Afghanistan

[Trenchcoat]

Looks like it has all fallen apart pretty quickly out there for the former Afghan government and the Taliban are back in power. Soldiers out there at present to evacuate embassy staff while the Taliban having moved into Kabul at the same time. Guessing it might be a tense time if Taliban fighters engage forces of the US, UK, etc. With the US & UK's budgets in a perilous state because of the pandemic I'm guessing money to fight a Taliban insurgency was out of the question.

It's looking like all that time, money, effort, bother and lives lost out there was all a waste of time. I never thought in the first place it was worth the hassle the way Bush & Blair went about it. Seems their strategy was all wrong and they never did their homework to learn from the Soviets mistakes out there. Can't think life is going to be very easy for the Afghan people now that the Taliban are back in power. Hardship & the Coronavirus knocking around for them I would have thought. Little to no aid from the west forthcoming I would reckon.

[mhr7]

It was an absolutely stupid, foolish, idiotic idea to remove troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban are retaking the country, what did the US think would happen? The Taliban now have the equipment and weaponry we gave to the Afghan military and are stronger than ever. Stupid, stupid move.

[tfcrew]

It was an absolutely stupid, foolish, idiotic idea to remove troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban are retaking the country, what did the US think would happen? The Taliban now have the equipment and weaponry we gave to the Afghan military  ... stupid move.

I believe it was stupid to go in there in the first place. The British failed there...the Russians did too.

The Taliban now have the equipment and weaponry we gave to the Afghan military

Odd..that happened in Vietnam also if I recall.

[2tallbill]

It was an absolutely stupid, foolish, idiotic idea to remove troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban are retaking the country, what did the US think would happen? The Taliban now have the equipment and weaponry we gave to the Afghan military and are stronger than ever. Stupid, stupid move.

It was always going to happen. There was never going to be a long term solution where
Afghanistan turned into a real country with peace, prosperity and unbuggered camels.

[BillyB]

The Taliban visited China two weeks ago. Probably told them someone in America owes them a favor so get your troops ready. In exchange for getting America out of Afghanistan, they must do business with China.


No sane American general would flee so quickly leaving behind billions of dollars worth of military equipment for the enemy to have. Giving up strategic military bases is one thing but they would take the equipment out of there. The way we left Afghanistan wasn't because of a bad decision. It was done on purpose. No expert advisor would've recommended that type of exit that leads to chaos and death. Trump had a peace plan with the Taliban that they wouldn't commit violence and get along with the Afghan government if we left and we were supposed to leave May this year. I don't want our troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East forever but we need to be responsible on how we leave. We owe it to the people we claim to care about.


China put out an announcement yesterday asking the Taliban to negotiate peace with the Afghan president. Of course they didn't mean it. Today the Afghan president fled the country.


Civilian flights at Kabul's airport have been cancelled since the Taliban has arrived. The Taliban has release photos of themselves in the Presidential Palace. Military flights are still happening and videos showing thousands of Afghani's pleading for a flight out of there. The Taliban will execute those who are our friends and rape their wives and kids.


After the Taliban names the country "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", China will humiliate us by officially recognizing the name and new government of Afghanistan at the UN. The Taliban will have victory parades in our military equipment. Our allies such as Taiwan will wonder how reliable we are to their future.


I know an Afghani living in America. Before 9/11 he told me about life back home. The authorities would show up at a soccer game and in front of people, chop off prisoners hands for stealing, chop off their feet for running away from authorities, and chop off their heads for worse offenses. No judge, no jury and no trial. You have to trust the police that those prisoners were guilty.


Afghanistan will go back to the Stone Ages and stone women who attempt to read books.

[BC]

It was an absolutely stupid, foolish, idiotic idea to remove troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban are retaking the country, what did the US think would happen? The Taliban now have the equipment and weaponry we gave to the Afghan military and are stronger than ever. Stupid, stupid move.

It was either that, or expand the war.  Promises for our withdrawal in May were made long ago, our in exchange for safe passage.  If that holds, and the airport is not directly attacked with high casualties, fine by me.

[Trenchcoat]

Did I hear they'll put women in their place

Problem always was that the Afghan Army was never going to be reliable. As this shows it doesn't matter how many years pass they always act the same, they change sides where their self interests lay, the prime one being self preservation so can't blame them really. The only thing that kept them from doing so o date was a large US/UK army presence so their self preservation was secure. As we know of the Taliban they are not one cohesive force but are made up of many groups. A large part of the Taliban is probably likely to be defected Afghan Army forces, hence why he Taliban advanced so quickly after we left as Afghan Army forces switched sides thereby quickly giving territory to the Taliban, in name at least.

My guessing on how this works is essentially the Taliban offers sweeteners to the Afghan forces, control of local tax revenue, land, poppy drug growing areas, etc that or risk their lives fighting them, their families, etc. With US/UK forces gone the self survival option kicked in and they switched sides and got better off financially and saved their lives. Anyhow the bigger the Taliban force got the more they could threaten to crush smaller forces so the more easier it becomes to persuade the smaller force to avoid almost certain destruction and the loss of their lives and switch sides.

The only way to avoid this would be to permanently station a foreign US/UK army out there forever. That is a financially costly undertaking  and one that is financially burdensome to keep up. Once our economies got hit by the virus pandemic and our governments are now in dire straits financially it's not something we can do anymore.

Main problem from the outset was that Bush & Blair failed to understand the Afghanistan problem and it's country and work on a strategy that took into account how things work out there.

[Nightwish]

USA fucked up
UN fucked up
EU fucked up

Afghanistan is a fucked up country and it will never be anything else. Better leave it to become a Khalifate and all muslims that desire that can move there.  Just put an iron ring around the country and don't let anyone leave.. if you enter - see ya never

[ML]

I am simply sick over the killed and maimed USA (and allied) military personnel . . . all in vain.

[tfcrew]

US officials say 7 killed in Kabul airport evacuation chaos

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Thousands of Afghans rushed onto the tarmac of Kabul's international airport Monday, so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto an American military jet as it took off and plunged to death in chaos that killed at least seven people, U.S. officials said.
The crowds of people rushing the airport came as the Taliban enforced their rule over the wider capital after a lightning advance across the country that took just over a week to dethrone the country's Western-backed government. While there were no major reports of abuses, many stayed home and remained fearful as the insurgents' advance saw prisons emptied and armories looted.
The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, bringing an end to a two-decade campaign in which the U.S. and its allies had tried to transform Afghanistan. The country's Western-trained security forces collapsed or fled, ahead of the planned withdrawal of the last American troops at the end of the month.
Residents raced to Kabul's international airport, where the “civilian side” was closed until further notice, according to Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority. The U.S. military and other Western forces continued to organize evacuations.

MORE [w/video] ---  http://www.aol.com/news/ap-sources-seven-people-dead-143451082-145334822.html
This stuff also happened in Vietnam.

[tfcrew]

Russia says Afghan president fled with cars and helicopter full of cash - RIA

MOSCOW, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Russia's embassy in Kabul said on Monday that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in, the RIA news agency reported.
Ghani, whose current whereabouts are unknown, said he left Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban entered Kabul virtually unopposed. He said he wanted to avoid bloodshed. read more
Russia has said it will retain a diplomatic presence in Kabul and hopes to develop ties with the Taliban even as it says it is no rush to recognise them as the country's rulers and will closely observe their behaviour.
http://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/russia-says-afghan-president-fled-with-cars-helicopter-full-cash-ria-2021-08-16/

"As for the collapse of the (outgoing) regime, it is most eloquently characterised by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan," Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Kabul, was quoted as saying by RIA.
"Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac," he was quoted as saying.

http://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/russia-says-afghan-president-fled-with-cars-helicopter-full-cash-ria-2021-08-16/
Gee! Lucky for him!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Profits and poppy: Afghanistan's illegal drug trade a boon for Taliban

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The United States spent more than $8 billion over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan's opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to airstrikes and raids on suspected labs.
That strategy failed.
As the United States wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world's biggest illicit opiate supplier and looks certain to remain so as the Taliban is on the brink of taking power in Kabul, said current and former U.S. and U.N. officials and experts.
The latest from Afghanistan

• Shops close, security guards flee in Afghan capital
• Taliban surge exposes U.S. failure to build Afghan army
• Timeline: The Taliban's rapid advance

Widespread destruction during the war, millions uprooted from their homes, foreign aid cuts, and losses of local spending by departed U.S.-led foreign troops are fueling an economic and humanitarian crisis that is likely to leave many destitute Afghans dependent on the narcotics trade for survival.

http://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/profits-poppy-afghanistans-illegal-drug-trade-boon-taliban-2021-08-16/

[GQBlues]

Finally we allowed Afghans to govern Afghanistan themselves. This is a problem why? When OBL left Afghanistan and hid in Pakistan, we should've left then.

The US had installed so many cruel dictators all over the world that caused so many casualties and deaths, but we need to invade and occupy a country because they harbored an idiot behind 911?

We could've snuffed the idiot out without invading an entire nation. Exactly how they did it in that Pakistani compound.


Biden on July 8th:

[tfcrew]

Russia says Afghan president fled with cars and helicopter full of cash

The more I think about it the more I would like to see Ghani deported from every country he runs to.....No doubt though, JB would take him in just like Carter did the Shah.

[BillyB]

I'm okay with Afghanis governing themselves but with a peace deal in hand where nobody gets violent when we leave. If we have to leave without a peace deal, we evacuate citizens before troops which is common sense.


A journalists said hundreds like him are trapped in Kabul. I'm sure everyone of them and their families are going to be slaughtered if they wrote a hit piece on the Taliban in the past. Its a matter of survival for those people. Some citizens looking to gain favor with their new masters will turn in citizens and journalists who they know said something bad about the Taliban. It'll be like Nazis rounding up the jews that got reported.




The mainstream media probably not going to show you all the videos since they don't want Biden to look so bad. Mass people at the airport on the runway. American military choppers swooped down to clear the runways. Military cargo plane takes off with people on the exterior hanging on. About a half dozen people fall to their deaths after the plane takes off. The other option is to wait for the Taliban to provide them with a slow painful death.




Taliban took over $700 million dollar American Embassy. Will probably give it to China. China put out a statement today saying their eager to do business with the Taliban. This all didn't happen 'unexpectedly' folks. It was planned.

[XMan]

I dug up an old email I sent to a friend of mine in June of 2003. What I said then applies today. You can never win a war in afghanistan. It doesn't matter if you stay there 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or a century. The moment we leave it will fall apart. They do not want democracy, they want theocracy. It's run by warlords who's allegiances change at the drop of a hat. The only way anyone could win in Afghanistan would be via genocide, wiping out the entire population of the country, and even then the Taliban would be hiding in Pakistan just waiting for the right moment to return. "All the war in Afghanistan will do is bankrupt the country,," and that's what it has done.  All the Hawks who insisted we stay and fight indefinitely would have sung a completely different tune if the politicians said we will have to raise your taxes in order to pay for this war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  Prior to George W., No president in the history of the U.S. started a war (Iraq) and cut taxes.  The beginning of the end was when he did so.  Our national debt, which actually went down during 2 years of the Clinton administration, ballooned, and only got worse under Obama and Trump.  Now there is no hope of change for the better.  When we lose our status as the world's reserve currency, one will be able look back and pinpoint the outset of that loss.  Two wars while lowering taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  It made them wealthier, but did zero for the middle class.  All the loves lost and we gained nothing.  It merely weakened us for other challenges (Iran, China, Russia). 

[GQBlues]

I'm okay with Afghanis governing themselves but with a peace deal in hand where nobody gets violent when we leave. If we have to leave without a peace deal, we evacuate citizens before troops which is common sense...

Once again, Pentagon intelligence were either way off in their assessment/intelligence, or it was clearly stupid to actually even 'believe' the Talibans would uphold their end of this deal. US generals believed the Talibans will eventually take over the country in the ensuing '18 months', with which Biden declared it's highly unlikely that the Talibans will, or can, take over. I don't blame Biden for this wacky Pentagon intelligence.

Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/14/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-afghanistan/

All the money did was enriched the tribal leaders in the country.

[BillyB]

Guys, regardless if you think we shouldn't be there or the result would be the same no matter how we left, we should make an attempt to leave in a responsible way. We owe it to the people there that we gave hope to. Not only is our reputation at stake, people's lives are at stake. The Pentagon last year that gave Trump good advice to only leave with a peace deal in hand is the same Pentagon that is advising Biden this year. Their advice hasn't change but it wasn't accepted by Biden.


Watch this video of an Afghani girl crying. She looks like she could be living in a Western country but she's in Afghanistan. She knows life is over for her. She knows her future will be painful.


http://t.me/WeTheMedia/29915



There's Tribal mentality in Afghanistan and some of those guy's thinking is no different than the warriors in Genghis Khan's time. They will go to villages that were friendly with us and confiscate their livestock and turn their children into sex slaves for Taliban soldiers. Children will be spoils of war. Look at the fear in those people's eyes if you can stomach it. Imagine if that were you and your family. People who you thought were your friends in America irresponsibly abandoned you but you're still at their mercy hoping they'll rescue you from the pain, suffering or death that the Taliban will bring your family. You won't see our mainstream media reporting the worst crimes against humanity in their attempt to soften the criticism against Biden. Next week they'll probably talk about the increasing shark attacks off the coast of Florida to take our minds off what we've done.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9883367/Taliban-going-door-door-forcibly-marrying-girls-young-TWELVE.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead


What is going on is not what the average American wants and doesn't reflect American values. We do not want this and we are not celebrating. We would not have voted in leaders to do something like this. You guys know how I feel about the election and I feel China is currently involved in our foreign and domestic policies. See how quickly China filled in the void considering we haven't fully left Afghanistan yet? Border crisis, pandemic crisis, inflation crisis, and now this crisis that are all by design. They want never ending crisis. This is not based off bad decisions. They know what they are doing. They want misery and suffering. Constant complaining isn't going to change things for the better. We need more action and less talk otherwise we are going to get more of the same.

[GQBlues]

BillyB-

There's 'crisis' everywhere. Haiti, Belarus, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Libya, So. Africa, Hong Kong...etc. Not to mention homelessness and opioid epidemic here at home. Enough.

We have simply been incompetent with the governments and leaders we've elected in the recent past.

We're the ones who reneged on this peace deal. We didn't leave when we originally said we will. The US hasn't suffered any casualty since the peace was brokered, that much you could at least look at. To this day, despite thousands of troops in Kabul, we couldn't even managed safe passage from the US embassy to Kabul's airport, a 2-mile long surface street even after trillions of dollars and a 20-year stay, that we had to fly between the two destinations in helicopters. Talibans can very easily make this far more bloodier if they really wanted to.

[2tallbill]

USA fucked up
UN fucked up
EU fucked up

Afghanistan is a fucked up country and it will never be anything else. Better leave it to become a Khalifate and all muslims that desire that can move there.  Just put an iron ring around the country and don't let anyone leave.. if you enter - see ya never

They have never had a 30% literacy rate. Team Obama bumped them up 10 points
or so but they were using fake math and making up the numbers in the countryside.
Nobody outside of Kabul can read. The word for cousin and enemy are the same. 

jb once said that they should have made the place a glass parking lot and he wasn't
wrong.

[Sailor291]

Having been to Afghanistan on 3 different occasions, it pains me to think of the wonderful people I worked with there.  They must be terrified now.  It’s so sad on so many levels.

[Nightwish]

They have never had a 30% literacy rate. Team Obama bumped them up 10 points
or so but they were using fake math and making up the numbers in the countryside.
Nobody outside of Kabul can read. The word for cousin and enemy are the same. 

jb once said that they should have made the place a glass parking lot and he wasn't
wrong.

We have about 200 000 afghani refugees here in Sweden, about 99.99999% are men in their 20-40's even though they all try to come forward as 17 to be treated as a lone-coming child and get instant permit to stay. (AND SUCCEED!)

If they went back with a AK in their hands they could easily have helped defeat the Talibans with a little training, but they don't want to, they don't want to live there. They don't want that country, they know what a shithole it is, 50-60% of them never even lived in Afghanistan, they came directly from Iran. Many others from Pakistan.

Use your nukes I say.. flatten it to a big solar array and we can harvest the energy created here in the west.

[Trenchcoat]

Idk, doesn't sound too bad, I could go there become a religious Guru to the Taliban get my own hot Afghani sex slave woman and live in a country where feminism is banned, yeppee!!!

2022 could see me all garbed up in some Mosque in Afghanistan with my dating problems solved me thinks

[BillyB]

Having been to Afghanistan on 3 different occasions, it pains me to think of the wonderful people I worked with there.  They must be terrified now.  It’s so sad on so many levels.

I know Vietnam veterans who felt the same about what happened in Vietnam. You know there are good people in Afghanistan and you developed a bond with them. They are innocent of the politics and games being played with their lives.


Regardless of how our leaders got us there, they need to get us and our friends out responsibly. Abandoning those who helped us root out terrorists is backstabbing them. When lives are on the line, there are zero excuses for anything less than making the best effort. How we left Afghanistan and abandoned our friends there is a disgrace and people all over the world recognizes it for what it is. Anybody who thinks we couldn't have been more responsible, you're putting yourself in the same group as Biden.


2000+ American soldiers died there for what? We left giving the Taliban all our equipment and they will be taking the equipment of the Afghan army making them more powerful than ever.

[GQBlues]

The US had a relatively efficient withdrawal from Iraq. It didn't help that a short time later a makeshift ragtag militants (ISIS) took over despite all the money spent 'training' Iraq's military.


Security/sanity/responsibility in these nations doesn't lie with us, its' with their own population. 2001 Afghanistan's population grew by over 10 million by 2020 (21.1 - 33.2). This period saw a full generation come to 'military age'. If they saw anything we did as worth saving and protecting for the benefit of their own nation, then it can't possibly be that difficult to stop any transgressor/s. You are not witnessing any of that. You really don't need to ask why...

[mhr7]

It was either that, or expand the war.  Promises for our withdrawal in May were made long ago, our in exchange for safe passage.  If that holds, and the airport is not directly attacked with high casualties, fine by me.

We're turning our back on the Afghans. We gave them several years of what living in the 21st century feels like and now they go back to living in hell.