US and Taliban signs deal for an American withdrawal
 

US and Taliban have signed a deal aiming at ending their 18 year old conflict.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51689443

Headline should read : US and Taliban sign deal for an American withdrawal.
Asking the authority to make the correction.

Some voices especially in Britain have been saying for a long time that the campaign was futile. The Brits were once responsible for Helmand province.

Time will only tell if this will another April 30th 1975 moment in U.S. history.

As usual, T'rump screwed the pooch on this attempt to find peace in Afghanistan. Oh well, everything Vlad's puppet touches dies.

Bah! This is merely Donny casting about for a "win" before the election. There's no there there. You're gullible enough to believe there is, lol.

He'll call it a "win", they call it "victory!".
Who will the rational world observers believe?

O well what a mess we have left behind.....we should of handled this differently.
You would think we would of learned something in the twenty years over there. Not just spent money and life's.


A sad day for Afghanistan.

In the end we trained and equipped a army, to see it just melt away, morph into a Taliban one.


The world gave Afghanistan twenty years to get their act together. This was a time for them to stand on their own. Could we of handled it better, YES! We dropped the ball at the end and ran away!

Armies must have basic, instinctive loyalty to their leaders. The Afghan recruits always knew their leaders were corrupt Anerican puppets. Nothing could overcome that, and you had a force totally unwilling to fight and die.

The US has failed once again to learn from our own recent history...

I recommend that you fellows (re)read A Bright and Shining Lie which lays out in detail our failures in Vietnam which are not at all unlike our failures in Afghanistan.

The GOP quietly removed a webpage hailing Trump's peace deal with the Taliban as the militant group seized power in Afghanistan

https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-...an-deal-2021-8

Cancel Culture, anyone? So much for Donny's "historic" peace deal. :rolleyes:

The title of Bright and Shining Lie refers to the bureaucracies' inability to face hard truths when it is in the immediate interest not to. That is a continuing problem for sure.

I think this is more complicated than Trump did this and Biden did that.....

We trained Afghan forces for twenty years and gave them what they needed to defend themselves and, it seems to me, they just gave up and surrendered without a fight.

I can't help but think the Afghans share some of the responsibility.

I can see where someone is being forced to complete a ""agreement"" made by others. Not wanting to or unable to try and make a better deal. The Afghanistan government was not even at the table for the treaty.

Biden was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Borrowed from a pm:
A couple of more sober and realistic views...
https://www.realclearworld.com/arti....ul_790142.html
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/af...r-afghanistan/
https://cepa.org/afghanistans-end-po...er-u-s-future/
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/ar...tan-assessment
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/artic...of-afghanistan

david nussbaum @theNuzzy

“I started the process, all the troops are coming home, they (Biden) couldn’t stop the process. 21 years is enough. They (Biden) couldn’t stop the process, they (Biden) wanted to but couldn’t stop the process.”

- Trump, 1 month ago

https://mobile.twitter.com/theNuzzy/...51039404957697

4:34 PM · Aug 15, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

Today while watching the news coverage and listening to NPR the realization came to me.

There were close to 700,000 trained and equipped to fight for themselves. Watching the coverage and seeing the crowds of men rushing to leave. What if they all were armed and fighting?

Sorry sometimes you require self help. This is one here.

As to the people who were working for the USA. What is the odds we were told they would be OK? That their army was going to be able to hold off the taliban.....

We choose to believe them that was a mistake.

Now the country will be looking for funding. They will be making deals with our adversaries on the equipment left behind.......

What a mess to look forward to.

I don't blame the Afghan recruits much. They are uneducated, they were put through one of a succession of American training programs that worked poorly for illiterate persons, and may have been completed on a total go-through-the-motions basis, and they knew their leadership was corrupt and kissing American ass for $. The idea that they would fight was always ridiculous.

Most likely these guys just saw it as an employment opportunity.

The Taliban is the continuation of the people the US armed to fight the Soviets. They have the conviction to endure suffering for what is essentially religious purity.
It appears to me that the 700,000 are a more secular crowd with aspirations for more worldly comforts. They notice that their leaders have outs, options to the west...they simply would like that too.

Hell yes. Typical career was get a few paychecks and desert.

More good reading from fellow member Bratwurst:


https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...country-505160

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/....gtype=Homepage

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-...n-Afghanistan2
https://www.commentary.org/noah-roth...h-less-secure/
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna....nistan/619765/
https://newrepublic.com/article/1632...n-bush-taliban
https://nationalinterest.org/feature...onquest-191875
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-....e-american-era

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/colum...ons-created-it
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pa....pment-projects
https://www.csis.org/analysis/reason...-afghan-forces

Uncle Joe is right: There was never a good time to leave Afghanistan.

Overwhelming majority backs US withdrawal from Afghanistan: poll
4/29/2021

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-amer...om-afghanistan

So, Joe went with most Americans, who just want out of endless foreign wars. Disgusting Repubes, of course, wanted the same, but are now hurriedly deleting any and all posts showing that they did. No worries, the internet never forgets.

Working thru this;
https://www.csis.org/analysis/reason...-afghan-forces

Agreed. But here's what I've been thinking about this...

If we had withdrawn five years ago the outcome would have been the same. If we remained for another five years the outcome would be the same. Because...

We had three presidents with 20 years of opportunity to use all the enormous power of the US military to at least attempt to drive out/kill off the Taliban for good. And not one of them had the guts to deal with the bad press, the disillusioned electorate, the accusations of racism, and the fear of not being re-elected to take the necessary action and make it happen. So it was left to Joe Biden to have the guts to stand up in front of the cameras and say...whatever the outcome, we are done with this war.

Thank you, Joe.

It was, as with Vietnam, a stalemate machine. By 'it' I mean the leadership politics and bureaucratic cowardice of DC, that was unwilling to risk either escalating enough to possibly bring the Taliban to terms, or leaving--until Biden finally pulled the plug.

There was a really good reporting on CBS Sunday Morning today. As in Vietnam, the graft and corruption in the Afghan government and military was rampant from top to bottom. As many as half the 300,000 reported ranks of the Afghan army, that this country completely financially supported, were "ghost" soldiers who didn't exist...their pay going to the General staff and other high ranking officers. The question remains...how do three presidents representing both parties, lnot only let this go on, but finance it for two decades.

They felt trapped. They might end it by 'winning the war.' but that was believed impossible. Or they might end it by pulling out, but that was believed to carry too sharp a political cost. So policy became to carry on indefinitely, and lie to the public and each other about everything.

Since this deal was made, we are to believe the TALIBAN can be relied upon to fight religious extremism and the violence it inevitably spawns?

We really have become an Idiocracy......

Afghanistan up until a few days ago was sustained by billions in aid from the US and others. Huge economic shock happening now. Taliban has big incentive to try to put a decent face on things in the hopes that some governments and NGO may continue or resume financial support. But that of course conflicts with their core ideology. They will make gestures and try to move towards a kinder and gentler Islamist terror state. Or to fake it. Interesting times in Afghanistan.

And I thought we might have learned our lesson about that sort of thing back in 1975. Silly me.

A couple of generations dimmed the institutional memory, and bureaucratic institutions are what they are anyway. And so a stupid Republican president got us into not one but two land wars in Asia.

A guy with experience on the ground, and insight, writes:I am fairly convinced we need a Great Awakening, a moral reform movement to wipe out dishonesty, completely. Being caught in ONE lie should make you unelectable, anywhere!

Follow the link, read the rest. This guy says it right.

Afghanistan: sophisticated money laundering.
Biden had guts to pull the plug on this massive transfer of wealth from the public to the well connected.

"In a speech Thursday in which he said the United States would punish the Islamic State for a deadly attack on American service members and Afghans in Kabul, President Biden said he would send additional troops to aid Americans in Afghanistan if his military advisers ask — though he said that has not been requested.

The Islamic State attack at the Kabul airport, which included two suicide bombings, killed 12 U.S. troops and wounded 15.

“We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said in the White House speech Thursday evening, calling those military members who died “heroes who’ve been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others.”" WP

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...-live-updates/

:(

What a mess Biden was faced with.

Has he any good options?

Could he had done a better job?

Probably not.

No matter who was in charge or when it occurred the withdrawal was destined to fail miserably. The apparently clear fact is simply there would never have been a Afghan army to protect the USA. Was it wishful thinking, misguided by overzealous generals and advisors?


President Biden will be blamed for the way it ended with little to none going to the real architects of this disaster.
This will never be known.

KABOOM!

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/2...n-afghanistan/


""ISIS-K Planner Hit in US Drone Strike in Eastern Afghanistan""

""US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counter terrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan", Urban stated. "We know of no civilian casualties.""

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...mil1jq_Uhno7NE

BYE BYE!