After more than 16 years of war, Afghan civilians live each day under constant threat, as U.S. forces and the Afghan government struggle to secure the country.
Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war since 2001, U.S. goals are far from within reach. Meanwhile, the Taliban has never been stronger, controlling more land than ever before and establishing footholds in nearly every province in Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump has vowed to undo some of the terror group’s grip on the country and force it back to the negotiating table. But his new strategy, which centers on thousands of additional U.S. troops and an intensification of airstrikes, has only just begun to produce gains.
The Taliban, facing renewed pressure, have increased terror attacks on major cities, striking at the heart of Kabul recently, in a series of devastating attacks that left hundreds of civilians dead in the span of a week.
VICE’s Ben Anderson travelled to Afghanistan in October 2016 as the Taliban were on the verge of retaking Helmand Province, once a crucial territory in the U.S. war. Reconnecting with families he’d visited years earlier, he saw just how little has been done to contain the Taliban’s influence across the country’s rural landscape, and the challenges that await Afghan and U.S. forces.
As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:
1. Demand personal loyalty from all appointees.
2. Organize military parades and other choreographed shows of force.
3. Threaten to fire independent prosecutors who get too close to the truth.
4. Spread conspiracy theories about "deep state" forces seeking to oust the tyrant.
5. Refer to top-ranking military leaders as "my" generals.
And 15 others...
6. Threaten to jail political opponents.
7. Claim to have won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.
8. Stoke tensions abroad, even the specter of nuclear war, to distract from the tyrant's efforts to consolidate power at home.
9. Circumvent the independent press and communicate directly with followers.
10. Vilify legislators and judges who are critical of the regime.
11. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.
12. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize the regime, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”
13. Repeatedly tell big lies, causing the public to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals
14. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and hatred against them.
15. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.
16. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.
17. Appoint family members to high positions of authority. 18. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from public office.
19. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators, but express indifference if not defiance toward leaders of democracies.
“Who Needs a Controversy Over the Inauguration?”: Reince Priebus Opens Up About His Six Months of Magical Thinking Months after his chaotic resignation as chief of staff, and with his successor on the hot seat, Priebus comes clean about everything: the inauguration crowd-size fiasco, the decision to fire Comey, the Mooch, the tweets, how he helped saved Jeff Sessions’s job, and his mercurial former boss. “I still love the guy,” he says. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/reince-priebus-opens-up-about-his-six-months-of-magical-thinking
VIDEO- Scott Pruitt Has Resigned as EPA Administrator
By Brittany Shoot July 5, 2018
President Trump’s embattled chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, resigned Thursday. Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s former deputy administrator, an erstwhile Senate aide, and a former coal industry lobbyist, will act as the agency’s interim director, President Trump revealed via Twitter.
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