It’s no different here, except both mainstream parties are centre right regimes catering to authoritarian rule.
The reason we invaded Afghanistan wasn’t because of the Taliban. We were perfectly fine with them being in power. The problem was that the Taliban was harboring Al Queda. Had that not been the case, we never would have invaded Afghanistan. If Al Queda reemerges in Afghanistan and the Taliban chooses to allow it, then we will probably have to go back. It’s quite possible that we would even give aid to the Taliban to fight Al Queda should they request it.
The Afghans are some of the most disregarded, trampled people I’ve ever seen. They have suffered so much with every major decision that larger powers have seen fit to inflict upon them for decades now, and this is just the latest, unavoidable iteration. My sincere hope is that we don’t ever find any reason to ever go back just so they have a chance of settling into some semblance of a routine again. The work I did there ultimately amounted to nothing and it wasn’t worth a single American casualty, and yet I find it impossible to muster any self-pity knowing the amount of suffering that will transpire over the following months for those people. And regarding blame - who cares. Biden’s exit is every bit as ham-handed as Trump’s bargain with the Taliban, Obama’s surge, and Bush’s invasion. Pulling the plug is a form of mercy and I’m just glad it’s over.
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I spent 4 years in Afghanistan, from Kandahar to the Chinese border. I am too angry to post anything about how I feel. This quote sums up most of my reactions.
The depressing truth is that we haven’t won a war in decades. We couldn’t defeat the Taliban, we didn’t bring peace and stability to Iraq. The military is filled with dedicated, courageous men and women, who are being abysmally served by their leadership."
If you want to read a primer on the war, this article sums it up. I have personally dealt with the massive corruption from the Afghan leadership, military, and police.
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Most Afghans want Taliban rule, that’s why they conquered the country within a month with little bloodshed. Don’t buy into warmongering propaganda from Zionists and war profiteers. This was inevitable and desirable, from the POV of the Afghans.
Haven’t declared one in even longer.
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So… I’ve been doing some research into this because I’ve seen quite a few kids post woke statements over standing in solidarity with the Afghan population. Talking of how barbaric it was to pull the troops out and subject the population to the barbaric prospect of Taliban rule and I thought to myself “like other incessant wokisms, this can’t be that black and white”
Here’s the conclusion I came to. The US invaded Afghanistan to push out Al Qaeda in the name of counter-terrorism. Osama Bin Laden/Al Qaeda orchestrated 9/11; no one fucks with America and get’s away with it!
The Taliban supported Al Qaeda, therefore they had to be pushed out of the region. If my sentiment is correct, the initial invasion had little/nothing to do with liberating the Afghans from Taliban rule. What’s more, it appears initially many living in Afghanistan at the time preferred Taliban rule over western rule as this kind of islamic fundamentalist indoctrination tends to be engrained from birth within countries that govern under shariah law.
Public support for the Taliban has trended down significantly, though a startling 15% or so still seem to support the Taliban, that’s almost 1/6. The Taliban was driven out of industrialised Afghanistan but still had a footing in remote communities. Que twenty years of non stop military presence, attempted westernisation of a culture embedded within fundamentalist roots, the occasional Taliban insurgency, widespread political corruption, billions and billions of dollars spent, lives lost for no good reason and I’m sitting here, reading and thinking “What the fuck? Who thought this was a good idea? You can’t suddenly Westernise a population and expect them to become obedient when they’ve been entrenched within radical jihadist, fundamentalist ideology since birth”.
The deal struck in 2020 more/less stated (correct me if I’m wrong) “we will pull troops out, the Taliban will re-take Afghanistan, or attempt to; but they’ll suppress al qaeda activity”. That’s like expecting Iran to legitimately stop producing nuclear weapons in exchange for the removal of restrictions on trade… HAAAAAAAAA
Unfortunately those who abide by Western philosophies but are stuck in Afghanistan are totally fucked, particularly women… that’s a horrible situation to think about… but what was the alternative? Continue to fight an endless war that can’t be won?
This is a laymen’s summary, but did I get it right or am I missing something?
Biden was the president ultimately pulled the troops out, but to my knowledge Trump wanted the troops out too. To peg this on a particular political ideology seems foolish. Regardless of who had won the election I think this would have happened. I mean, for gods sake; this is a war that had been going on for nearly TWO DECADES! We still hadn’t “won”…
This is an excellent article clearly explaining the difference between invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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I think you’re directionally correct. There’s another element that’s difficult to perceive from outside the country, and that’s the fragmentation and of the country’s population. The notion of a national identity probably runs strongly in the major cities (dunno for sure - was never in one). Outside the population centers, however, the levels of government that matter are family / tribe / village - and maybe at the top end - province. Most of those people have never seen a newspaper or a uniformed government official, never paid a tax dollar, never seen a tax dollar work for them, never voted, etc. In 2010, I entered a village where people thought we were the Soviets. So the notion that there’s some sort of national awareness and buy-in to what’s happening in Kabul is very much wrong. I think that national identity is as meaningless and intangible to many Afghans as identifying with a global hemisphere would be for someone living in a first-world nation. All of this just goes to the point that influencing Afghanistan as a country is a true exercise in herding cats, and ultimately futile.
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Not only seems, foolish…it IS foolish, @unreal24278 …
Yet it’s happening in all corners.
It’s BEYOND frustrating to hear…
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Democrat ideology, if it can even be pinned down, is definitely related to the staggering incompetence in governance on display today. We are witnessing woke Marxist priorities play out across the world to terrible effect. As they predictably do.
Hopefully we are getting a better understanding of “How woke is too woke?” and Democrats might vote their way into sensible policies and politicians, or even some mostly harmless Mayor Quimby types. Color me skeptical, but I’ll call it if I see it.
Have you considered the possibility that the Democrats are the same garbage party they’ve been through all of history and the Republicans are the same flawed alternative they’ve always been?
The war itself is a bipartisan effort spanning four administrations and my entire adult life. I was a Democrat at the start, mostly due to Neoconservative policy being so distasteful to me and the blatant fear campaign. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was simply anti NeoCon, not pro Democrat.
That was then, this is now.
The lack of planning and execution for this withdrawal lies squarely with the Biden administration. They’re the ones in charge. Just days ago they were on tv assuring this outcome wouldn’t happen. With a straight face. Joe Biden ran on many lies, but his competence in governance might be the most egregious.
Certain trolls like to pretend as if I consider Republicans or Trump to be above reproach and argue against that straw man. Fine, “but Trump” all day if you want. That doesn’t change reality.
It is impossible to ignore the rank policy failures presently unfolding everywhere the Democrats are in charge. Whether it’s the southern border, our domestic energy industry, our major cities being terrorized while also neutering law enforcement or now, the Afghanistan withdrawal, we get very little aside from demonstrably bad outcomes brought about by disgraceful failures of policy and leadership.
It turns out that reality doesn’t care about woke media narratives and hashtag sloganeering. The Taliban sure as hell don’t.
This is why HR 1 and social media censorship are policy priorities of the Biden Administration. Today. Right now, as all of this unfolds. The viability of the Democrat party is at stake without these powerful media narratives. How powerful? Powerful enough to convince people that Jim Crow is on the rise and that cops are racist, all without a shred of evidence.
And we’re only a few months into this administration.
I know, I know, but Trump. It’s “but Trump” when our cities are terrorized. “But Trump” when the police are defunded. “But Trump” as we shut down domestic energy and ask OPEC to increase supply.
And now, “But Trump” when Biden oversees a National embarrassment and humanitarian disaster.
Same stuff on both sides might seem nice, polite and even thoughtful, but at the end of the day you either pick a side and get involved or sit it out and bitch about the situation.
If you can’t pick a side today, with all that’s happening, I’m not sure what to tell you.
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I’ll let @zecarlo and @H_factor respond to you, @twojarslave (and people like you)…
I just don’t have the patience anymore…and haven’t for some time.
You’ve never had the willingness to respond to any specific point I take the time to articulate. You never seem to discuss politics outside the confines of broad, vague narratives.
I’ll let the trolls have the last word today, whether it involves insults or rants about Trump in the Biden 2021 thread.
I find this sums up my opinion on Afghanistan very well, particularly his second point. Why Aren’t Afghan Men Fighting To Protect Afghanistan? - YouTube
If the Afghanis don’t like the Taliban, they had every opportunity to prevent it resurging into their cities. They clearly didn’t care enough.
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Agree.
This is a clumsy attempt by a pundit with no apparent context to use the situation in Afghanistan as a vehicle to propagate views on whatever the hell else he wanted to say in the first place. It makes the mistake of looking at an Afghan problem through an American lens and wondering why Afghans don’t react the way he expects them to. The only part he gets right - even if he meant it sarcastically - is that the construct we’ve imposed upon Afghanistan is wholly unwanted by the people, because an Afghan identity really doesn’t fit uniformly across the country’s population. Asking why Afghan men didn’t do more to stop the Taliban’s advance is like asking why someone didn’t try harder to stop a hurricane. The truth is that Afghan men have fought and will continue to fight for what’s important to them much more than American men ever will. It may be on a small scale and it may be in support of values that seem medieval to our sensibilities, but the Afghans maintain a warrior culture in a way that America hasn’t since - I dunno - the Civil War? Yes, it looks like it’s largely men trying to make it onto those C17s. Probably because women and children will always be 2nd rate citizens even in a progressive, 21st-century Afghanistan. It could also be that the overwhelming majority of Afghans who have helped NATO forces for the last 20 years are men, and they’ve got a few hours to figure out how to escape before they get their heads sawed off. Neither here nor there - my only point is that for some podcast tough guy mother fucker to impugn the actions of the Afghan people as though he knows how he would have acted under the same circumstances is ugly Americanism at its finest.
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You reminded me of something, @JKil116…
It’s of a post I saw of the first (and probably last) female Afghan mayor…where she stated that she was essentially waiting for her and her family to be killed. (I’ll see if I can find it).
We as Americans (and most in the West) simply have not idea…
I certainly have no idea about what it’s like to have to Live with Horrible vs. Hell-on-Earth choices.
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Here it is:
“I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family. I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me,” Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of Maidan Shar."
" I can’t leave my family. And anyway, where would I go?"
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But Trump was mean tweeter, 
I posted the Matt Walsh clip mostly because when I saw it he said all of the things that I had been thinking about the situation (so we can leave him out of it, the opinion is mine, as much as it is his). I had even made the point about how if all of the people fleeing would have just stood their ground and worked together they probably could have made a decent stand. They probably outnumber the Taliban in actual numbers and have had the last 20 years to make a plan to defend themselves.
You’re right that I lack a certain amount of context. And yes, the Taliban certainly has a warrior culture built into it. I made the post partly because I completely can’t understand the mindset of these people. Even if the entire US military was shoved through an extra-dimensional portal, US cities still wouldn’t fall to a group of jihadist warlords without a shot being fired. Blood would run in the streets (probably my own if I’m being honest) before I would push my way onto a C-17 and try to blame someone on the other side of the world.
@Mufasa, as far as the mayor goes, she wanted to be a strong woman mayor as long as someone else was willing to put their neck on the line, but now she’s the victim with no one to help her. Tens of thousands of people are fairly certain that the Taliban is going to saw their heads off, and they are still unwilling to fight back. No wonder the country is a shithole. They need to take some responsibility for themselves. You can’t teach a man to fish if he’s afraid of water and doesn’t like fish.