Afghanistan exit strategy

I think we are making an assumption that the very people we are talking about controlling are ready to sit down and talk. Even beyond that It seems arrogant to assume they even want us involved in the first place as anything other than a hired gun against their enemies.

I would think that given what has become of america in the past four years we would recognize we are not a utopian society of wisdom and peace. I cannot imagine the joke and absurdity it must be to foreign people to have america telling them how to behave.

We should leave because we are incapable of fixing anything when we see the trash we are. Even if you believe Joe Biden is an improvement, in four years we might have another trump leading us. Look at what happened to Iran when they made a deal with a country that changes personalities every four - eight years. I cannot imagine what it is like dealing with a country that goes from Obama to trump.

People are expecting that sort of psychotic shift in a country's foreign relationships to help them?

I'm not making that assumption at all.

I agree, you aren't, but this is one of those occasions when I'm forced to agree with @Tererun 's pessimism.

Whether those factions sit down and talk is out of our hands. We've collectively long since blown our legitimacy as benign overseers (and yes, I mean we). Our efforts to enforce peace are always ham fisted, self interested, driven by profit or the hope of strategic and political gain and without fail the drivers of furthers rounds of violence.

We have bloody hands which go back centuries, before the US or the UK existed as political entities, we fought crusades to reclaim Christendom before extremism or even oil could be viable motivators, we drove some of the most advanced and sophisticated peoples in the world into endless cycles of violence which continue to this day.

We created Israel on land which rightfully belonged to our Arab allies, we funded regime change after regime change, never learning or caring about the human cost so long as we could exert our control.

Whatever future brings for the Middle East we have no place in deciding it.

^This is what I'd have said if I'd found as good a way to word it.

Looks like we are pulling out a lot of troops. @14thDoctor is not overjoyed.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/afghanistan-iraq-withdrawal-pentagon/index.html

The withdraw seems like a tantrum by trump to harm the people supporting the corrupt forever war. We know the reason for our troops being in afgganistan has nothing to do with making things better there. Anyone who believes we are there to help those people is a fucking moron, or as I like to call them a @14thDoctor . It is all about money and power. Trump is just being a piss baby and fucking up their revenue and power.

Seriously, 3000 troops are not making afganistan great again. They are not eliminating ISIS or the taliban with those levels. They are just a speed bump for russia, and a drain on american taxpayers. If we were serious about helping afganistan into some sort of better lifestyle we would be doing a lot more.

America needs to piss or get off the pot. Trump may be doing it for the wrong reasons, but don't worry cotton eye Joe will gladly piss away more money on the half assed forever war. All the americans wanting to piss away more money and lives for a lie will soon be back to it in a couple of months.

Good. Bring them all home and let's stay out of middle eastern affairs. We have not business being there.

You realize the only reason he's doing this is to sabotage Biden, right? Either Biden sends them back and alienates his anti-war Left, or he waits until something tragic happens* because now the mission is understaffed. Do you seriously think spite is a good basis for American foreign policy?



*And you know the moment it happens, it'll be Benhgazi 2.0. I can already see you demanding to know why didn't Biden have enough troops there. Biden hates the troops!

Much as I hate to agree with you on anything, you cantankerous bastid, the West (and I include the British/European colonial powers) never grasped that we are naifs against the ancient intrigues and interconnected complexities of Afghanistan. Everyone from Alexander to the Romans to the USSR to the Brits to the U.S. has thought "Oh, we'll just bring our modern enlightenment to these savages and they'll embrace modern ways."

Afghanistan is not, and will never, be a "nation." It's an amalgamation of tribes who loathe each other, except when they're fighting a common enemy like the USSR and the U.S.

@14thDoctor likes to post photos of Afghani women with acid scars because he assumes that these attacks will get worse if Western forces withdraw. My observation (and @Ancalagon, if it wasn't as immovable as a Taliban warlord, would probably concur) is that these attacks are tribal/manhood-related and will continue no matter which "enlightened" nation has brought its heavy artillery in to "restore order."

Our "good friends" the Saudis acid-burn their women as well. I don't notice @14thDoctor raising hell about that.

Wow.

Y'know, most of us around here object to the phrase "all lives matter" because of that it's popularity with anti-black groups that use it disingenuously, but I get the impression people like you and @T.R. honestly don't believe that all lives matter. Foreigners halfway across the planet ? Fuck'em. It's too expensive to help them, right? And it'll probably take more than a weekend? Fuck that.


Oh, and my opinion of Saudi Arabia (Fuck Saudi Arabia) is very well documented, both here and elsewhere.

You're the type of guy who takes a massive greasy shit in a public toilet and then doesn't bother to flush, aren't you?

So concentrate on (and do something about) Saudi Arabia, where at least the West has some [monetary] influence, and stop cherry-picking.

That said, withdrawal from the ME is another of Donnie-boy's empty promises. Like the "miraculous health plan" he promised "in two weeks"... three months ago.

I don't care why Trump is pulling out. As if you know anyway and I'm pretty sure he's been planning this long before Biden won. We've had plenty of time and three presidents now to come up with an exit strategy and they didn't, enough is enough. As for Benghazi, you didn't see me complaining about the amount of troops we had there. What I did complain about was Suzan Rice and others blaming the attack on a YouTube video when they knew that wasn't the case.

Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it. ― Hannah Arendt

Saudi Arabia. If we beat down the wealthy ones, the poor ones will need patronage. Focus.

Do you care that scattershot decision-making is the reason we now have ISIS?

No, the ends don't justify the means and nothing Trump has done for the last 4 years has been for anyone's best interests but his.

So spoken from the guy who wants to save the people by blowing them up and shooting them. War is a great way to stop people from getting hurt.

You want to save the people just like pro-life people want to save the babies.

No one seems to be arguing that Trump is doing this for his own reasons and it has nothing to do with actually making things better. It still ends up being the right decision even if the reasons are fucked. The wars in afganistan have never brought peace or victory. The idea that it is for the people's benefit is fucked when no one who claims to want to save the people gives one shit about actually saving people. They just want a false flag of rightousness to fight for. The calls for a war for the people of afganistan are just a pretense to caring and the fight is just there so the people pushing for it can pretend they are doing something. The 14th does not care about the well being of people. He just wants a fight that he can feel good about.

We should note he still hasn't punched a single Nazi despite wanting others to do it. This is not because the nazis are hiding, but because he is a cowardly and craven armchair warrior.

So, how many Nazis have you punched, Comrade?

Tererun will surely tell you that punching a Nazi doesn't solve anything. Nor does voting strategically to remove a Nazi from the White House. The only effective way to change things is to spend all day online spamming obscure message boards and driving random people suicide. That's what real heroes do.

ISIS developed during the Obama administration.

Thank you Trump, but you failed to bother with the point. You do not give a fuck about people being maimed or killed when your solution isi war and dropping bombs in their neighborhoods. How many innocenti people have been maimed, killed, or lost friends and family due to US actions in afganistan? The number is insane, but you want to keep doing that while never putting an end to an acid attack or criminalizing any ISIS activity.

You are fucking pathetic. You just want to be violent so you can wave a flag and pretend you did something while not addressing a single issue you claim to care about. At least dayton had the courtesy to admit he was a hateful little weakling who wanted others to be harmed so he could feel better about himself.

Dude, the nazis are marching local to everyone in the US and you cannot even yell at one on the internet. In the words of GnR you are nothi8ng but a fucking pussy.

ISIS was founded in 1999 and was operating in Iraq as early as 2003. Obama's half-assed approach to Iraq and Syria definitely helped them, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ISIL

Either way Trump had nothing to do with the rise of ISIS and as far as I know, the Trump administration has been pretty successful in driving them out.

Either your reading comprehension is terrible, or you've confused yourself in a knee-jerk attempt to defend Trump. Which is it?

I can agree that Trump did not create ISIS, but he also has not done shit to stop them. If there has been any american effect on the fall of ISIS in the trump administration it is because he just let the military go about their business and didn't fuck things up. I have not caused any car wrecks in michigan, but I should not be credited with making their roads safer by staying away even if I tend to cause people to wreck quite often.

BTW I do not have many car accidents, I have on purposes.

Part of being a leader is allowing your people to do their jobs without micromanaging them every step of the way.

Yes, but playing with the tweeter while ignoring your job responsibilities is the sign of a shitty manager.

Holy heck you're gullible.

You won't get any argument from me there.