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I wonder how many people the US and UK have abandoned to a truly terrible fate?
At least 50% of the population I'd say. Suddenly the Handmaid's Tale doesn't seem like fiction. I'm amazed and shocked that Biden and other western leaders allowed Trump's deal with the Taliban to go ahead. I'm not a fan of western interventionism for obvious reasons but there must have been a better way than simply leaving anyone who isn't a bearded religious zealot to their fate.
My cousin was there in the 70's and enjoyed it as part of the hippy trail. Said he met lots of London original skinheads on massive danceathons in bars playing ska as you could buy speed pretty much anywhere. Nowt to do with current awful situation.
What a sh*it show 🙁 The US and allies had to withdraw at some point but the way it's been done is disastrous. You can't blame it all on Biden (or politicians) in general though - the ANA seemingly giving up without a fight is what's allowed the Taliban to seize control so quickly. If anyone in the ANA (that wasn't pro-Taliban) participated in corruption or chose not to fight then surely they need to take a large part of the blame. I know it's easy to say when safely sat at a keyboard but if you're not going to fight for your own country then you can't expect other countries to either.
I'm not sure what I'd have done in Biden's shoes, the US had to leave Afghanistan at some point but they'd already reduced the amount of deployed troops to a minimum. With a Taliban offensive on the near horizon they had the choice of either to surge troops again (which wouldn't play well with voters) or withdraw and once the Taliban made it clear any remaining foreign troops would be a target that meant a complete withdrawal. The safest way (for US interests) to do a complete withdrawal was to do it extremely quickly, which they did. A slower withdrawal would have left US troops deployed outside of Kabul at high risk. So Biden only really had a choice between stay indefinitely or a rapid complete withdrawal.
Ofc it's the Afghan people that have been left to pay the price, I can't imagine the nightmare they're going through now. It's criminal that there's still the issue of getting out Afghan interpreters etc. - the UK and US wasted years when they could have processed many more thousands of them and got them to safety but they clearly just wanted to tick some boxes and help as few as they could whilst still being able to say they are doing something, disgraceful.
With the Taliban in control of most border regions the final hope that people will be able to flee to relative safety seems almost impossible to 🙁
Just watching that on twitter, There are reports of young men, have tied themselves onto planes, falling off into the city as the planes take off…
In the same way as people will cram 30 into a rubber dinghy and take to dangerous seas to escape, it just shows how bad things are expected to be for these folks under the Taliban.
We have to secure the airways, either militarily or by negotiation with the Taliban, and allow these people safe passage and ask questions later. In the spirit that better 10 guilty men walk free than one innocent man is hanged, to abandon them now for fear of someone undeserving also hitching a ride is horrific.
Hopefully the Taliban would allow a 'cease fire' to avoid the need for a military secured perimeter. At this point an acceptance that some people don't want their proposed way of life and prefer to leave vs a retribution based outcome can only add legitimacy to their desire to be seen as a proper regime?
Don't worry in a couple of days there will be no TV footage... just the odd tale of the Taliban courts from anyone who can get across a border.
By late afternoon on Sept. 11, 2001, the disaster of the half arsed Afghan adventure and Iraq shitshow was pretty much dialled in.
See Rumsfeld: Link.
The whole situation was inevitable. My understanding is that there were huge swathes of rural Afghanistan that were never under any real government/US control.
I recently finished reading a book about Afghanistan immediately before the British invasion in 1839, and it pretty much draws a line from the state the country (now defined) was in then to how it was before the US invaded in 2001. It was a feudal system, with warlords subjugating tracts of land and fighting among themselves. And with the Soviet invasion, mujahaddin and everything that's happened since, there simply was no country or system to go back to. The US efforts at nationbuilding have been an absolute shambles of course - the military aren't exactly the first choice of body to send it to *build* something, even when they have huge wadges of cash. The puppets they've installed have been hugely corrupt, products and perpetuators of the cycle of corruption and violence. They never actually built a functioning nation, or legitimacy for those puppet politicans or even the Afghan army.
And then Biden pulled the plug. Trump of course carries a lot of the blame, but Biden was the one who decided to pull out all troops.
Among other more important things, it goes to show that US Democrats are not the people we like to think they are...
Among other more important things, it goes to show that US Democrats are not the people we like to think they are…
Obama in Libya?
Ultimately it’s Biden’s administration who executed this plan, hence it’s their job to plan for this possible scenario. We will have to wait for the hearings on this to get the full story.
The ANA are hardly an army, they've spent the last 20 years in a support role to the US and UK forces and from what I've seen they spent most of that time high on reefer.
Compared to the Taliban who have decades of real fighting experience behind them. Had they resisted, as many 'hoped' they would it would have just been another bloodbath.
As much as we might talk about that ANA not having the courage to fight, to do so would have been futile and the only positive outcome for them would have been martyrdom.
Oh the irony...
It was a feudal system, with warlords subjugating tracts of land and fighting among themselves.
I think in rural areas that is to a large extent still the case.
Theres a squaddie on five live at the moment, who has just said that today he has asked himself three questions and answered them...
Was it worth it? Probably not, no
Did I lose my legs for nothing? Looks like it, yes
Did my mates all die in vain? Yep
I don't think you need more of a summary of the last 20 years than that
The ANA are hardly an army, they’ve spent the last 20 years in a support role to the US and UK forces and from what I’ve seen they spent most of that time high on reefer.
https://twitter.com/Brandallini/status/1427254600663457802
How much public support do the taliban actually have?
Obviously some people must be welcoming them, they are recruiting from somewhere after all, it can't be the entire population going along out of fear.
To use the 1930s Germany analogy again, there were dedicated belivers in the cause,those who went along with it and those who had to pretend to to stay alive, it takes a critical mass of the first (two?) groups to get the system established and resistance to it to become untenable for individuals.
How many true taliban are we talking about? (As in belivers who welcome their rule, not necessarily fighters) How many who are taliban supporters now but would swap sides if the 'other' side was winning and how many are just living by their rules because they have to?
By late afternoon on Sept. 11, 2001, the disaster of the half arsed Afghan adventure and Iraq shitshow was pretty much dialled in.
"We're gonna fight someone, somewhere over this and those sons of bitches are gonna get some shock an awe".
Iraq was just unfinished business for the Bush family.
How much public support do the taliban actually have?
Obviously some people must be welcoming them, they are recruiting from somewhere after all, it can’t be the entire population going along out of fear.
But they're armed to the teeth with some proper military hardware. Tanks and all. And they have a mountainous hinterland to retreat to and fester as well as that hinterland containing a porous (non-existent) border to another state that isn't shy of dabbling in the regional interference game.
The border region is ungoverned and ungovernable.
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1427258342758617101
About the author: Tom Nichols is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of the book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy.
Kabul has fallen. Americans will now exercise their usual partisan outrage for a few weeks, and then Afghanistan, like everything else in a nation with an attention span not much longer than a fast-food commercial, will be forgotten. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves.
Many Americans will bristle at the idea that this defeat overseas can be laid at their feet. When U.S. forces had to endure the misery of the retreat from North Korea back to the 38th parallel, no one made the argument that it had happened because of the voters. No one turned to the American people during the fall of Saigon and said, “This is on you.”
So why would I do that now?
Much of what happened in Korea and Vietnam—ultimately constituting a tie and a loss, if we are to be accurate—was beyond the control of the American public. Boys were drafted and sent into battle, sometimes in missions never intended to be revealed to the public.
Afghanistan was different. This was a war that was immensely popular at the outset and mostly conducted in full view of the American public. The problem was that, once the initial euphoria wore off, the public wasn’t much interested in it. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once a new adventure was launched in Iraq.
In post-2001 America, it became fashionable to speak of “war weariness,” but citizens who were not in the military or part of a military family or community did not have to endure even minor inconveniences, much less shoulder major burdens such as a draft, a war tax, or resource shortages. The soldiers who served overseas in those first years of major operations soon felt forgotten. “America’s not at war” was a common refrain among the troops. “We’re at war. America’s at the mall.”
And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. “You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade,” Biddle said early this year. “It’s been invisible.” But Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all ran on getting out of the war, and now we’re out.
What the public does care about, however, is using Afghanistan as raw material for cheap patriotism and partisan attacks (some right and some wrong, but few of them in good faith) on every president since 2001. After the worst attack on U.S. soil, Americans had no real interest in adult conversation about the reality of anti-terrorist operations in so harsh an environment as Afghanistan (which might have entailed a presence there long beyond 20 years), nor did they want to think about whether “draining the swamp” and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort.
Maybe it would have been worth it. Or maybe such a project was impossible. We’ll never know for certain, because American political and military leaders only tried pieces of several strategies, never a coherent whole, mostly to keep the costs and casualties down and to keep the war off the front pages and away from a public that didn’t want to hear about it. Today, many claim that they did not know what the military or the government were really up to, and they point to The Washington Post’s attempt to create a Pentagon Papers vibe around a set of revelations that were not nearly as shocking as the secrets of Vietnam—or should not have been, anyway, to anyone who read a newspaper during the past two decades.
Nor did Americans ever consider whether or when Afghanistan, as a source of terrorist threats to the U.S., had been effectively neutralized. Nothing is perfect, and risks are never zero. But there was no time at which we all decided that “close enough” was good enough, and that we’d rather come home than stay. Obama made something like this case during the 2011 surge, and Donald Trump tried to make a similar argument, but because Trump was too stupid or too lazy to understand anything about international affairs (or much else), he made it purely as a weaponized political charge and, as with his inane attempts to engage North Korea, in a search for a splashy and quick win.
Biden’s policy, of course, is not that different from Trump’s, despite all the partisan howling about it from Republicans. As my colleague David Frum has put it: “For good or ill, the Biden policy on Afghanistan is the same as the Trump policy, only with less lying.”
But as comforting as it would be to blame Obama and Trump, we must look inward and admit that we told our elected leaders—of both parties—that they were facing a no-win political test. If they chose to leave, they would be cowards who abandoned Afghanistan. If they chose to stay, they were warmongers intent on pursuing “forever war.” And so here we are, in the place we were destined to be: resting on 20 years of safety from another 9/11, but with Afghanistan again in the hands of the Taliban.
A serious people—the kind of people we once were—would have made serious choices, long before this current debacle was upon them. They would today be trying to learn something from nearly 2,500 dead service members and many more wounded. They would be grimly assessing risk and preparing both overseas and at home for the reality of a terrorist nation making its way back onto the international map.
Instead, we’re bickering about masks. We’re holding super-spreader events. We’re complaining and finger-pointing about who ruined our fall plans. (I’m part of that last group. Spoiler: It’s the people who refused easily accessible vaccinations.)
Biden was right, in the end, to bite the bullet and refuse to pass this conflict on to yet another president. His execution of this resolve, however, looks to be a tragic and shameful mess and will likely be a case study in policy schools for years to come. But there was no version of “Stop the forever war” that didn’t end with the fall of Kabul. We believed otherwise, as a nation, because we wanted to believe it. And because we had shopping to do and television to watch and arguments to be had on social media.
But before we move on, before we head back to the mall, before we resume posting memes, and before we return to bickering with each other about whether we should have to mask up at Starbucks, let us remember that this day came about for one reason, and one reason only.
Because it is what we wanted.
And as for "we didn't think the local guys we'd trained would collapse that quickly" schtick - Saigon 1975.
I don’t think you need more of a summary of the last 20 years than that
That's just a summary of being in the army. He also said he knew what he signed up for, which seeing he's now questioning the value of losing his legs for whatever he thought his mission was, it would seem he was wrong. I don't blame him, it's an outrage that many who join the army do so on the basis of an imaginary patriotic myth. You'd think a fiasco like Afghanistan would make people think twice before joining up in future but I doubt it.
it takes a critical mass of the first (two?) groups to get the system established and resistance to it to become untenable for individuals
It takes a belief that there is a critical mass, with lots of violence and intimidation, the numbers can appear larger than what they actually are. Especially when the aggressors are organised and the general population aren't. They hunt in packs and attack easy targets, then everyone becomes an easy target unless they are also in a bigger pack,
andrewh
Free Member
How much public support do the taliban actually have?
Who knows time will tell. Pretty clear that without US money, arms and presence of troops and machinery the support for the last 20 years was built on sand.
Occupation can only last as long as the occupiers are willing to stay around.
Ultimately it can only be up to the Afghans to sort this out. Their starting point is the Taliban, doesn't particularly need to end there over the long term..
Governments are going to have to work with them, the Russians and the Chinese quite happily will anyhow(Their embassies are still functioning.).
So far afghan has cost the US 2 trillion dollars, let’s ignore the costs for other NATO countries and the lives lost…. That $2 trillion is enough to end world hunger, help sort climate change, end poverty or give every person on the planet approx. $250 each
Ultimately it’s Biden’s administration who executed this plan, hence it’s their job to plan for this possible scenario. We will have to wait for the hearings on this to get the full story.
It's been said already but much of the Intel that the ANA were able to take over was changed because of not wanting to tell the higher ups things they didn't want to hear. And it was happening during Obama's terms for sure.
How much worse did it get with a populist president in place with an absolute reputation for 'tell me what i want to hear, or I'll fire you and replace you with someone who will'
So far afghan has cost the US 2 trillion dollars, let’s ignore the costs for other NATO countries and the lives lost…. That $2 trillion is enough to end world hunger, help sort climate change, end poverty or give every person on the planet approx. $250 each
That sort of hippy mindset would wreak havoc on the global arms trade, likely having a deep impact on offshore finance and government as we know it!
How much public support do the taliban actually have?
The first time they took over control, initially they had quite a bit of support. They helped cut down on quite a bit of the corruption that Mujahidin carried on with
jivehoneyjive
Free Member
So far afghan has cost the US 2 trillion dollars, let’s ignore the costs for other NATO countries and the lives lost…. That $2 trillion is enough to end world hunger, help sort climate change, end poverty or give every person on the planet approx. $250 eachThat sort of hippy mindset would wreak havoc on the global arms trade, likely having a deep impact on offshore finance and government as we know it!
Yip, something was required to facilitate the transfer of tax payers money to arms traders...
We will have to wait for the hearings on this to get the full story.
Oh good, how many 'Benghazi' inquiries will the GOP launch this time around?
There seem to be quite a few who are considerably more bothered about people storming the Presidential Palace in Kabul than they are about people storming their own Capitol.
A lot of the support for the Taliban is because they policed the population and brought security, in the areas the controlled whereas the other competing factions in the civil war would take an area and then just loot it or ignore the civilian population altogether if there was nowt worth nicking.
Also, look at Afghanistan before 1979. Sure, I’ll bet there were very conservative attitudes in the sticks beyond the cities, but this video of Afghanistan in the 60s doesn’t look like the ‘intractable fundamentalist hell hole’ that many would like to write it off as.
Afghan women were 95% illiterate in 1979. 85% of the population lived in the countryside. Women had 7.5 children each.
These photos and videos of a superprivileged elite in the heart of Kabul - they might as well have been taken on the ****ing moon as far as most Afghans in the 70s were concerned.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS?locations=AF
That $2 trillion is enough to end world hunger, help sort climate change, end poverty or give every person on the planet approx. $250 each
And yet some people still don't think money grows on trees?! Afghanistan tells us all we need to know about how the western military-political elite runs it's affairs. Without wanting to sound like a conspiracist, they need wars like Iraq and Afghanistan to keep the money flowing into the pockets of the elite. In a few years time they'll change their minds, troops will be back and the arms companies and shady middle men will be filling their pockets again with printed money.
Looking at the evacuation I noticed that, again, majority are young men/men who are able bodied. For some reasons, they don't seem to care much about their women folks even during the chaos.
A few points that need to remember no particular order of importance:
1. If their people (men) do not wish to fight against their enemies, even leaving their women folks and children behind, no amount of efforts can change that.
2. West having a base in Afghanistan is a strategic position to keep things in check. Sacrifice there rather than complete chaos in the west (gov't voted down or change of gov't etc due to public opinions etc and subsequent govt never learns)
3. Taliban knows the west has no stomach for long war hence they have time on their side. Slowly grinding the west down.
4. The rule of engagement is completely different. They don't take prisoners while the west take the high horse only to be eliminated.
5. Negotiation can only benefits them. That's their culture. They are very good negotiators by the way.
6. History - that location has been fought over for thousands of years. Anyone who dominate that region will "rule the world". Look at the amount of time Alexander, Gheghis and Chinese took to subdue the region and once succeeded their influence spread all over.
7. Biden administration bears all the responsibility.
8. Now we brace for the impact.
7. Biden administration bears all the responsibility.
F me. All? ALL?! Theres blame & more than enough to spread round you myopic ****
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
The current and future role of China is potentially the most interesting. What are China’s motives? Trade? Maintaining the “space” of their growing middle class? Consolidating power of the dominant ethnic group?
China is not interested in trade for trades sake. It is also not interested in projecting power by force until it has overwhelming force in a specific area. It’s not interested in being the worlds policeman in the way Cold War USA was. China seems most intent on building and consolidating absolute power in its sphere long term.
Theres a squaddie on five live at the moment, who has just said that today he has asked himself three questions and answered them…
Was it worth it? Probably not, no
Did I lose my legs for nothing? Looks like it, yes
Did my mates all die in vain? Yep
I don’t think you need more of a summary of the last 20 years than that
That interview is being talked about a lot by my ex-military friends right now. The vast majority of them feel the same, that their time over there and the losses they've witnessed were all for nought.
Looking at the evacuation
"On the telly."
reluctantjumper
That interview is being talked about a lot by my ex-military friends right now. The vast majority of them feel the same, that their time over there and the losses they’ve witnessed were all for nought.
Struggling to feel sympathy for people that couldn't see the blinking obvious.
Struggling to feel sympathy for people that couldn’t see the blinking obvious.
Any sympathy for the friends and families of the 456 British service personnel killed in Afghanistan?
Biden's definitely messed it up. I don't think he's necessarily wrong to withdraw- I'd love to say "stay and fix it" but that ship's probably sailed. But it shoul;d have been managed much better than this. I suppose you can't blame them for being distracted by the crises at home, there's probably a case to be made for "there's things we can invest our effort in that will reap rewards, and there's things that are *ed up and will always be *ed up and no matter how much time we put into it, it's just differing levels of ****ed up, so let's cut our losses". But then the military side of things shouldn't be a distraction from the domestic, if there's any sort of competence in that side of things.
But even for the Chewkwbot, "Biden bears all responsibility" is ridiculous.
7. Biden administration bears all the responsibility.
Trump has blasted Biden for not 'following the plan his administration crafted for Afghanistan'
Nice(if predictable) way of claiming the idea but switching blame, as we all know that 'plan' included withdrawal of troops. one of Trump's most popular pledges.
Was trump's plan written on the same piece of paper as his COVID plan that no one has ever seen?
The current and future role of China is potentially the most interesting. What are China’s motives? Trade? Maintaining the “space” of their growing middle class? Consolidating power of the dominant ethnic group?
China shares a border with Afghanistan and has made no secret in wanting to invest in Afghanistan's mineral deposits, they have also met and no doubt discussed it with the Taliban(rather than the Afghani government) so the coincidence of a future Afghan coalition/Taliban government working with the Chinese to economically exploit mineral deposits shouldn't come as a big surprise.
Like Trump’s administration was capable of planning anything. They couldn’t even book a press conference at the correct location ffs. Biden, for want of a better analogy, seems to have chosen to rip the plaster off in one go as opposed to slowly removing it.
That Twitter video is so sad and a glimpse of the madness that is surely to come in the next few weeks and months. Probably utterly naive of me but, surely NATO or another peace keeping force should have boots on the ground. I dread to think of what will happen to anyone who supported the Afghan government.
Any sympathy for the friends and families of the 456 British service personnel killed in Afghanistan?
on one level yes of course. any premature death is sad and wrong. However being sent to far off places to kill and be killed is a part of being a serviceman and given the history of the last 30 years its pretty obvious they would end up in a futile situation like this so they really should have had their eyes open to the risk
Was trump’s plan written on the same piece of paper as his COVID plan that no one has ever seen?
Trump's historic 'Afghanistan peace deal'? of course he now says it would have all been different if he was driving it.
espressoal
Free MemberTrump has blasted Biden for not ‘following the plan his administration crafted for Afghanistan’
Nice(if predictable) way of claiming the idea but switching blame, as we all know that ‘plan’ included withdrawal of troops. one of Trump’s most popular pledges.
Isn't it pretty much the case that they've done what the Trump administration planned to do, just a little bit slower and less chaotic? (ie, the shit that we're seeing right now, would have just happened worse)
When the Biden admin announced they were slowing the withdrawal they were castigated for it.
Probably utterly naive of me but, surely NATO or another peace keeping force should have boots on the ground.
My dad served in both NATO and UN peace keeping forces... they are ultimately just "our" forces working together under joint command... if we're pulling out, it's not to put the same people back in wearing different hats.