Afghanistan (Again)

[Chew Toy McCoy]

The news could put up a picture or video of any random bearded middle eastern guy in the appropriate outfit, say it’s the leader of the Taliban, and 99.9% of the public would believe it. FACT. That’s less racist and more how little we actually pay attention or give a shit.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Holeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee F-
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1438549709438738432/

Talk about picking & choosing...

 

[SuperMatt]

Holeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee F-
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1438549709438738432/

Talk about picking & choosing...

“Support the Troops” has joined “Back the Blue” as a slogan that right-wingers flush down the toilet the instant it conflicts with the worship of Donald Trump.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Bonus editorial about insincere critics
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1439007663912747009/

 

[lizkat]

There's a piece in the Washington Post about members of the Taliban currently serving to keep the peace in Kabul (as opposed to their former commitment to jihadi warrior roles in the hinterlands):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/19/afghanistan-taliban-fighters/

On Kabul’s western edge, fighters from another Taliban unit charged with protecting Afghanistan’s national museum from looting explained that they were told their assignment was intended to encourage confidence among Kabul’s residents.

“Our leadership just told us that this building is important, and we shouldn’t allow anyone to loot it,” said Mohammad Javid Mubari, the leader of about a dozen men stationed at the museum. He admitted that he didn’t know what was inside the building and brushed off the question as unimportant.

“Before this, I was just fighting jihad,” the 30-year-old said, boasting of his battlefield credentials. “I fought in many different provinces in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. We also trained in Pakistan, and fought against the Pakistani army.”

“I became the top commander in my group after the three commanders before me were killed in drone strikes,” he said with little emotion.

“I don’t have a background in archaeology,” he said of his current assignment guarding relics, including Buddhist antiquities, which many Taliban fighters view as an affront to Islam. “Our leaders will decide what will happen to the artifacts here. We don’t have the authorization to destroy them yet.”

Hell of a punchline there (bolding is mine).

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I set flipboard to block all news on Afghanistan and the Taliban. The only reason it is getting so much coverage is at the behest of the military industrial complex attempting to make the President look bad for ending their forever war, and they would have done the exact same thing to any President who did the same. This wasn’t a failure of the past month. This was a failure of the past 20 years and it’s astonishing they want to continually remind people of their failure. It would be like the oil industry trying to blame the current President for their past 20 years of environmental damage. Go fuck yourself.

 

[lizkat]

I'm not blocking any of it, sickening as some of the at least temporary outcomes may be... also waiting to see more of the nudges of neocons towards getting back in or towards getting on with the Next Long War already.... likely candidates for the latter appear to be in East Africa or western Sahel areas where the USA has already long had some troops and "advisors". Of course right now we're in a row with France over the Australian submarine contracts, so maybe whatever we have or had been doing with the French regarding trying to keep a lid on terrorists in the Sahel will remain status quo for awhile.

 

[Deleted member 215]

I set flipboard to block all news on Afghanistan and the Taliban. The only reason it is getting so much coverage is at the behest of the military industrial complex attempting to make the President look bad for ending their forever war, and they would have done the exact same thing to any President who did the same. This wasn’t a failure of the past month. This was a failure of the past 20 years and it’s astonishing they want to continually remind people of their failure. It would be like the oil industry trying to blame the current President for their past 20 years of environmental damage. Go fuck yourself.

I’ve done something similar. Just tired of all the BS. Not like there’s never been BS in the media (Russiagate being a notable example of the past few years) but the way we’re being sold on the next war is just absurd. I’m hearing China is our new Cold War enemy and I’m sure we’ll be entering some proxy wars soon.

 

[lizkat]

I’ve done something similar. Just tired of all the BS. Not like there’s never been BS in the media (Russiagate being a notable example of the past few years) but the way we’re being sold on the next war is just absurd. I’m hearing China is our new Cold War enemy and I’m sure we’ll be entering some proxy wars soon.

That's another thing that creeps me out. All this bearing down on China. Both countries were better off when we kept our coats hung on the "competitive partnership" pegs. From mistaken interpretations of what's for domestic consumption or face-saving sometimes come actual policy shifts that one could regret later on because they're so hard to back out of.

Sigh. Sometimes hard to tell when a "pivot" to a new external enemy is launched by a state for purposes of shoring up the incumbent regime and so just a matter of feeding campaign material as news to their own constituents... or when the mainstream media in the west foresee a dearth of enough controversial news to prop up the bottom line for another quarter. Anyway it's at any of those times that special interest items and longstanding partisan agendas start popping up as items of "compelling news!" -- on the off chance that finally their moment to shine has arrived.

The winding down of a war usually involves days, weeks, maybe months of crisis-level reporting. The publishers and editors (and the war machine) are meanwhile looking for what's next and there is always someone ready to pop item 743 off a long wish list into a reporter's mailbox.

God forbid the planet should endure a few months of low level rumble before erupting into whole new sets of flag-waving and amped-up old hostilities.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I'm not blocking any of it, sickening as some of the at least temporary outcomes may be... also waiting to see more of the nudges of neocons towards getting back in or towards getting on with the Next Long War already.... likely candidates for the latter appear to be in East Africa or western Sahel areas where the USA has already long had some troops and "advisors". Of course right now we're in a row with France over the Australian submarine contracts, so maybe whatever we have or had been doing with the French regarding trying to keep a lid on terrorists in the Sahel will remain status quo for awhile.

I like reading news on Afghans resettled in the US. In fact, I found out a couple days ago that Fremont CA that I pass by every day to/from work has the biggest community of Afghans in the US.

What I don’t need is to read about every transgression of the Taliban. We had 20 years to fix that shit and failed spectacularly. We should be embarrassed to be reporting on our epic failure with a magnifying glass. Like I said, the only reason it’s being covered is an attempt to make the current President look bad. Anybody who is buying into that narrative is a fucking moron.

 

[Yoused]

Not we have a civil war in Afghanistan, between the Assholes and the Scum-of-the-Earth.

IS bomb attacks on Taliban raise specter of wider conflict

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings targeting Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan.

apnews.com

Hard to decide which side I think should win. It might be a good thing if a war-battered Da'esh prevailed over the Taliban, so that the neighboring countries might be encouraged to go in and beat them down. However, I could imagine such a situation leading to an ongoing war between Pakistan and Iran.

 

[lizkat]

Like I said, the only reason it’s being covered is an attempt to make the current President look bad. Anybody who is buying into that narrative is a fucking moron.

Yes because there were op-eds and books out since just a few years into the Afghanistan adventure, not least from people who didn't even disapprove going there, just saying hello why not finish the omelet there before going in to break all the eggs in Iraq too.

Not we have a civil war in Afghanistan, between the Assholes and the Scum-of-the-Earth.

IS bomb attacks on Taliban raise specter of wider conflict

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings targeting Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan.

apnews.com

Hard to decide which side I think should win. It might be a good thing if a war-battered Da'esh prevailed over the Taliban, so that the neighboring countries might be encouraged to go in and beat them down. However, I could imagine such a situation leading to an ongoing war between Pakistan and Iran.

It's going to be a mess, and unless Taliban takes sensible advice from contacts in say Qatar or UAE, will also be another round of brain drain from war-weary educated Afghan professionals and disappointed families with half-educated women just wanting out already. For instance if the Taliban settle on permanent injunction against letting women teach, that means another couple generations of mostly illiterate women, since there are not enough male teachers to continue to improve literacy rates among females. Right now it only hovers around 30%, and that was a grand improvement.

A civil war versus Taliban and likely some tribal score-settling (opportunistically exploited by Da'esh for sure ) does seem likely now... it was happening already and only mitigated by the lingering presence --and money-- of the US in force and in all its contracting services glory. But those engagements the Afghans need to settle by themselves now if they can. If they can't, I shudder to think what will happen if the proxy managers like Pakistan, Iraq and China get involved. Afghanistan is perhaps not a graveyard of empires any more, but it remains almost impossible to govern centrally, thanks to its location, terrain and longstanding tribal history overlaid by centuries of bribery as a way of assembling armies and an ability to govern. Villagers have been buying peace a day at a time for at least forty years now. How does it matter whom one pays this afternoon?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

 

[Herdfan]

So do you believe the Generals or Biden?

The Generals say they warned him (under oath), he told Stephanopoulos that no one told him.

Top generals contradict Biden, say they urged him not to withdraw from Afghanistan

Gen. Frank McKenzie said that he recommended maintaining a small force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan earlier this year.

www.politico.com

I do realize that no one on this board really wants to question his competence, but this is not going to go away.

 

[Yoused]

I do realize that no one on this board really wants to question his competence, but this is not going to go away.

Nonetheless, it was based on the agreement give-away that Agent Orange negotiated last year. Do you think he could have handled his own screw-up any better? Screwing things up was SOP for Individual-ONE.

 

[SuperMatt]

So do you believe the Generals or Biden?

The Generals say they warned him (under oath), he told Stephanopoulos that no one told him.

Top generals contradict Biden, say they urged him not to withdraw from Afghanistan

Gen. Frank McKenzie said that he recommended maintaining a small force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan earlier this year.

www.politico.com

I do realize that no one on this board really wants to question his competence, but this is not going to go away.

You “realize” a lot about people on this board. Why not just put ideas out there and debate them on the merits instead of painting your fellow board members with a broad brush? I bet you there are some here who wish Bernie had won the nomination, and plenty who don’t agree with everything Biden says or does.

In this situation, this is how I see it. Biden listened to the generals for 8 years when he was in the Obama administration. And things just got worse over time, despite Obama taking their recommendations. Biden promised to get the troops out, and he was tired of generals saying to just wait a while longer, send more troops, etc, etc….

The fall of the Afghan government in a matter of days was way faster than expected. It was a tragedy, but America is better off without our troops in Afghanistan.

Biden promised to get the troops out, and he did. Trump promised the same and failed to do so. Point: Biden. In a couple years, people will remember that he ended it, not that the exit was problematic.

 

[Herdfan]

You “realize” a lot about people on this board. Why not just put ideas out there and debate them on the merits instead of painting your fellow board members with a broad brush? I bet you there are some here who wish Bernie had won the nomination, and plenty who don’t agree with everything Biden says or does.

You're right. I will attempt to do better.

In this situation, this is how I see it. Biden listened to the generals for 8 years when he was in the Obama administration. And things just got worse over time, despite Obama taking their recommendations. Biden promised to get the troops out, and he was tired of generals saying to just wait a while longer, send more troops, etc, etc….

But Biden said in an interview with Stephanopoulos that he wasn't told. But multiple 4-stars have said under oath that he was told. So who do you believe?

 

[SuperMatt]

You're right. I will attempt to do better.



But Biden said in an interview with Stephanopoulos that he wasn't told. But multiple 4-stars have said under oath that he was told. So who do you believe?

I think the Generals did suggest multiple plans in which troops were left in Afghanistan. I read the transcript of Stephanopoulous’s question. It was part of a larger discussion and it seemed like Biden was trying to dismiss the entire line of questioning. It’s being presented as one question with a flat answer - it seems a bit more nuanced than that, but that doesn’t drive traffic to websites.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told -- your military advisors did not tell you, "No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It's been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that"?

BIDEN: No. No one said that to me that I can recall. Look, George, the reason why it's been stable for a year is because the last president said, "We're leaving. And here's the deal I wanna make with you, Taliban. We're agreeing to leave if you agree not to attack us between now and the time we leave on May the 1st."

So, one could interpret that as advisors not saying to keep 2500 troops, or one could interpret his response as being focused on “stable situation for the last several years” which is what he expounded upon. George layered multiple things onto his question - it wasn’t a flat “keep 2,500” troops - IMHO George should have left the question as that. The way he presented it, one could say he gave Biden space to interpret the question to be about whether the generals said 2,500 troops would keep things stable as they had been for the last several years. That would be naive and I don’t think the generals would claim something like that.

I don’t think it was Biden’s intent to say that no military advisors told him to keep troops there. Based on his full answer, it seemed like he was addressing the stability question. In other statements, it was clear some advisors did suggest that to him. But Biden could have answered it better, and now it’s making him look like he’s contradicting others. I think the media is making more of this answer than they should. Hopefully Biden will have a chance to clear things up... or maybe he will just avoid it and wait for the next news cycle. Who knows... not the greatest moment for the administration either way.

 

[Yoused]

We had to stay.

And we had to leave.

The Afghan government was in no way prepared, or really even able, to defend the country from the Taliban.

Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban - ex-official

Thousands of troops who were supposed to fight the Taliban did not exist, a former minister says.

www.bbc.com

Their army mostly did not exist, except as a fiction for the Generals to draw money out of. I mean, the US has propped up the likes of Batista and Somoza, Chiang Kai-Shek, Reza Pahlavi, and we still support the al Saud family, where the good guy is a festering piece of shit.

And, of course, Halliburton and Blackwater.

What is the right thing to do? I mean, in terms of what can be done?

 

[SuperMatt]

We had to stay.

And we had to leave.

The Afghan government was in no way prepared, or really even able, to defend the country from the Taliban.

Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban - ex-official

Thousands of troops who were supposed to fight the Taliban did not exist, a former minister says.

www.bbc.com

Their army mostly did not exist, except as a fiction for the Generals to draw money out of. I mean, the US has propped up the likes of Batista and Somoza, Chiang Kai-Shek, Reza Pahlavi, and we still support the al Saud family, where the good guy is a festering piece of shit.

And, of course, Halliburton and Blackwater.

What is the right thing to do? I mean, in terms of what can be done?

I don’t know the answer. If America had never gone there 20 years ago, would people have risen up on their own against the Taliban? If so, such an uprising might have been far more popular. A U.S.-backed overthrow of the Taliban always allowed the Taliban to not just be a bunch of extreme religious leaders, but the heroic defenders against the interfering Americans.