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I don't often come to this thread because I'm certain my views on political thoughts are, generally speaking for this website, in the minority and online conversations have become increasingly hostile. I guess you could say I'm part of that "silent" group that was referenced a lot in 2016 and 2020. Supressed into silence, but still voting and paying attention in the shadows.

I just want to say that I don't know if any kind of pull-out would have gone well with any President. From what I have read, the Taliban basically had the mindset to wait until the West left, and with the public (both parties) wanting the war to end eventually, all they had to do was wait. Even if we somehow had gone in and killed literally every single Taliban soldier in the country, all young people have to do is find information/propaganda videos and follow in their father's footsteps and we'd still have that organization around. Could President Biden have handled it differently (Or Trump, or Obama, or Bush Jr)? Sure. Would it have made a difference in a positive direction? Possibly. We don't know, nor will we. The only things we know for certain are that the public doesn't support perpetual wars and that the Taliban were never going to be 100% defeated by the West. Where we go from here I honestly don't know. I didn't think anything would get the mainstream media to actually report negatively about this administration, but here we are and I'm quite shocked they are. Perhaps this truly will create a paradigm-shift in thinking. Or China will simply inherit the policing role over there, for better or worse, and we no longer will feel we have to get involved. Who knows?



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If you think about it and if any one was paying attention this was pretty much bound to happen. The Taliban played the waiting game because the US has a history of intervention and pull outs. You only have to wait for the US to get tired and want to pull their troops back home just like all the other wars and intervention the US has done for decades. This was never going to end well and it really do not make a difference which President decided to pull the trigger.

I give the Taliban credit for hitting at the right time as they must have been waiting for the US to have low enough troops to make their push. They got some pretty good swag in the process and gave the US the finger on the way out.

The US could have made it more expensive but then again, the loss of life (US) probably was debated and the decision was to get the hell out now then continue messing around. Now will the US learn from this adventure, well if the dozen or so wars and occupations have anything to say about it , NO. We still have that military engine to support and soldiers need something to do.

Even China does not want to play that policing game, they just want the few bits of property they feel are theirs and win everything else by financial warfare.



You can't really save the Afghans from themselves, can you? This would be the end result no matter how long you stayed in Afghanistan unless you wanted to commit cultural genocide.

From the Afghanistan Pew Survey conducted in non-Taliban times:

- 99% say they want Sharia
- 96% say converting others to Islam is a duty
- 94% say the wife is always obliged to obey the husband
- 85% say stoning is a must for adultery
- 79% say death is a must for apostasy
- 39% say suicide bombing is justified

There's a high chance the people desperately wanting to board those planes were just former US collabs fearful of retaliation and in truth wanted something perhaps just slightly more moderate than Taliban - say, like Iran or the Gulf countries.

Source



 

 

 

 

 

Wide sweeping birds eye view of our situation in Afghanistan: 

We are an intelligent tool making animal with a controlling streak, we are not wise as a whole by any stretch

Most of our leaders regardless of background seem to care most about personal and political power, resources and the lives of the less powerful are used to achieve this end  

Last edited by Rab - on 17 August 2021

There were so many opportunities for Biden to rescue our Afghan allies - Dems and Reps on Congress spent months begging the administration to do something about the evacuation, but he ignored them because he didn't care. He straight up didn't care in the slightest. It was a Blue America First.

One of the most shameful foreign policy episodes ever.

Last edited by Moren - on 16 August 2021

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EnricoPallazzo said:

I really hope the American people can learn a little bit from it.

Good luck with that. For a start, I'd guess 95% of Americans have no idea where on the map Afghanistan even is. Of the remaining 5%, 99% have no idea of the social structure within that country. And as a side note, 99% of Americans have no idea that their heroine stems from Afghanistan, the farmers PROTECTED by American soldiers because "stability in the country".

To make a long story short:

1. The strange American idea that Afghanistan ever had an army is laughable right from the start. It has been a tribal community for thousands of years. The loyalty of any soldier is to his tribe and only to his tribe, not to the country. Combine that with a thoroughly corrupt government (the president and his entourage instantly running away with the money is no surprise here), there really never was a question whether the army would fight or instantly vapourise. It was perfectly clear that the army would disappear the minute things got rolling.

2. The strange American idea that concentrating solely on "we won the fight against Al-Quaida" and leave at some point, job done. This is such an obvious delusional pipe dream it doesn't need any explanations.

3. The strange western/European idea that we could bring "western style democracy" to Afghanistan. Just look how well that works even within Europe itself (Hungary, Poland, etc).

In my view, it was perfectly clear that some US president will have to swallow this particular toad. Unfortunately for Biden, he was listening to his thoroughly  incompetent military advisors. I'm just curious as to how far reaching this fiasco is and will influence the next election cycles. I'd rather be a Republican than a Democrat now because the last guy gets the blame, and the last guy is represented by Biden this time.



i just wonder the reason why bush went there and stayed. Does afghan have oil?



Hiku said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

First of all it's the American people's fault for choosing their leaders and supporting those invasions in other countries. I hope nowadays with internet and ease of communication they can really oppose those stupid wars that kills so many people and spends so much money (trillions) invading other people's countries. This printed money could have been used for something else in benefit of the American people. Most likely nothing will change though, they prefer to take the streets for other purposes.

It's also Bush's fault for starting this stupid war and throwing the country inside the cemetery of empires. Then after that Iraq. Unbelievable this guy was president for 8 years. He is much worse than Trump.

It's Obama's fault for having 8 years to end this shit. He made so many promises about it but in the end he just kept the ball rolling and killing people using Drones. Gosh, he killed so many people. 

It's Trump's fault because 1) he exists and 2) he could have started the process earlier and in a more organized way. We would never know how he would have ended the process as Covid came, elections came and he never got his second term. But since it's Trump it would probably have been bad even if it was good and organized.

It's Biden's fault for fucking up everything to the highest level and leaving all of a sudden, leaving a lot of equipment behind, not extracting key people first, and throwing the Afeghan people, especially women, to the lions. It was clear this was going to happen and he knew exactly what he was doing. Leaving this way is pure evil, product of a sick mind. But he is a democrat and this is the most diverse US army ever so it is ok.

In the end the US media will somehow throw the blame on Trump's shoulder.

I really hope the American people can learn a little bit from it. It's one thing to go to war to defend your allies, like they did with Kwait (although there is more into it) or they may have to do in the future with Taiwan. But Afghanistan and Iraq, that's just evil, pure evil. Most likely nothing will change.

Fair enough. Just the way you wrote it made it sound like you either thought this was a good outcome, or that Trump had no hand in it.

As for how things would turn out if he was still in office, after what happened with the Kurds last year, I have no faith in the exit strategy of that administration either.
But Biden chose to follow through with this, so this will be a stain on his term as well. 

To me it seems like the 200 000 Afghan soldiers they trained was obviously not going to be enough to handle this, and should have increased this number by a lot before leaving. And be ready to evacuate people.

I give one thing to Biden though. Someone had to rip off the band aid.

The reason the soldiers lost is the same why Israel was able to win a war against the whole arab league. They were fighting for they country, family, territory, they were willing to give their lives for the future of their sons.

Afghan soldiers are nothing more than people that used the opportunity to have a job. There is almost no Afghan identity and they are more identified with their own tribes than the country as a whole. There is no commitment. This is one of the reasons why most Arab militaries sucks big time. 



drkohler said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

I really hope the American people can learn a little bit from it.

Good luck with that. For a start, I'd guess 95% of Americans have no idea where on the map Afghanistan even is. Of the remaining 5%, 99% have no idea of the social structure within that country. And as a side note, 99% of Americans have no idea that their heroine stems from Afghanistan, the farmers PROTECTED by American soldiers because "stability in the country".

To make a long story short:

1. The strange American idea that Afghanistan ever had an army is laughable right from the start. It has been a tribal community for thousands of years. The loyalty of any soldier is to his tribe and only to his tribe, not to the country. Combine that with a thoroughly corrupt government (the president and his entourage instantly running away with the money is no surprise here), there really never was a question whether the army would fight or instantly vapourise. It was perfectly clear that the army would disappear the minute things got rolling.

2. The strange American idea that concentrating solely on "we won the fight against Al-Quaida" and leave at some point, job done. This is such an obvious delusional pipe dream it doesn't need any explanations.

3. The strange western/European idea that we could bring "western style democracy" to Afghanistan. Just look how well that works even within Europe itself (Hungary, Poland, etc).

In my view, it was perfectly clear that some US president will have to swallow this particular toad. Unfortunately for Biden, he was listening to his thoroughly  incompetent military advisors. I'm just curious as to how far reaching this fiasco is and will influence the next election cycles. I'd rather be a Republican than a Democrat now because the last guy gets the blame, and the last guy is represented by Biden this time.

Lol, at the end of the day, no American is really going to care.  In 3 1/2 years all that US people really care about are their comfort level.  As you stated this was never going to go well unless we wanted to occupy Afghanistan forever.  



Good story about one Westerner's experience in Afghanistan and his thoughts on America's withdrawal:

https://imgur.com/gallery/Z7c0Llj

"I don't say this to brag, I say this out of sadness, because I was not really that important of a person in the big machine: My opinion has been formed by having more personal and constructive contact with Afghans all over their country than any other American I know. My opinion is backed by a better understanding of Afghan history and culture for the last 100 years than people who were supposed to be formulating our strategic plans and goals. I did the very best job I could because I cared about doing what I thought we were there to do. I quit the war when I realized that the whole thing had become institutionalized, abstracted, and abdicated to bloated and ineffectual middle management to a shocking and revolting degree.

My opinion is that there is literally nothing that could have prevented the fall of the puppet government in Afghanistan. Waiting another fighting season ("We should have withdrawn in the winter, to give them time to consolidate!") would have done absolutely nothing except put a few more dollars in the pockets of the corrupt and give more time for military forces to plan which bandit group to defect to. I would also be willing to bet that the withdrawal was actually extremely orderly and well planned, but that many on the Afghan side didn't believe it would actually happen this time, and that the individuals in various positions of power knew there was more for them to gain personally in the chaos afterwards.

There has been a serious issue with the international media's portrayal of the withdrawal - they haven't been talking to anyone credible, just whoever was accessible under the shrinking umbrella of American security. For months the news has been littered with interviews with locals angry that the money spout from the local base is being turned off; minor government officials who are butthurt they didn't get a bigger slice of the loot; and random expatriates who haven't lived there in decades. The real movers and shakers in Afghanistan have been quietly preparing for this moment for well, since we invaded. They've been quietly building personal wealth and power during a foreign occupation in preparation for their inevitable withdrawal. That's just how things go in Afghanistan, and I know, because I fucking saw it happening with my own eyes.

For 20 years the US has been propping up a government that is doggedly corrupt and also disliked by the majority of people that nominally fall under their governance. In the entire history of the geographical area we currently call Afghanistan, there has never really been a time where the central government - whether it was a king, a president, or a mullah - held much sway outside the immediate seats of power or the direct occupation of the central military forces.

There was an opportunity to change this and to usher in an era of modern national governance. Was.

We failed to build anything foundational and instead threw trillions of dollars into stopgap programs that ended up being leaned on year after year after year like fixtures, all the while subsidizing naked theft and incompetence in exchange for empty public statements and a willingness to comply with military demands. We squandered one year at a time, one staff rotation at a time, one TDY at a time for long enough that people who weren't even born when the war started ended up fighting in it as adults.

Unfortunately, I think the bottom line is that the Afghan people themselves are going to have to figure this one out. Our occupation was smothering and distracting from social and political developments that need to happen under the motive power of the Afghans. I do not think it is a coincidence that those developments have been smothered with intense meddling, because my opinion is that what the Afghan people will end up with (eventually) is not what America or many of their NATO partners would prefer to happen. The Afghans don't want an American-style democracy just like the Vietnamese didn't, and that is unpalatable or even unbelievable to many, many outsiders.

They're going to have to duke this one out, find their own voices, and come to an agreement with themselves. It's what should have been allowed to happen ten minutes after the Taliban were burned out of the country 20 years ago, and certainly what should have happened with the first election. Instead, we installed a cooperative playboy (Hamid Karzai) and propped up a manufactured regime which included at the time of its fall (right now) war criminals, infamous and hated warlords, and profiteering double agents all of whom have been slinking around and power brokering since the Soviet and post-Soviet eras.

Speaking of the Soviet and post-Soviet era, how is anyone surprised that the military abandoned the puppet regime of an exiting superpower? Historically speaking, in Afghanistan, it does not pay long term to be the remnant clinging to power in the shadow of the behemoth that just cut you loose.

There are plenty of fighting Afghans who absolutely don't want the return of the Taliban or their bullshit. The reason the Taliban is so easily marching to apparent victory is that power is reconsolidating in regional and local groups all over the country. The ANA and other national security forces are folding and evaporating in front of the Taliban because they don't give a shit about the puppet government - not because they don't have something worth fighting for, and not because they have no plans to resist.

There have been some good seeds scattered about. Modernized (relatively speaking) infrastructure and international engagement for 20 years have certainly given many Afghans things that they won't tolerate the loss of, and while the Taliban may be making large military gains now, understand that it's very unlikely that they will suddenly return to full power and instantly re-introduce their previous regime. They, too, will fall victim to the same issues that every central regime has faced, and this time they will not only be competing as they were before with other, slightly weaker regional warlords, but also with a populace that is far more educated and cognizant of the outside world than they ruled over 20 years ago.

People are desperate to avoid comparing Afghanistan to Viet Nam, and people are desperate to throw in their opinion on what they have been shown in the last few months. I think all of that desperation comes from people who should have been paying attention to the war while it was happening.

Once again, an American occupation under false pretenses has only delayed and intensified a (perhaps inevitable) civil war. And now that America has spent 20 years with a big, fat, shortsighted and incompetent thumb on the scales, we leave the Afghan people to fight a conflict that has been made even uglier by the injection of massive amounts of military hardware, training, and experience for all involved, as well as 20 more years of living grudges and personal grievances to infect the next generations of Afghan civil discourse.

If you pray, pray for the Afghans."