Afghanistan

[SoCal Deek]

12 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

I be agree in general but Afghanistan appears to be a different beast.  The Soviet Union lost there, we had 20 years to no avail.  The Afghan people do not have the will to keep their country.

All of that is true, but once again, we have a presence in all sorts of odd places around the globe. I’m not sure what everyone’s definition of a victory is but it could be defined as establishing another base in the Middle East and stemming the actions of terrorists on American soil….which we’ve done….for twenty years next month. 

[Tenhigh]

On 8/7/2021 at 11:02 AM, ComradeKayAdams said:

 

Afghanistan is much more than a “piece of dirt!” It contains an enormous amount of untapped mineral resources that can be used for the electronics industry and for other various high-tech emerging industries. Historically, the land has also held an important trade position connecting the Chinese empire with the Persian empire. Nowadays, the United States can look at the country as a favorable geostrategic position from which to watch over her biggest adversaries: China, especially Iran, and Russia too. If you look at a complete map of U.S. military bases around the world, you will see something very interesting: we’re REALLY obsessed with surrounding Iran on all sides! I believe these are the most important reasons for our extended military occupation there.

 

Spreading democracy, upholding international human rights, controlling the opium market, diverting oil pipelines, maintaining a high budget for the military industrial complex…all good answers, but I think they are secondary motivations. Seeking revenge for 9/11, dismantling the Taliban, and stopping Islamic terrorism were the main reasons for entering the war and certainly the main reasons why any American citizens continued supporting the war in its early stages. But now?

 

At this point, it is indeed all about American imperialism. Afghanistan is only one of the more obvious examples of this deeply immoral and pervasive foreign policy, with Iraq being the most obvious one (Libya, Syria, and Saudi Arabia/Yemen are conspicuous as well. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Israel/Palestine, and countries involving military drones are perhaps a bit more subtle). As someone who is a strident non-interventionist, I am actually MORE concerned that we are (allegedly…) withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan. Why are we (allegedly…) abandoning this strategic military outpost?? My cynical suspicion is that we may soon see false flags somewhere in the Middle East (Syria?) that will get us into some form of a protracted war with Iran. And if I was a resource-rich South American country with a left-leaning government, I would be sleeping with one wary eye open northward.

I agree with you on the original motives for entering the war.   Living in NYC at the time even my furthest left friends were in support of the effort. People were scared and angry, and rightly so. 

But I think the shortsighted plan in Iraq is a large part of what has led to our overstay in Afghanistan.   America desperately wants to look like the good guy/world police, and after the fiasco that became of Iraq, bailing out on Afghanistan wasn't a face that we wanted to show the world.  

[Irv]

Demented Biden letting the Taliban overun Afghanistan quicker than Grant took Richmond.  Dopey Joe forgot about them.  What a mess.  

[dpberr]

1 hour ago, Irv said:

Demented Biden letting the Taliban overun Afghanistan quicker than Grant took Richmond.  Dopey Joe forgot about them.  What a mess.  

 

There's not much he can do about it.  This was going to happen in the Trump presidency timeline too.

 

 

[SCBills]

I’m of the opinion that this would have happened if we left 5 years ago or leave 5 years from now.  These people can’t/won’t defend themselves from the Taliban.  
 

That said… NYT is reporting that we are asking for assurances from the Taliban to not attack us, so we can avoid evacuating our embassy.   LOL…. What!?  
 

Begging OPEC for oil and pleading with the Taliban to not hurt our embassy workers.. Quite the ambitious foreign policy agenda today. 
 

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by SCBills

[LeviF]

On 8/11/2021 at 8:25 PM, dpberr said:

Kabul will be in Taliban control by 9/11. 

 

That's their push. 

 

 

 

At this point I think it's safe to say that every statement that came from the White House over the last 20 years about how we're building up Afghanistan and its people was a blatant falsehood.

 

20 hours ago, SCBills said:

I’m of the opinion that this would have happened if we left 5 years ago or leave 5 years from now.  These people can’t/won’t defend themselves from the Taliban.  
 

That said… NYT is reporting that we are asking for assurances from the Taliban to not attack us, so we can avoid evacuating our embassy.   LOL…. What!?  
 

Begging OPEC for oil and pleading with the Taliban to not hurt our embassy workers.. Quite the ambitious foreign policy agenda today. 
 

 

 

What was it she said yesterday, the Taliban have to decide what role they want to play in the international community?

 

Psaki you dumb B word you can't just summon them to HR they're a ***** terrorist army.

[ALF]

The US trained 300,000 Afghan troops , well equipped with vehicles and aircraft at a massive cost. Now they are surrendering that equipment  to make the Taliban  unstoppable. 

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

[Irv]

Demented Joe does it again.  Another absolute freakin' failure.  Has this dithering old fool done anything right?  Anything?  Mushy brain and his Squad are ruining the country at warp speed.  What a mess.  

 

https://www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan

 

 

[The Frankish Reich]

On 8/11/2021 at 6:25 PM, dpberr said:

Kabul will be in Taliban control by 9/11. 

 

That's their push. 

 

 

This makes sense to me. And for the USA: it looks like another fall of Saigon moment is coming. And this is very troubling. At least the military and foreign policy gurus were able to talk Trump down when he was agitating for full withdrawal. Since those people - the so-called Deep Staters - are presumably still around, it appears that Biden either:

- stupidly ignored their advice, and really meant it when he said that the Afghan army was strong enough and motivated enough to withstand the obvious Taliban offensive lying in wait for our departure, or

- heartlessly sacrificed our Afghan supporters and all women and girls of Afghanistan so that the USA can concentrate on his “foreign policy” agenda, namely, climate change initiatives, etc. 

Whichever one it is, it doesn’t reflect well on this administration. And yes, I am kind of the old school neocon (old enough to remember when “new” really meant “new”) when it comes to these matters. 

 

[oldmanfan]

Afghanistan has not been figured out by any country including the U.S., and in the U.S. multiple administrations have not been able to come up with a coherent strategy.  I am an admitted war hawk; I believe our military is to be used for the defense of our country and to defend the values our country stands for.  Thus, as the Taliban represents a real and present danger to the people of Afghanistan, with genocide of men, women, and children, I would go in with a huge, overwhelming force (and would get allies on board), and wipe the Taliban out once and for all.  The free  countries of the world should not allow genocide to occur.

[B-Man]

 

 

The Taliban gathers young girls they call “spoils of war” with plans to marry them off or use as sex slaves. 

 

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/taliban-going-door-to-door-for-girls-as-young-as-12-to-make-them-sex-slaves/news-story/0b94550ec02e02de92f179cc7aabdbbf

 

 

 

[ALF]

K.T. McFarland: Afghanistan was always Mission Impossible. Biden's living in fantasyland with this endgame
The tragedy of Afghanistan is that the Taliban were always going to prevail

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/afghanistan-mission-impossible-biden-fantasyland-endgame-k-t-mcfarland

 

She summed it up well

[LeviF]

9 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

The Taliban gathers young girls they call “spoils of war” with plans to marry them off or use as sex slaves. 

 

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/taliban-going-door-to-door-for-girls-as-young-as-12-to-make-them-sex-slaves/news-story/0b94550ec02e02de92f179cc7aabdbbf

 

 

 

 

Fight for the US Military: get cuckolded by your wife while on deployment and watch as the USG gives her your pay, pension, and home.

 

Fight for the Taliban: assigned a wife.

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

"Brief us in 11 days..........no rush"

 

 

 

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

This aged well.

 

 

 

[Chef Jim]

1 hour ago, oldmanfan said:

Afghanistan has not been figured out by any country including the U.S., and in the U.S. multiple administrations have not been able to come up with a coherent strategy.  I am an admitted war hawk; I believe our military is to be used for the defense of our country and to defend the values our country stands for.  Thus, as the Taliban represents a real and present danger to the people of Afghanistan, with genocide of men, women, and children, I would go in with a huge, overwhelming force (and would get allies on board), and wipe the Taliban out once and for all.  The free  countries of the world should not allow genocide to occur.

And how would you go about wiping out the Taliban once and for all?  Cockroaches always come back after “extermination.”  I always felt our presence was needed there and other Middle East shitholes to keep the terrorists occupied fighting us there instead of here. It’s a conundrum in my mind. 

4 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

This aged well.

 

 

 

No he’s not aged well at all!

 

Oh…..you mean his statement 

 

Carry on……

[dpberr]

36 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

And how would you go about wiping out the Taliban once and for all?  Cockroaches always come back after “extermination.”  I always felt our presence was needed there and other Middle East shitholes to keep the terrorists occupied fighting us there instead of here. It’s a conundrum in my mind. 

No he’s not aged well at all!

 

Oh…..you mean his statement 

 

Carry on……

 

You could only fully eliminate the Taliban by cutting off their Pakistani and Saudi funding, help and safe harbor, and that would have required killing a lot of Pakistani and Saudi politicians,  intelligence and military.  

 

9/11 doesn't stop with the Saudis - it also includes the Pakistanis.  Those two go way back.  A little known story is that the Saudis and Pakistanis helped the Afghans in the 80s not out of goodwill towards their neighbor, but that the Soviets had their eye on invading Pakistan in 1981  and using Afghanistan as the base.  

[B-Man]

 

 

Pentagon sends 3,000 troops BACK to Afghanistan to evacuate Americans and won't say whether US will stay past August 31: State Dept announces Kabul embassy drawdown as Taliban captures 12 cities

by Morgan Phillips & Chris Pleasance

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9887967/Biden-administration-pleads-Taliban-terrorists-advance-Kabul.html

 

 

 

 

 

[SoCal Deek]

Well done Joe!  Another total disaster.  Myself and others criticized Trump for not pulling out, but it turns out Trump was right to listen to his advisors. As many have said, Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of virtually every foreign policy decision his entire career in Washington. In this particular case, the phrase fits....WHAT A MESS! 

[oldmanfan]

1 hour ago, Chef Jim said:

And how would you go about wiping out the Taliban once and for all?  Cockroaches always come back after “extermination.”  I always felt our presence was needed there and other Middle East shitholes to keep the terrorists occupied fighting us there instead of here. It’s a conundrum in my mind. 

No he’s not aged well at all!

 

Oh…..you mean his statement 

 

Carry on……

Overwhelming force.  Get our allies together and put a million troops in there.

[B-Man]

 

 

This Afghan rout is entirely on Joe Biden

New York Post, by Editorial

 

It doesn’t get more idiotic: “The Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their role to be in the international community,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said with a straight face Wednesday.Oh, and the State Department has sent diplomats to “press the Taliban to stop their military offensive and to negotiate a political settlement, which is the only path to stability and development in Afghanistan.” They’re also begging to have the US embassy in Kabul left alone, warning that future US aid is at risk — and so effectively promising that we’ll actually subsidize these barbarians.

 

Hello? The Taliban have never given a damn about world opinion or “stability and development.” They were a global pariah when they ruled Afghanistan in the ’90s, ignoring the handwringing as they crushed the country’s women, destroyed those 1,500-year-old Buddha statues and hosted the al Qaeda plotters of 9/11.

 

And they haven’t changed a whit since, blowing off all diplomatic efforts these last 20 years to get them to abandon their drive to reconquer the country.

These are fanatics out of the 10th century. They’re turning girls as young as 12 into sex slaves as they advance.

 

We didn’t disagree with Biden’s move to remove the last US ground forces, just as Donald Trump promised as well when he was in office. That’s plainly what most Americans wanted, too. Afghanistan had become an endless war.

 

But any pullout had to have a plan. Not an utterly disastrous cut-and-run, with virtually no provision for the Afghans who worked with us all these years.

 

 

https://nypost.com/2021/08/12/this-afghan-rout-is-entirely-on-joe-biden/

 

 

 

 

[B-Man]

 

Afghanistan Falling Just A Month After Biden Says It’s Unlikely Taliban Will Take Over

 

https://lidblog.com/biden-afghanistan-plan-unravel/

 

 

 

 

 “So the question now is, where do they go from here?  That — the jury is still out. 

But the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

 

 

 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

4 hours ago, B-Man said:

 

 

Pentagon sends 3,000 troops BACK to Afghanistan to evacuate Americans and won't say whether US will stay past August 31: State Dept announces Kabul embassy drawdown as Taliban captures 12 cities

by Morgan Phillips & Chris Pleasance

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9887967/Biden-administration-pleads-Taliban-terrorists-advance-Kabul.html

 

 

 

 

 

🤦‍♂️

 

joe…. Shortest lived withdrawal in history. Now we are sending troops into a previously stable region which is now exceedingly dangerous again. 
 

Where is the media crucifying this sequence of events??

Edited August 13, 2021 by Over 29 years of fanhood

[SoCal Deek]

3 minutes ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

🤦‍♂️

 

joe…. Shortest lived pull withdrawal in history. Now we are sending troops into a previously stable region which is now exceedingly dangerous again. 
 

Where is the media crucifying this sequence of events??

And where is Joe? Yep…He’s on VACATION! So classic. 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

Surely they read this encouraging headline?

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2021-08-12/china-prepared-to-recognize-taliban-if-kabul-falls-sources-say-undermining-us-threats%3fcontext=amp

1 minute ago, SoCal Deek said:

And where is Joe? Yep…He’s on VACATION! So classic. 

But hey he wore that tan suit in homage… and he like ice cream.  So there’s that 

[BillStime]

 

[SoCal Deek]

Just now, BillStime said:

 

BROMANCE! 

It’s all on Joe now, you clown! Enjoy the ride. 

[TSOL]

38 minutes ago, BillStime said:

 

 

 

I wish the good people of Afghanistan, well today 

[Chef Jim]

5 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

Overwhelming force.  Get our allies together and put a million troops in there.

Then what?  Why is their shithole our responsibility? 

[TSOL]

It's Iran, Iran is the problem. 

 

They need to smolder, but nobody's got the sack to do it. 

[Big Blitz]

5 hours ago, TSOL said:

It's Iran, Iran is the problem. 

 

They need to smolder, but nobody's got the sack to do it. 

 

 

China benefits the most since they are actively undermining the U.S. position in the world  - this is a huge propaganda win for them.  Biggest since the covid coup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And has a plan for none of them.  

 

 

 

[oldmanfan]

12 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

Then what?  Why is their shithole our responsibility? 

Because they are going to commit genocide on the women and children there, and the decent people of the world should not allow that to ever happen again.

[Chef Jim]

21 minutes ago, oldmanfan said:

Because they are going to commit genocide on the women and children there, and the decent people of the world should not allow that to ever happen again.

I know this sounds cruel but why is this our job to save them?  They have men right?  

[SoCal Deek]

50 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

I know this sounds cruel but why is this our job to save them?  They have men right?  

Hey, hey, hey…that’s a bit gender binary isn’t it? Come on Man!

(Oops, did it myself.)

[All_Pro_Bills]

1 hour ago, oldmanfan said:

Because they are going to commit genocide on the women and children there, and the decent people of the world should not allow that to ever happen again.

The problem is the people running governments and setting policy and making decisions on these matters are not what I'd call "decent people".  They are generally sociopaths obsessed with acquiring and growing their power and wealth.  And stepping on anyone that gets in their way.  In fact, while there are likely moral and ethical leaders somewhere I'm hard-pressed to name any current head-of-state of any Western nation that I would consider "decent".

Edited August 14, 2021 by All_Pro_Bills

[SoCal Deek]

3 minutes ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

The problem is the people running governments and setting policy and making decisions on these matters are not what I'd call "decent people".  They are generally sociopaths obsessed with acquiring and growing their power and wealth.  And stepping on anyone that gets in their way.  In fact, while there are likely moral and ethical leaders somewhere I'm hard-pressed to name any current head-of-state of any Western nation that I would consider "decent".

Just ask Billstime and he’ll give you a long list of everyone with a (D) after their name. It’s the very definition of “decent”. In fact that’s what “D” stands for…no?

[BillStime]

5 minutes ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

I'm hard-pressed to name any current head-of-state of any Western nation that I would consider "decent".

[LeviF]

2 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

Because they are going to commit genocide on the women and children there, and the decent people of the world should not allow that to ever happen again.

lol the fourth estate can’t make me care about some shithole country when they’ve actively tried to burn this one. Not happening. Sorry you have to carry that burden. 

[Chef Jim]

Just now, LeviF said:

lol the fourth estate can’t make me care about some shithole country when they’ve actively tried to burn this one. Not happening. Sorry you have to carry that burden. 

 

Tens of thousands of homeless here in the US and he wants to save some woman and children half a world and a few centuries away.