Shocker: After claiming that women will still be permitted to perform paid labor this time around under their new government, the Taliban has advised working women to stay home for their safety. Why? Because, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid explained in a news conference on Tuesday, women are not safe in the presence of their soldiers, as their soldiers are "not trained" to respect them. (I didn't know that required training. That explains a lot about the world.)

Likewise the Taliban has said that girls and women will still be permitted an education under their new government so long as their teachers are female. Afghan (now-former) are extremely skeptical, noting that the country probably doesn't have enough female teachers for the task (perhaps owing to a certain previous Taliban ban on girls and women going to school or something).

But we're seriously considering recognizing their government.

The suicide bombing that occurred the other day was a tragedy. No one will deny that. However, it is exactly this type of thing that is pushing us out of Afghanistan. By staying, you are putting Americans in danger every day that they are there. Further, violating the deal that was made with the Taliban would undoubtedly require increased fighting, leading to more American deaths.

Now, you say that leaving isn't going to save any lives. I feel like this should be seen as nonsense on its face. How many people Americans are going to die in Afghanistan in 2022? What about 2023? 2024? If we follow through on our promise to leave, these lives lost have the potential to be the last we lose in Afghanistan. Further, lets talk briefly about the history of death in Afghanistan. 17 of the last 19 years in Afghanistan involved a greater loss of life than this year, if we are able to leave without any further casualties.

This is a bit of a strange phenomenon in how people react to military casualties. If two servicemen/women die every month, nobody really cares. It may get a small blurb buried in the newspaper, but it isn't news. On the other hand, if a dozen servicemen/women die in one day, that is front page news. Both are a tragedy. Both are families who lost a love one, and young men/women who have been robbed of a future.

While I understand that there is difficulty in breaking this cycle of war for the American troops who fought in it, the only way to protect future generations is by not continuing to send them into war. Condemning them to the same pain as our troops experienced over the last two decades is simply unconscionable. 

There was no feasible way to "win" the war against the Taliban, but the situation had been manageable at least. And we didn't just embark on a (mild, and locally popular) nation-building project in Afghanistan for no reason, we did so for our own safety after being struck with the deadliest, bloodiest terrorist attack in the history of the world on September 11, 2001. We had sought the extradition of Osama bin Laden in response. The Taliban refused to hand him over. The whole point was to make us safer here at home because clearly we would never be safe with the Taliban running that country. Now we're letting them run it again and apparently expect a different result. The suicide bombing by the Islamic State is an early indication that we will soon be no safer than we were before the 9/11 attacks as a direct result of this decision. The Islamic State is much like Al Qaeda before it and will assuredly use their newfound safe haven to attack us on our own soil, and they probably won't target military personnel. What then?

Like I said, we might think we are done with Afghanistan, but the real question is whether Afghanistan is done with us.

This wasn't like the Iraq War. It wasn't a conflict that we initiated. I guess the lesson from all this in your view is that if we ever face another attack like what happened on 9/11, we should just accept it and do nothing in response? Just let it keep happening over and over again? Is that the moral of this whole experience; that it's wrong for us to defend ourselves?

ISIS is an enemy to the Taliban, just as they are an enemy to the United States. While there is some concern that Afghanistan under the Taliban will harbor groups like Al Qaeda, arguing that IS-K would have a safe haven under the Taliban seems largely unfounded. The two groups have fought in the past and will likely continue fighting long after America leaves. I feel like you are somewhat falling into the same trap that you were warning against, assuming that all of these groups are the same.

As for whether we would be safer as a whole if we occupied Afghanistan, I feel that is somewhat of a dangerous line. America could go into a lot of countries and hold a tenuous rule through a puppet government and be "safer", but without a direct and credible threat, is this a reasonable solution? For over a decade, we haven't really had a direct cause to maintain rule in Afghanistan (notably, the Taliban is not Al Qaeda). Back in 2009, Biden argued that there wasn't a significant and credible threat to the US homeland in Afghanistan:

Our military strategy in dealing with terrorist groups is generally an over-the-horizon approach where we seek to mitigate it from afar. The greatest risk to Americans will continue to be when they are stationed in dangerous territory, not when they are at home. This attack does nothing to prove that the American homeland is in any more danger today than it was last year. 

A Senior @StateDept offl acknowledged for 1st time today that the majority of Afghans who helped the US Gov't over last 20 yrs didn't make it out of Kabul. Asked about SIV applicants left behind, the offl said while they couldn't provide a # "it's the majority of them."

— Abigail Williams (@Abs_NBC) September 1, 2021

What in your opinion, should the administration have done?

Could have processed the eligible people for visas faster, for a start. Could have given elegible Afghans far more of a heads up and gotten them out of the country months ago.

He just didn't care because he didn't think they are worthy of his attention.

You remember that Texas law that my wonderful Governor Greg Asshole Abbott signed back in May banning all abortions statewide after just six weeks (i.e. before most women even know they're pregnant!) and putting $10,000 bounties on the heads of anyone -- and I mean ANYONE -- who in any way "aids or abets" the provision of an abortion, from doctors doing the procedure to nurses working with them to say a family member providing a ride and anyone in-between? That one? The abortion bounty hunters law? I know what you were predicting: "Just like all the other six-week abortion bans, the courts will intervene and put a stay on this law until it's overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court inevitably, thus preventing it from ever going into effect." Right? Wellllll....WRONG!! The courts have decided not to intervene and the law has just gone into effect today!

This is the most extreme abortion restriction in the country. While nearly all abortions occur within the first trimester of a pregnancy, at least 85% of them occur after the first six weeks of pregnancy, so what this means in the practical is that...basically abortion is banned in Texas as of now. I mean almost all of it is anyway. This is a total ban too. You're not even exempted if you can prove that your pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Many if not most providers are going to just stop providing abortions altogether now just to shield themselves from legal liability. For example, most physicians working at the state's four Whole Women's Health clinics have said they will discontinue the provision of abortions period henceforth because of this new law.

More importantly yet, the Supreme Court's decision not to take up this case -- or at least not before it could go into effect anyway -- signals a fundamental change in the court's orientation toward abortion bans. It signals that there are now at least five Supreme Court justices (out of the nine; a majority, in other words) who are against Roe V. Wade today; inevitably a reflection on the fact that former President Trump was allowed to seat THREE new Supreme Court justices in the span of just four years despite his party having actively blocked consideration of one Merrick Garland throughout the entire final year of Obama's second term. The Court is set to take up an abortion case from Mississippi in their next session. This is an early indication as to how that will likely go. This really could mark the beginning of the end of Roe V. Wade in the U.S. And that's saying something because it's not exactly like anti-abortion fanatics have been on the defensive for the last decade, or for the last 45 years for that matter. Most abortion providers have been forced to close their doors over the last decade alone and fake abortion clinics in this country now far outnumber real ones as things are. It's only a matter of time before the final blow is struck and I really believe that time is now upon us.

In view of all this, this seems like a nice time for some presidential intervention in some form. Something needs to be done on this front immediately! As in right now, today.

Super impressed with Biden’s defiance so far. Shocked actually. Go Biden. Now do it again.

Seeing Tucker taking a pro-war stance just to oppose Biden after years of rallying behind Trump’s anti-war (fake) stance, hypocrisy meter gone broke. Seeing leftists outlets using feminism to push against the withdrawal in a way they never dared to push against allies that literally prevented women from driving, is also delicious. 

Remember when I predicted not long ago that the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan would lead to a spike in military depression and suicides? What would I know about such things as someone who grew up in a military family myself? As the daughter of a broken Vietnam War veteran who degenerated into alcoholism and abuse and ultimately died in an alcohol-induced car wreck? Well lo and behold that calls to veterans' suicide prevention hotlines are way up since the fall of Kabul. Why, you ask? This sums it up well:

My point is that it's not just war itself that kills our service members; it can also be the terms of peace. Soldiers and war veterans aren't militarists like generals can be. You will find it to be the case time and again though that our veterans expect the sacrifices expected of them to have been made for some sort of reason; that they made some kind of tangible difference in the world. Most of our soldiers and veterans I guarantee you wanted this war to end too. But not on these terms. Not in the form of very publicly losing all the gains that were made at substantial human cost. To be frank, it makes them feel worthless. This is the result.

When you've made the kinds of sacrifices involved in fighting a war -- when you've lost friends and maybe limbs, marriages, and certainly your mental health -- the terms of peace matter to you. Peace at any price isn't the endgame you want to see realized, but peace with honor. In this sense, you do become attached to the cause on some level. Whether you truly believed in the cause or not, you want all that sacrifice to have been for some kind of reason. You want it to have at least meant something. And you don't want people to think less of you because of your service when you come home. The kind of very public humiliation on the world stage that our service members are enduring right now isn't just unseemly, it's life-threatening.

Suicide is by far the leading cause of death connected to military service and rates are consistently higher for veterans than for other Americans. That's not too surprising when you're routinely exposed to traumatizing situations and taught to suppress your emotions rather than talk about them in response.

I'm sorry for getting overly emotional about the terms of peace in connection to a war I think all of us wanted to see come to an end, it's just a topic that hits really close to home. There's nothing "delicious" about this situation to me.