Afghanistan

[Trenchcoat]

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.

From the pics in the news article it looks like they prefer to stick to their old tried & tested AK-47, amazing the longevity & effectiveness of that weapon, still up there with the best even in this day and age.

[fathertime]

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.

It isn't the US's responsibility to be there. 

At one point they harbored terrorists and if it becomes a staging ground for terrorism then I'm sure we will be bombing them again (If we ever stop to begin with).    If they pose no direct threat to us in terms of terrorism, than they can live the way they want. 

We (The US) have too many responsibilities to handle here at home. 

Fathertime! 

[fathertime]

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.

We lost, using nuclear weapons now is tantamount to throwing a tantrum, at the world's expense.    I say we take our lumps and move on to other items on the agenda.  I'm sure there are plenty of good people in Afghanistan.  If the taliban were so bad and unpopular, they would have been extinct by now.  They have withstood decades of US bombing and have done nothing but get stronger.  It seems clear the populace is more supportive of them, than we would like.  Let's move on. 

Fathertime! 

[BillyB]

From the pics in the news article it looks like they prefer to stick to their old tried & tested AK-47, amazing the longevity & effectiveness of that weapon, still up there with the best even in this day and age.

Obama used American taxpayer money to buy them Russian arms and military equipment in his Reset, let's be friends moment. Over time, they will be replacing Russian with Chinese military equipment. China quickly inserted themselves into Afghanistan and is going to guarantee no NATO member comes back.

[BillyB]

I'm actually shocked CNN hammered Biden completely and says he owns this mess. They told the truth. Biden pulled 2500 troops out and then within days had to send more than double the amount back for damage control. They said Biden ignored the good advice he was given months ago. They also showed footage of people hanging onto the exterior plane on the runway and later falling to their death after the plane is in the air. Is MSM preparing Biden for a fall?

[Boethius]

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.

The literacy rate is 43%. 

[BC]

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.

Sometimes, mhr7, we can only plant a seed and give water for a while.  The rest is not up to us.

Maybe their appetite has been whetted, and folks there will find ways to keep it growing.

[Trenchcoat]

Obama used American taxpayer money to buy them Russian arms and military equipment in his Reset, let's be friends moment. Over time, they will be replacing Russian with Chinese military equipment. China quickly inserted themselves into Afghanistan and is going to guarantee no NATO member comes back.

They'll also have these:

http://www.google.com/amp/s/nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-the-114-year-old-lee-enfield-rifle-is-only-now-being-retired-by-the-canadian-armed-forces/wcm/8ae073f8-7d26-44e9-9550-61219cfdda7e/amp/

Another gun classic but with an incredible range, far greater than an AK47, only downside is the reload time. Still great in sniper situations.

[BC]

I'm actually shocked CNN hammered Biden completely and says he owns this mess. They told the truth. Biden pulled 2500 troops out and then within days had to send more than double the amount back for damage control. They said Biden ignored the good advice he was given months ago. They also showed footage of people hanging onto the exterior plane on the runway and later falling to their death after the plane is in the air. Is MSM preparing Biden for a fall?

Other nations are flying out their dual citizens and others that supported their missions.  i.e. Germany and France.

The issue is mostly optical.  Folks got scared, abandoned lines, jumped fences, whatever and made a run to the planes, putting themselves and the planes in danger.

Germans report the situation has stabilized.  They only took 7 back yesterday, aborting loading early as they didn't want folks getting caught up in the propellers, causing a PR shitstorm.  Two planes now bringing folks to Germany. The US pilot yesterday made a bad call, or obeyed bad orders by insisting on taking off.  An aircraft commander has the final call.  If aware of the situation, the pilot put not only the folks hanging onto the plane in grave danger, but the aircraft and all those inside as well.  Jet engines are designed to survive ingesting some small birds and such, but not persons.  The visuals, of course, were terrible, and upsetting.

I've seen no reports of the Taliban interfering with the evacuation efforts to any great extent.  If they want to stand as a government, they likely have been told, and realized, they will have to act and take responsibilities as one.

Anyway lets hope for the best instead of hyping the worst possible outcomes.  Only time will tell.

[2tallbill]

The literacy rate is 43%.

So says the internet, who did the literacy test? Was it Google?

Did they ONLY check in Kabul because they would probably be beheaded in the
Rural areas, 71 per cent of the population live in rural areas. Very few women
in the rural areas go to school.

"Kem estimated that only 2 to 5 percent of Afghan recruits could read at a third-grade level despite efforts by the United States to enroll millions of Afghan children in school over the previous decade. “The literacy was just insurmountable,” he said in an Army oral-history interview"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

Afghan Army's 90% Illiteracy Rate Big Training Obstacle
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/09/afghan_armys_90_percent_illite.html


Illiteracy undermines Afghan army training
Afghan army recruit Shahidullah Ahmadi can't read — and neither can nine out of 10
soldiers in the Afghan National Army.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32844807


Fifty-five per cent of Afghan children under the age of five cannot develop physically
or mentally as they should, due to chronic nutritional deficiency.
http://www.wvi.org/afghanistan/article/latrines-sanitation-afghan-communities

[2tallbill]

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

Excellent plan! Imagine all the women you could acquire for some goats
and a donkey or two. Bring along some nice healthy UK goats
Boer Goats for Sale 5 Nannies 2kids only £550
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/pets-animals/sap/wpzdd6fXbQ0EE16WaCk9XQ?slot=1

If less than half of Afghan women have used toilet paper, what percentage
shave their legs or their armpits I wonder? What percentage have most of
their teeth?

Surely you will get used to the smell eventually. I am not so sure that a
fatty from Blighty who uses toothpaste every day wouldn't be preferable. 
I am sure that nobody would question your expertise on the Koran since
most of them can't read anyway. I doubt that they would put your head
on a pike, you should do it!

Udachi!

Bill

[BillyB]

The US pilot yesterday made a bad call, or obeyed bad orders by insisting on taking off.  An aircraft commander has the final call.  If aware of the situation, the pilot put not only the folks hanging onto the plane in grave danger, but the aircraft and all those inside as well.  Jet engines are designed to survive ingesting some small birds and such, but not persons.  The visuals, of course, were terrible, and upsetting.

Why blame it on the aircraft pilot? He/She had to follow orders and was probably ordered to take off knowing humans on the exterior of the plane would freeze at high altitude or blow off falling to their death. I wonder if the people at the State Department making the calls were the same people making the calls at Bengazi.





Viewer discretion is advised. Somebody needs to be held accountable for this.


http://t.me/disclosetv/4084




 We evacuated troops before civilians. Even if you don't care about Afghanis, there are still 10,000 American citizens stuck in Afghanistan. Pulling out our citizens and friends before troops is common sense. This Build Back Better program isn't looking too good right now. People are going on MSM saying they provided plans for the government to pull out the proper way and it was ignored. They said they had a list of 80K+ Afghanis that needed to get out before America leaving the country. They had reports that the Afghan military can't be depended on because they aren't getting paid and moral is low. Our 2500 troops Trump left there kept everybody relatively safe while the Afghan army did most of the fighting. Seeing us leave broke what spirit they had left.

[GQBlues]

I listened very carefully to Biden's address to the nation regarding Afghanistan yesterday. I admit to giving him the utmost respect for his reasons and decision he shared to the American people to stand firm. More importantly, to own up to the consequences of that decision. Absolutely nothing Biden said in that address I disagree with.

Trump was right (again). America's biggest enemy of the people today is the mainstream media.

Pres. Ghani assured Biden in June and July that the Afghans are prepared for any possible confrontation the Talibans may bring. This was proven wrong at the 11th hour. After years of training, trillion of dollars spent, arming a robust army of 300,000; to see it wither in an instant cannot be blamed on Biden. If Afghans won't fight for their freedom and country, why should Americans continue to shed its blood in that land. To the Talibans' credit, violence was minimize. They are allowing foreigners safe passage so far. While it remains to be seen, offering amnesty to Afghans who sided with the allies during the occupation.

We were wrong to invade and attempt to nation-build any country. We succeeded in achieving the principal reason why we went to Afghanistan in the first place, with the support of 97% of Americans.

The Talibans vowed they will honor one of the main condition of the peace brokered by the Trump administration. The Taliban will never again harbor any militant who pledges harm to another nation. If this proves true, we have achieved what we went to Afghanistan to begin with. In exchange, the US vowed to recognize the Talibans as a legitimate governing, political entity in their nation. Time will tell.

The nation building mission, unfortunately, was a bad call. Time told us so, time and again.

[Boethius]

So says the internet, who did the literacy test? Was it Google?

Did they ONLY check in Kabul because they would probably be beheaded in the
Rural areas, 71 per cent of the population live in rural areas. Very few women
in the rural areas go to school.

"Kem estimated that only 2 to 5 percent of Afghan recruits could read at a third-grade level despite efforts by the United States to enroll millions of Afghan children in school over the previous decade. “The literacy was just insurmountable,” he said in an Army oral-history interview"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

Afghan Army's 90% Illiteracy Rate Big Training Obstacle
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/09/afghan_armys_90_percent_illite.html


Illiteracy undermines Afghan army training
Afghan army recruit Shahidullah Ahmadi can't read — and neither can nine out of 10
soldiers in the Afghan National Army.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32844807


Fifty-five per cent of Afghan children under the age of five cannot develop physically
or mentally as they should, due to chronic nutritional deficiency.
http://www.wvi.org/afghanistan/article/latrines-sanitation-afghan-communities

For almost two decades, the UN has been training Afghans to operate schools.  My statistic is from the UN, and their statistics on these matters tend to be accurate.


9 million of Afghanistan's roughly 11 million children attend school, so it's not restricted to cities.  That is probably what is most at risk, primarily for girls.

[BC]

 Seeing us leave broke what spirit they had left.

Their spirit was broken long ago, by tweet.

http://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/10/08/taliban-cheer-trump-tweet-promising-early-us-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

[BillyB]

I listened very carefully to Biden's address to the nation regarding Afghanistan yesterday. I admit to giving him the utmost respect for his reasons and decision he shared to the American people to stand firm. More importantly, to own up to the consequences of that decision. Absolutely nothing Biden said in that address I disagree with.

It was a decent speech because he didn't write it. At the end of the teleprompter it said "Leave now". They knew reporters were going to ask some really hard questions so he walked away like a coward. The words were good, the action was not. He didn't truly own the chaos in Kabul.


Most Americans agree we need to leave Afghanistan. Most of us are having issues about the way we left. Little or no regard for innocent human lives who were are friends over their. Our troops were ordered to leave before our own citizens. We don't know the full extent of the damage yet. There is a chance some American English school teacher in a remote village couldn't make it back to Kabul and will later be on tv denouncing America right before her head gets chopped off. The Taliban knows Biden isn't coming back over something like that. They are going to make examples and show the world we aren't reliable or take care of our own and humiliate us by driving our equipment we abandoned in a hasty retreat in a victory parade. So what some may say. These events will hurt America's ability to perform on the world stage for years or decades since many nations won't recognize us as a responsible world leader. China will be a winner in this event and when it comes to survival, nations will side with a winner even if the winner is not a good guy.

If Afghans won't fight for their freedom and country, why should Americans continue to shed its blood in that land.

There's an information war that crushed their moral. Biden in the speech said we pay for the army but soldiers aren't getting paid. The Taliban puts out propaganda saying "We are brothers and you've sided with Great Satan" and "Great Satan will abandon you". Once they realize the Taliban was right they were abandoned without a peace deal to guarantee their survival, of course many soldiers are going to run.




Khrushchev said he was going to take America without firing a single shot. How does something like that happen? We too are in an information war that will affect our survival as a nation. This war is more important than the one in Afghanistan. We criticize the Afghan Army but look at us. Some of us don't know what is going on and if we don't think there is a problem, we won't take action to correct the problem. From my observations, those people tend to be on the left. There are some soldiers in the Afghan army like that too. Some of us know there's a problem but we are too weak lacking the courage to take action or we are too lazy. From my observations, those people tend to be on the right. There are some soldiers in the Afghan army like that too. Who are we to criticize the Afghan army for failing to defend their country. There are powerful people influencing them and there are powerful people influencing us, manipulating our minds neutralizing our ability to see a problem or if we see, we refuse to act. I hope my signature line helps people understand the magnitude of the situation and start figuring it out so we can win this information war. When people can't figure it out and don't take preventive measures, they'll lose their freedoms and eventually their country. Just ask the Afghanis and Venezuelans how things are going. Once you lose it all, it's hard to get it back.

[GQBlues]

Their spirit was broken long ago, by tweet.

http://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/10/08/taliban-cheer-trump-tweet-promising-early-us-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

...and you keep harping you only deal in 'facts'. US military is not ready to leave Afghanistan et al if it had its way. It handed Biden an erroneous intelligence, unless you're telling me Biden completely ignored every warning that Pentagon gave him that the money we spent training Afghanistan's army was for naught, and they knew they wouldn't fight once the Taliban came. The military couldn't play Biden, nor Trump, the way they played Obama like an idiot.

US military brass generally didn't like Trump because Trump wanted to pull the US out of all these stupid hot zones, including getting the f@ck out of useless NATO, and useless UN if he could.

[BC]

GQ,

The US made a deal.  Short extension aside, Biden held our part of the deal and did not renege on it.

To not do so would mean either prolonging another 20 years, or a very nasty withdrawal.

[BillyB]

GQ, I've read recent posts from retired officers that included generals that can now speak freely. They don't like these endless wars. They don't like seeing civilians and their troops being killed for no valid reason. They don't like the promises they made to allies not being kept by new management. They don't like seeing that we're using $75,000 hellfire missiles to take out $50 Taliban communication repeaters duct taped to a pole made of PVC. You're assuming they don't care about anything but war and intentionally deceiving whichever president is in office so they can play endless wargames. A handful may be like that but I believe most won't do that. If you think our generals are worse than our politicians, then politicians successfully fooled us so we assign blame on others instead of them, who control the purse strings of war.


Ret. General Flynn, who ran military Intelligence, says one of the most important books on war we should read is the 1935 "War is a Racket".  I read a brief description of the book which basically says profit is made off human suffering. It says we pay the bills and others in industry makes the profit. It also tells us how to end the racket. Gen Flynn is one of the leaders in this fight to making sure we can elect good people to run this nation. I've woken up. If we don't take action for the better, we should expect never ending wars and human suffering on a higher frequency than normal.

[GQBlues]

The full Biden address yesterday. I couldn't care less if this was scripted because he's out there in front of all of us speaking and owning up to things he decided upon. Bush wasn't this courageous, not Trump and certainly not Obama. How refreshing.


Stop the partisanship for a change...

[tfcrew]

The full Biden address yesterday. I couldn't care less if this was scripted because he's out there in front of all of us speaking and owning up to things he decided upon. Bush wasn't this courageous, not Trump and certainly not Obama. 

If Biden was so courageous, why did he turn his back on the press [review the last seconds of the clip]...mosey on out and run on aboard his chopper and return to Camp David and resume his [much deserved?] vacation ??

"Owned up"? More like CYA'd up to me.
 

[GQBlues]

If Biden was so courageous, why did he turn his back on the press [review the last seconds of the clip]...mosey on out and run on aboard his chopper and return to Camp David and resume his [much deserved?] vacation ??

"Owned up"? More like CYA'd up to me.

When you finally understand the difference between a national address from a press conference, you will soon find that what you seek, grasshopper.

[fathertime]

If Biden was so courageous, why did he turn his back on the press [review the last seconds of the clip]...mosey on out and run on aboard his chopper and return to Camp David and resume his [much deserved?] vacation ??

"Owned up"? More like CYA'd up to me.

He spoke up and stated his case...your comments are that of the typical partisan hack, as usual.    Biden wasn't responsible for the past 20 years.  He was the one to finally exit us, honoring trump's pledge. I agree with the both of them on that one.      I'm sure it wasn't perfect but it never was going to be.     I'm glad we are done there.  Hopefully our military/leadership doesn't find another land to occupy. 

Fathertime! 

[fathertime]

  China will be a winner in this event and when it comes to survival, nations will side with a winner even if the winner is not a good guy.[/size][/font]

Who is to say China won't be the good guy, or at least the decent guy?  Right now we (The US) are considered the bad guy, and probably rightfully so.  If Afghanistan's govt decides to align with China, that is their choice, and perhaps a good one.  We spent an extra 18 or so years making asses of ourselves in another country and the result is working out badly.  I'm not sure what the final count of women/children dead, but it's enough make us rather disliked among many. 

Fathertime! 

[tfcrew]

your comments are that of the typical partisan hack, as usual.   

But yours never are huh?

He spoke up and stated his case

He spoke up and covered his ass. A true leader takes responsibility and doesn't blame everyone else for issues and problems. 4:55 into the clip---JB blames the Afghan leadership...5:00--blames the Afghan army... Another thing--why were there 2500 non combatant personnel in Afghanistan? That is more than there were US troops left. Whose idea was it to turn Afghanistan into a stalwart liberal country with women representation who had basically no education themselves? Answer-- Obama and Clinton and yet Biden stood there [see the clip] and said there was not supposed to be a nation building intention there.
I don't mind being called a political hack but I contend I am not the only one.