Kabul Liberation

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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby sparrow » Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:56 am

Tarkan wrote:
mb wrote:
Tarkan wrote:I must say I am glad that we no longer have to deal with mean tweets from our President and it is so refreshing to have the chaos of the Trump administration behind us so we can enjoy what a smooth running machine, good governance, and even better planning the Biden administration - headed by the man that got the most votes of any candidate in American history - has put into place. It must be comforting to our allies to know as well that the US will stick with you through thick and thin. Don’t worry Taiwan - we have your back!


Do you have the wrong thread?

The collapse and withdrawal from Afghanistan was a campaign promise Trump made and followed through on. Negotiation was what, last year some time? Biden just kinda let it happen. A bit sloppily true, but I guess he foolishly believed what the previous admin left for him was solid.

Just like Trump abandoned our supposed allies in Syria.


Yeah that is going to be the new narrative - “Trump set me up!” - but it’s not true.

And a bit sloppily might be the understatement of the decade.

Well, what would you have done?
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby Kurt » Thu Aug 19, 2021 12:29 pm

Afghanistan was so shitty that once we chose to go there we limited ourselves only to bad options.
We could see that:
Any exit plan would be shitty
Any plan to stay would be shitty
Any escalation or plan to "win" would be shitty.

The neo-libs and neo-cons are throwing a hissy-snit now because they hoped to keep going and to expand our interventions abroad....and they cannot quite face the fact that their shit ideas started all this.

Trump was right to want to leave and Biden was right to leave.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby seektravelinfo » Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:50 pm

There is no “new narrative”. American involvement with Taliban goes all the way back to Jimmy Carter when he engaged CIA ops to oust the Russians. You can go all the way back to Alexander the Great to gloat over failures in Afghanistan. The events of this past week shocking? Yes. Surprising? No. The most sickening image broadcast were those planes, filled with men clamoring to board, with only a small handful of Afghani women allowed the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge. Of course, there are “patriots” like McTarkan who crow at laying all this on Biden. It was Trump who got charmed by the Taliban, even secretly hosting them at Camp David to work out a plan.

Too bad that with all the trillions of $$$ spent America didn’t just outfit the women Lions of Rojava style, but Trump had quickly betrayed the Kurds who have been our most steadfast allies in Central Asia.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby Tarkan » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:26 am

Kurt wrote:Afghanistan was so shitty that once we chose to go there we limited ourselves only to bad options.
We could see that:
Any exit plan would be shitty
Any plan to stay would be shitty
Any escalation or plan to "win" would be shitty.

The neo-libs and neo-cons are throwing a hissy-snit now because they hoped to keep going and to expand our interventions abroad....and they cannot quite face the fact that their shit ideas started all this.

Trump was right to want to leave and Biden was right to leave.


So, I agree with you Kurt. Trump was right to leave and Biden was right to leave. The policy isn't the issue. The execution, however, is.

It is, in short, staggeringly inept.

Let's accept for a second that Biden inherited a shitty hand given to him (and Trump) by a good 12 years of bad Bush/Obama policies where we coddled a corrupt Afghan regime, failed to address Taliban safe havens in Pakistan all the while paying Pakistan quite handsomely to wage a proxy war on ourselves, and subverted the potential tribal counterweights to a Taliban takeover.

BIden inherited a bad hand, and made it inconceivably worse with intentional decisions and actions.

- They knew collapse was imminent but kept promulgating the lie that the Taliban were not going to take over Afghanistan, giving Americans and other non-Afghan ex-pats working in Afghanistan a false sense of security with regards to time window available to them to exfil
- Biden ordered in-the night withdrawal and abandonment of US forces from places like Bagram, with no warning given to our so-called allies, so the Taliban in many cases just strolled right in and claimed the military equipment before it could be secured by the ANA
- The US withdrew all of the military and State Department personnel and basically gave a big middle finger to anyone still left in country - SIVs, American contractors, NGO workers, etc. Too bad, fuck you, hope you don't end up on a beheading video, but if you do, oh well.
- The US did all of this without consulting any of our other allies (i.e., Britain and France). Boris Johnson reportedly tried to call Biden on Monday, and Biden refused to take his calls for 36 fucking hours.
- The US had to backtrack and send in troops to secure KIA. There are now more 3x American troops in a very small area than we had in all Afghanistan 6 months ago. Surrounded by the Taliban. On the upcoming 10 year anniversary of 9-11.
- While the Brits and French are sending out their relatively small military to help retrieve their citizens, the US commanders on scene are trying to prevent them from doing so and are not allowing the much larger American forces to do anything to rescue Americans.
- There was a huge backlog of SIVs that were never processed. A large number who were processed, well, the State Department simple burned their passports. Too bad, so sad, hope the Taliban don't murder you and your family. Maybe your daughters will at least get to live as sex slaves.
- Reportedly, there was a plan in place to empower local militias in case the central government collapsed just like it has, but Biden nixed that.
- Billions of dollars worth of American military equipment fell into the hands of the Taliban - in a sane world, this equipment would have been destroyed, but now the Taliban went from being a rag-tag militia to being quite well armed.

I can't think of a single fucking thing the Biden admin did here that displayed any actual planning or competence.

We will be very, very lucky if the Taliban don't decide just to massacre all the Americans they can.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby ReptilianKittenEater » Fri Aug 20, 2021 2:12 am

Tarkan wrote:I must say I am glad that we no longer have to deal with mean tweets from our President and it is so refreshing to have the chaos of the Trump administration behind us so we can enjoy what a smooth running machine, good governance, and even better planning the Biden administration - headed by the man that got the most votes of any candidate in American history - has put into place. It must be comforting to our allies to know as well that the US will stick with you through thick and thin. Don’t worry Taiwan - we have your back!


You're finally seeing the light.

Actually I am kinda worried about you.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby ROB » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:29 pm

C'mon folks, the execution of this withdrawal has been atrocious.

I think people are so relieved to have an adult in the Whitehouse that they're willing to forgive anything, but this withdrawal could have been a WHOLE lot better than it has been.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby Tarkan » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:47 pm

ROB wrote:C'mon folks, the execution of this withdrawal has been atrocious.

I think people are so relieved to have an adult in the Whitehouse that they're willing to forgive anything, but this withdrawal could have been a WHOLE lot better than it has been.


Except Biden isn't an adult, he's the Democratic version of Trump - a petulant man-child with the bonus of not having the energy or mental faculties left to lead in a crisis.

Which is what this is. It's turning into literally the worst case scenario for Afghanistan. To wit:
- it's fait accompli that the Afghans who worked with the Americans and their allies are going to get slaughtered
- it's highly possible that remaining Americans and foreigners in Afghanistan will be slaughtered. The administration, the State Department, and Democratic politician talking points have already written them off
- US commanders in KIA are getting into shouting matches with their British and French peers - who are sending their troops to rescue their citizens while the much larger US force sits on their asses "securing the airport" while Taliban are murdering people right outside the walls
- China has already overtly hinted to Taiwan that they can't depend on the US; and China is already set to fill the vacuum left by the US withdrawal
- Russia has done the same to the Ukraine
- NATO allies are coming to the realization that they can't count on the US - at all - regardless of who is ostensibly running the show
- OPEC just gave the middle finger to Biden about increasing oil production - it's shame that Biden canceled Keystone XL and banned offshore exploration and production

There is a very real possibility the US will have more KIA in Afghanistan in the next 18 days than we did in the preceding 18 years. At it was all avoidable.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby ROB » Fri Aug 20, 2021 2:22 pm

lol - you know just saying this shit doesn't make it so, right?

You live in a fucking alternative reality mate.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby Tarkan » Fri Aug 20, 2021 2:29 pm

ROB wrote:lol - you know just saying this shit doesn't make it so, right?

You live in a fucking alternative reality mate.


Exactly which part or parts do you think is off the mark?
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby vagabond » Fri Aug 20, 2021 5:54 pm

ROB wrote:C'mon folks, the execution of this withdrawal has been atrocious.

I think people are so relieved to have an adult in the Whitehouse that they're willing to forgive anything, but this withdrawal could have been a WHOLE lot better than it has been.


Agreed. It seems like there should've been a plan since boots hit the ground went in. All this BS about visas, paperwork, etc backlog for people that worked with forces and NGOs...seems like something that should've been taken care of. It's not like the US was planning on being there forever nor, after soldiers left, that we would have a way to shape their society and guarantee peoples' safety. It doesn't help that the capacities of the State Dept were gutted over the past four years but there should be ways around the red tape.

I do wonder what the best way to draw down would've been. Word would've spread as people started leaving which would've resulted in a similar rush I would think. I don't know. Given the amount of think tanks and supposed experts we fund, one would think someone out there had a good plan. I'm sure even some grunt on the ground had some decent ideas at some point.

I tried to watch a press conference the other day involving the State Dept spokesman. He seemed competent, a bit tired and stressed. The questions from the press corps were stupid and trying to shape some sort of narrative they wanted. A lot about how much negotiation they have going on with the Taliban and what was agreed upon as if we wouldn't be talking with the victors or they with us.

The politicians are going to keep pointing fingers at someone else. The media here in the US should be asking themselves deeper questions and not the flunkies. Take this with a grain of salt, but I read that from 2015-2019 that less than an hour of coverage was given to Afghanistan each year by the three major news networks in the US. I doubt that they covered the contractors over there nor the massive amounts of money we funneled to them and the mil-industrial complex (our real form of welfare in this country). Like always, it's the people we leave behind that will suffer.

I think the only true bipartisanship our people can agree on right now is that the most Americans want their tax dollars spent at home.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby ROB » Sat Aug 21, 2021 3:56 am

Tarkan wrote:
ROB wrote:lol - you know just saying this shit doesn't make it so, right?

You live in a fucking alternative reality mate.


Exactly which part or parts do you think is off the mark?


The part where you try to nomalise the bloodied abortion laying on the ground of your broken democracy that was Trump.

Literally ANY candidate from EITHER side from the last 50 years would have been 10x better than the fuckery of that cunt.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby el3so » Sat Aug 21, 2021 4:34 am

ROB wrote: Literally ANY candidate from EITHER side from the last 50 years would have been 10x better than the fuckery of that cunt.
Pump the brakes man. Remember Reagan? Remember Nixon?
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby ROB » Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:16 am

el3so wrote:
ROB wrote: Literally ANY candidate from EITHER side from the last 50 years would have been 10x better than the fuckery of that cunt.
Pump the brakes man. Remember Reagan? Remember Nixon?


You mean the Nixon that had enough integrity to resign after the scandals that Trump endured weekly?
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby snaark » Sat Aug 21, 2021 8:28 am

Comparing Nixon with Trump is a bit like comparing gonorrhea with ebola. Both cause oozing from places that shouldn't ooze, but only one will cause the end of democracy and global hegemony.
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Re: Kabul Liberation

Postby Tarkan » Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:44 pm

ROB wrote:
Tarkan wrote:
ROB wrote:lol - you know just saying this shit doesn't make it so, right?

You live in a fucking alternative reality mate.


Exactly which part or parts do you think is off the mark?


The part where you try to nomalise the bloodied abortion laying on the ground of your broken democracy that was Trump.

Literally ANY candidate from EITHER side from the last 50 years would have been 10x better than the fuckery of that cunt.


Oh, give me a fucking break.

One, the only thing that aborted our democracy was rampant fucking vote fraud in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. And after it was all said and done, Trump stepped down and wasn't dragged out of the White House by the Secret Service or the US Marshals.

And as for literally ANY candidate being 10x better than the fuckery of that cunt, you clearly haven't been fucking attention. Biden is 7 months in and has fucked up everything he's touched. Literally everything. I used to think Biden was a puppet - if only that was the case, at least the Shadow President might be competent.
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