9,800 Troops in Afghanistan

Where is the hue and cry?. Why has this not gotten more press?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Where is the hue and cry?. Why has this not gotten more press?

I have seen several extended reports on this.
Of course, I don't watch Fox News.

I used to think that Nixon's cabinet was relitigating Viet Nam with every conflict, trying to find a way out of the morass, to find the key to winning and thus prove themselves right after all.

But as far as I know Obama has no Nixon cabinet members on staff.  Maybe he never met Gorbachev?

Saw a thing on the moving picture box the other day about how the Taliban is biding their time, waiting for Biden to pull out the rest of the US troops. They are as strong as ever, and will quickly overtake the Afghan government and turn the place into another Islamic caliphate.

US military is warning about this. Biden says he doesn't care. We've held off the tide for twenty years, and nothing has changed. If we don't decide to say "fuck it" and leave, we'll be there forever.

I agree. The world is not our responsibility.

And besides, the Taliban is no different, no different at all, than the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Bois and the current Republican Party.

As Chinua Achebe says, "Things Fall Apart."

Quote :

I remember there was this colonel who had talked to us right when we got into country. And he said, “I want you to remember that not a single thing you do out here is worth the life of a single Marine.”

It felt like that’s the kind of thing that you hear at a safety brief before a training exercise. Like, “Hey, remember, this is just training. Nothing that we do is like worth someone dying over. So if something’s unsafe, just stop it.” But this is war. The thing that we’re doing is supposed to be worth the life of a Marine, because if it’s not, then what are we doing here? Are we just running out the clock? Are we just sitting here, waiting to go home and trying to not die? ...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/looking-back-on-20-years-at-war-in-afghanistan_n_6092b882e4b05af50dca9a64

This is a war without any definable “victory.”  It was a political undertaking, a show war for the theater of it, a chance to show that we could do what the Soviets could not. Except nobody, not the generals, not the leadership, not the soldiers, not the pundits could define what the goal was, what constituted victory.

It was fuzzy thinking from the start.

Soldiers should not die for the careers of politicians.

What's our moral responsibility toward Afghan refugees?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/afghan-refugees-biden-faster-evacuations_n_60ba5e7ae4b02df1ad8afac2

Especially the translators?

Those of us old enough can remember the wholesale slaughter of Vietnamese translators as we pulled out of that shit fight.

Rethinking counter-insurgency.

Quote :

The longer and larger a military commitment is in fighting an insurgency, the more vulnerable it becomes to a variety of potential "Achilles' heels". The most obvious of these is the casualty rate, a trend that can become seriously unpopular back home. More than 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War and nearly 15,000 Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan - factors that hastened the end of those campaigns.

Then there is the financial cost, which almost invariably exceeds expectations. When Saudi Arabia began its intervention in Yemen's civil war in 2015 it never expected to be still fighting there six years later. Estimates of the running cost to the Saudi treasury to date range as high as $100bn (£72.4bn).

Concerns over human rights can also derail a military campaign when least expected. US air strikes hitting Afghan wedding parties, Saudi air strikes killing civilians in Yemen and human rights abuses by the UAE's allies there have all carried a reputational cost for those countries. In the case of the UAE, the stories emerging of prisoners being suffocated to death while locked inside shipping containers had a major influence in prompting it to withdraw from the Yemen war.

Islamic caliphate(s) will take over the Middle East. Sharia law will plunge half the world's population back into the Middle Ages. Lack of trade and commerce and natural resources -- after the oil is gone -- will keep those areas in poverty and servitude. The sheer numbers of the suffering would seem to make humanitarian aid a responsibility, but disease and pandemics may cause the opposite, a closure of all borders between the East and the West.

It'll be God versus Allah for a couple generations.

As weather patterns shift, with the deserts get even more uninhabitable? Or could they suddenly become temperate zones?

Biden says he'll give sanctuary to the translators. Let's hope he does.

Time's running' out Joe. Time to stop talking and start acting.

I'm already getting the "Obama-willies" about the Biden administration (all talk and no action). And Joe still holds a congressional majority. Come 2023 he'll lose that, if he doesn't pull his ass off the comfy chair.

President Bush says he fears the Afghan women will pay a heavy price for the American withdrawal.  No doubt he's right. And he should care -- it's all his fault.

Mrs NoCo said, "Maybe we should just airlift them all out?"

To which I replied, "Well, that'd stop the Taliban in its tracks woodenit."

Biden Administration used executive action today to appropriate $100 million to evacuate 20,000 Afghan translators.  (That's only $5000 each.)  One of them has already been hunted down and beheaded by the Taliban if anyone doubts the need.

On Rachel tonite there was a story about Hong Kong pro-democracy activists asking for emergency refugee status to escape the increasing Chinese crackdown.  Those people are a little different than the Afghan translators, because we didn't cause their imperilment.  Arguably, England did by turning over HK to China in 1999.  Still, if America stands for anything, it's refuge from repression at home, right?

The white supremacists / white homeland / keep-our-wimmin-pure folks will just have to buck up and accept that the USA is going to be a multi-cultural melting pot of good folks escaping domestic terrorism all over the world.  This should be made clear to them, in no uncertain terms.

Why are there immigration limits at all?  We should welcome a flood of new citizens, similar to what happened in 1865 when 3.9 million residents of the country suddenly became citizens.  Let's run that experiment again -- and get it right this time.

But is this policy sustainable?

What about all the world's people displaced by sea level rise? What about all the people impacted by repressive governments? What about all the people affected by drought?

Maybe the US cannot absorb every person who thinks they'd have a better chance here. Maybe we can. I dunno.

Looks like the translators won't be evacuated before the Taliban takes the country back.

We spent 20 years and trillions of dollars "training" Afghan forces so they could defend their own country.

In mere weeks, the Taliban has taken over most of it, and will complete the rest as soon as the last American forces are gone.

What an incredible waste of money & blood. Who can we hold responsible?

Stoopid US Representative on stoopid Fox News doesn't know the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaida. How do these morons get elected?

I have a question.

Why hasn't any news organization, that I have seen anyway, drawn the obvious parallel between our ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan, and our 1974 withdrawal from Viet Nam almost 50 years ago? Have we learned NOTHING  in the last half century?

In both cases the forces taking over the country, as the Americans withdrew, have been described as "insurgents."  They are not insurgents.

In both cases, the American-trained and -provisioned soldiers were expected to defend their own country, and we expressed great disappointment when they dropped their weapons and ran.

In both cases, our withdrawal from these countries has been seen as a failure to stand up a government strong enough to protect itself against foreign invaders.

Those are false narratives.  False, false, false.

What has happened, in both cases, is that we overstayed our welcome. We created a "puppet government" that was supported and sustained by the American military, but not at the request of the local natives.  These governments are not seen by the local populace as "their government," but rather the imposed government of the occupiers.  No soldiers wanted to defend these unpopular institutions.  When LOCAL forces (the Viet Cong in Viet Nam, and the Taliban in Afghanistan) arrive to "liberate" the populace from foreign occupation, they are welcomed in, and the so-called army quickly surrender and change sides.

At least, that's the way I read the situation.

Fox News wants to blame Biden for the fall of Afghanistan, but isn't is a failure of twenty years of nation-building?

Two points.

One. For the trillions of dollars poured into the sand of Iraq and Afghanistan, we could've done MAJOR infrastructure rebuilding in the USA.  We could've had high speed rail, electric car infrastructure, brand new roads and bridges, no more lead pipes, brand new schools, universal high speed internet.  We could've given excellent universal healthcare to everyone.  We could've made college free to anyone.  We could've made major strides cleaning up carbon pollution.

Instead, we made a few warlords rich and made the rest of the oil countries hate us.

Two. I read yesterday that Iraq and Afghanistan (the Cheney Wars) were the first wars in US history that were financed by borrowing rather than raising taxes. During the Second World War taxes were raised.  During the Korean War top tax rates were raised to 92% to pay off the war.  During Viet Nam 78%.

During Iraq/Afghanistan, Bush actually cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.  

As a result, we're actually spending just under a trillion per year ($952 billion) to finance the debt for the Cheney Wars.  The wars cost $3.4 trillion right off the top, but by the time the debt is paid it'll be closer to $13 trillion to $15 trillion.

And who do the interest payments go to? Oh yeah -- rich folks.

For what.  What do we -- what does ANYBODY -- have to show for this.

Alex Denethorn answering a question on Quora:

Quote :

After the fiasco in Afghanistan, do Biden voters still think he’s doing a great job? How do family members who have lost loved ones there, feel about current events?

Let’s put it this way:

Donald Trump negotiated a treaty with the Taliban that timetabled the withdrawal of US troops for May. He participated in a hostile transition that did not prepare the incoming Biden administration, and made no effective preparations by the time he left office on January 20th. This is also bearing in mind that he left a nation ravaged by Covid-19, an economy in recession, and a huge host of other issues for the new President to focus on.

Further to that, it was fully expected that the Afghan military would at least work to hold back the Taliban from taking over the country. Instead, within the space of two weeks, the Taliban control nearly all of it, including the Afghan capital. Nobody could have seen that one coming, President Biden included.

President Biden was bound by the treaty, knowing that a failure to withdraw US troops would see American lives at risk from Taliban retaliation. Rather than see the US embroiled in a full-scale war in Afghanistan, he got things moving as quickly as possible to ensure the safe evacuation of US personnel. This did require additional troop deployment to Kabul to ensure that the Taliban did not attack the city while US personnel were present. They will now be withdrawn along with the remainder of the civilian personnel.

It hasn’t gone smoothly, or as anyone would have expected, but the job’s been done, and without any American lives being lost in the process. I’d call that a significant victory, personally, particularly since Biden has accomplished that which multiple Presidents before him failed to do.

And I would imagine Americans who lost loved ones in Afghanistan are thankful that the remainder of US troops deployed over there are now returning home, without having been killed by the Taliban in some last-ditch effort to keep Afghanistan from falling into their hands. Biden could very well have chosen to fight, and did not. That decision has likely saved thousands of lives.

True enough as far as it goes, but an American might have waxed a bit more lyrical on how
1. Trump chose to negotiate with terrorists and wouldn't even let the Afghan government participate in the talks.
2. Yet again, America has thrown an ally under the bus and surrendered to its enemies.
3. The major beneficiaries of all this are Russia and China.

Way to go Trump. Making America great again.

Alex Denethorn wrote:

Instead, within the space of two weeks, the Taliban control nearly all of it, including the Afghan capital. Nobody could have seen that one coming, President Biden included.

Bullshit.

Fox News.com is a predictable "it's all Biden's fault" mess, but right on the front page, next to all the Biden-bashing, is a story entitled "Area 51 Secrets: Are We Alone In The Universe?" At least they have a sense of humor.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returned to Kabul today, to cheering crowds.  He had been in exile in Qatar for the past three years.  Baradar founded the Taliban in 1994 with his brother-in-law, Mullah Mohammad Omar. He fled the country when the US routed the Taliban out of Afghanistan in 2001.

Baradar was released from prison in Pakistan in 2018, after eight years in jail, at Donald Trump's demand .  

Quote :

The Trump administration in February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani object[ed] to a provision in the agreement that would require his country to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. “Freeing Taliban prisoners is not [under] the authority of America but the authority of the Afghan government,” Ghani says. “There has been no commitment for the release of 5,000 prisoners.”

[T]he Trump administration reduc[ed] U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.

Biden delayed the May 1 withdrawal date that he inherited. But ultimately his administration pushed ahead with a plan to withdraw by Aug. 31, despite obvious signs that the Taliban wasn’t complying with the agreement and had a stated goal to create an “Islamic government” in Afghanistan after the U.S. left.

At a rally in Ohio, his first since leaving office, Trump boasts that Biden can’t stop the process he started to remove troops from Afghanistan, and acknowledges the Afghan government won’t last once U.S. troops leave.  “I started the process,” Trump says. “All the troops are coming back home. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process."

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

If there is any blame for the collapse of the Afghan government, it goes to the Trump Administration for surrendering to the Taliban, promising to turn over Afghanistan to them, behind the official government's back. The one we spent 20 years, $13.4 trillion, and 3,204 deaths (20,320 injuries) standing up.

But I'm not sure there *IS* any blame.  This thing was never going to end any other way.  In fact, it's pretty clear the bigger brains in the Trump Administration -- not Trump himself -- left this turd in the toilet bowl for the next administration, KNOWING full well that they would lose the election and KNOWING the next president would have to deal with the fallout.  It was, in short, a ticking time-bomb.

Biden is sticking with is self-imposed deadline of August 31 for complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.  This was delayed from the toxic time-bomb Trump left of a May 1 withdrawal date... less than five months into Biden's term.

Biden will take a lot of criticism from the far-wrong for not evacuating the several million Afghanis who would prefer to leave the country.  Such as:

Quote :

As recently as April 18, Trump said: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.” On June 26, he bragged: “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think?”

Now he is calling the situation “not acceptable” and saying that the troop withdrawal should have been “conditions based” — which wasn’t part of the deal he struck with the Taliban. He is demanding that Biden “resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan,” i.e., for carrying out Trump’s policy. Bizarrely, Trump is even castigating Biden for failing to “blow up all the forts,” as if U.S. forces were fighting in the Middle Ages.

Trump’s partner in hypocrisy, as in misgovernment, is former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Not only did he oversee the negotiations with the Taliban, Pompeo convinced Pakistan to release from prison Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghanistan’s new president, to serve as an interlocutor. Pompeo met with Baradar last year and bragged about it on his Twitter feed, thereby legitimating the Taliban and disheartening the Afghan military.

As recently as July, Pompeo was eager to “applaud” the withdrawal, saying he wanted “the Afghans to take up the fight for themselves.” On Sunday, by contrast, he was fulminating that “weak American leadership always harms American security.” He went on to ludicrously accuse the Biden administration of being “focused on critical race theory while the embassy is at risk.”

Trump's surrender to the Taliban was designed to do two things:

1. Finally get the US out of Cheney's Forever War, which no president has had the guts to do (& take the inevitable heat for "losing the war")
   
2. Give Republicans a major big stick to beat Biden with for the next election cycle(s)
   

But short of declaring Afghanistan the 51st U.S. state, there's nothing else we could do.  We'll get most of the translators and office staff out, and we'll get all of the US military personnel out.  I strongly suspect there will be a few Western journalists (Ian Pannell and/or Richard Engel or some BBC guys) who will elect to stay and we'll shortly see their heads on pikes on the evening news.  So be it.

As to the rest of the population of Afghanistan?  Change comes from within.

If there's isn't enough citizen pressure to reform the Taliban -- which there hasn't been for, oh, 2,000 years? -- then no outside force can impose a 21st Century government on them.  Sure, there'll be mass killings.  Sure, there'll be mass oppression of women.  Sure, their heroin / opium-based economy will benefit only a few corrupt individuals at the top.

But you know what?  That's okay.  Hopefully(?!?) U.S. leaders have learned a long-overdue lesson and it'll be a long time before we enter into another war on stupidity.