No. Milker isn’t just any old cow. He’s Forumosa’s very own sacred cow.
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Our mantra now is: “We can’t abandon the Afghan women.” And what we mean by that is visas and evacuations. But obviously, we can’t fly out all Afghan women. As for the others, we’re handing them off to confront a medieval regime all on their own, having skimmed away anyone who is educated, affluent, articulate, connected and savvy. We’re leaving them in poverty and on the brink of famine, after whisking away those who staffed the food programmes and the clinics. The US embassy is shuttered. That, folks, is what abandonment looks like.
I was thinking along those lines recently. A brain drain of sorts.
Here is what we did instead:
- We created and coddled a tiny, entitled urban elite of professional feminists who were great on the Western lecture circuit but were disconnected from — and I venture to say, uninterested in — the actual lives of Afghan women, and who rarely used their privileges to benefit their poorer sisters.
- We loved to build girls’ schools. It was fashionable, and we ignored early signs that the mantra “build it and they will come” wasn’t true for Afghanistan. There weren’t enough teachers, and the unending violence made it unsafe to undertake anything but a very short journey. It surely would have been better to build clinics instead, and trained traveling nurses and midwives, and focused on nutrition projects and water projects and basic public education on hygiene and first aid.
- Then came 2021 and suddenly the Taliban were in Kabul, and we reacted with hysteria. A Plan B would have been judicious, a ready visa process in the event of imminent danger to educated people or high-profile activists. Instead, we preemptively grabbed as many male and female professionals as we could possibly shove onto airplanes — all the people with useful talents: doctors and nurses, journalists, women with artisanal skills, teachers, IT experts. Anyone who could have kept civil society, economic relations, social services and moderate values alive was hustled onto a plane and flown as far away as possible. Not an evacuation, more like a reverse cultural revolution that erased in the space of days what we had nourished over two decades.
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Some decent points in that article, some naiive as well.
1 - Just like there weren’t enough teachers, there weren’t enough medical staff. Why presume you could train up one but not the other?
2 - Travelling. Fucking. Women. Nurses. In. Afghanistan. Fuuuccck.
3 - we built a lot of clinics. Very successful.
4 - we built some big hospitals too. Less successful… difficulty staffing. 
1 - So a brain via a visa program is cool, a brain drain via evacuation isn’t? What?
2 - yes, a visa program would’ve been nice. But we couldn’t even agree politically to move on SIVs, so realistically, it would’ve been a pie dream.
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The Blob:
1)“I’m outraged that Biden’s bungled withdrawal led to the US military killing ten innocent Afghan civilians.”
2) “I don’t give a crap about the thousands of innocent Afghan civilians that were killed by military bungling in the previous twenty years.”
I guess I’m too old to be outraged by these kinds of events. 
(NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK OR CHILDREN)
I’m still capable of being sad, though.
inb4 @BiggusDickus:
How old do you think I am?
I have no idea.
Frankly, the most shocking thing is all the cigarette ads.
Old enough to reference me to a Vietnam War massacre.
Obviously I’m aware of it, but I’m intrigued as to why you chose me.
I was just riffing off of this post:
I’m a boomer, so I’ve gotten the impression over time that people think my stuff is from another planet (then again, a lot of my contemporaries have thought the same thing, so maybe it’s just me). My inb4 was meant to be light ribbing, but I certainly apologize if I offended you.
I would add that maybe I range too far with my analogies ((1) sheriff’s deputies, angry on learning that one of their fellow deputies was shot by a bank robber, shoot a plumber emerging from under a house; (2) angry, fatigued American infantrymen, ceasing to distinguish between civilians and enemy guerrilla fighters, massacre civilians).
Recent events (1, 2) reminded me of the two items referenced immediately above.
But maybe I’m just being a nutty, old boomer.
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Being intrigued isn’t being offended. I suppose it might result in being offended
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I’m glad you said that.
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As "nutty, old boomer"s go you’re a very interesting chap.
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Maybe it’s time to join the silent generation. 
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I’ll take it under advisement.
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I think 1945 is the cutoff year, but there are varying definitions.
A week later, the news out of Afghanistan is…wrestling.
At least they’re fighting themselves this time around.
oh yeah, any those bodies hanging in that city of course, but why be negative?
The Republican pivot from “Biden is abandoning our brave Afghan allies trying to flee” to “Biden is swamping the country with welfare-sucking Afghan parasites” is complete.
The evenly divided Senate narrowly turned back a Republican amendment Thursday that sought to curtail assistance to Afghan refugees who were rapidly evacuated to the United States and that would have made it more difficult for them to obtain Real IDs.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sought to attach the amendment to legislation to fund the government into early December, which is expected to pass later Thursday with bipartisan support. Cotton’s amendment received 50 votes, one short of the number needed to succeed. The tally broke along partisan lines.
In addition to providing stopgap funding to keep the government open, the spending measure includes emergency funding for the resettlement of Afghan refugees who fled amid the takeover of the country by the Taliban and U.S. military exit.
Cotton’s amendment sought to cut off housing, food and medical aid, among other assistance, as of March 31, 2023, for Afghans who were granted parole to quickly enter the United States.
In other Afghanistan news-
Lance Cpl. Hunter Clark, who’s under investigation for taking part in political activities by speaking at the Trump rally, claimed he was the Marine shown in a viral video lifting the child over the wall at the Kabul airport.
“We’re also honored to be joined by one of the Marines who bravely served in Kabul during the withdrawal — and helped evacuate children over … the airport wall. You saw him. He did a great job,” Trump said in introducing Clark, calling him a “handsome guy.”
Clark then told the audience: "I am the guy that pulled the baby over the wall and it’s definitely probably one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my entire life
Trump’s Save America PAC later issued a statement promoting a Fox News story with the headline, “Trump invites Marine who pulled baby over Kabul wall onto stage at rally, prompting ‘USA’ chants.”
Only problem? He was not the guy in the picture, according to the US Marine Corps:
[
CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/30/politics/fact-check-trump-rally-marine-baby-kabul-airport/index.html) reported Friday that Kelton Cochran, a spokesman for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said in a statement: “Regarding the viral photo that began circulating around August 20, 2021, the Marine identified in that particular image was not LCpl Clark.”