 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
Good idea when the clown wanted it, good idea now.
_________________
kill for collingwood! |
|
|
|
 |
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
|
|
|
|
David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I think that last sentence sums it up better than I can. Just a completely useless war that was incapable of achieving even the most basic long-term aims.
For anyone who thinks today's news is somehow a vindication of those who wanted to "stay the course" – or that American foreign interventions are good, actually – Kant put it best: "ought implies can". America can't.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
|
|
|
|
What'sinaname
Joined: 29 May 2010
Location: Living rent free
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Over to China
_________________
Fighting against the objectification of woman. |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
And it begins.
| Quote: | Since the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan in July, the Taliban have swiftly taken control of large parts of the country. The president has fled and the government has fallen.
Emboldened by their success, lack of resistance by Afghan forces and minimal international pressure, the Taliban have intensified their violence.
For Afghan women, their increasing power is terrifying.
In early July, Taliban leaders, who took control of the provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, issued an order to local religious leaders to provide them with a list of girls over the age of 15 and widows under the age of 45 for “marriage” with Taliban fighters. It's not yet known whether they've complied.
|
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-16/afghanistan-taliban-women-and-girls/100379914
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
swoop42 
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Every Afghan (and their family) who risked their life working for our Armed forces in an official capacity need to be extracted and given sanctuary in Australia.
Anything less would be a national shame.
_________________
He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^
Those that haven't already been tortured and/or killed.
Bring them to Melbourne so they can experience freedom in a non-authoritarian state.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Pat Buchanan sums it up best.
| Quote: | Who Lost America’s Longest War?
In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States.
Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on the cusp of victory over the Americans and their Afghan allies, with gruesome public executions of their surrendered and captured enemies.
Sept. 11, 2021, could see U.S. Marines and diplomats fleeing Kabul to escape the retribution of the Taliban whom we ousted in 2001.
Consider. From Friday, a week ago, to today, the Taliban have overrun 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals.
Mazar-e-Sharif in the north is now surrounded. Kandahar and Herat, second and third largest cities, are under siege. The Kandahar-Kabul road has been cut. The defense minister escaped assassination in the capital. The government’s media director did not. The Taliban now control half of the 400 regions of Afghanistan and two-thirds of its territory.
Some Afghan soldiers have fought bravely. Others have retreated into their bases, surrendered, or fled into neighboring countries such as Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. An entire Afghan army corps with its U.S. weapons, equipment and vehicles was surrendered in Kunduz city.
U.S. military say the fall of Kabul could come within 90 days, with some saying privately the regime could fall to the Taliban within a month.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has summarized the situation:
“The complete, utter failure of the Afghan national army, absent our hand-holding, to defend their country is a blistering indictment of a failed 20-year strategy predicated on the belief that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars could create an effective democratic central government in a nation that has never had one.”
The reality of that grim assessment raises many questions.
Who is responsible for the colossal U.S. failure in Afghanistan? Who is responsible for America’s impending defeat in her longest war?
Over the last 20 years, the U.S. lost 2,500 troops with 20,000 wounded and invested $1 trillion to create an Afghan army, only to see that army crumble and disintegrate as soon as we departed.
Wednesday, Biden conceded that truth:
“Look, we spent over $1 trillion over 20 years; we trained and equipped … over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. They’ve got to fight for themselves.”
We are facing in Afghanistan a wipeout of the investment of a generation to convert Afghanistan into a democracy with the ability to hold the allegiance of its people and to defend itself.
Why did we fail?
Did the U.S. generals, statesmen, politicians and journalists who went to Afghanistan during these last two decades, and came back to testify to our steady progress, delude themselves? Or did they deceive us?
How many U.S. generals knew what was going on but declined to risk their careers by telling Congress or the country that the Afghan army and regime we had stood up would likely collapse like a house of cards once the Americans departed and they had to face the Taliban alone?
Today, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in Qatar threatening the Taliban that if they overrun the country and impose a victor’s peace, they risk being denied diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and its Western allies and a forfeiture of future foreign aid.
But to brand the Taliban terrorists and pariahs is not new to them. What they seek is something for which they have proven they are willing to die.
What is critical for them is to restore the Taliban to their previous dominance; to create an Islamic Emirate; to make themselves the moral, social and political arbiters of a more purely Islamic Afghanistan.
And to be rid of the outsiders and their alien values.
They want to be able to stand up and say to the Muslim world: “We have shown you how to do it. We fought America, the world superpower, for 20 years until we forced the Americans, tails between their legs, to get out of our land, and then put their puppets up against a wall.”
While our strategic defeat will leave Americans reluctant to attempt any such future imperial interventions, there needs to be an accounting.
The questions that need answering:
Was not the attempt to transplant Madisonian democracy into the soil of the Middle and Near East a fool’s errand from the beginning?
How many other U.S. allies field paper armies, which will collapse, if they do not have the Americans there to do the heavy lifting?
Is what we have on offer — one man-one vote democracy — truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?
The Taliban’s God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger. |
https://buchanan.org/blog/who-lost-americas-longest-war-149906
_________________
| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
|
|
|
|
Jezza
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | I think that last sentence sums it up better than I can. Just a completely useless war that was incapable of achieving even the most basic long-term aims.
For anyone who thinks today's news is somehow a vindication of those who wanted to "stay the course" – or that American foreign interventions are good, actually – Kant put it best: "ought implies can". America can't. |
Exactly, David.
The Soviets occupied Afghanistan all throughout the 80s and ultimately failed. The US was there for 20 years and no strategic gains have been made.
Only the people of Afghanistan can choose their destiny. Nation building a country that has no history or desire to have democracy is doomed to fail.
Wouldn't have mattered if the US stayed there for another year or five years, the outcome would have been the same.
_________________
| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
A moral horror show from delusional and grifting beginning to utterly pitiful end.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Just get those poor innocent people out of there, then bomb it off the planet, let them all be martyrs murdering bastards
I don’t get it, in this day and age, what those women and children will go through, they will kill any man who won’t join them.
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Not having a go at anyone here in particular, but it’s worth remembering that Afghanistan is precisely where many of those people locked up for 8+ years on Manus Island come from. What do you think they were fleeing from? The Taliban didn’t go from zero to full control yesterday; they’ve been running much of the country for years. So to call for millions to be transported to safety and freedom now, when we couldn’t handle a few hundred arriving by boat not that long ago, well … I understand the sentiment, but it’s hard to see it as being a seriously or genuinely held position. (And TP, I’ll be charitable enough to put your suggestion of "bombing the country off the planet" in the same category.)
As Swoop says, the US and Australia certainly have a moral obligation to their collaborators, and should make getting them out of the country to safety a priority. But in the meantime, any notion of saving all the citizens of Afghanistan from living under a violent theocratic dictatorship (a fate shared in some form or other by many hundreds of millions of people around the world) is the same kind of paternalistic mentality that led many people to support the invasion in the first place. There are many things, on the other hand, that we can, and should, do: use any diplomatic leverage we have with the Taliban to get improvements for the lives of the people living under their rule; expand our refugee intake and work with countries in the region to enable safer passageways and shared resettlement strategies; support the work of NGOs and human rights organisations within the country; and so on.
But one of the absolute best things the US can do is, for once in a blue moon, actually learn from its bad decisions, make appropriate restitution for this one – if such a thing is even close to being possible – and shift their cultural discourse so that anyone who even floats the possibility of doing something like a War on Afghanistan again is scorned and humiliated. Because while it may not always be possible to be a genius in hindsight, any vaguely competent policymaker should be able to learn from others’ well-documented mistakes.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
|
|
|
|
roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Typical US foreign policy debacle driven by those with a huge financial gain when the US creates wars.
_________________
kill for collingwood! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
