Current Affairs Afghanistan

[Tramps_mate]

To be honest I don’t think it had moved forward at all…. The Taliban were always going to be there in the background just waiting … this was always going to happen once the troops left.

Women wearing normal clothes. Women in jobs. Women at University.. A lot had changed. Sadly it will revert back I fear..

 

[tsubaki]

No, the reason was because Afghan forces were backed with us military planning and air support. Take all that away and you have what’s happening right now.

not really - if that was true, then why were there hundreds of US troop casualties when US troop numbers (and air support, and ANA strength) were far higher than they are now?

 

[longers]

The predicted terrorist attacks on the airport materialised with tragic consequences, unfortunately this an all too likely occurrence once the US president Taliban Joe issued his hasty ill-thought out order to withdrawal

Even the normally strongly Democrat supporting US TV networks political commentators' have been weighing in on Biden. Totally furious that the man they supported - mainly because he wasn't Trump rather than what he was, even quietly suppressing obvious doubts before the election, has proved to be such a loser and clearly just not up to the job.

Trust the Taliban, don't take any questions and concentrate on anything other than this disaster, the elephant in the room, has been his tactics at set speeches. He may even be indicted if the Republicans win back Congress next year as is now looking more than likely.

He's sleepy, old, clearly failing and may not have much longer anyway. The Taliban and Kabul will be his epitaph

Meh. I still think Afghanistan will be an after thought for most voters come election time. By then the US will have been out of Afghanistan for at least 2 years, people will have stopped caring about the 10 dead US soldiers within a month or two. Of course it will still be used by Republicans and their base as a stick to beat Dems with but there will be far more important issues come election time imo... 2 years is a long time for a lot of things to happen, just look at COVID basically burying Trump in election year, no one saw that coming.

 

[Kurt.]

Women wearing normal clothes. Women in jobs. Women at University.. A lot had changed. Sadly it will revert back I fear..

I understand what you’re saying mate but it was always only pretence, the west enforcing the ways of the west onto foreign nationals, admittedly it must have been great for the past 20 years for the Afghan woman but it was always a futile exercise and just prolonging the inevitable. Very sad.

 

[wainy]

not really - if that was true, then why were there hundreds of US troop casualties when US troop numbers (and air support, and ANA strength) were far higher than they are now?

Why hadn’t the taliban retaken control of the country then if it was so easy? Take away US backing and they had no chance, just becomes a civil war almost. Hard when the enemy know who your family are. Seems since combat missions ended circa 2012 that deaths haven’t been excessive. Certainly not hundreds of US personnel.

 

[peteblue]

Just listening to the Pentagon briefing and a General telling everyone about the power of his aircraft and attack helicopters. He never once mentioned the tens of thousands of people surrounding and inside the airport nor the built up area around it.…He cannot pick out and eliminate a suicide bomber with any of these assets without killing loads of civilians and doing the ISIS job for them…..shocked tbh…..

 

[Pettifogger]

Is it?

This is the very tail end of a twenty-year war that has been - by any measure - a disaster, for the Afghans and for everyone else. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans dead, thousands of Western troops killed, tens of thousands of Western troops maimed, at least two and a bit trillion dollars pissed away, a wave of radicalization leading to terror attacks across the globe and the rise of a group worse than the Taliban... and all it has achieved is to get us right back to square one.

Now we are leaving and repeated tragedy has ensued during this withdrawal, the very last people who should be crowing about how appalling it is are the incompetents that are responsible for all that (or the people who cheer on those incompetents), whose proposed response to this is apparently to either not leave and hope the Taliban don't notice or instead to ramp the war up again for as long as it takes, because obviously the lesson from this latest horror is that we should present more targets over there for a longer period of time.

Of course though there are Tony and his mates, seemingly on all media platforms, condemning Biden for withdrawing (under a deal Trump signed and would have implemented earlier), and pretending its going to be open season on the US / the UK / western civilization as a whole because of how "Taliban Joe" (!) has taken troops out.

It won't, and if we go back to a saner foreign policy (where war is a last resort but when it is declared, it is done properly) led by more competent and less corrupt leaders we will all be far safer than we are now.

I'm not sure I disagree with any of that.

But I thought the question was whether America's meekness is going to embolden adversaries, and the answer to that, I believe, is absolutely. Of course, projecting strength does not have to be in the form of staying in Afghanistan indefinitely - most Americans want to exit (myself included).

 

[tsubaki]

I understand what you’re saying mate but it was always only pretence, the west enforcing the ways of the west onto foreign nationals, admittedly it must have been great for the past 20 years for the Afghan woman but it was always a futile exercise and just prolonging the inevitable. Very sad.

TBF it really shouldn't have been. One of the biggest reasons for the Taliban's continued existence and their recent success is that they are not seen as bent or incompetent; the Afghan government was both.

If the West had gone in there in 2001, defeated the Taliban and then ensured an effective and not bent regime replaced it (one which could protect itself and genuinely deliver improvements in the lives of the population of that country) then they'd never have been able to come back.

 

[tsubaki]

Why hadn’t the taliban retaken control of the country then if it was so easy? Take away US backing and they had no chance, just becomes a civil war almost. Hard when the enemy know who your family are. Seems since combat missions ended circa 2012 that deaths haven’t been excessive. Certainly not hundreds of US personnel.
View attachment 137050

right, so when you said the reason that no casualties had been suffered was because of US air support and military planning you were talking rubbish?

 

[Prevenger17]

Meh. I still think Afghanistan will be an after thought for most voters come election time. By then the US will have been out of Afghanistan for at least 2 years, people will have stopped caring about the 10 dead US soldiers within a month or two. Of course it will still be used by Republicans and their base as a stick to beat Dems with but there will be far more important issues come election time imo... 2 years is a long time for a lot of things to happen, just look at COVID basically burying Trump in election year, no one saw that coming.

Aye, Trump casually abandoned the Kurds and, while there was outrage at the time, it just got buried amongst his other acts of lunacy. But this is a stain on Biden's presidency without a doubt

 

[Pettifogger]

I think I agree with you, somewhat. I think the main concern is that the USA has a president who’s clearly not mentally cognitive calling the shots, but had an already shocking foreign policy history anyway. As you say, it’s the Afghans, the US forces and likely now the west who will suffer because of this. The events happening right now are just a small insight lnto what will likely happen again on western shores.

We are a comfortable, apathetic society obsessed with largely fictional crises and hence we're very, very ill equipped for genuine conflict with real consequence. Our leadership reflects our people. That deficiency is harder to spot in everyday mundane domestic life. It becomes glaring when that leadership is asked to guide us through actual crisis. It's the equivalent of asking humanities professors to win a firefight.

 

[Pettifogger]

TBF it really shouldn't have been. One of the biggest reasons for the Taliban's continued existence and their recent success is that they are not seen as bent or incompetent; the Afghan government was both.

If the West had gone in there in 2001, defeated the Taliban and then ensured an effective and not bent regime replaced it (one which could protect itself and genuinely deliver improvements in the lives of the population of that country) then they'd never have been able to come back.

I think you're asking for the impossible though. The Taliban is successful because it's an organic movement premised on something bedrock to many Afghans. No western-backed government would be sustainable in Afghanistan IMO. It's built on a faulty premise - that Afghanistan is a state in any meaningful, international-community sense.

 

[tsubaki]

We are a comfortable, apathetic society obsessed with largely fictional crises and hence we're very, very ill equipped for genuine conflict with real consequence. Our leadership reflects our people. That deficiency is harder to spot in everyday mundane domestic life. It becomes glaring when that leadership is asked to guide us through actual crisis. It's the equivalent of asking humanities professors to win a firefight.

Indeed, though I'd point out we've had serial crises these past twenty years (in terms of governance, the economy and now public health) and the leaders of this country have failed all of them. Environmental and probably political ones loom imminently, too.

 

[grandjoeblue]

Women wearing normal clothes. Women in jobs. Women at University.. A lot had changed. Sadly it will revert back I fear..

The vast majority of Afghans support Sharia. Freedoms just because of oppressive force isn't really sustainable.

I think you're asking for the impossible though. The Taliban is successful because it's an organic movement premised on something bedrock to many Afghans. No western-backed government would be sustainable in Afghanistan IMO. It's built on a faulty premise - that Afghanistan is a state in any meaningful, international-community sense.

Agree with this. Most Afghans apparently believe in their local community/tribe. Nationalism isn't a massive thing there.

 

[Pettifogger]

Indeed, though I'd point out we've had serial crises these past twenty years (in terms of governance, the economy and now public health) and the leaders of this country have failed all of them. Environmental and probably political ones loom imminently, too.

And when the population forgives and forgets, that's the political equivalent of moral hazard, I'd argue.