So we are supposed to keep kicking around the people of afganistan because some people might realize we had no business doing it in the first place? Now it is just our country's mission to keep kicking afganistan ass because some people might feel bad if we stopped? That is fucking demented, and I am the fucking evil troll demon.
Reel it in, nitwit. A lot of what we did in Afghanistan was due to the "we broke it we bought it" impulse once we'd done the initial campaign. The Taliban hosted and supported Bin Laden and that made them legitimate targets. Even then, had they not tried to shield him once we were after him, there'd have been no twenty+ year campaign. You probably weren't born yet on 9/11/2001 but the country was in a pretty foul mood from that and someone was gonna get an ass-whoopin' regardless of race, creed, or color. That the perps were all Muslim, well . . . maybe rethink your bronze-age religion a little and that shit won't happen.
Too bad it was your man Trump that signed the order to withdraw the troops. Not that Bush Jr., Obama and Biden don't have any culpability, but still.
All those troops did not die for nothing. They died for the MIC to use up some bombs so we can buy some more.
This is true. So, how do you propose we responsibly address the bad decisions we made? And please don’t say anything about US elections because everyone know that won’t help a damn thing - even if the side you thing is correct wins every election. No “we” didn’t. That is the result of bad decisions. The question is, how do we clean it up? Which country? I don’t see where you are pointing. Return? If you’re speaking of Afghanistan, there is no “return”, the military engagement never ended.
I'm not sure what to think of this. Western engagement seems riddled with mistakes and self-interest, to say the least. But Taliban control is unacceptable.
The only way you will not have the taliban take control is to kill the taliban. Or you could nuke the place and nobody gets it and we contribute to the environmental storm that is coming. Or we leave and let the taliban have it. How is letting the taliban having that effect everyone else?
By making better ones going forward. In the case, elections might not have mattered much, since both main candidates wanted to end the Afghan mission. But those plans should've been delayed if a Taliban takeover was in the offing. Not only is that terrible for us strategically, it shows our enemies--and our friends--that we won't endure. Yes, "we" did. Our leaders--accountable to us--made the decision. The world is apparently going to write a sternly-worded letter to the Taliban, letting them know they're going to get the diplomatic cold shoulder if they take over the country. As if they cared two shits about that. There is no cleaning this up. The people we tried to help there are now well and truly fucked; many who worked with us will be marked for death. A humanitarian crisis seems inevitable. Our best case outcome is that the depravity is contained to that one miserable state and that Afghanistan doesn't once again become a refuge for the worst extremists. This country. The United States. The one that tried to raise up the Afghanis, but has now abandoned them to a merciless enemy of civilization. Follow along, Jenee. We're leaving Afghanistan. The Taliban are going to take control of the whole state. By return I mean we may be sending troops back there in the not-too-distant future for the same reasons we sent them in 2001.
Pulling back Western forces to isolated or semi-isolated bases and authorizing them to act only to response to Taliban aggression or to conduct very specific anti-Taliban operations seemed like an easy choice to me.
And I'd happily let America nuke that entire nightmare of a country off the face of the Earth, even if it meant killing all the poor unfortunate people basically held hostage there in the process. Regardless, Afghanistan ended up a staging ground and hideaway for AQ because the rest of the world didn't have the courage to push back against the Taliban before it was too late. I have zero doubt that the Taliban will do the same thing once they take over again.
Many, many long talks with actual Middle Eastern women who'd lived there for decades ripped away a lot of the liberal platitudes and moral relativism most lefties have towards Islam and the countries where it's a majority. I remember once a friend was drunk and angry at a bar and ranting about how "ISIS is the true face of Islam, everything they're doing is justified by the Koran and a lot of Muslims wish they were brave enough to join them," and I had to get her to quiet down because her tone didn't make it clear whether her shouting was for or against them. While I'm telling stories, that same woman once turned to me in public and said "I don't like the dark people." "...what?" "You know... The dark people. Like Dark Vader. The dark side people." "Oh...the Sith? From the movie we watched yesterday? YOU DON'T LIKE THE SITH FROM STAR WARS? ...I'm saying this very loudly so no one thinks we're about to commit a hate crime."
I've been reading around this to try and clarify my thoughts. 70% of Afghans live on less than $1 per day. Obtaining food is a constant struggle. Horrible as Taliban might be, particularly to women, this is their primary concern, and many support or tolerate the Taliban because they see in them people who will help them eat. This is distinct from the remote and corrupt Kabul elite, whom they associate not just with the US but with foreigners generally - most of them have two passports. I don't know what to do with this, but it bears consideration. The material condition of the Afghan population is at least as important as the human rights which from one perspective could be considered a western luxury/fixation.
Maybe the Taliban will time their seizure of Kabul to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in a few weeks. Man, what a debacle.
The last 20 years of American foreign policy have taught the world that if you hang on to your WMDs like North Korea or Syria the US will leave you alone, even if you use them on your own people. The world also learned that if you give up your WMDs like Saddam or Gaddafi, you'll end up dead in the street. But most importantly, everyone learned that if you trust America like the Afghan interpreters or the Kurdish rebels, you'll eventually get stabbed in the back and left for dead.
The only silver lining to the situation I can see is that it's very unlikely any US President will invade NK or Iran in the next decade while Afghanistan is in recent memory.
A year ago: Afghanistan to release 400 'hard-core' Taliban prisoners in bid for peace Ya' think those mooks are helping to overrun the country right about now?
The "slap in the face" argument doesn't work for me, since it can be used to justify doubling down on just about any failed endeavor. What does influence me is the fact that every woman and girl in Afghanistan is about to be living in pure hell, if they aren't already. There aren't many regimes as evil as the Taliban, and the fact that they aren't much threat to the U.S. doesn't erase the moral problems involved in standing by and letting them brutally oppress millions of people when we're in a position where we might be able to prevent it.
So what exactly has the USA been spending money on and doing in Afghanistan all these years if the Taliban, who were supposed to be all but beaten at one point, just take over city after city in a matter of weeks? Not a good look
