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Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:19 am
by honorentheos
There are moments of sweeping significance that happen in our lives where, when they occur, we are too busy to take note. Or perhaps their significance isn't recognized.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban today is one such moment that will almost without question change the course of both our nation and world events.
So why no threads discussing it? Who knows.
We will inevitably hear of mass executions, of public brutalization of men and women who had stood for the democratization of Afghan society. People whose murder will alternately go unknown or be broadcast on certain media sites who fought literally and figuratively for women's rights, for the US backed government, for modernizing and investing in a country now in the control of 13th century minded zealots that some describe as the next ISIS/Al Qaeda-like nest to plague the West.
What baffles me here is this was not only readily predictable and predicted, but also seems to be the natural fruit of the political ignorance of both the populist right and radical left. Had Bernie been elected it would likely have happened. Had Trump been reelected it would have likely happened given the withdraw was negotiated under his administration. And Biden...he gets to have this as perhaps the event that will define his legacy.
"Unserious, self-destructive, faux patriotic..." Indeed we are.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:46 am
by honorentheos
Cultellus wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:38 am
honorentheos wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:19 am
So why no threads discussing it?
You answered your own question.
Probably. But I was think this was the real answer.
honorentheos wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:19 am
"Unserious, self-destructive, faux patriotic..." Indeed we are.,
Thanks for providing supporting evidence I guess.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:05 am
by Doctor CamNC4Me
honorentheos wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:19 am
There are moments of sweeping significance that happen in our lives where, when they occur, we are too busy to take note. Or perhaps their significance isn't recognized.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban today is one such moment that will almost without question change the course of both our nation and world events.
So why no threads discussing it? Who knows.
We will inevitably hear of mass executions, of public brutalization of men and women who had stood for the democratization of Afghan society. People whose murder will alternately go unknown or be broadcast on certain media sites who fought literally and figuratively for women's rights, for the US backed government, for modernizing and investing in a country now in the control of 13th century minded zealots that some describe as the next ISIS/Al Qaeda-like nest to plague the West.
What baffles me here is this was not only readily predictable and predicted, but also seems to be the natural fruit of the political ignorance of both the populist right and radical left. Had Bernie been elected it would likely have happened. Had Trump been reelected it would have likely happened given the withdraw was negotiated under his administration. And Biden...he gets to have this as perhaps the event that will define his legacy.
"Unserious, self-destructive, faux patriotic..." Indeed we are.
I’m glad you took the plunge and created a thread. I thought about it, but … I dunno. What can be said that hasn’t been said by hundreds of pundits, and thousands of armchair quarterbacks that apparently understood foreign policy better than the Bush administration? And Obama administration? Say what you will about Trump, but he was right about that crap hole. I don’t know if Biden would’ve initiated a withdrawal had Trump not done it, but other than extending the deadline by a few months he honored the prior administration’s decision.
I just don’t think a region with no national identity, 50+ spoken languages, and no desire to do anything beyond village politics is ready for Communism, Democracy, or anything that extends beyond reading the Quran, farming, damned a bit, and shooting the neighboring tribe over a diverted stream.
Am I demoralized over our time there? Nah. It was never an existential threat to us, our way of life, or really, our armed forces stationed there for the most part. I just feel bad we wasted a trillion+ dollars, ~4k American lives, and enriched some corrupt Afghan politicians on this folly. Maybe
this time we’ll think twice before wasting blood and treasure on a foreign entanglement? Hope so.
- Doc
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:06 am
by Jersey Girl
Well honor, I don't think I know enough about it to make even the slightest contribution. I thought Trump had negotiated a withdrawal, then Biden announced our withdrawal and may have extended the deadline? Now we are sending troops back to Afghanistan and I don't know what would have been the wise thing to do to start with.
The headlines are saying that Biden blew it all to hell and back again. Endangering Afghani lives and that we left behind interpreters who served upwards of 10 years, perhaps more.
I'm confused about this as much as I find myself confused over the ME.
I can't tell who we crapped on or if we did. Did the U.S. break it's agreement under Trump and if Biden screwed up, in what way did he screw up? What could the U.S. have done better? Remain in Afghanistan for eternity?
I have more questions than answers and as I said, I'm confused mainly because I don't understand the history of the region so I don't understand what is happening now or the significance thereof.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:07 am
by Jersey Girl
ETA: I just read through Cam's post. I was at least right about the Biden deadline extension.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:18 am
by honorentheos
I don't disagree that there had to be a point where we left Afghanistan to figure out its own and how to deal with it. Maybe it's inevitable that it ended with as high a level of misplanning, false promises, international bewilderment, and tens of thousands of Afghans left to pay with their lives for believing in something more. But that doesn't excuse the reality that we as a nation aren't just lessened by the inability to stage a withdrawal that meaningfully kept promises and, if unable to fulfill the broad idealistic promises, could have at least kept the smaller, individual ones. It says something to the world about who we are and how much we can be trusted.
We are in a serious a cold war with both Russia and China today as we ever were in the middle and late twentieth century. The world doesn't divide American behaviour as "with Trump" and "without Trump". Rather, the entirety is communicating a concerning message about where the nations should look for leadership in the future.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:38 am
by Gunnar
I can't claim to be any kind of expert on what happened to Afghanistan, but, from much of what little I have read about it, I get the impression that deeply entrenched corruption within the American supported Afghan government itself had a lot to do with its ultimate and probably inevitable demise. As I understand it, even the Afghan government we supported was, in many ways, not a whole lot more admirable than the Taliban. If it had been, perhaps things might have turned out a bit more favorably for the Afghan people and it might have had more popular support, and there might have been more determined popular resistance against the Taliban.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:07 am
by honorentheos
History is a difficult teacher to learn more from than general lessons. Who would have predicted US presence in Saudi Arabia and support of the Mujahideen would combine to give rise to Al Qaeda and largely define a watershed divide between life before and life after terror became the enemy of the State? That this was all in part the consequence of British and US interference in Middle Eastern self-government decades before? Which were the results of shifting global power dynamics following the sun setting on empires of the industrial age?
Or that US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 would result in the rise of a violent theocracy that fought with ideology transmitted via social media sparking lone wolf acts of terror in the US and other Western nations that forced us to return yet again...
Where the successes of that return were largely built on the grit and fight of the Kurds who we then abandoned to the Turks?
I don't know. The future is unknowable until it happens. But today we left relatives of people who trusted the US to draw lessons that will write tomorrow. It's one more point in a story being read around the world. Make of that what you will.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:17 am
by honorentheos
Gunnar wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:38 am
I can't claim to be any kind of expert on what happened to Afghanistan, but, from much of what little I have read about it, I get the impression that deeply entrenched corruption within the American supported Afghan government itself had a lot to do with its ultimate and probably inevitable demise. As I understand it, even the Afghan government we supported was, in many ways, not a whole lot more admirable than the Taliban. If it had been, perhaps things might have turned out a bit more favorably for the Afghan people and it might have had more popular support, and there might have been more determined popular resistance against the Taliban.
If I suggested this event moved the probability of Republicans taking the Senate and House in 2022 higher, and upped the odds of Trump or someone like him claiming the White House in 2024 would you believe it? Would it concern you?
We are all part of an interconnected system. These things don't happen "over there" without consequences everywhere.
Re: Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:24 am
by Gunnar
honorentheos wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:18 am
I don't disagree that there had to be a point where we left Afghanistan to figure out its own and how to deal with it. Maybe it's inevitable that it ended with as high a level of misplanning, false promises, international bewilderment, and tens of thousands of Afghans left to pay with their lives for believing in something more. But that doesn't excuse the reality that we as a nation aren't just lessened by the inability to stage a withdrawal that meaningfully kept promises and, if unable to fulfill the broad idealistic promises, could have at least kept the smaller, individual ones. It says something to the world about who we are and how much we can be trusted.
We are in a serious a cold war with both Russia and China today as we ever were in the middle and late twentieth century. The world doesn't divide American behaviour as "with Trump" and "without Trump". Rather, the entirety is communicating a concerning message about where the nations should look for leadership in the future.
I think it likely that, on balance, our involvement in Afghanistan has done more to harm U.S. prestige, leadership and trustworthiness in the perception of the rest of the world than to help it -- even among our closest allies.