I seems just a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. began withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan.  Then last week, the Taliban took over several cities.  Then Biden decided to evacuate the civilians from the embassy by sending in troops.  They said that maybe in weeks the Taliban will take Kabul.  Well, the take over was much faster than expected.  The Americans barely got out and who knows how many Afghans who helped us are stranded.  This makes the fall of Saigon seem like slow motion.

I think most people, including me, find it hard to believe that after twenty years of training by the American military and given weapons, the Afghan soldiers could not hold against the Taliban forces for even a few weeks.  Upon reflection, I think the major reason for this failure is that the Taliban was fighting for their religion, at least the extreme version of it, and against the infidels who invaded their land.  The government forces were fighting for a paycheck.  Most of the soldiers do not believe in their own government.  This is the same dynamics when the Soviets tried to help the communists who ran the country against the Mujahedin.  The Mujahedin were fighting for their religion and saw the Soviets as invaders.  They were much willing to sacrifice to win.

The Soviets got into the quagmire in Afghanistan.  The U.S. was too happy for that during the Cold War.  In fact they supported the Mujahedin.  What we didn't realize is that after the Mujahedin would give rise to al Qaeda and ISIS.  With the Taliban victory who knows what terrorists groups will be emboldened.  I don't have problem with going into Afghanistan to go after al Qaeda after 9/11.  But veering off to Iraq and did not finish the job led to the mess with have today.  The Russians are probably laughing at us today.

The most important lesson is that we can never listen to war hawks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz again.  They made up lies about WMDs to get us into Iraq.  I will have more in the future about these war hawks and what are they up to today.  Another lesson is that we have not won a war since WWII.  We have spent trillions, lost thousands of lives and what have we got to show for it?  It is not our military might that is the problem.  It is the leadership that lead us into stupid wars that is the problem.  Our foreign policies need to change.  Otherwise we will keep getting humiliated despite spending tons of money and losing lives overseas.

Even though Bush and Cheney started this mess and Trump had declared the withdrawal before he was voted out, Biden is going to get a lot of the blame here.  His team failed to see how quickly Kabul was going to be lost.  We almost didn't get our people out.  Almost 40 years after Saigon, we are desperately evacuating.  This is going to be hammered by the GOP.  Biden can blame Trump but he is going to look bad just as Nixon did.  Add to the COVID surge which is mostly the fault of the anti-vaxxers who are mostly Trump supporters, Biden is going to have a tough few months ahead.

 The Tokyo Olympic games are over.  I have to give credit to the Japanese for hosting these games under terrible situation.  There were many who felt that the games should not be played.   I was borderline on that.  But Japan pulled it off and even though there were some increased in COVID cases, no great surge occurred.  For that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Now for some random thoughts on the games.

I was wrong about the women's soccer team and the men's basketball team.  I didn't think that the women would lose after that first game debacle.  Over the years they have been so much better than other teams and they have the best players available, unlike the men's basketball team which had some non all stars on the team.  But age may be catching up with the women.  Rest of the world may be also.

I was at least right about Kevin Durant needing to play better.  And did he ever!  He was the obvious MVP and the reason the U.S. won the gold medal.  He may be the GOAT of U.S. Olympic basketball.  I was also right about the lack of big men almost cost them.  Gobert dominated inside against them.  If he was a better scorer, we would have been in trouble.  What if we have to face someone like Jokic next time?  We have the best athletes by far but we still need some big men.

I was almost right about Doncic dominating.  He kind of ran out of gas the last two games after shouldering too much of the load to get Slovenia into the semifinals.  If he had taken the last shot against France instead of passing off, they could very well have been in the finals.

Good stories about couple of Asian Americans.  Everybody knows about Sunisa Lee who won the all around in gymnastics after Simone Biles dropped out.  There must have been great pressure on her going from number two to number one all of a sudden.  She is Hmong from the Twin cities.  My daughter went to college there and I remember seeing a lot of Hmong and Somalia refugees who settled there.  Minnesota has a history of taking in people from other countries.  Good to see spotlight on them.

Another Asian American is Jordan Windle who placed 6th in platform diving.  He was a Cambodia orphan who was adopted by a single gay man.  Jordan's father was rejected many times trying to adopt because of his status.  He turned out to be a great father as Jordan recalled how his father supported him all these years and saved him when he was only 16 lbs at two years old!

Simone Biles have put mental health at the front of the conversation which is great.  But the demonstrations expected at the games was practically non existent.  I guess given the pandemic hanging over everybody, nobody feel like protesting.

There were some new games to increase the interests of young people.  So skateboarding, surfing and sports climbing were added.  These all seem like sports for rich westerners.  I think we should find some sports that people in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America are playing.  I doubt that would happen because the people in charge want to increase the medal counts of rich countries and increase the tv ratings in rich countries as well.

I am sure I will think of something else to rant about but I am sure others can also.  On a lighter note, I wonder if people looking at the medal standings are thinking that Taiwan won a lot more medals than expected.  That is because Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China or ROC.  I see ROC has won a lot of medals.  But turns out it is the Russian Olympic Committee, not Taiwan.  This is all stupid if the Russia is banned but their athletes can compete under ROC,  Wasn't the ROC complicit in the cheating in the first place?  Did they sing the ROC anthem when an athlete win the gold or did they sing the Russian national anthem?  

 June 15 was the date that California reopened completely.  That was only one and half month ago.  I wrote a blog which said that we were not out of the woods yet.  So in a little over 6 weeks, things are looking bad again.  The cases are increasing rapidly here in California as is in most states.  I am sure the death rates will climb as well.  The delta variant is proven to be more infectious and dangerous than previous variants.  We are advised to wear masks indoors even if we are fully vaccinated.  

I never did stop wearing masks indoors when I go to public places.  But I can see others who have been vaccinated and thought we were back to normal getting frustrated.  The overwhelming majority of the people who get infected and get seriously ill or die are the unvaccinated.  But by telling the vaccinated that they have to wear masks seem to give the message to the unvaccinated that the vaccines don't protect us.  Those unvaccinated either do not understand or purposely don't care the fact they are not getting the vaccine is allowing this pandemic to continue.  I believe all the incentives in the world are not going to get them to do their part of simply getting a couple of jabs in order to save their lives and those of others.

I think it is time to have a national mandate for the vaccines.  Freedom?  I think the first freedom is not to die because there is no freedom after you die.  We have seat belt laws, we have laws against taking drugs, you can't drive 100 miles an hour etc.  This is a war and in time of war, freedom is going to be curtailed.  We used to have a draft.  You didn't have a choice of not going into the military if you were drafted.  There was no freedom then.  The country took away the freedom of hundreds of thousands of young men and tens of thousands of them died in Vietnam for an unworthy cause.  It is time to take away the freedom of not getting the vaccine in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives.