We're Back Online. Unfortunately, so is David Brooks.

Hurricane Irma didn't manage to do any damage to the Chaos Compound itself, we're far too heavily fortified for that, but she did manage to leave us without internet access for a few days which, in a way, is even worse. Anyway, everything seems to have worked out all right. The cable came back up in time to record the Broad City premiere, and the internet came back in time for me to see this:

Harvey, Irma, Jose … and Noah

David Brooks SEPT. 12, 2017

 

Does he mean NOAA? Because that would make sense. He must mean NOAA, right?





Nooope! He means Noah. The Old Testament guy.

Is there anything we can learn from hurricanes, storms and floods?

Oh my God, yes. So much. We can learn not to fuck up our environment because Mother Nature is a vengeful bitch. We can learn the importance of funding agencies like FEMA, NOAA, and the National Guard. We can learn which presidents don't care about which people.

So many things to learn.

Is there anything we can learn from hurricanes, storms and floods?

People have been asking that question for thousands of years, and telling stories that try to make sense of natural disasters.

Oh, I don't think so. I don't think that people have been asking for millennia "Is there anything we can learn from this flood/storm/hurricane we just went through?" I would suspect that after every such disaster, people learned something, or thought that they had. Maybe they learned not to build their village so close to the riverbanks next time. Maybe they learned that they hadn't been pushing enough virgins into enough volcanoes. I don't know, but I bet they took some lesson away from every calamity. I doubt they sat around wondering whether there was any lesson to be gleaned from it.

These flood myths are remarkably similar to one another.A researcher named John D. Morris collected more than 200 of them, from ancient China, India, Native American cultures and beyond. . . The most famous story, of course, is the biblical story of Noah.

Is it, though? Or do we just assume it is because it's the one we're familiar with? You think the billions of people in China and India might have another flood myth that they are more familiar with? Or does the Western myth automatically be the dominant one? Oh, it doesn't matter. It's just kind of annoying that Americans assume that whatever we're most familiar with is the standard for the world. I mean, there might be a singer in China who is known to more people than Elvis or the Beatles even if we Americans haven't heard of him. Whatever.

As the story begins, the human race is living without law, and as a result is living violently and badly. But there was one righteous man, Noah. God tells Noah to build an ark because He is going to wipe out the rest of humanity with a great deluge.

What does Noah say when he hears this? Nothing. Abraham protested to God when the city of Sodom was under threat of destruction. Moses protested when God was going to harm the Israelites. But Noah is silent. He doesn’t try to save his neighbors or argue with his God.

Rabbis and scholars have often judged Noah harshly for this. “He is incurious, he does not know and does not care what happens to others,” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg writes. “He suffers from the incapacity to speak meaningfully to God or to his fellow human beings.”

So. . .he's a Republican?

“Noah was righteous but not a leader,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes. A leader takes responsibility for those around him and at least tries to save the world, even if people are too wicked to actually listen. Moral integrity demands positive action against evil. Noah, by contrast, opts to withdraw from the corrupt world, in order to remain untainted.

I'm sorry. Are you a theologian now? What does any of this have to do with our present-day situation of dealing with Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katia and whoever is in line behind them?

Noah and his family get on the ark and Noah gently cares for the animals. Then the rain stops and it is time to go out and remake the earth.

Oh my GOD! We know the story! You just said it was thew most famous one.
Also. When the rain stops. That's not the time to get out of the boat. Floodwaters take a long time to recede. If Noah is dumb enough to go "oh good, the rain stopped, I guess I'd better go get a start on that whole re-making the earth project. Anyone know if there's a Home Depot around here?" If he's dumb enough to do that, he's gonna drown.

Okay, I'm off to rebuild the wor-- Aughhh!

Then the rain stops and it is time to go out and remake the earth. What does Noah do now? Once again, Noah is silent. He does nothing. He sits in the ark for another seven days twiddling his thumbs. He is waiting for God’s permission to disembark.

Or? Or? Or maybe he's waiting for some fucking dry land to show up? Maybe his boat ran aground on a god damn mountaintop, so maybe the entire surrounding area is under thousands of feet of water? Water filled with the bobbing rotted corpses of every man woman child and animal other than the small floating menagerie he's currently in?
I mean, I'm no Biblical scholar like our Mr. Brooks, but I seem to remember Noah sending a raven out and that bird eventually coming back because it could not find anywhere else to alight. No dry land, no treetop, no rock jutting out of the water, nothing.

 So if there isn't enough area to accommodate a raven, what are the odds that a family of 8 is going to find enough land to settle down and start incesting the human race back into existence?

Once again, the rabbis are critical of Noah’s passivity. One doesn’t need permission to go build the world. You just do it.

Um, yeah. . . if I just witnessed God killing every living person and animal on the face of the Earth, I don't know that I would sneeze without his permission.

Now God gives Noah a covenant. Moral laws are handed down, and Noah is told to go off and recreate. Noah seems to flee from this responsibility. Perhaps he has survivor’s guilt. He gets drunk. His sons find him lying naked and passed out.

Give him a break! Do you have any idea what kind of trauma this man has been through? Imagine floating around for weeks, hearing your friends and neighbors begging you for help as they slowly died and being unable to do anything to help. . . wait. I mean, I guess he could have. He could have at least tried to help some of his fellow human beings. Maybe save the babies at least. He could have at least tried.

Noah is a good man, but his story is a lesson in the dangers of blind obedience. The God of the Hebrew Bible wants respect for authority and deference to law. But He doesn’t want passive surrender.

Um, says who? You said Noah passively surrendered to God, never questioning him on even his most psychotic of mass-murder plans, and Noah is the only one who doesn't get punished.

Rabbi Sacks writes, “One of the strangest features of biblical Hebrew is that — despite the fact that the Torah contains 613 commands — there is no word for ‘obey.’ Instead the verb the Torah uses is shema/lishmoa, ‘to listen, hear, attend, understand, internalize, respond.’ So distinctive is this word that, in effect, the King James Bible had to invent an English equivalent, the word, ‘hearken.’”

Why are you still talking about this? If you want to be an amateur theologian, there are forums for that. I'm sure you could get this published here:

Theology Online

theologyonline.com/

Theology Online is a forum for discussing theology. Christian theology or just ... who have similar interests. At TheologyOnline you can discuss theology, religion, politics, and just about everything else. ... Individual debates take place here.

Or here:

Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma - Exploring the details of ...

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=38

52 posts - ‎20 authors

Debating Christianity and Religion - A debate forum for people of all persuasions.

Or you and Ross Douthat could set up a theological debating society in the New York Times breakroom. Why are you wasting column inches on the story of Noah?

Today we live amid many floods. Some, like Harvey or Irma, are natural. Others are man-made.

Oh my God, finally! Now maybe we can discuss the reasons we have come to the point in our history wherein these massive floods are the new normal. Hahahaha! Just kidding. During a flood is, of course, no time to discuss the cause of floods! That would be politicizing the disaster!

People are still good at acting individually to tackle problems. Look at how many Houstonians leapt forth to care for their neighbors. But we have trouble with collective action, with building new institutions, or reviving old ones, that are big enough to deal with the biggest challenges.

Oh! Oh! I know why! I know why that is!  Um, because one of our two major political parties has spent the last 30+ years pushing the idea that government is never the solution, that government is always the problem? Maybe because the residents of one side of the political spectrum have accepted as dogma that any collective action is "un-American" or "Communist" or, I don't know, something about "pajama boys" and "beta-cucks" or something. Anyway, we know who that party is. We know which side of the political spectrum these people are on. We know who is at fault for this state of affairs.

No. Not both sides. Try again. Think real hard. . .

That’s because we have trouble thinking about authority. Everybody seems to have an outsider mentality. Social distrust is at record highs. Many seem to swerve between cheap, antiestablishment cynicism, on the one hand, and a lemming-like partisan obedience on the other.

Noooope!
Not "everybody."
It's not "everybody's" fault that "social distrust is at an all-time high." That is the fault of the party that's been cultivating the bullshit "rugged individualist" ethos for decades. The party that specifically denounces any sort of collective action, from universal healthcare to labor unions. And the only people I've seen who "wwerve between cheap, antiestablishment cynicism, on the one hand, and a lemming-like partisan obedience on the other," are the people who spent 8 years swearing blind fealty to George W. Bush, insisting that every infringement on our civil rights was necessary to preserve freedom, then became virtual anarchists as soon as the black guy was in the Oval Office. And now those same people are waving palm branches and strewing their garments before the man they belive should restore "greatness" by any means necessary, checks and balances be damned!

The answer is the “hearken” mentality that Sacks describes. This is where Abraham succeeds and Noah fails. Abraham listens deeply to God and derives everything from his identity on down from Him, but pushes out ahead of the shepherd.

"pushes out ahead. . . ?" What" If you mean "pushes back" when God told him he was going to kill everyone in the Twin Cities, okay. That's true, and you made that point earlier. But you know what? God killed them all anyway.

Abraham pushes back when God says he's gonna kill a bunch of people. Noah just passively accepts that God is gonna kill a bunch of people. And in both instances, God kills a bunch of people. The very people he had said he was gonna kill. So what lesson are we supposed to get from thies two examples? No matter what you do, God's gonna kill who God wants to kill.

To hearken is to be faithful but also responsible, to defer to just authority but also to answer the call of individual conscience, to work within the system but as a courageous, creative force.

 To eat meat, but be a vegetarian. To join the Marines and be a pacifist. To buy a house and be homeless.

 Floods are invitations to recreate the world.

 Spoken like someone who has never experienced one. For anyone who lives in Houston or the Florida Keys or Cuba, etc. floods are not invitations to anything. Floods rob you of your home, your possessions, your livelihood and maybe your life. Only a smug wealthy prick like, say, David Brooks, could see the devastation of a hurricane and think "gosh, it must be nice to have the opportunity to remake your world!" Sure, if you're a smug wealthy prick like David Brooks, and you can just jet off to the Riviera or wherever while Sandy is ruining your Hamptons house, it's easy to see the storm as an opportunity to re-do things. "Oh, our beach house has been ruined? You know, I never liked the way the porch looked. Now we can re-build with a nice veranda! Oh, and marble countertops in the kitchen! I'm so glad we got this 'invitation' to recreate things!"

For normal people, floods bring nothing but sorrow, pain and desperation. Many will never regain what they lost. Some have lost friends or family members. They probably aren't looking at this as an invitation to anything except life in a FEMA trailer.

 Floods are invitations to recreate the world. That only happens successfully when strong individuals are willing to yoke themselves to collective institutions.

And if they aren't willing to do that, we know whose fault that is. And it's not "both sides."

This seems like a bad idea

So the "Oath Keepers," an organization dedicated to the premise that they will turn their guns on the US government if it ever tries to install martial law or in any other vague, nebulous way orders the military or police to violate their oaths to the Constitution, have apparently gotten tired of waiting for the order to cancel the Bill of Rights and herd people into FEMA camps that they were so sure was coming. Or maybe they just figure they won't have to worry about it unless and until there's another black president. Or a woman one - don't think they aren't still keeping an eye on you, Hillary!
Anyway, since they haven't yet got the chance to fight a new civil war, they're going to have to come up with some new way to feel important and possibly have an excuse to kill someone.

So this is on their website:

Call to Action: Volunteers Needed to Protect Houston Disaster Relief Center and Relief Workers

Protect them from whom? Well, the blahs presumably.

Disaster Relief Center Protection Detail in Texas

Okay, it's not a "protection detail" because you all aren't in the Army or on the police force anymore. If you want to be assigned a "detail," you're gonna need to re-join the military.

Oath Keepers and other patriots,
We need “quiet professionals” who can provide protection for relief workers and truckers who are bringing in critical disaster relief supplies to Houston, Texas. 

 

 Pictured: A  sad little man with delusions of grandeur "quiet professional"

 Oath Keepers has been asked to provide protection for a massive warehouse in Houston that is now being used as a major disaster relief hub and distribution center, with trucks running day and night to bring in relief and recovery supplies, which are then distributed out to those in need.   The owner of the warehouse, Robert Erwin, of R2 Corporation, donated the use of his building to relief efforts, and then requested our help to keep the building and everyone in it safe.

 Has their been an incident? Have the people in the warehouse been threatened? So very threatened that the police department and the National Guard aren't enough to keep them safe?

 Among the people we are protecting are dock workers, drivers, and volunteers from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by Robert Mele, Principle Officer of Teamsters Local 988.  The Teamsters have stepped up big time to help the people of Houston, with loaded trucks coming in from all over the nation. 

Because you know who generally need a lot of protection? Teamsters!



How could these guys be expected to defend themselves?

Unfortunately the warehouse is in an industrial complex that is surrounded by a residential area with a large gang presence, which is why we need skilled, qualified men and women to keep people safe here.

Oh. . . "gang" presence. Got it. Have any of these gangsters attacked the warehouse? Hurt any volunteers? Stolen anything? Well, no. But they might. If a bunch of mouth-breathing gun nuts aren't around to shoot anyone who looks black or Latino like a gang member.

Our experienced police officers are acting as liaisons with Houston PD, Metro PD, Harris County Sheriffs Office, and DHS.

Oh my God. The Houston PD, the County Sheriff's office and the Department Of Homeland Security aren't enough to deter the threat? That is one hell of a gang!



Look, I 'm about 99% certain that these guys mean well. I think that they are really trying to help, and probably are doing good on the ground. Retired cops and soldiers, people who have training in dealing with search and rescue situations are probably invaluable during a national emergency. But then I see something like this:

Here in Texas, Oath Keepers are working around the clock to be sure relief supplies are arriving safely at their destination. The first shipment from Patriot Express arrived safely with Oath Keeper escorts, after the driver was followed for three hours on the way here by suspected bandits.

So these guys see a vehicle that is behind them on the freeway. That vehicle (probably also headed to Houston) stays on the freeway without exiting and the immediate thought is "those guys must be 'bandits.'" It's this kind of paranoid reaction that makes me wish these guys would leave their guns at home. Because, you know how they say that if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Well, when the only tool you have is a gun, maybe everybody starts to look like a bandit. Or a gangster. And that doesn't end well.
Especially when you already have these assholes down there waving  rifles around:

Armed right-wing Proud Boys "patrolling" in Houston (Photo: Screen capture)

Not mentioned in the above caption: that is a "white power" sign they are flashing.

The actual law enforcement personnel on the ground in Houston already have enough to worry about with this bunch of racist vigilante-wannabes "patrolling" the neighborhoods looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Introducing more guns into the situation is only going to make things worse. If violence does break out, the actual cops are going to have a hell of a time determining who the "good guys with guns" are and who are the "bad guys with guns."

So, if you want to help with disaster relief in Houston - or Florida - or wherever Hurricane Jose' hits - or wherever Hurricane Katia makes landfall - or, well there's going to be plenty of opportunities to help  - anyway, if you want to go help, godspeed! And thank you. But please, leave your guns at home. And don't make this an opportunity for playing army man.

Law Enforcement Heroes

By now, I assume everyone has seen the video of Utah police courageously arresting a terrified nurse for the crime of refusing to commit a crime, but did you know there were other hero cops in the news lately? Well it's true!


For instance: Clark County, Ohio Sheriff’s Deputy Jake Shaw

Post Nation

Officer shoots Ohio newspaper photographer after confusing his tripod and camera for a gun

 

 

 Andy Grimm, a photographer for the New Carlisle News, left the office at about 10 p.m. to take pictures of lightning when he came across a traffic stop and decided to take photos, according to Dale Grimm, the photographer’s father and the paper’s publisher.

“He said he got out, parked under a light in plain view of the deputy, with a press pass around his neck,” Dale Grimm told The Washington Post. “He was setting up his camera, and he heard pops.”
Clark County Sheriff’s Deputy Jake Shaw did not give any warnings before he fired, striking Andy Grimm on the side, according to the paper.

And sure, maybe this was an "accident" or a "mistake," but maybe that photographer was about to commit the heinous crime of filming the police in a public place, you ever think of that? And in a further act of bravery, the officer, after having taken down the threat of a camera-wielding reporter, ran to the reporter to say "I'm sorry, I thought your tripod was a gun." Be honest, do you think any of you could spot the difference in the split second you have to make a life or death decision?

Be honest now. You couldn't, right? Not in that split second you have to realize "my God, that man has some sort of an object! In Ohio, an open-carry state! No time to shout 'drop your weapon!' I'd better just open fire."


Not heroic enough for you? Well, how about this act of selfless courage from the entire police department of Cleveland?

Cleveland police union will not hold flag during Browns' opener, citing players kneeling during National Anthem

So, you think you're just going to get away with protesting police brutality?

 Members of the Cleveland Browns kneel during the national anthem before an NFL preseason football game between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Browns, Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, in Cleveland. (Ron Schwane, AP Photo)

You think you can just go around hurting the feelings of Cleveland's finest with impunity? Well, think again buddy-boy! You just lost your flag-holders.
Now who ya gonna get to walk a comically oversized American flag on to the field while the crowd waits impatiently for the game to start, hmm?
What are you gonna find a local ROTC at the nearest high school? You gonna get some "veterans" group to hold it? Or maybe the "boy scouts?" Hahahaha! I'd like to see that! No one else is capable of holding a large flag except the Cleveland Police Department!
Now how are you going to have the National Anthem before your game, huh? You just gonna have people stand up and face the permanent stadium flagpole that always has an American flag on it? Good luck with that!
The Cleveland PD has had it up to here with you players not participating in this nationalistic ritual, so to punish you, the Cleveland police will not be participating in this national. . . oh, I think there's maybe a flaw in the logic. Oh, well. Still heroes!

But wait. We haven't gotten to the most heroic law enforcement officer of them all. This heroic officer apparently wished to remain anonymous, not even seeking any kudos for his act of bravery.

Volunteers With Supplies Turned Away From Harvey-Ravaged Region by Cop: 'We've Had Enough'

Almost any police officer - Hell, almost any person - in this situation would take the easy route, just thank these guys for going out of their way to help the people of your community and ask if they need any assistance. But not this cop! This cop bravely stood his ground and told these guys to take their life-saving supplies and go the hell back where they came from, because who needs 'em?

So the next time some damn liberal starts shooting his liberal mouth off about how cops are "killing people" and "racially profiling people" and "wah, wah wah. . ." you can say with confidence "NOT ALL COPS!" and share the stories of these brave men. Today's Law Enforcement Heroes!

It's starting already

You know, it took over 8 years before Conservative commentators realized they could no longer defend the incompetence and mendacity of the Bush Administration and so they rolled out the alternative reality of "George W. Bush was not a true conservative." I'm pretty sure that canard didn't appear until after Dubya was out of office. It seems to be starting already for people who can no longer defend President Cartman.

Opinions

The real reason Trump is not a Republican

By John C. Danforth

Oh, sure, he ran as a Republican and won the Republican nomination, was voted in by Republicans and his policy proposals are pretty much a Republican's wet dream, but still. . .

Many have said that President Trump isn’t a Republican. They are correct

 

No. No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to do that FOX News weasel-y "some say" bullshit without giving at least one example. "Many have said?"  Name one! Name one credible person who has said that.

 

They are correct, but for a reason more fundamental than those usually given. Some focus on Trump’s differences from mainstream GOP policies,

Such as?

Oh, riiiiight. Orange Julius Caesar wants to build a wall, mainstream Republicans want to build a fence!

Some focus on Trump’s differences from mainstream GOP policies, but the party is broad enough to embrace different views,

Oh right. I forgot about the legendary broad-mindedness of today's Republican Party!

but the party is broad enough to embrace different views, and Trump agrees with most Republicans on many issues.

Uh. Yeah. No kidding.

Others point to the insults he regularly directs at party members and leaders, but Trump is not the first to promote self above party. The fundamental reason Trump isn’t a Republican is far bigger than words or policies. He stands in opposition to the founding principle of our party — that of a united country.

 

 Ugh. Is this the part where you pretend that today's Republican Party is still the "party of Lincoln?"

We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, and our founding principle is our commitment to holding the nation together. This brought us into being just before the Civil War.

Augh!!!! NO! You have not been the "Party of Abraham Lincoln" since at least the 1970's. From Nixon's Southern Strategy to Sarah Palin's "real Americans" bullshit you have become the most divisive force since Robert E. Lee.

Saying the Republican Party is the Party of Lincoln is like saying Motorola is a car radio company. They were. They started out making car radios (hence the name) but now they make cell phones and computer chips. They haven't made a car radio in decades.

If you think that the Republican Party is still the Party of Lincoln, I wpould advise you to place a bet on the 49ers to win the Super Bowl, seeing as how they are the team of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice.

The first resolution of the platform at the party’s first national convention states in part that “the union of the States must and shall be preserved.” The issue then was whether we were one nation called the United States or an assortment of sovereign states, each free to go its own way. Lincoln believed that we were one nation, and he led us in a war to preserve the Union.

We know all that. We also know that the former Confederate States continued to vote Republican for decades because they couldn't forgive the Republicans for being the party of Lincoln. Now those states vote overwhelmingly Republican. Care to guess why that is?  Maybe because ever since Strom Thurmond led an exodus of "States' Rights" racists out of the Democratic Party, you have not been anything like the party of Lincoln. Have you not noticed all the Confederate flags at conservative gatherings?

Lincoln would have personally bitch-slapped those flags right out of their hands!

Hey, what about Iowa Congressman Steve King?

He's not even a Southerner and he has the stars & bars displayed proudly in his office. Is Steve King also not a "real Republican?"

The Republican Party has a long history of standing for a united country. Theodore Roosevelt raised up the ordinary people of his day and championed their cause against abusive trusts. Dwight Eisenhower used the army to integrate a Little Rock high school.

 And do you honestly think that either of those men would stand a snowball's chance in Hell of getting through a Republican primary today? Honestly, I'm not sure Nixon or even Reagan would. Because your party, the Republican Party, has gone that far off the rails.

Our record hasn’t been perfect. When we have pushed the agenda of the Christian right, we have seemed to exclude people who don’t share our religious beliefs.

Yeas and when I stood in the front of a church and said "I do," I may have seemed to be getting married.

We have seemed unfriendly to gay Americans.

And the Manson family seemed a bit unfriendly to Sharon Tate, but does that make them bad people?

But our long history has been to uphold the dignity of all of God’s people and to build a country welcoming to all.

WHAAAAAAAAT???

Fuck your "long history." Let's talk about now. The present. The time in which we are. The time in which Il Douche dominated the Republican primaries -- the REPUBLICAN primaries -- running as the most anti-immigrant candidate since the heyday of the Know-Nothing Party.
And a recent survey showed a majority of Republicans believe that the influx of people from other countries poses a threat to "traditional American customs and values." Every public appearance the Republican president makes, he is showered with chants of "Build That Wall!" from his fellow Republicans.  But yeah, your party is totally welcoming to newcomers.

Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history.

Then. Why. Did. They. Vote. For. Him?

 Republican voters chose Trump. No other candidate was close. Who do you think votes in Republican primaries, Whigs?

We are the party of the Union, and he is the most divisive president in our history. There hasn’t been a more divisive person in national politics since George Wallace.

Um. . .

In honor of our past and in belief in our future, for the sake of our party and our nation, we Republicans must disassociate ourselves from Trump by expressing our opposition to his divisive tactics and by clearly and strongly insisting that he does not represent what it means to be a Republican.

 Oh, his "tactics." His "divisive tactics." That's what you object to. Not his policies. Not deporting Dreamers, not banning Muslims, not kicking trans soldiers out of the military; it's his "tactics" you have a problem with. Because he says out loud the things you're supposed to dog-whistle.

Well, sorry Republicans. You can't "disassociate" yourselves from Cheeto Mussolini. Not that most Republicans would even try. If they distance themselves from tRump, they will lose their base. The REPUBLICAN base. You had your chance to stop this. You could have united behind a Rubio or a Kasich in the Primaries. You chose not to. And it's too late now. You voted for him, you own him. Or, to be fair, he owns you.

A new low.

This is a new low,
This op-ed piece appeared on the New York Times website and, presumably, its print edition.

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Contractors, Not Troops, Will Save Afghanistan

Now that's not necessarily any worse than the right-wing bullshit that the Times regularly publishes from hacks like David Brooks and Ross Douthat, but what makes this anew nadir in the annals of journalism is the author of this piece. I cut two words out of the original headline, here it is in full:

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Erik Prince: Contractors, Not Troops, Will Save Afghanistan

Yeah. Eric Prince. Brother of Betsy DeVos and, more germanely, the owner of Blackwater (or Xe, or whatever it is they're called now), the largest mercenary army in the world. Prince has been openly lobbying the tRump administration to let his private army take over operations in Afghanistan, and now the New York Goddamm Times is giving him a platform to promote his own money-making scheme as if it were some sort of objective, considered opinion.

This would be like seeing an editorial entitled "Why Electroc Cars Should be Mandatory" by Elon Musk. Or "Dogs Must be Banned" by Fluffy the Cat.

This spring, as Afghanistan policy was debated in Washington, the president asked for fresh options to end the war honorably. Faced with two choices — pulling out entirely or staying the course —

Yeah, there are more than two choices. I would argue that pulling out entirely is the only option that makes any practical or moral sense, but the possibilities are virtually endless. We could send in more troops, have fewer troops, remove all troops and concentrate on blowing up weddings and birthday parties Al Queda bases with drones and missile strikes. Why are you pretending there are only two options?

Faced with two choices — pulling out entirely or staying the course — I argued strongly for a new approach, a third path that would put in place a light footprint of American Special Forces, as well as contractors to work with Afghans to focus on the goal that Americans really care about: denying America’s enemies the sanctuary they used to plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

Oh my God. Are we still pretending that that is a thing that can happen? That we can blow up enough of Afghanistan that Al Queda or ISIS or whoever will no longer be able to plan attacks against the West? They can plan attacks from their base camps in Syria, in Somalia, in the Philipines. . . They don't even have to have a central gathering place, I'm sure they know how to Skype.

But please, tell us about your new approach.

The third path I’m talking about is not untested, even if it has been forgotten. When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power.

So. . . how is this a "new" approach if it's what we did 16 years ago? Oh, wait. I see the difference. The new plan is we do the same thing we already did but with the added strategem of paying millions of dollars to Eric Fucking Prince! Brilliant!

Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed. Since then, the Pentagon’s biggest innovation has been to vary American and NATO troop levels from 9,000 to 140,000, and to increase civilian contractors to a peak level of 117,000 during President Obama’s “surge.”

So One Hundred Seventeen Thousand private contractors couldn't get the job done, even fighting alongside 140,000 US troops, but this new idea is . . . wait for it.. . . A smaller number of contractors are you fucking serious?

But history shows clearly that sheer tonnage does not win insurgencies. In all of them, when a foreign “invader” dominates, the weaker indigenous forces wait and learn.

 Oh, fuck you with your bullshit quotation marks around the word "invaders." We are the invaders. We are the dictionary definition of the word "invaders." You can argue whether or not we had a legitimate causus belli to invade, but invade we did. We are the foreign invaders, we need to own that.

The “new” strategy that the president adopted last week would reportedly increase authorized troop levels from 8,400 to around 12,400. This will merely continue the conflict. And no one can seriously argue that this strategy won’t inevitably require more spending, more troops and more casualties. In a war that has already lasted twice as long as Vietnam, is this the “new” strategy we want?

No. No one wants that. But does that mean that we'd rather have a bunch of cowboy mercenaries over there not subject to the Uniform Military Code of Justice or any civilian law, killing with impunity? You think that sounds like a better option to any sane person?

My proposal is for a sustainable footprint of 2,000 American Special Operations and support personnel, as well as a contractor force of less than 6,000 (far less than the 26,000 in country now). This team would provide a support structure for the Afghans, allowing the United States’ conventional forces to return home.

Oh, that sounds great. You know, the San Francisco giants are having a pretty lousy year, maybe if they only field 6 players instead of the 9 they've been using, that new approach just might turn things around for them!

This plan would use former Special Operations veterans as contractors who would live, train and patrol alongside their Afghan counterparts at the lowest company and battalion levels — where it matters most. American veterans, whose extraordinary knowledge and experience could be vital to Afghan success on the ground, would serve as adjuncts to the Afghan Army and would perform in strict conformity with Afghan rules of engagement, eliminating the stigma of a foreign occupying force.

How? How would that stigma not still be attached to US personnel? And how would these Afghani soldiers not be seen as collaborators with the foreign invaders? And has the Afghani military shown any real desire to be a part of this plan? Because it sounds awfully familiar, American "advisors" training the locals, has it ever worked?
I mean, I get that you don't care. You probably would prefer that it did not work so that the taxpayers could keep paying you for this fool's errand in perpetuity, but the rest of us care. And we're sick of this pointless bloodshed. We just want to bring our troops home. And no one is buying the idea that you are some sort of honest broker in this and not a walking conflict of interest. No one is falling for that. Except, apparently America's paper of record, who has hit a new low.