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Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

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Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#191

Post by ClumsyPilot »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #50
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corruption is so bad soldiers in hospitals starved to death. It's clear that in the past 30 years afganistan did not have a functioning government at all. Its not about popular support, its a failure of 'statebuilding' https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corru...

Most of the Afghan government just pocketed as much money as possible and stashed in (and their families) in Dubai: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-11-04/the...

Well Russian government also pockets the money and stashes them in foreign countries, but it is not totally dysfunctional - they can get infrastructure built and the army organised. They dont do it well, but they can defend themselves.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#192

Post by GaryTang »

fuoqi wrote: post #42

It's interesting to note that DRA (the pro-Soviet Afghanistan government) has fought for 3 whole years after the Soviets have left Afghanistan. And it was with the almost complete lack of military support from the USSR (you know, the Union collapse and all) and with Taliban being actively funded by the US and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the current government probably will fall even before the US will finish its humiliating…

Most of us knew this was inevitable as soon as Biden became president. What happens when weak leadership takes over is weak results. Tale as old as time.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#193

Post by Beldin »

rascul wrote: post #175
fuoqi wrote: post #42

It's interesting to note that DRA (the pro-Soviet Afghanistan government) has fought for 3 whole years after the Soviets have left Afghanistan. And it was with the almost complete lack of military support from the USSR (you know, the Union collapse and all) and with Taliban being actively funded by the US and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the current government probably will fall even before the US will finish its humiliating…

> Meanwhile, the current government probably will fall even before the US will finish its humiliating retreat The humiliating part is that the U.S. was there at all, not that the U.S. finally pulled out of a place where troops should never have been sent.

Having to send new troops just to evacuate embassy personnel before your old troops have finished leaving isn't the proudest moment ever, I'd think.

That is: the humiliation isn't in retreating, but in things collapsing even before you've left.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#194

Post by throwawaysea »

rascul wrote: post #173
throwawaysea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that getting out is a good thing. It means a terrorist organization will control a nation and harbor terrorists once again in the future (remember the same Taliban sheltered 9/11 terrorists and is still allied with al Qaeda!). It means we lose a foothold in the region, militarily and economically. It means rivals like China expand their influence and force projection at our expense, since they plan to reco…

> It means a terrorist organization will control a nation What terrorist acts have the Taliban committed? I've mostly only seen them fight back against foreign invaders. > and harbor terrorists once again in the future (remember the same Taliban sheltered 9/11 terrorists and is still allied with al Qaeda!). First they offered to look at evidence and consider extradition, then they offered extradition, both of which t…

> What terrorist acts have the Taliban committed?

Giving aid to a terrorist group that commits those acts doesn't make the Taliban less complicit. See this UN report from June about how the Taliban is still closely tied to al Qaeda (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/02/middleeast/un-report-tali...). As for what atrocities they've committed, there's a long list on Wikipedia, many of which meet the definition of terrorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Condemned_practices).

> Why does the U.S. need a foothold in a region on the other side of the world?

So many reasons. First, to contain China, which is the principal threat to America's prosperity and control in the future. Second, to support other democratic nations like India, who will suffer from the Taliban's resurgence. Third, to expand our economic interests. Fourth, to continue our mission to sustain human rights which the Taliban is already eroding. There are others, and I am certainly not a foreign policy expert, but my point is - there's something there.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#195

Post by lamontcg »

_moof wrote: post #185

Maybe next time we protest against starting a war, listen to us.

Yeah I called this one in real time right as I watched the planes hit the towers. Knew we'd kill hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east before we had to pull out defeated. I didn't quite expect it to take 20 years though.

Then protested Iraq and they cheered our freedom of speech, then rolled tanks into Baghdad anyway and the WMDs weren't there, just like Scott Ritter told them. That worked out well.

Really should have listened to us when it came to Kuwait in 1991 as well. The towers might still be standing.

I eagerly await the mental tap dancing and 'splaning that results in us being the hopelessly geopolitically naive ones, when the other side of the argument has been wrong for a solid 30 years straight.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#196

Post by lamontcg »

hulitu wrote: post #110
throwawaysea wrote: post #37

The Taliban has already entered the capital ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-taliban-seize-jala... ). This is an utter disaster for Biden and America. We should instead have performed a slower withdrawal and also continued to maintain a military presence permanently at Bagram field. Instead it appears China and Pakistan will welcome a new Taliban government and build new economic ties while America loses i…

This is not a disaster for Bidden. I'm sorry to say it but it is really a victory for Bidden to limit the loss of lives.

As usual though the Democrats are the ones that wind up holding the bag and doing the necessary thing, so that they're the ones that will carry the blame as far as political simpletons go.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#197

Post by karakot »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #159
chewz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary. Taliban increased poppy fields by 50 percent in 2020 and they are also pushing meth through their channels. Taliban budget estimated at 2 bilion dollars is supported chiefly by opium trade... https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/19/taliban-expanding-drug-...

Questionable story, drugs are a huge taboo for devout muslims. Hard to square with the Taliban rank and file showing strong support for their leaders.

there is a russian blogger in Kabul, you can use google translate to read his articles, in short there're plenty of heroin addicts in plain sight

https://varlamov.ru/tjm1DhGAHsj

https://varlamov.ru/gLxlGFc6GCc?cda=

https://varlamov.ru/VndQif0KCJw?cda=

a lot of very interesting photos

https://varlamov.ru/p_aaaYHw724

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#198

Post by adwn »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #119
BasDirks wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US played a pivotal role in saving our asses over in Europe, and we are eternally grateful, but ever since, the US has been bad at war. It's not the firepower, it's not the soldiers, and it's not the organization. These are top notch. It's the **ing politicians dragging young men and women into wars not worth fighting.

This is a very ironic comment considering that the soviets, not the US liberated Europe from Germany. They fought the hardest battles, lost the most soldiers, fought for the longer time and were first in Berlin. The public just believes otherwise because of 70 years of US propaganda [1]. The only thing US soldiers left us europeans with are a massive influx of refugees of which we have to take care of and for which w…

> [The soviets] lost the most soldiers [...]

To be fair, the major reasons for this were that the Russian military leadership was utterly incompetent during the earlier stages of the war [1], and that they suffered from a serious lack of equipment and material. "Number of casualties" and "years spent fighting" aren't good indicators of military effectiveness.

[1] That's what happens when you liquidate your military elite or put them into gulags because they are on the wrong side of your class war.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#199

Post by _moof »

lamontcg wrote: post #195
_moof wrote: post #185

Maybe next time we protest against starting a war, listen to us.

Yeah I called this one in real time right as I watched the planes hit the towers. Knew we'd kill hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east before we had to pull out defeated. I didn't quite expect it to take 20 years though. Then protested Iraq and they cheered our freedom of speech, then rolled tanks into Baghdad anyway and the WMDs weren't there, just like Scott Ritter told them. That worked out well. Real…

Hell, if you zoom out from the Middle East, you can go all the way back to Vietnam. (I don't know much about Korea.) That's over six decades of being wrong--sixty years of belligerence with nothing to show for it but a horrific body count and whole generations turned against us.

Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

#200

Post by purple_ferret »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #119
BasDirks wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US played a pivotal role in saving our asses over in Europe, and we are eternally grateful, but ever since, the US has been bad at war. It's not the firepower, it's not the soldiers, and it's not the organization. These are top notch. It's the **ing politicians dragging young men and women into wars not worth fighting.

This is a very ironic comment considering that the soviets, not the US liberated Europe from Germany. They fought the hardest battles, lost the most soldiers, fought for the longer time and were first in Berlin. The public just believes otherwise because of 70 years of US propaganda [1]. The only thing US soldiers left us europeans with are a massive influx of refugees of which we have to take care of and for which w…

American Lend-Lease kept the Soviets afloat. Stalin couldn't even supply his own army with cars.
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