Afghanistan

[Doc]

Letting the Afghans own Afghanistan again is Biden’s singular presidential achievement.

We'll see...

[noddy]

Letting the Afghans own Afghanistan again is Biden’s singular presidential achievement.

We'll see...

I agreee with Nonc, its the best outcome no matter what happens.

partisan sniping on the horror stories which will happen are irrelevant, they were happening already.

after 20 years and trillions of dollars of corruption money going in all directions that nothing has changed in Afghanistan, and it has reverted quickly back to what it actually is, what else can happen ?

let them slowly fix it, its nobody elses job

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/worl ... -boys.html

the original goal of not letting it be a launch pad for islamaic terrorism via Al Queda is an absurdity against the spread of ISIS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory ... amic_State

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Letting the Afghans own Afghanistan again is Biden’s singular presidential achievement.

We'll see...

I agreee with Nonc, its the best outcome no matter what happens.

partisan sniping on the horror stories which will happen are irrelevant, they were happening already.

after 20 years and trillions of dollars of corruption money going in all directions that nothing has changed in Afghanistan, and it has reverted quickly back to what it actually is, what else can happen ?

let them slowly fix it, its nobody elses job

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/worl ... -boys.html

the original goal of not letting it be a launch pad for islamaic terrorism via Al Queda is an absurdity against the spread of ISIS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory ... amic_State

We missed the best-case scenario window when we turned down the Taliban's surrender in 2002 or 2003 which would've reorganized the totem pole with the Taliban being lowered in the pecking order and a formal agreement to keep training grounds out of Afghani territory.

Looking back, we essentially ended up with that arrangement, albeit informally, under the Karzai government.

The Durrani tribe policed things to keep the training camps to a minimum and in turn, they cooperated with the Taliban as just another one of the many tribes and powers in the land.

[Doc]

Letting the Afghans own Afghanistan again is Biden’s singular presidential achievement.

We'll see...

I agreee with Nonc, its the best outcome no matter what happens.

partisan sniping on the horror stories which will happen are irrelevant, they were happening already.

after 20 years and trillions of dollars of corruption money going in all directions that nothing has changed in Afghanistan, and it has reverted quickly back to what it actually is, what else can happen ?

let them slowly fix it, its nobody elses job

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/worl ... -boys.html

the original goal of not letting it be a launch pad for islamaic terrorism via Al Queda is an absurdity against the spread of ISIS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory ... amic_State

As I said "We'll See"

wc3THeXjE6A

We will have a good idea in 7 to 10 days on how the Taliban will behave this time around. We will know in a couple of years how much the Taliban sold out their country to the CCP

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

We will have a good idea in 7 to 10 days on how the Taliban will behave this time around. We will know in a couple of years how much the Taliban sold out their country to the CCP

China already has the mining rights and if China wants a pipeline through Afghanistan, they are going to get one anyway. And on that front, good luck in saddling debt on to a people who don't believe in it.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The question I have is:

Have we severed enough of the ties between Pakistan/ISI and the Taliban?

Pakistan has always been the problem and the Taliban their clients; the way I remember it, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were controversial figures for the Taliban and would not have operated out of that territory without ISI insistence.

[noddy]

As I understand Pakistan also has the tribal Pashtuns, which is the base for the Taliban but the control they had was always overstated.

They could exploit mutual dislikes by funding them and pushing them in directions but they had no real control over it - they had their own war against them just recently, the main difference being that Pakistan has a much bigger urban area and more sub cultures going on than just the mountain men,

We will have a good idea in 7 to 10 days on how the Taliban will behave this time around. We will know in a couple of years how much the Taliban sold out their country to the CCP

if the Afghans trust Taliban/China more than America do you think bombing them more is going to fix it ?

[Doc]

As I understand Pakistan also has the tribal Pashtuns, which is the base for the Taliban but the control they had was always overstated.

They could exploit mutual dislikes by funding them and pushing them in directions but they had no real control over it - they had their own war against them just recently, the main difference being that Pakistan has a much bigger urban area and more sub cultures going on than just the mountain men,

We will have a good idea in 7 to 10 days on how the Taliban will behave this time around. We will know in a couple of years how much the Taliban sold out their country to the CCP

if the Afghans trust Taliban/China more than America do you think bombing them more is going to fix it ?

Honestly I never believed "Afghanistan" was "winnable"(whatever that was supposed to mean) Militarily. When I saw the feminists get hold of the idea that they were going to insist on western values being forced upon that country, I figured it was not going to end well whenever it did end.

However when I saw the video of the Japanese doctor that organized the building of a canal I realized that the way forward was to end chronic malnutrition in Afghanistan by making food security possible and wait a generation or two.

https://www.onthenatureofthings.net/for ... 27#p140527

‘He Showed Us Life’: Japanese Doctor Who Brought Water to Afghans Is Killed

Tetsu Nakamura, 73, arrived in Afghanistan in the 1980s to treat leprosy. But he changed many more lives with the canal-building techniques he brought from his native Japan.

The point is WRT feminism is that without food security Afghanistan is always going to be a man's world.
Again funny that after years of it being available for anyone to see anywhere it was posted, how Youtube made the video age restricted just when the war in Afghanistan was ending

[Doc]

Desperate Afghans fall from landing gear of US plane at Kabul airport

[Typhoon]

Substack - Greenwald | The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

Substack - Tracey | “A Big Money Funneling Operation” — Afghanistan Vet Reflects On Withdrawal Of US Forces

As for the US troops killed or wounded during the last 20 years my guess is that the majority were from the working classes whom the chattering classes, cheerleading the occupation + war in Afghanistan, hold in contempt.

This bit of fantasy sums up the US political-military-industrial complex strategy

Upn8oUy5xPk

[Doc]

Substack - Greenwald | The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

Substack - Tracey | “A Big Money Funneling Operation” — Afghanistan Vet Reflects On Withdrawal Of US Forces

As for the US troops killed or wounded during the last 20 years my guess is that the majority were from the working classes whom the chattering classes, cheerleading the occupation + war in Afghanistan, hold in contempt.

This bit of fantasy sums up the US political-military-industrial complex strategy

Upn8oUy5xPk

Apparently the Afghan Army fell apart because Ghani was not paying the soldiers. Instead he was keeping the money for himself. Which is why Trump wanted the Troops out of Afghanistan by May 1st.

[noddy]

Apparently the Afghan Army fell apart because Ghani was not paying the soldiers. Instead he was keeping the money for himself.

I think that understates the pointlessness of the exercise.

throwing money at institutions doesnt "fix" the underclass problems in our countries, so why would people even think it would work in foreign cultures.

doubly so when the Pashtuns and their ilk are far less down the middle class rabbit hole in the first place - they properly are sovereign nations of family based tribes with zero interest in becoming office workers.

We missed the best-case scenario window when we turned down the Taliban's surrender in 2002 or 2003 which would've reorganized the totem pole with the Taliban being lowered in the pecking order and a formal agreement to keep training grounds out of Afghani territory.

Looking back, we essentially ended up with that arrangement, albeit informally, under the Karzai government.

The Durrani tribe policed things to keep the training camps to a minimum and in turn, they cooperated with the Taliban as just another one of the many tribes and powers in the land.

Ive read in some places the Taliban acknowledge the fact that the urbanites arent going to join them, so they will attempt to be slightly more multicultural than last time.

once the initial chaos settles down, it will be curious to see how much thats actually true, probably not very much.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1640974/war-i ... rips-kabul

[Doc]

Apparently the Afghan Army fell apart because Ghani was not paying the soldiers. Instead he was keeping the money for himself.

I think that understates the pointlessness of the exercise.

throwing money at institutions doesnt "fix" the underclass problems in our countries, so why would people even think it would work in foreign cultures.

doubly so when the Pashtuns and their ilk are far less down the middle class rabbit hole in the first place - they properly are sovereign nations of family based tribes with zero interest in becoming office workers.

Exactly. When Tetsu Nakamura went to Afghanistan as a doctor he saw that being a doctor was not helping that much because everyone was malnourished. The reason for that was there was not enough water for people to grow their own food.

So he decided that a canal from a river 27 km away would end the malnourishment. So he raise the money(I would guess a couple of million dollars) to get a large back hoe and to pay the locals to work on the canal. He made a simple, easy to repair, design for the canal mostly using local rock wrapped in chicken wire.

The immediate result was that men that formerly work as soldiers for the war lords and the Taliban went to work building the canal.

Once completed the canal made it possible for farming in that valley to support 600,000 people.

Afghanistan has lots of canals that were mostly destroyed by war.

But the US government solution was to build girls schools, and push western values. It did not even try to bring justice to the countryside. Something the Taliban did do.

We missed the best-case scenario window when we turned down the Taliban's surrender in 2002 or 2003 which would've reorganized the totem pole with the Taliban being lowered in the pecking order and a formal agreement to keep training grounds out of Afghani territory.

Looking back, we essentially ended up with that arrangement, albeit informally, under the Karzai government.

The Durrani tribe policed things to keep the training camps to a minimum and in turn, they cooperated with the Taliban as just another one of the many tribes and powers in the land.

Ive read in some places the Taliban acknowledge the fact that the urbanites arent going to join them, so they will attempt to be slightly more multicultural than last time.

once the initial chaos settles down, it will be curious to see how much thats actually true, probably not very much.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1640974/war-i ... rips-kabul

Currently there are reports that the Taliban are now going door to door looking for people that worked for the US government and executing those they find.

Joe Biden had from January to August to get those people out of the country and he did nothing.

[noddy]

had from January to August to get those people out of the country and he did nothing.

same as Trump did nothing when he started the pullout, same as my government did nothing when they announced theirs.

this isnt partisan, why pretend it is.

nobody cares if a few hundred Afghans get murdered for helping us, the backlash against another round of refugees with potential terrorists amongst them is far more of a political concern.

dont kid yourself the republicans would be on the right side of that particular panic.

[noddy]

Apparently they only remembered to evacuate our allies after they had already been shot.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/ ... /100383784

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

had from January to August to get those people out of the country and he did nothing.

same as Trump did nothing when he started the pullout, same as my government did nothing when they announced theirs.

this isnt partisan, why pretend it is.

nobody cares if a few hundred Afghans get murdered for helping us, the backlash against another round of refugees with potential terrorists amongst them is far more of a political concern.

dont kid yourself the republicans would be on the right side of that particular panic.

It is partisan as the Trump arrangement with the Taliban was to be out by a date in May with the condition of no hostilities towards the Afghani government before the agreed upon date. Any hostile takeover would start a bombing/drone campaign.

"It's not a plan to get people out" No. But it was a plan which kept open our airfields to the end, which has turned out to be one of our main problems in actually moving out.

The Biden administration, not the Taliban, was the one to break the arrangement. The Taliban told us back in April or May they expected the US to stick to the deal and Biden blew them off.

I remember the Times, I believe, having a "deadline nearing" story in late April or early May, with a Biden admin. spokesperson giving the official line that this administration doesn't work with people like the Taliban.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

And I think a lot of it comes down to a effete Washington attitude of "we don't work with those people" -- Washington has been actually caught off guard because the Taliban is beneath their contempt.

So we have a military/CIA leadership which kept their mouths shut about what they actually knew
and a civilian leadership which tore up the old barebone plan, and did nothing with the extra time tacked on

because both were clearly acting out of spite for all the icky people involved from Mr. Trump to Mr. Taliban.

[noddy]

I spose I cant argue with what might have happened.

cant also say I really think it would have played out that different - our current Prime Minister is an evangelical right wing fellow, who was a Trump fan and follows in lock step with his American millitary advisers.

if he remembered to evacuate the Australians all in good time but forgot to do likewise with their Afghan assistants, my suspicions are what they are.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I spose I cant argue with what might have happened.

cant also say I really think it would have played out that different - our current Prime Minister is an evangelical right wing fellow, who was a Trump fan and follows in lock step with his American millitary advisers.

if he remembered to evacuate the Australians all in good time but forgot to do likewise with their Afghan assistants, my suspicions are what they are.

Well, I don't want to push it too far-- like I said yesterday, anybody in charge was going to take it on the chin and it would've been a clusterf* event regardless.

But I do think the chaos would've been of a different breed, starting with a lack of confidence our generals and bureaucrats would've followed orders to pull out under President Trump.

I am pretty sure there would've been a coup before that deadline by formal structures or informal means. The Republican leadership and mainstream conservatize media remained strongly in favor of continuing the war and were absolutely aghast that his administration spoke openly of dealing with the Taliban. They were throwing around the word "treason" just last year. And of course the Democratic Party's stance against anything Trump doesn't need motivation.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

It's almost the opposite problem with Biden- the way we left things- it's obvious the generals in charge were confident that they were going to force Biden to change course on pulling out and that the people on the civilian side of things never even thought about the Afghanis (particularly the Taliban) having any agency of their own. They were just supposed to sit there as we sauntered out, after dishonoring the date.

[Doc]

had from January to August to get those people out of the country and he did nothing.

same as Trump did nothing when he started the pullout, same as my government did nothing when they announced theirs.

this isnt partisan, why pretend it is.

nobody cares if a few hundred Afghans get murdered for helping us, the backlash against another round of refugees with potential terrorists amongst them is far more of a political concern.

dont kid yourself the republicans would be on the right side of that particular panic.

There are 30,000 Afghans that worked for the US government. So far 2,000 have been allowed to leave. Many that were given visas to go elsewhere are stuck in their homes and afraid to leave them to go to the airport even before flights were suspended.

Trump negotiated a deal with the Taliban that seemed to have at least had an effect on how the Taliban wants to be viewed. US troops were to be out of Afghanistan by May the first. Biden violated that agreement by pushing the date back to Sept 11th.

Trump had drawn down US troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 before he left office. There was not a Taliban surge until well into this summer when Biden pulled US troops out of Bagram IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, without telling the Afghans they were leaving. That is where the dominos started to fall. After that the Afghan army surrendered in Kandahar.

The motto used in Afghanistan with the Afghan army was "Shoulder to Shoulder" Too bad the Afghan Army wasm't made up of young girls and women.




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mi ... ar-AANpHzw

Mike Pompeo Outlines How Trump Admin Planned to Handle Afghanistan, Taliban
Darragh Roche 1 hr ago
17 Comments
|
Reports: US Air Force plane carries over 600 people out of Afghanistan
Afghanistan updates: Clearing of civilians from Kabul runway continues

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the Trump administration had a better approach to dealing with Taliban "butchers" and their plan would have led to a more successful withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mike Pompeo wearing a suit and tie: Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency on February 27, 2021 in Orlando, Florida. Pompeo said on Monday that the Trump administration would have handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan more successfully. © Joe Raedle/Getty Images Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency on February 27, 2021 in Orlando, Florida. Pompeo said on Monday that the Trump administration would have handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan more successfully.

Pompeo spoke to the Fox Business Network on Monday about U.S. troop drawdown from the country following chaotic scenes in Kabul as the Taliban took the capital city on Sunday.

President Joe Biden defended the withdrawal from Afghanistan in an address on Monday and criticized the Afghan military for the Taliban's rapid advance through the country.

Pompeo spoke to Fox Business host David Asman about Biden's speech and said the president "blamed everyone but himself."

"The tragedy you see unfolding, the videos you see, those things didn't have to be," he said.

Pompeo argued that the Trump administration had kept the country stable through a "deterrence" model and went on to stress the need to evacuate personnel from Afghanistan.

He also criticized Biden's decision to send 5,000 troops to the country despite earlier withdrawing forces, a sentiment he repeated on Twitter.

Asman asked Pompeo about the Trump administration's role in planning for the troop drawdown.

"Obviously, you're defensive about what happened during the Trump administration but how would you have handled things differently?" Asman said.

"No, I'm not defensive at all," Pompeo said. "I know precisely how we handle it and I know that we drew down 12,500 people and didn't have a single American killed by these very same Taliban butchers."

Sending more than 5000 troops back in AFTER you withdrew a couple thousand of them is proof that you are disconnected from the reality on the ground and aren't serious about protecting Americans.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) August 16, 2021

"We had a model where we'd made clear what our red lines were," Pompeo went on. "We'd made clear the things we were prepared to do to defend them. We could have executed a plan in a way that would have led to the orderly withdrawal."

"We would have demanded that the Taliban actually deliver on the conditions that we laid out in the agreement - including the agreement to engage in meaningful power sharing agreement - something that we struggled to get them to do but made clear it was going to be a requirement before we completed our requirement to fully withdraw," he said.

Pompeo went on: "We would have gotten those conditions right. We would have held the Taliban to those limits and we would have been able to prevent, in all likelihood, precisely what you're seeing unfold today in Afghanistan."

The former secretary of state then said that members of the military who served in Afghanistan, either directly or in support roles, "should be proud of the work that they did."

President Biden delivered an 18-minute speech on Monday defending the withdrawal from Afghanistan and said he wouldn't "mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference."

Biden specifically mentioned the Trump administration's plans to withdraw from Afghanistan: "When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, just a little over three months after I took office."

"There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1," Biden went on.

"There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan and lurching into the third decade of conflict."

Biden defended pushing ahead with the withdrawal but also offered criticism of the U.S.-trained Afghan army.

"We gave them every tool they could need," Biden went on. "We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide is the will to fight for that."

Newsweek has asked the White House for comment.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Ive read in some places the Taliban acknowledge the fact that the urbanites arent going to join them, so they will attempt to be slightly more multicultural than last time.

once the initial chaos settles down, it will be curious to see how much thats actually true, probably not very much.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1640974/war-i ... rips-kabul

I think what the Taliban learned over last two decades is how they need to maneuver internationally.

They are using spokesmen talking about inclusion, blanket forgiveness and actual law&order.

They are also going to allow some international NGOs in those cities; it even looks like they will allow a measure of protest.

It's a more sophisticated [for lack of a better word] Taliban than the one we knocked over in 2002 that actually learned some sort of lesson over the last two decades.

And it's one interested in ruling at some sort of pragmatic level with the support of the Chinese, Russians and Pakistanis.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

a deal with the Taliban

I think this is really key.

The Taliban wants legitimacy with business deals. It also knew it held all the cards: the Afghan gov't was a fake embezzling machine, and the Taliban could play hardball by playing the interests of all the bigger countries off each other.

We really needed people in charge ready to do what is unpalatable to many; kiss the Taliban's ass for our own self-interest with an understanding that even if we did that, we'd just as likely lose out.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The former president who ran off with billions and wasn't paying the troops-- where's he at right now?

Columbia University's own; the foremost expert in rebuilding failed states; the man who said he would die for Afghanistan just this May; which beach resort is he laughing it up in right now?

I know the Education Minister was another jewel of the US universities and lived here from 1981 to 2003. At least she showed some courage and didn't run immediately.

But how many of these people were US educated?

Our universities are really good at producing fake governments.