing all of Afghanistan, with the terms of the ceasefire all but broken. The Taliban are stronger now than when NATO invaded.
One need look no further as to the comedy in this tragedy then to read reports concerning the Taliban’s capture of the Kunduz Airport this week. It is reported that upon overrunning the airport the Taliban seized billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment including MaxPro Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, ScanEagle drones and Humvees. U.S. tax dollars just went toward supplying the Taliban and possibly al-Qaeda with state of the art military equipment.
Was it all worth it?
In future essays we hope to explore that question along with several others. How did we get here? What were the true costs (sunk costs and ongoing future costs) of the war? What are the geopolitical ramifications? What will come of Afghanistan?
From Veitnow by Rage Against the Machine ”Terror's tha product ya push Well I'm a truth addict, oh shit I gotta headrush Tha sheep tremble an here come tha votes“
Falling Sugar Maple Leaf
Where is Mahabodhi?
Mahāsiddha Tilopā: “Six Words of Advice” for abiding in non-dual continuum of clear light:
Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening. Do not try and figure anything out. Do not try and control anything. Relax, right now, and rest in the radiant luminescent coalescence of emptiness and appearance.
Charlie Munger: 24 (22) causes of human misjudgment
List of key bias per Munger:
Where a “cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own “subjective reality” from their perception of the input”
Video of full speech: 1hr16m (Youtube)
Transcript (www.fs.blog)
- Under recognition of incentives (reinforcement)
- Psychological denial
- Incentive-cause bias, “agency costs”
- Bias from consistency and commitment tendency
- Bias from Pavlovian association
- Bias from reciprocation tendency
- “What you do will change what you think”
- Bias from over influence of social proof
- Elegant math
- ”Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong” – John Maynard Keynes
- Bias from contrast caused distortions of sensation, perception and cognition
- ”Cognition mimics sensation”
- Bias from over-influence by authority
- Bias from deprival, super-reaction syndrome – including threatened removal of something almost possessed
- Bias from envy/jealousy
- “It’s not greed that drives the world but envy” – Warren Buffet
- Bias from chemical dependency
- “The tendency to distort reality so that it’s endurable”
- Bias from mis-gambling compulsion
- Bias from liking distortion (reciprocal: disliking distortion)
- Bias from non-mathematical nature of the human brain… tendency to overweigh conveniently available information
- ”All the things on this list distort judgement”
- Bias from over-influence by vivid evidence
- Mental confusion caused by information not arrayed in the mind and theory structures, creating sound generalizations developed in response to the question “Why”
- “If you want to persuade someone tell them the “Why”
- Normal limitations of sensation, memory, cognition and knowledge
- Stress-induced mental changes
- Mental illness and decline
- Organizational confusion from say-something syndrome
- “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
The setting sun
A tree line of pines encroaching shadowy line a sunset divine
Conceptual consciousness
Through contemplative wisdom, consciousness realizes the illusion that is self.
On a story told…
In her secret garden I lay, wishing she would say Of the ancient story, When Israel’s glory Was to Egypt sold. The story she told, of a vibrant luxurious coat, Soaked in the blood of a goat And of a father’s heart broken With naught but a crimson token. On Genesis we reflected And of the covenant rejected, Wondering if we would have made The choice for knowledge forbade, While in the secret garden I laid.
The Initiations Of Orpheus: To Musæus and Hecate
From Thomas Taylor’s translation of The Orphic Hymns (1792)
To Musæus Attend Musæus to my sacred song And learn what rites to sacrifice belong. Jove (Zeus) I envoke, the earth (Gaia), and solar light (Helios), The moon’s (Mene) pure splendor, and the stars of night; Thee Neptune (Poseidon), ruler of sea profound, Dark-hair’d, whose waves begirt the solid ground; Ceres (Demeter) abundant, and of lovely mien, And Proserpine (Persephone) infernal Pluto’s (Hades) queen; The huntress Dian (Artemis), and bright Phœbus (Apollo) rays, Far-darting God, the theme Delphic praise; And Bacchus (Dionysos) , honur’d by the heav’nly choir, And raging Mars (Ares) , and Vulcan (Hephaestus) god of fire; The mighty pow’r who from foam to light, And Pluto (Hades) potent in the realms of night; With Hebe young, and Hercules the strong, And to whom the care of births belong; Justice and Piety august I call, And much-fam’d nymphs, and Pan the god of all. To Juno ( Hera) sacred, and to Mem’ry (Mnemosyne) fair, And the chaste Muses (Mousai) I address my pray’r; The various year, the Graces and the Hours, Fair-haired Latona (Leto), and Dione’s pow’rs; Armed Curetes (Kouretes) household Gods I call, With those who spring from Jove the king of all; Th’ Idæn Gods (Olympians), the angel of the skies, And righteous Themis, with sagacious eyes; With ancient night, and day-light I implore, And Faith, and Justice dealing right I adore; Saturn (Cronus) and Rhea, and great Thetis too, Hid in a veil of bright celestial blue: I call great Ocean, and the beauteous train Of nymphs, who dwell in chambers of the main; Atlas the strong, and ever in its prime, Vig’rous Eternity (Aeon) and endless Time (Chronos); The Stygian (Styx) pool, and placid Gods beside, And various Genii (daemon), that o’er men preside; Illustrious Providence, the noble train Of dæmon forms, who fill th’ ætherial plain; Or live in air, in water, earth, or fire, Or deep beneath the solid ground retire. Bacchus (Dionysos) and Semele the friends of all, And white Leucothea of the sea I call; Palæmon bounteous, and Adrastria great, And sweet-tongu’d Victory (Nike), with success elate; Great Esculapius (Asklepios), skill’d to cure disease, And dread Minerva (Pallas), whom fierce battles please; Thunder and winds in mighty columns pent, With dreadful roaring struggling hard for vent; Attis, the mother of the pow’rs on high, And fair Adonis, never doom’d to die, End and beginning he is all to all, These with propitious aid I gently call; And to my holy sacrifice invite, To Hecate The pow’r who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, Of earthly, wat’ry, and celestial frame, Sepulchral, in saffron veil array’d, Pleas’d with dark ghosts that wander thro’ the shade; Persian, unconquerable huntress hail! The world’s key-bearer never doom’d to fail; On the rough rock to wander thee delights, Leader and nurse be present to our rites; Propitious grant our just desires success, Accept our homage, and the incense bless .
