US strikes deal w/ Taliban to remove troops from Afghanistan (2 Viewers)

[Heathen]

Surprised I didn't see it posted anywhere. And to preface -- I know there are too many contextual complexities to name regarding this.

Props to this administration for pushing to get this done. Endless war shouldn't be what American citizens view as 'normal'.

This would be a huge win for Americans and Afghanis if this works out as planned:

Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war

President Trump says it is "time after all these years to bring our people back home".

www.bbc.com

The US and Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal.

President Trump said it had been a "long and hard journey" in Afghanistan. "It's time after all these years to bring our people back home," he said.

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to follow.

Under the agreement, the militants also agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.

 

[Lapaz]

yea, it's easy for people to be against a bad outcome, those people have no idea what they want though.

No one wants this, but no one has any suggestions as to what an alternative is. Most people would oppose anything we do with regard to Afganistan, because there isn't any option that results in a good outcome.

There are people that offered alternatives, primarily being remain. I was against this before it turned bad, so it easy to dismiss people who disagree as simply being against it since it turned bad, but it was predictable. It is easier to refuse to acknowledge that it was a mistake.

 

[SystemShock]

So you don't consider thousands of Afghan troops dying fighting the Taliban fighting for their country? I suppose you can say they died for a paycheck, but that paycheck was earned by fighting for Afghanistan. You can take the cynical attitude that it had nothing to do with their country, but I don't believe that, because they could've left the country to do something else that was a lot less dangerous, or they could've joined the Taliban.

None of that has anything to do with what I am saying.

By things were working, I mean the U.S. troops were filling in the non-combat roles that the Afghans were not good at yet. Most of their army didn't have that much experience. We have soldiers with over 30 years of experience leading our troops, and many have combat experience. Also, our troops are professionals. I'm sure there were many good Afghan soldiers, but they were still a very inexperienced force. Another 20 years might've done the trick.

I don't know about inexperienced. Between civil wars and foreign occupation, the Afghani have been in armed conflict since the 1970's.

You also make it sound as if the Taliban goes to BUD/S at Camp Pendleton. They aren't exactly military masterminds. And they fight guerrilla warfare, and don't wear uniforms.

That may also have been enough to solidify the country's democratic institutions to weed out corruption, but even then we know from experience that institutions are tenuous. You need a few generations of people with non-corrupt principles to fill positions throughout the government.

You will need to wipe out Islam. That's what you'll need to do.

 

[Kerry Won Ohio]

You're forgetting the people that may have changed their mind because they believe it was wrong to leave, but didn't have all of the information when they initially voted. Of course there is huge partisanship among Republicans, and they will disagree with anything, but I'm a democrat, and I want Biden to succeed, but I disagreed with this decision.

I personally don't see this as a partisan issue. There are people on both sides of the aisle that want to stay in Afghanistan and there are people on both sides of the aisle that want to leave.

Yes, there are now a lot of revisionist history idiot Republicans now stating that Trump never wanted to leave Afghanistan and that he would have handled this differently, but that is a different topic.

 

[samiam5211]

There are people that offered alternatives, primarily being remain. I was against this before it turned bad, so it easy to dismiss people who disagree as simply being against it since it turned bad, but it was predictable. It is easier to refuse to acknowledge that it was a mistake.

I am not talking about everyone who is against it, but the public in general.

No one who suggested we should remain in Afghanistan was ever going to be elected to a position to enact such a plan.

 

[bdb13]

You're forgetting the people that may have changed their mind because they believe it was wrong to leave, but didn't have all of the information when they initially voted. Of course there is huge partisanship among Republicans, and they will disagree with anything, but I'm a democrat, and I want Biden to succeed, but I disagreed with this decision.

That's fair.

 

[SystemShock]

It's much more than justice, it's basically threatening death to everyone who doesn't fall in line. I really don't care what Muslim ideology thinks about it.

I don't personally care about Muslim ideology either, but that is their ideology, that's what they believe in. It may sound barbaric to us, but to them cutting hands/heads is justice.

 

[Lapaz]

This was in 2017

This was on July 9t of this year:

Do you really want to keep claiming that the Afgans would have held their ground with the help of 3,000 American troops? It's just not a realistic expectations. If anything the last 48 hours and last 20 years have taught us is that we need to stop believing in these fairy tail scenarios. It was never going to happen.

Mapping the advance of the Taliban in Afghanistan

Maps of Afghanistan show who controls districts in fighting between the government and Taliban forces.

www.bbc.com

Until we started evacuating, the Taliban had zero of the roughly 30 provincial capitals. The Taliban controlled dirt, not any cities of significance. I didn't see Afghans trying to flee the country in a mad rush, because they felt safe.

 

[DaveXA]

I don't personally care about Muslim ideology either, but that is their ideology, that's what they believe in. It may sound barbaric to us, but to them cutting hands/heads is justice.

All the more reason to help evacuate those who want out of the country, especially those who gave aid and assistance to our allies there. They don't have much of a future without our help.

 

[Lapaz]

None of that has anything to do with what I am saying.

I don't know about inexperienced. Between civil wars and foreign occupation, the Afghani have been in armed conflict since the 1970's.

You also make it sound as if the Taliban goes to BUD/S at Camp Pendleton. They aren't exactly military masterminds. And they fight guerrilla warfare, and don't wear uniforms.


You will need to wipe out Islam. That's what you'll need to do.

Interesting that you think Islam is inconsistent with civilized society. There are about a billion Muslims in the world, at least half of which don't live in the middle east, that would disagree. I get that Islam has more extremists than other religious sects, but they also have moderates among them. Besides, they didn't have to become a western country. They just needed to have a society that doesn't behead people and grants them some freedoms. As bad as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and some of the other countries are, they are far better than the Taliban.

Also, fighting civil guerrilla wars isn't the same as have a professional fighting force. Also, most of the people that have been fighting in Afghanistan were the Taliban. The Afghan army was probably composed mostly of dispossessed people that were tired of living under the Taliban, so they probably had not been involved in fighting.

 

[DaveXA]

Fwiw, credit where it's due. It appears that we're not just upping and leaving and that we're trying to get some 30k refugees out of the country. Hopefully that pans out.

 

[Poison]

I don't personally care about Muslim ideology either, but that is their ideology, that's what they believe in. It may sound barbaric to us, but to them cutting hands/heads is justice.

Wait until you find out about the Old Testament, you’re in for a treat.

 

[Kerry Won Ohio]

Interesting that you think Islam is inconsistent with civilized society. There are about a billion Muslims in the world, at least half of which don't live in the middle east, that would disagree. I get that Islam has more extremists than other religious sects, but they also have moderates among them. Besides, they didn't have to become a western country. They just needed to have a society that doesn't behead people and grants them some freedoms. As bad as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and some of the other countries are, they are far better than the Taliban.

Also, fighting civil guerrilla wars isn't the same as have a professional fighting force. Also, most of the people that have been fighting in Afghanistan were the Taliban. The Afghan army was probably composed mostly of dispossessed people that were tired of living under the Taliban, so they probably had not been involved in fighting.

The problem with Islamic society is that the nut job extremist minority drown out and control the more moderate Muslim majority. It seems in most of these Islamic countries, the inmates run the asylum.

Unfortunately, U.S. society is precariously close to resembling this, with the dangerous fascist minority Republican Party very close to having permanent control of the U.S. government, starting in 2022.

 

[Lapaz]

The problem with Islamic society is that the nut job extremist minority drown out and control the more moderate Muslim majority. It seems in most of these Islamic countries, the inmates run the asylum.

Unfortunately, U.S. society is precariously close to resembling this, with the dangerous fascist minority Republican Party very close to having permanent control of the U.S. government, starting in 2022.

You're right, but our presence was helping the moderates wrest control of Afghanistan. Despite the nutjobs in other countries, they aren't as nutty as the Taliban. We demonize Iran, but they treat their people much better. Jordan, current Iraq, Turkey, UAE, Kuwait, Pakistan and others treat their people much better. It may not be to our standards, but it is reasonably civilized.

 

[Kerry Won Ohio]

You're right, but our presence was helping the moderates wrest control of Afghanistan. Despite the nutjobs in other countries, they aren't as nutty as the Taliban. We demonize Iran, but they treat their people much better. Jordan, current Iraq, Turkey, UAE, Kuwait, Pakistan and others treat their people much better. It may not be to our standards, but it is reasonably civilized.

The Afghan government may have been moderates, but they were also hopelessly corrupt. Afghan leaders at all levels handicapped their own security in order to enrich themselves. The U.S. could have done a lot more to address this fundamental problem, but they failed over several Presidential administrations -- Bush, Obama, and Trump.

And it was a well-known problem that U.S. civilian and military leaders pretended didn't exist, at least in public. That's really the most frustrating and tragic part of all of this.

 

[Poison]

Training militant Islamists and training terrorists are 2 different things. There is a huge difference between the dude carrying an AK-47/RPG running around caves in a desert of rock and sand (with the occasional poppy field) and the dude blowing himself up in a train station in London.


I don't see how that counters what I said. Great place to hide and play boot camp, but nothing else.

This is really an artificial distinction. Militant Islamists/terrorists trained in Afghanistani camps were on various occasions dispatched from Afghanistan to other locations including the US and ended up being involved in terrorist attacks.

Though the 9/11 pilots completed their flight training in the US, quite a few of the hijackers were products of these Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

See, for example: Wail Mohammed al-Shehri and his brother

Wail al-Shehri - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Lapaz]

The Afghan government may have been moderates, but they were also hopelessly corrupt. Afghan leaders at all levels handicapped their own security in order to enrich themselves. The U.S. could have done a lot more to address this fundamental problem, but they failed over several Presidential administrations -- Bush, Obama, and Trump.

And it was a well-known problem that U.S. civilian and military leaders pretended didn't exist, at least in public. That's really the most frustrating and tragic part of all of this.

I agree that we needed to do much more to deal with corruption. We needed a lot of the similar checks like ours, such as comptroller generals, FBI, inspector generals, etc, and perhaps additional measures that we don't have. The thing is that there is corruption all over the world in many countries, but they still maintain a government. Just because the government was corrupt, it didn't mean we had to give up on the country. I don't agree that it was hopeless. We had committed to the country, and we should've continued that commitment as long as the Afghans were willing to fight for the country. Had they quit fighting while they still had our support, then I also would've agreed that it was time to leave. Had our commitment been much larger, and had we been losing many lives in a battle that would last for generations, then I also would've agreed that it was time to leave. We will probably end up losing many more lives in the future to deal with the aftermath.

 

[DaveXA]

This is really an artificial distinction. Militant Islamists/terrorists trained in Afghanistani camps were on various occasions dispatched from Afghanistan to other locations including the US and ended up being involved in terrorist attacks.

Though the 9/11 pilots completed their flight training in the US, quite a few of the hijackers were products of these Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

See, for example: Wail Mohammed al-Shehri and his brother

Wail al-Shehri - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I thought that was the case. I hadn't read the reports in years, so I don't remember a lot of what's what post 9-11.

 

[coldseat]

Until we started evacuating, the Taliban had zero of the roughly 30 provincial capitals. The Taliban controlled dirt, not any cities of significance. I didn't see Afghans trying to flee the country in a mad rush, because they felt safe.

Yes, and they would have continued to gain ground even if we hadn't started evacuating. There was deep rooted corruption and dysfunction in the Afgan government and military that was doming it for collapse regardless of our support. We would have eventually had to have another US troop surge in order to beat back the Taliban, make them retreat into Pakistan and diminish their capabilities. Another trillion dollars and many more American lives lost. That's what Biden saw coming (because he had already seen it under Obama when he was Vice-President. That was the reality he was no longer willing to accept, so he pulled us out.

I suggest that anybody that believes that we could have help maintain Afghanistan in status quo situation with just 3,000 troop do a deep dive into The Afghanistan Papers from the Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...istan-war-confidential-documents/?tid=top_nav It really makes clear just how much we were mislead and how deep rooted the problems were in Afghanistan.