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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

#201

Post by yalogin »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #46
yalogin wrote: post #32

What a failure of the US armed forces here. 20 damn years staying in the country with the only 2 goal - to help Afghans build an army and help defend themselves and to eradicate the Taliban. They failed miserably in both. Trillions spent and many lost lives. Why would we ever pour money into such a terrible, incompetent system? Of course, the cycle keeps repeating itself and we keep growing the military.

>>>Why would we ever pour money into such a terrible, incompetent system? Not that the US DoD is in any way a model of efficiency, but I suspect you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of the problem set. Over the past 200 years, the British, Soviet, and American empires have all failed to pacify Afghanistan. Probably the Mongols and Alexander the Great struggled too, I need to dig into the history of those cam…

Your blurb further clarifies not just our deep incompetence but also our extraordinary arrogance. Even though there is a history of nations failing in Afghanistan we somehow thought we will succeed. This is nothing but a power and money grab by our politicians and defense contractors.

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

#202

Post by kingofpandora »

koonsolo wrote: post #190
kingofpandora wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you like a foreign power invading and running your country? You better believe a large part of the Taliban are fighting not out of religious conviction but essentially (Pashtun) nationalism.

US did it during WW2, and it seemed to work out fine. Only thing is that when they left, we made sure the Nazi's didn't come back. Right now they were training Afghans to have their own military, but it's all so corrupt that it is just an impossible task. Those who can will flee the country instead of fighting for it.

They are fighting for it. It's just hard to see from you perspective because they are fighting against who you want to win.

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

#203

Post by lamontcg »

_moof wrote: post #199
lamontcg wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I was just sticking with events in my lifetime, I just wasn't alive much for Vietnam, and wasn't very concerned with politics right after I was born.

Someone reminded me about Reagan sending weapons to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, which I do remember (and Carter boycotting the Olympics).

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

#204

Post by koonsolo »

kingofpandora wrote: post #202
koonsolo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US did it during WW2, and it seemed to work out fine. Only thing is that when they left, we made sure the Nazi's didn't come back. Right now they were training Afghans to have their own military, but it's all so corrupt that it is just an impossible task. Those who can will flee the country instead of fighting for it.

They are fighting for it. It's just hard to see from you perspective because they are fighting against who you want to win.

So how do you explain all the Afghan refugees right now? Seems like they all love the Taliban so much they want to get out as soon as possible.

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

#205

Post by emilsedgh »

Johnjonjoan wrote: post #183
chewz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not want to fight for their freedoms so why shall we Westerners feel obliged to do the fighting for them? They can go back to Middle Ages.

We started the fight

Not only that, US initially empowered Taliban to fight the cold war.

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

#206

Post by emilsedgh »

koonsolo wrote: post #190
kingofpandora wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you like a foreign power invading and running your country? You better believe a large part of the Taliban are fighting not out of religious conviction but essentially (Pashtun) nationalism.

US did it during WW2, and it seemed to work out fine. Only thing is that when they left, we made sure the Nazi's didn't come back. Right now they were training Afghans to have their own military, but it's all so corrupt that it is just an impossible task. Those who can will flee the country instead of fighting for it.

You are assuming Taliban _left_, and Afghans are letting them come back.

Initially, Taliban offered surrender. US denied their terms. So they kept on fighting and rebuilding.

They took over the country in less than a month. They never left. They were always there.

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

#207

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

jacksonkmarley wrote: post #90

Seems like the Taliban are holding back to allow foreign personnel to evacuate. I wonder if that is part of an explicit agreement, or just them not wanting to create problems for themselves when they've already clearly won.

Hunting down a retreating enemy has always been a bad war tactic.

The only thing it can accomplish is creating additional casualties on your side, and you gain no additional turf.

Killing them while they're trying to retreat just makes them turn around and start shooting back, because if they're going to die no matter what, they might as well go down in a blaze of glory.

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

#208

Post by rasz »

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…

Occupied, not liberated. Does this look like US propaganda to you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

WW2 was started by Germany and USSR hand in hand.

'Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September'

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

#209

Post by MichaelZuo »

karakot wrote: post #197
MichaelZuo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks for sharing. The proof will ultimately be in the pudding, if opium trade goes down or not in a few years time.

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

#210

Post by hintymad »

yalogin wrote: post #32

What a failure of the US armed forces here. 20 damn years staying in the country with the only 2 goal - to help Afghans build an army and help defend themselves and to eradicate the Taliban. They failed miserably in both. Trillions spent and many lost lives. Why would we ever pour money into such a terrible, incompetent system? Of course, the cycle keeps repeating itself and we keep growing the military.

You simply can't foster a regime, for the fostered government is by definition a puppet that simply does not command enough support of its people. What's surprising to me is the US government never learns despite so many failures around the world.

And an honest question: why do American people think that it's so damn important to spread American democracy at the cost of waging wars? Pew Research said 94%+ of Afghanistan adults support Sharia laws. So why do we risk our own people's lives, kill thousands of people in a foreign nation, and throw trillions of dollars just to force other countries to buy our own ideology? Isn't it text-book definition of pure evil? Another case in point: According to the book Skin in the Game, the western countries removed Assad in the name of bringing democracy, yet triggered one of the most brutal civil war in a country, left dozens of cities in ruins, and ironically fostered the largest slave market in the world. Yeah, slave market. Isn't it ironic?

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