This is horrible, but Trump's Taliban is at school board meetings threatening doctors and administrators with death for requiring kids wear masks in school. No one is at our schools arresting Trump's Taoliban or stopping them from patrolling our streets and issuing death threats to people for having an election that removed their glorious leader. I really do not understand why one person thousands of miles away is worth so much more than americans in america to america? Well, I guess a Canadian will not like america. Somehow I think america will survive the @14thDoctor 's pissbaby fit. Maybe he should actually do something like go to afganistan and rescue this guy? I am sure Canadian armchair Rambo will make a great carcass for carcass football.
"Feel free to take over the country and start murdering interpreters" was part of the Doha agreement? Let me flip the question around; how many Afghans would you accept the Taliban murdering for the sake of maintaining polite diplomatic relations?
Like I said the Taliban are awful, but you seem to be assuming that there is anything the military can do now that won't make things worse. This isn't about maintaining polite diplomatic relations, it's about acknowledging the reality of the situation.
Worse than the Taliban leisurely murdering countless Afghans for the crime of helping coalition forces? What's worse than that?
Yes, it would be worse if you consider the body count being the value you judge things by. Hostilities would cause the US to start it's casual bombing of innocents and the Taliban to start murdering more people in retaliation. So yes the idiocy of let us start a much bigger war would lead to more destruction and innocent casualties. It is just complete dumbassery to think killing more people in open war would somehow lower the body count and damage being done to afganistan.
2001 called, it wants it's "they'll greet us as liberators and it will all be over quickly" talking points back.
Fucking Christ man, I'm not talking about occupying the country for another 20 years, or 20 months, or 20 weeks. Maybe 20 days, tops. To evacuate human beings that supported the coalition and that will otherwise be literally murdered by the Taliban for having done so. And you want to leave them to die without any sort of struggle, for what? Do you seriously think the Taliban are trustworthy guys that won't target Westerners whenever they feel like based on decades or centuries old grievances anyway? Everyone with a brain and a heart understands that the Iraq war was a stupid pointless disaster of a war and it never should have happened. Everyone with a brain and a heart understands that the Vietnam war was a stupid pointless disaster of a war and it never should have happened. But not every single use of military force is automatically another Iraq war or Vietnam war. Not every possible conflict has to last two decades. Sometimes there are just bad people trying to hurt good people and those good people need more time to get on planes and escape the bad people. But fuck those people, right? They need to fucking die because you're still angry with Dick Cheney. But to repeat the question; What's worse than the Taliban leisurely murdering countless Afghans for the crime of helping coalition forces?
You know what you can do with those words you're trying to put into my mouth? You can take them, roll them up into a little ball, and shove them up your arse so they get to go live with all the other shit. Just a couple of nights ago I was spending time with the guy who is essentially my brother in law, with him talking about how he hadn't cried for years, but had been crying for days straight at what's going on. He was talking about his family back there, we were all talking about potential plans and strategies for getting them out. My father in law was showing conversations he had been having with them, and the fear they currently have for their lives. "Maybe 20 days, tops". Please, I would love as many people as possible to be saved. Explain how that happens.
I already answered that question, but since you and everyone else seem completely against the use of military force or any sort of defensive violence, I guess we're stuck with thoughts and prayers and those feelings of moral superiority.
This is a discussion about the US invasion, occupation and withdrawal from Afghanistan. I've given an opinion on that and stated that it is part of an ongoing pattern of US arrogance, aggression and lack of self awareness on the world stage, a sense of entitlement to act without due concern for, or even interest in, the impact it's actions have on innocent parties. I hadn't addressed you at all till you insulted me via a third party. I've many times expressed shame and indignation at our own foreign policy history but that is not being discussed, this shit show is.
Personal hostilities aside, can you show an example of a similar scenario where collaborators were not targeted? Even the most casual student of history could have predicted this with certainty, yet it has been allowed to happen anyway. It's well documented that post occupation there tends to be violence, both official and unofficial, aimed at punishing those perceived as having collaborated with the enemy. Typically whether that collaboration was an act of heroism or cowardice is a matter of perspective depending on the affiliation of the observer. Likewise the difference between resistance and insurgency is to all objective purposes partisan. Following WW2, for instance, there were severe consequences for those French who had aided, abetted or grown in any sense close to the Germans. As an aside that retribution was disproportionately targeted at women.
No, you've expressed a hope that somehow things would work. Let's say the withdrawal is extended for three weeks, more than the amount you said would be needed. How do people get to the airport when the Taliban are putting up roadblocks? Are the US troops going to fight them? Is that airport at the center of an active war zone going to get lots of civilians travelling to it?
It is going to happen because that is what fighting is, and because you cannot trust that the US won't target you and your assets with missile strikes. When the guy down the street has been working with the US, and you know all the US needs is to know your location and they can target you, of course they are going to kill a bunch of them. That is survival and to be expected. That is why you do not go in and set up this bullshit occupation. Since there was never a chance the US would make afganistan part of the US, this was always going to be the result. This is how wars are fought, and this is why way back when this shit was starting up I was screaming (In other places) no. This is what you will get when you do things like this. These other countries are not going to play polite war by your rules. They are different than the US and everyone else so they will have their own people doing their shit. When you can use a spy to mark targets in a foreign enemy land, anyone who is friendly with your enemy becomes a threat you need to kill. The taliban is not china or russia who can secure their airspace with mutually assured destruction. They know we can still cause them pain, and @14thDoctor is totally wrong if he thinks they are not aware. This is something they have to do. They have to beat down the people because they have enemies all around. Their brutality and hunt for traitors will make them somewhat safer from those who want to kill them.
Interesting: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...fly-kabul-amid-chaotic-evacuation/5580628001/ Bipartisanship still exists in Murica
........why the hell would people send their kids over there like....NOW :| We didn't all know it would be this bad but we knew it wasn't a great time to send anyone over there who didn't need to be.
Jesus wept. Was there any time over the last 40 years that would have been a safe one for a fucking school trip?
They want to send their kids to school without masks in a pandemic so they can mingle with others and bring home the COVID to their unvaxxed families. don't know what to say the monkeys won't do.
You seem to have posted a bunch of facts here without expressing any sort of opinion. Are you suggesting the murders the Taliban are planning are somehow okay because that's what winning sides tend to do? Do you think Biden should try to do more now to save more people, or are you fine just criticizing him for not doing more earlier? Is that just the way the cookie crumbles as far as you're concerned?
I'm saying this was always inevitable from the moment a US soldier set foot on the country. Ergo there were two responsible options, not invade on the vanishingly small chance of finding OBL amongst the chaos, or acknowledge that by doing so you are taking on an enormous long term duty of care. Anything in between and you're just presuming to cause death and suffering for no good reason.
Yeah yeah, you've been doing the Monday morning quarterback routine for several hundred posts now, we all get it. What are you proposing be done right now, about the people in danger at this very moment?
I'm a bit out of options at the moment, having spent about twenty years before this thread started beating the same drum, protesting the invasion at the time and predicting this precise outcome consistently ever since only to be told time and again that this was helping those civilians at the heroic cost of American blood. Many of us did. Have you any ideas short of re engaging? Perhaps open talks with the Taliban which start with a direct threat of military action made credible by public Western support for their victims?
Or, just maybe Biden have the conviction to acknowledge the error and put conditions on the withdrawal? Something to the effect of "The agreement you reached with my predecessor was based on your good conduct upon withdrawal. Clearly I was wrong to expect you would honour those conditions therefore you leave me no option other than to review the situation on an ongoing basis. Should it appear that innocent lives are being put at risk or human rights violated be under no illusions that we cannot or will not reverse our current course. The choice is yours, bitches". Or similar.
This. @14thDoctor seems to be assuming that anyone who thinks there is no quick solution here is against the idea of us having a duty of care for the mess we made. Absolutely not the case.
Largely on the topic of media bias, but also has some facts about the withdrawal you might not know. Did you know over 82,300 have already been evacuated, or that Biden has been threatening the Taliban if they interfere with the evacuation? Or that civilians KIA in Afghanistan are lower this year than any time since 2005? No? Here's an answer as to why. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/media-bias-biden-polls-approval-afghanistan-withdrawal.html
There's no need to fire on an enemy who is doing his best to leave your land forever. Q: What positive thing can we say about a humiliating retreat? A: We're making great time! And will the evacuations include all of those who have aided us? And will it include all stranded Americans? And will it get done by August 31? And what are we prepared to do if it isn't? With the country handed to the Taliban, the guys who sheltered bin Laden and al-Qaida. Can't help but be reminded: "They make a desolation and call it peace." Certainly the women are being quiet. And, of course, this kind of order comes under threat of death. But not to worry: if you aided the Coalition forces, there's no need for violence in the streets; they'll come for you at your home in good time. Uh huh. Inclusive meaning men and those who conform to radical sharia.
