Author: whskyjack

Soulful, Sunday Blues

For the music lover we are living in a remarkable time. The amount of music we have access to is over whelming. From around the world, not just from big money, music city, places but from every small group in small towns around the world with a phone and internet access. Also going back through the 140 years of commercial recordings. An it is all right here on which ever devise I want to use to stream the music on.


With all of this music to choose from it is a little irritating that You tube can only seem to toss up the same stuff and you have to play tricks with it to get it out of it’s favorite rut. It is why I’ve been enjoying the “discovery” mode on my Pandora “stations”. Thanks to it my “The Band” station offered todays selection by Big Mama Thornton

I’ve put together a play list that has Thornton, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughn. I may add more to it later.

Kick back with a good cup of coffee this morning and relax, after all it is Sunday

Enjoy, Jack

So What Now?

As we watch the Afghan army “fold like a cheap suit” ( what ever the f*** that means) the blame game is starting. Often by people with little or no expertise but with loads of agenda. So we need to be cautious as we read these hit pieces. But there will also be quality analysis though often it will be lost in among the crap

I just ran across a really good opening discussion for the up coming debate. By Mike Jason. He retired in 2019 as a U.S. Army colonel, after 24 years on active duty. He commanded combat units in Germany, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

It is from The Atlantic and the quality is why I pay good money for a subscription.

I will quote his conclusion but read the whole piece, it will be worth your time.

How America Failed Afghanistan

We didn’t fight a 20-year war in Afghanistan; we fought 20 incoherent wars, one year at a time, without a sense of direction. The U.S. military can and should be blamed for the collapse of security forces in Afghanistan—I hold us responsible. The current collapse keeps me up at night. In the military, the main effort gets the best resources and the best talent available. For more than 20 years, no matter what was reported, what we read in the headlines, efforts to build and train large-scale conventional security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have mostly been an aimless, ham-fisted acronym soup of trial and error that never became the true main effort, and we are to blame for that.

But we are not the only ones responsible. Someday we will ask young men and women to do this again—to fight a war overseas, to partner with local forces, to train them and build them up. Before we do, we owe it to those young people to ask the tough questions of how, and why, we all failed.