Reply to "How Obama Lost Karzai"

A friend posted this to Facebook. I wanted to reply. I hope he gives me the honor of reading it. I would really like his opinions.

1. My impression of Karzai that I have from U. S. liberal media (NPR in particular) is that Karzai himself is not interested in Afghanistan either.  He says he is upset that the U. S. does not seem to care but he does not seem to care about it either.  So, why should he be surprised that we do not care either.
2. As the typical, under educated when it comes to world affairs, American walking the streets, I never understood why we should care about Afghanistan at all.  We (America) seem concerned over that part of the world for oil.  I'm tired of spending so much money and effort to secure that part of the world for a substance that we need to move away from.  I argue that instead of spending $20B in Afghanistan and other countries over there we should research alternative energy solutions.  We should walk away from that entire quagmire with great haste and without apology.
3. America is bankrupt.  We need to pull away from being the police force for the world.  We need to let those countries either nuke each other or decide like the US and Russia did not to nuke each other.  We discovered that Mubarak personally has billions of US money that we have given him over the years.  We need to completely stop all of this.  Let the world do or not do as it pleases.  In this regard I do not just "not care" about Afghanistan but I have a healthy hatred for it.  I don't care if it brings down Pakistan, India, Israel, and all the other countries.  I personally and 99% of American's have no "foreign" interests as the media claims that we do.  The Bush type monarchies do... but I'm not a part of them.  These monarchies need to be brought down as well.
4. In a similar vein, the article says that the Pashtun have ruled for 250 years.  Looks to me that that is more than enough argument that they need to go.  What better proof do you need that they have utterly and completely failed in providing for their country.  They provide only for themselves and their inner circle.  Again... I don't have just disinterest but hatred.
5. Points three and four lead to the point that Karzai's hope for Afghanistan is probably wildly different from Bush's, Obama's, and the average Joe American walking down the street.  Nor do I believe that Karzai's hopes are in alignment with the average person on Afghanistan.  It is clear that Bush's idea of American freedom has nothing to do with my vision.  His version of American freedom is that he is free to commit war crimes, tap my phone, and destroy any good will America had with the rest of the world all within eight very short years.  Likewise, I bet Karzai's vision of Afghanistan is to go back to the way it was with his family as one of a few ruling dynasties.  I have no interest in spending my money to see either of those.
6. Oh wait!!! But what about the Taliban?  Oh gee..!! be afraid be afraid... right?  that is what our government has plowed into our brains since 2001.  I don't buy it even in the least.  At this point I need to come out of the closet and admit that I am a "truther"... yea... shame shame... I do not believe that the American public has been told the truth of what happened on 9/11 and I don't believe that Afghanistan has any significance to it at all.  
1. Even if we take the official story as true, that people in that part of the world are so upset with America that they attacked us on 9/11, I would argue that what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq are only making matters worse.  Lets get out and mind our own business.  I am repeatedly reminded of some of the debates during the framing of the American Constitution where  the founding fathers went to great lengths to try and keep America out of foreign affairs.  They saw how Britain had done great harm in her foreign affairs and did not want to repeat her mistakes.  But American has repeated all of them including trying to support huge military forces to the point of revolt by the common citizen.  As The History of Britain tells, what Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex was not a new concept in 1960 but dates back throughout Britain's history.
2. We already know that the war in Iraq is a complete fraud.  Afghanistan, the war on terror, and 9/11, in my mind are all wrapped together and I see all of these "priorities" as nothing but frauds perpetrated by the American ruling elite to better their own position passing the cost down to the average American.
7. The article spoke about the rigged election.  From the U. S. media, the impression I have is that there is no question that it was rigged.  The impression I have is that the opposition gave up because they knew that Karzai would just rig the repeat more than the first.  Please don't tell me that I can't trust American Mass Media as well?  Oh dear!  I keep coming back to the same point. Not only can I not get to the truth of this particular tidbit but I don't even want to.  Yes.  This particular American does not care about Afghanistan.  I don't think I'm alone in this regard.
8. The article also spoke of the desire to use Afghanistan as a breeding ground for America's war on terror.  I absolutely believe this.  The powers in America need war to sustain themselves.  At least, that is what they believe.  That is the easiest way for them to fleece us of our freedoms and our money.  The "War on Terror" is brilliant.  It is so vague that it can't possibly be won and it can be used as an excuse -- it already has been used as an excuse -- to rob us of all of our founding freedoms.  I think Karzai may hit upon a profoundness that he doesn't fully realize the depth of.  Of course, being one of the ruling classes, he should be use to these types of propaganda schemes so maybe he does know the depth of it.
9. The article has some contradictions.
1. If Karzai is so popular, then why can the Taliban succeed in upsetting his rule and setting up shadow governments?  Again based upon U.S. media, this is because people distrust him and his government due to its corruption.  Thus, to say that he is "twice elected" reminds me of Clinton.  The Clinton supporters often mentioned that "he is twice elected" and that Americans in general loved him.  I sure didn't.  I was as ashamed of having him as my president as I was of Bush.  Obama hasn't shamed me -- he just seems to be a dufus.
2. There seems to be some weird egos involved.  If the US talks to the Taliban, Karzai gets upset.  If Karzai talks to them, the US gets upset.  WTF if that about?
10. The final paragraph ends with: "alternatives to that are too horrible to contemplate".  Really?  Tell me about them -- please!  As I see it, spending money and lives in this region of the world is not just a waste but entirely counter productive to my personal objectives as well as the personal objectives of each of the average individuals in these regions.  If American had pulled out of Egypt, how much sooner would the revolt happened?  The ruling elite seem to hate to see when their brothers lose power and advertise that as horrible.  But what is truly horrible is wasting innocent lives and  billions of dollars in propping up dynasties that beg to be replaced.

The Democrat Contradiction

I need to start off with an admission. In this essay I make some sweeping generalizations. I justify them based upon my experience talking to self proclaimed Democrats. There are two of them:

1) Generally, Democrats "believe in" (their term -- not mine) evolution.

2) Generally, Democrats prefer the federal government to do a particular service rather than the states or local government, or allowing businesses, or allowing individuals themselves to do it. The example I'll use is health care.

Here is the contradiction.

What are the fundamental principles of evolution? Most will be quick to say "that the fittest survive". But that isn't really deep enough. Closer to the truth is that evolution is based upon two mechanisms.

First, nature provides a near infinite number of experiments -- tests. Each test is the particular gene makeup of an individual organism. It is interesting that often an individual's genes are referred to as its "instructions" or "rules" by which it acts, behaves, grows, etc.

Second, these tests have a success or failure. The individual survives and reproduces or it doesn't.

The individuals have groupings like genius, species, class, variety. The tests are most often looked at using statistics: e.g. more of variety A reproduced than variety B. And usually there are mundane numbers spewed around like 28.5%. I mention these aspects just to complete the picture.

There is a peculiar observation of evolution which is that the exact same experiment might work in one situation but fails in another situation. A tropical lily thrives in the tropics but dies in the north. A conifer loves the cold north but is choked out by other trees in more moderate climates. As a result of evolution, there is a wide variety of organisms each specialized for the environment they are in.

A federal plan is a single, unified, plan or system. There is one federal Health Care system. There is one set of rules to govern all the health care entities and how they apply to all the people in all of the country. The key here is "one" -- one set of rules or genes.

Do you see the contradiction yet? Perhaps not.

The contradiction is if Democrats actually "believed in" evolution they would hold dear the principles behind it. In particular, millions of tests and not just one test.

To be consistent, instead of arguing for a unified "one" plan, they should argue for many plans. Perhaps one for each state, or preferably one for each county if they want some form of government to take on this job. We won't broach the possibility of allowing each company or even each person do it since that begins to mix apples and oranges (mixing government based verses non-government based experiments).

Lets take for example, the possibility that each state implement their health care plan the way they see fit. In that situation, we would have 50 different plans running concurrently. In five years or ten years, most would die in which case, the state would pick another system. But some would survive. We would see populations moving between states to get access to the better health care system just as we see companies fleeing California today to get away from their tax system. We would definitely gain much more data on what works and what doesn't work using fifty concurrent experiments than with just one. The individual voters of state A could see what state B was doing and, if it made sense to them, vote to enact similar plans.

Imagine still the possibility of each county implementing their health care. In that situation, they could specialize even more for the exact environment that they are in.

Having dozens or thousands of concurrent health care experiments would allow for, and put faith in, the principles of evolution when applied to health care systems.

Instead, the Democrats are actually arguing the Creationist's viewpoint for health care. That one, omnipotent, greater power will create the perfect plan.

Am I rich?

I'm doing my taxes today for 2010. There are all sorts of deductions. Well, except not for me.

Medical deductions? Nope. Not for me. I have to have $8000 or more of medical expenses before I can take the first penny.

Tuition deductions? Nope, they faded away even if I made only one third of my income. I paid $14,000 for tuition but none is deductible.

Casualty or Theft? Nope. Has to be more than 10% of "adjusted gross income". So, I had $6000 of loss last year but no deduction.

The list continues but you probably get the idea.

What bothers me isn't that I'm not getting any credit for these deductions. What bothers me is the general sense in this country that the tax system is for the rich. But reviewing the twenty five plus categories of possible deductions, all of them fade away before you get anywhere near the income needed to be considered rich.