Mendocino County Today: Friday, Nov. 23, 2018

• Two Inches
• Rain Assist
• Cannabis Curse
• Give Thanks
• Employee/Official
• Little Dog
• Retech Moving
• Nude Cartwheels
• Food Bank
• Dark Days
• Illustrated Stabber
• Khashoggi Murder
• Being Without
• Yesterday's Catch
• Oh Montana
• Suppertime
• P-whipped
• Bloody Kelsey
• Divide & Conquer
• Trump Aid
• Radical Reexamination

A COUPLE INCHES RAINFALL on the Anderson Valley over the past two days, with more on the way today: "Another round of moderate to heavy rain and breezy winds is impacting northwest California this morning and will continue through the afternoon. Drier weather is expected during the weekend, with wet and windy weather redeveloping by the middle of next week." (National Weather Service)

CAMP FIRE UPDATE: Containment at 95%. An incredible 13,954 residences were destroyed, plus 514 commercial structures and 4,265 “other buildings.” Civilian fatalities now up to 84.

“The rain has assisted in extinguishing hot spots and smoldering fire. All containment lines continue to hold. Firefighters will continue patrolling for hazards while responding to calls for service throughout the fire area. Fire suppression repair personnel continue to assess areas for rehabilitation and conduct repair where possible. Search and Rescue Crews, US&R Teams, and engine companies continue working to assist the Butte County Sheriff’s Office with search efforts.” (Calfire)

‘THE CURSE OF THE AD HOC’

by Mark Scaramella

WHEN RON EDWARDS described Mendo County's cockamamie marijuana policy problems as the “Curse of the Ad Hoc” at the Supes’ Special Cannabis meeting last Thursday, Edwards' frustration was obvious. When the first “ad hoc” pot policy committee was set up with Supervisors John McCowen and Tom Woodhouse in early 2017, it wasn’t long after that that Woodhouse suffered some kind of mental breakdown, stopped “representing” the Third District’s many pot growers, and soon resigned, leaving lame-duck Georgeanne Croskey to fill in as Supe (after months of no Third District Supe at all). Croskey did not replace Woodhouse as “ad hoc” committee member, however.

LONG-TIME POT GROWER and Supervisor Dan Hamburg could have been on the original “ad hoc” but he declared a conflict of interest because his daughter Laura was a grower. So after Woodhouse wigged out, that left only McCowen on the “ad hoc” committee. Then, magically and without explanation, Hamburg’s “conflict” mysteriously went away and he was back in Board discussions of pot policy. (Maybe Laura gave up on applying for a permit like many other local pot growers?) The next thing we knew McCowen suggested renewing the “ad hoc” pot policy committee for a few changes to his mess of a pot policy and Hamburg and McCowen started meeting and discussing “a few minor changes”).

AFTER A SINGLE meeting and the drafting of some proposed relaxations of a few of the rules, Hamburg became “ill” and dropped from sight, disappearing on all County matters including the marijuana “ad hoc.” This left the Board split on the “ad hoc’s” pot relaxation proposals to the point that Supervisor Dan Gjerde openly questioned whether the proposals that Supervisor McCowen presented last Thursday were really agreed to by Hamburg. (McCowen told Gjerde to treat the recommendations as McCowen’s own if he felt like it, adding that Gjerde’s question was kind of insulting. But Gjerde had a minor point: did Hamburg agree to every recommendation?)

IT’S UNLIKELY NOW that the latest victim of the "curse of the ad hoc," Hamburg, will re-appear by the end of his term to address any revisions to McCowen’s pot recommendations, leaving the pot people again in limbo about what the rules will be as the process drags on into 2019 when two new Supervisors, Ted Williams and John Haschak, will take their seats. Neither of them have apparent pot backgrounds, although Haschak has said he wants to see the rules simplified. (Not likely. The pot permit mess is beyond repair and many of the smaller growers McCowen had hoped to encourage to participate have either given up or left the County.) By the time any serious rule relaxations are considered, much less approved — Sheriff Allman openly opposes the proposed rangeland grow provisions, for example — the pot program will have ground to a near halt.

LAST WEEK, McCowen finally got around to asking newly hired Ag Commissioner Harinder Grewal how many of the hundreds of stalled permit applications were being held up by applicants who have not provided proper documentation, as opposed to just sitting unprocessed in a County office. Of course, Mr. Grewal didn’t know but said he was working on getting a number. This, of course, begs the questions of what documentation the applicants have not provided. Are the applicants to blame for not being able to dot every i and cross every t? Or is the County to blame for imposing ridiculous requirements on them? Or is the state to blame for imposing their (Fish & Wildlife, Water Quality Control, State Water Board, tax registration, etc.) rules? And exactly which requirements seem to be the main hold up?

MEANWHILE, outlaw pot growers, some of whom may have once considered applying for a permit but gave up, while others — Mexican cartels on public land, for example, would never have applied — are still out there in large numbers as noted by Sheriff Allman last week.

McCOWEN’S ORIGINAL INTENT in proposing the rules he is now stuck with was reasonable: He wanted to keep pot gardens relatively small, encourage existing reasonably small growers who wanted to go legit, keep the County from being sued on environmental grounds by restricting where pot could be grown, and keep large pot operations out of range and timberland. Unfortunately, the program ballooned into the unworkable mess it has become — including a major drain on the County’s General Fund, the size of which the County has yet to acknowledge.

SO THE CURSE OF THE AD HOC goes much further than just Woodhouse and Hamburg. The curse applies to everyone who has had a hand in what the program has become, leaving a parade of local bureaucrats in its in wake — musical Ag Commissioners, program staff, coordinators, etc.

BACK BEFORE PROP 215 (and even after it) the people who were calling for pot legalization could never have dreamed it would turn out this bad. (Decriminalizaiton in some form seems on hindsight to have been a better goal.) As we have said before, the program should never have been assigned to individual counties — except for zoning. It should have been treated like alcohol, preferably by just adding it to the State’s Alcoholic Beverage Control administration.

HAVING each County develop its own set of pot permit rules is asking for confusion, and the primary underlying reason for the mess we’re in. If pot permitting had been set up like DMV or state employment offices or Air Quality (with state employees, local offices, and one set of rules and administrators), Mendo could still restrict growing with zoning, but would not be saddled with administering its own unmanageable, costly and redundant program.

OH WELL! Too late now.

SECTION 1170 — A READER WRITES: “Ms. Elliott, County attorney, may have been misleading when she responded to your query concerning handsome Dan. The ordinance cited (check it out) refers to succession concerning sick or missing supervisors NOT whether or not a supervisor is a county EMPLOYEE. Apparently, looking about the internet at other counties, there is some question as to whether or not elected officials are employees as opposed to appointed or hired officials. Never trust a lawyer.”

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “They gave me a choice between turkey and meat. Meat, dude, every time. They gave Skrag the same choice. He said he wanted roast dog. That's the disrespect I live with.”

RETECH MOVING MANUFACTURING JOBS FROM UKIAH TO POLAND

by Justine Frederiksen

Retech announced this week that it will shut down the manufacturing arm of its Ukiah facility and move “much of the manufacturing and assembly previously done” there to facilities located in Poland.

Last week, employees at the company, which manufactures vacuum melting systems, received an email notifying them that layoffs were pending, as the company would be shutting down manufacturing at the Ukiah location within 60 days, but that sales and engineering employees would be retained.

When reached last week for comment, Retech President Earl Good said changes were coming, but that there were “still a lot of uncertainties and we are still working out all the details.” He asked that the company’s privacy be respected, and said he would be willing to provide more details next month.

According to information released by the company this week, “the Ukiah office will be downsized and will retain our experienced engineers, leading technical directors, technologists, and service staff. Key leadership roles will continue to be filled and Retech’s unique R&D Center will continue to be built up. Ultimately, the company will then maintain a west coast office along with the recently opened east coast office in Buffalo, NY.”

Good is quoted as saying, “This is an effort to both strengthen our organization and to satisfy our customer’s expectations. Ultimately, we are confident that the new organizational structure and footprint will enable Retech to be much closer to our global customers while improving our competitiveness in the industrial markets we serve.”

The company describes itself as “the world’s leading supplier of Electron Beam (EB) and Plasma (PAM) Cold Hearth furnaces for melting and refining titanium and titanium alloys. Retech advanced vacuum metallurgical systems also include Vacuum Arc Remelt (VAR), VAR Consumable (Skull) Casting, EB and PAM Consolidation furnaces, Plasma Welders, Vacuum Induction melting (VIM), Precision Investment Casting (DS/SC/EQ), Cold Wall Induction melting and casting, Vacuum Heat Treating, and Gas Atomization for metal powder production.”

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

HOW DOES THAT SONG GO? 'You're so vain, you think this song is about you...." If we had a dime for every person who whined versions of, "You're just bashing me to sell newspapers" we'd have two turkeys for Thanksgiving instead of one. The mere mention of County government is instant chloroform to most readers, hence its ongoing dysfunction. Very few people pay any attention. If County government did nude cartwheels down State Street it might attract a few gawkers, but even then.... If you occupy a public position you're in for criticism. It comes with the job, Little One, and what lots of you describe as "bashing" is only that — criticism, to which you're welcome to respond at any length you choose. "But you'll only bash me more." And here we are. All of you are lucky you're not in a big media market.

FROM COAST SOCIAL MEDIA — “The Fort Bragg Emergency Winter Shelter should be open on Dec. 15th. This is great. My only question regarding the permit that is being asked for in order to run the shelter is: Why on earth would they want to move the staging area from the Food Bank to the Hospitality Center on Franklin St? Last year there were very few if any complaints having to do with the staging area at the Food Bank. Moving it to the downtown area in my opinion is asking for problems. Doing what is best for the community as well as the clients should be taken into consideration. Don't fix it if it isn't broke. The Food Bank is the perfect location for staging.”

(Via MendocinoSportsPlus)

DARK DAYS: REMEMBERING JONESTOWN AND THE MOSCONE-MILK ASSASSINATIONS

projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/jonestown-moscone-milk/

MASKED MAN RANDOMLY STABS SANTA ROSA WOMAN AT HER FRONT DOOR

Santa Rosa police arrested a man in the unprovoked stabbing of a woman at her front door. Jesse James Graham, 40, attacked the victim without warning at around 11:42pm Tuesday as she got home from work and was trying to unlock her front door in the 1000 block of Jennings Avenue. Graham stabbed her in the back. The victim suffered a life-threatening injury and had to have emergency surgery. The man had come from the area of a parking lot and railroad tracks. He appeared to have followed her from her car to her door. Police say Graham then ran north through the complex. Detectives combed through surveillance video and eventually arrested the suspect after identifying him. He was arrested after getting out of an apartment on Jennings Avenue. After the stabbing, the attacker ran away from the woman’s apartment complex. Police arrested Jesse James Graham, a 40-year-old homeless man, on suspicion of stabbing the woman. Police described the woman’s injuries as life-threatening, but she was rushed to a hospital and is in stable condition following emergency surgery. Surveillance camera footage helped catch the suspect, who followed the woman as she got home from work. The victim pounded on the door after the attack until her daughters, 19 and 21, brought her inside and treated her punctured lung while waiting for emergency responders. Video and witnesses helped police identify Graham — who has had run-ins with police before — as the suspect. The suspect in the video hid his head with a hat, and had another article of clothing wrapped around his face. Graham’s mugshot shows he has distinctive facial tattoos.

Detectives were on the lookout for Graham at several locations on Wednesday, and caught him when he was leaving an apartment on Jennings Avenue, the road where the stabbing occurred. Police said Graham didn’t know the woman before the stabbing and that there was no warning he would attack. The woman told police she may have seen him at the gym before. “The motive for the attack remains unclear,” police said. Graham is being held on $1 million bail at the Sonoma County Jail. He is set to appear in court on Tuesday.

(Jared Gilmour, Fresno Bee)

PRESIDENT TRUMP is getting a lot of justified criticism for avoiding the subject of Saudi Arabia’s top royalty’s involvement in the recent murder of DC-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump says there's too much money at stake to start pointing fingers. But where were these critics when the entire country avoided the subject of Saudi’s involvement in 911 apparently for similarly fiscal reasons? I mean, those Saudi sections of the 911 Commission’s report are still blacked out, aren’t they? Why else would Saudi Arabia's 911 involvement have been downplayed? (Mark Scaramella)

TO BE WITHOUT some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

— Bertrand Russell

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 22, 2018

AARON ALARCON, Covelo. DUI, disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

EVAN FEEN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BOBBY GRAY, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, trespassing, probation revocation.

ANTHONY HOAGLIN, Domestic abuse, failure to appear.

JEREMY KELSAY, Cloverdale/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

VERNON KNAPP, Ukiah. Hit&run with property damage, disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent Flyer)

CRYSTAL LOCKHART, Ukiah. Assault on peace officer.

JOHN PARKER, Yuba City/Ukiah. Drugs or alcohol in jail, prison priors.

DARBI RICCI, Ukiah. Controlled substance.

ANDRES ROSAS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JUAN VASQUEZ-ALVARADO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JOSEPH VENTURI, Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

KEITH WAGNER, Sacramento/Ukiah. DUI.

DOUGLAS WHIPPLE, Covelo. Felon with firearm, community supervision violation.

BEING THANKFUL FOR MONTANA

by George Ochenski

The pre-dawn darkness faded as we crested the Deep Creek divide headed for a whitetail hunt on a friend’s ranch at the foot of the Crazy Mountains. By the time we hit Wilsall the sky had exploded in a stunning display of color as the not-yet-risen sun backlit the rugged snow-capped peaks. Low-hanging clouds were infused with intense reds, oranges, purples and yellow against the lighter blue of Montana’s famous big sky as my hunting partner and I gazed in awe at the sunrise spectacle before us.

The softly gurgling Shields River wound through the bottomlands so beloved by whitetail deer and, like the sunrise itself, the colors of autumn persisted in the reds of willows, the yellows of the few remaining leaves and the soft brown of the closely mown hay fields.

While quietly walking through the cottonwoods trying to avoid patches of crunchy early snow, a huge great horned owl left its low perch in a dead tree and silently flew a few feet above me on enormous gray wings through the now leafless grove. Seconds later its mate followed, equally silent, equally majestic.

A shot rang out and my partner’s good luck and accurate shooting brought his hunt to an end in less than a half hour since we left in separate directions from the truck. It would take me a while longer, but by noon we were heading home with our whitetails cooling in the back and the satisfied smiles of successful hunters on our faces.

We got to Townsend and hit the spud depot to pick up 200 pounds of beautiful red potatoes grown in the rich soil of the valley floor. With dirt still on the outside, the thin red skins covered white flesh so crisp and cold that it snapped when cut. There was no question but that these sweet and delicious products grown by Montana’s farmers would be a welcome part of the Thanksgiving dinner for the families and friends with whom they would be shared.

Driving back to Helena with Canyon Ferry’s not-yet-frozen waters glistening between the Elkhorn and Belt mountain ranges, the sheer beauty of Montana’s natural landscape was unmarred by the blight of development all too common in other mountain states. The harvested fields, dotted with herds of antelope and deer, blended gently into the sagebrush and juniper ecotone before giving way to the forested slopes and rocky summits outlined against the bright, smog-free sky.

Once home the spuds were unloaded, the whitetail hung on the gambrel in the backyard tree to cool, and it was time to clean up and put the rifle and hunting gear away for another year. Reading the morning’s paper that arrived after our departure and firing up the email to see what the rest of the world was up to brought the post-hunt euphoria back to earth.

And yep, things were still chaotic in the nation’s capital and the bitter partisan warfare that characterized so much of the election season showed no indication of abating. If anything, all the signs pointed to a brutal month ahead in the political arena and significant battles to come when the new Congress convened.

Yet, while the realities of our current national condition continue to assail our daily lives, there are still Montana’s mountains, rivers, forests and fertile plains to hold us in their embrace as life goes on. In the end, political turmoil plays an almost non-existent role in our daily lives. For that — and Montana’s natural beauty and kind citizenry — we should be truly thankful.

(George Ochenski is a columnist for the Missoulian, where this essay originally appeared. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s why Trump does so well with women as evidenced by the recent House mid-term results/sarc.

Are you saying Melania holds all the cards? Attention galore for an empty headed hottie, 3 chef-cooked hots and a cot in her own White House wing, and she doesn’t even have to sleep with the guy? All this, for another green card night clubbing immigrant who just chained migrated her family into US residency? (Who’s the real Dummy? Hint, it ain’t Melania.) Meanwhile, Studly Doright is still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a piece of porn star poon and his only real female devotee is Kelly Anne Conway who has to face the mic head on or she disappears. But there are those MAGA Women For Trump Rally attendees swilling Mountain Dew when they aren’t jumping around in red tees. They look pretty traditional. They might even clear the table and wash up before bed.

This new Gender Reality works until about age 60 when the drive to copulate goes back to hanging out with the guys. Then, no one will listen anymore. It’s just not as fun as it used to be when everyone knew their place and role/sarc. Hell there’s always been that uttered terrible line, “Let’s just be friends”. It’s the same thing, just not as fun getting there, (or at least thinking you’re getting there…..somewhere)

The point of this comment is that there has always been this gender movement. It’s nothing new. We just called it, “Pussy Whipped”, and now it’s public. Strident. And if she’s cute, men will line up to take it, block after block after block.

And from one of the biggest cousin-lovin dummies who ever lived, a great song: youtube.com/watch?v=sj0o0QO2riY

A THANKSGIVING HISTORY LESSON

In the few years when I worked for the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office in what now seems like a million years ago, it was made clear to me by several local Pomo Indians that Thanksgiving to the Native American Indian community does not mean the same thing that it does to the Whites in American history.

To Native Indians, Thanksgiving means a totally different thing.

Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock was the beginning of their end -- a time when Natives gave up their land in return for worthless gifts, like beads and other trinkets, or gifts that were full of disease, like wool blankets laden with smallpox, or gifts of alcohol and guns that hastened the Native demise.

The textbook version is that the White settlers at the first Thanksgiving saw their celebration with the Natives as a friendship being started, knowing that without the help of the Native American Indians, they would never have survived the rough winter. It was a time of celebrating with family and friends and being thankful they were still around to do it.

Today, of course, we celebrate it with our own family with turkey, yams and ham -- and American consumerism and materialism.

Thanksgiving has become a celebration of capitalism -- Black Friday deals, Cyber Monday, Home Shopping Network, QVC, and Amazon ecommerce.

Thanksgiving may be remembered as a time when the Native American Indians and Pilgrims sat at a long table and ate together, sharing everything they had with one another. But the peace and good vibes would not last long. Over the next two hundred years since the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock, not one single treaty of any of the original treaties between any tribe of Natives and Whites was honored -- not a single treaty! There was only genocide, the theft of lands, and forced migration.

And now?

Life on the reservation is characterized by widespread poverty, high unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, obesity, diabetes, asthma, depression, and suicide. Because law enforcement is weak on the reservation, crime rates against women and children are high -- domestic violence, rape, and child abuse.

Here in Mendocino County, CA, the Round Valley Reservation in Covelo is the final chapter in a long, sad, murderous history.

Over in neighboring Lake County, the history of what the Whites did to the local Pomo Indians is no less appalling.

Pomo men were massacred at Bloody Island in what is now regarded by modern historians to be a slave rebellion. Pomo men were forced into slavery. Pomo girls were rounded up and forced into sex trafficking to serve the market for sex after gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills.

Andrew Kelsey, who committed many of these crimes with his business partner, Charles Stone.

Here's just one example.

In the fall of 1849, Kelsey forced 50 Pomo men to work as laborers on a gold-seeking expedition to the Placer gold fields. Kelsey became ill with malaria and sold the rations to other miners. The Pomo starved, and only one or two men returned alive to Clear Lake.

Here's another example.

Stone and Kelsey regularly forced the Pomo parents to bring their daughters to be sexually abused by them. If they refused they were whipped mercilessly. A number of them died from that abuse.

And as I previously mentioned, Kelsey and Stone indentured and prostituted the Pomo women.

Kelsey and Stone also tried to starve the Pomo to death. They were allowed to hunt or fish. The Pomo were worked to death as slaves. Otherwise, Kelsey and Stone saw the Pomo as a unnecessary consumers of scarce resources.

The starving Pomo became so desperate that Pomo leaders, 'Suk' and 'Xasis', took Stone's horse to kill a cow but the weather was bad and the horse ran off. Knowing they would be punished, (Chief) Augustine's wife poured water onto the two men's gunpowder, rendering it useless. Kelsey and Stone were furious and swore revenge. They sent a courier to summon the U.S. Calvary.

Pomo warriors attacked the house at dawn, immediately killing Kelsey with an arrow.

Stone jumped out a window and tried to hide in a stand of willow trees, but Augustine found him and killed him with a rock.

The Pomo men took food back to their families and everyone left to join other relatives around Clear Lake. Some went to Badon-napoti where the spring fish spawn was underway. The Bloody Island Massacre was soon to follow.

On May 15, 1850, a 1st Dragoons Regiment of the United States Cavalry contingent under Nathaniel Lyon, then still a lieutenant, and Lieutenant J. W. Daviso tried to locate Augustine's band to punish them. When they instead came upon a group of Pomo on Badon-napoti (later called Bloody Island), they killed old men, women and children.

The National Park Service has estimated the army killed 60 of 400 Pomo; other accounts say 200 were killed. Most of the younger men were off in the mountains to the north, hunting. Some of the dead were relatives of Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake and Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. The army killed 75 more Indians along the Russian River.

One of the Pomo survivors of the massacre was a 6-year-old girl named Ni'ka, or Lucy Moore. She hid underwater and breathed through a tule reed. Her descendants formed the Lucy Moore Foundation to work for better relations between the Pomo and other residents of California.

Later, the Pomo were forced to live in small rancherias set aside by the federal government. For most of the 20th century, the Pomo, reduced in number, survived on such tiny reservations in poverty. Few textbooks on California history mentioned the Bloody Island incident or abuse of the native Californians.

Two separate historical markers record the site.

The first, placed by the Native Sons of the Golden West on 20 May 1942 on Reclamation Road 0.3 miles off Highway 20, simply noted the location as the scene of a "battle" between US soldiers under "Captain" Lyons and Indians under Chief Augustine.

California Historical Landmark No. 427, which describes the location as the scene of a "massacre" mostly of women and children, was placed on Highway 20 at the Reclamation Road intersection on 15 May 2005 by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the Lucy Moore Foundation, a non-profit organization founded to educate the California public about the Bloody Island massacre.

One more thing.

As a final insult, the present-day town of Kelseyville is named after the war criminal, Andrew Kelsey.

Kelseyville has a population of about 3,000.

Why aren't any of these people demanding that the name of their town be changed?

(John Sakowicz)

A READER WRITES: I remember how Weston Price traveled deep into the Swiss Alps, about a 100 years ago, to small villages that had yet to be infected with our culture.

Besides the outstanding health of the people, he found a strong comradery among them all. He described it as truly a community of “one for all and all for one.” He was greatly affected by it, and it is reflected in his writing.

The point of today’s “culture” is to atomize everyone, pit everyone against each other, break all apart, so to allow the easy domination of the governmental power structure. No one has others to confide in, share their innermost thoughts. Unlike our past history, where you had deep connections with each other in clans, and with the animals and life around you, now there is nothing.

If you remember Dave McGowan, the excellent investigative reporter, wrote about this more than 13 years ago. We are all, purposefully, cut off from each other. And there’s a reason for it. It makes us all weaker and impotent before the leviathan.

[Author Rebecca] Traister is a stooge fronting for the “deep state” to maintain the hatred and confrontation between men and women. It’s essential for the powers that the most basic, human relationships be destroyed. And family is target #1.

AMERICA'S COMING BANKRUPTCY

"A radical reexamination of America’s overseas assets and obligations must take place. Ideologically motivated wars have led us to the precipice of financial disaster. American foreign policy must adopt a limited, highly strategic view of its national interest and use its remaining wealth sparingly and only when necessary. Realism can stave off national ruin. Close bases in Germany and bring the money home, instead of forcing the troops to evacuate in the dead of night after it’s too late. Enter negotiations with the Taliban and have a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, lest it end with helicopters fleeing Kabul like they did Saigon. Make the hard choices before circumstances make them for you."

theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-coming-bankruptcy-of-the-american-empire/