Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners
Quotes of the Day:
"There's a sense of desperation in Afghanistan because of the lack of funding and the fact that the U.S. only has a one-track military strategy. It doesn't have an economic and political game plan."
- Ahmed Rashid
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
“If you accept a democratic system, this means that you are prepared to put up with those of its workings, legislative or administrative, with which you do not agree as well as with those that meet with your concurrence. This willingness to accept, in principle, the workings of a system based on the will of the majority, even when you yourself are in the minority, is simply the essence of democracy. Without it there could be no system of representative self-government at all. When you attempt to alter the workings of the system by means of violence or civil disobedience, this, it seems to me, can have only one of two implications; either you do not believe in democracy at all and consider that society ought to be governed by enlightened minorities such as the one to which you, of course, belong; or you consider that the present system is so imperfect that it is not truly representative, that it no longer serves adequately as a vehicle for the will of the majority, and that this leaves to the unsatisfied no adequate means of self-expression other than the primitive one of calling attention to themselves and their emotions by mass demonstrations and mass defiance of established authority.”
- George F. Kennan
1. Opinion | It Shouldn’t Fall to Veterans to Clean Up Biden’s Mess
2. As the Taliban Tighten Their Grip, Fears of Retribution Grow
3. France and UK to propose Kabul safe zone at UN meeting, says Macron
4. The Final Retrograde from Afghanistan Has Officially Begun
5. Who Will Trust Us after Afghanistan? by Bing West
6. Kabul is only the start: US allies feel the draught as Biden turns his back
7. The deaths of 2 Marines in Kabul underscore the evolving roles of women in the military
8. Who Abandoned Bagram Air Base?
9. American-Born Disinformation is Harming U.S. Allies—Just Ask the Baltics.
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/8-29-2021-National-Security-News-and-Commentary.html?soid=1114009586911&aid=0GOgrNe80HQ
