US strikes deal w/ Taliban to remove troops from Afghanistan (1 Viewer)

[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.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Opinion | Abandoning Afghanistan Is a Historic Mistake (Published 2021)

Leaving proves Osama bin Laden right: Eventually, America cuts and runs.

www.nytimes.com

Abandoning Afghanistan Is a Historic Mistake​

Leaving proves Osama bin Laden right: Eventually, America cuts and runs.

I once boarded a flight from Dubai to Kabul alongside a team of Afghan soccer players — teenage girls in red uniforms, chatting and laughing much as they might have anywhere else in the world. I thought of those players again after President Biden announced plans for America’s complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I hope they have the means to get out before the Taliban take over again, as sooner or later will most likely happen.

The United States did not go into Afghanistan after 9/11 to improve the status of women. We did so anyway. Millions of girls, whom the Taliban had forbidden to get any kind of education, went to school. Some of them — not nearly enough, but impressive considering where they started from and the challenges they faced — became doctors, entrepreneurs, members of Parliament. A few got to watch their daughters play soccer under the protective shield of Pax Americana.

Those women are now being abandoned. So is every Afghan who struggled to make the country a more humane, hospitable, ethnically and socially tolerant place — some by taking immense personal risks to help U.S. troops, diplomats and aid workers do their jobs. As George Packer writes in The Atlantic, there are some 17,000 such Afghans waiting for the wheels of U.S. bureaucracy to turn so they can get their visas.

If Joe Biden wants to distinguish his immigration policy from that of his predecessor, he should sign an executive order to grant every one of those visa applications. Quickly. It would lift the death sentence that now lies on their heads. It would be in the best American tradition of welcoming political refugees from places like Hungary, Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union and northern Iraq. And it would send the useful signal that helping America when America asks isn’t the dumbest thing a person can do.

But those 17,000 are still a tiny fraction of who we are leaving behind. There’s a rational argument to be made that the United States went into Afghanistan to serve our national interests, coldly considered, and not the needs of an impoverished country of nearly 40 million people. Foreign policy is ultimately about self-interest, not the interests of others.

But what was the American interest in staying in Afghanistan beyond the fall of the Taliban? It wasn’t, centrally, to kill Osama bin Laden, who was just one in a succession of terrorist masterminds. It was to prove Bin Laden wrong about America’s long-term commitments, especially overseas.

In August 1996, Bin Laden issued his notorious fatwa declaring a war on the United States that he hoped would be long and bloody. He observed that, in one conflict after another, the Americans always cut and run. “God has dishonored you when you withdrew,” Bin Laden wrote, “and it clearly showed your weaknesses and powerlessness.”

The attacks of Sept. 11 were a direct consequence of that observation. That’s why Barack Obama was right when, during his first campaign for the presidency, he called Afghanistan “a war that we have to win.”

To lose would not just demonstrate our weaknesses and powerlessness. It would be a vindication of the strategy of jihad. How safe will America be when that strategy succeeds not only in Kabul but also in Islamabad?

​

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Opinion | Abandoning Afghanistan Is a Historic Mistake (Published 2021)

Leaving proves Osama bin Laden right: Eventually, America cuts and runs.

www.nytimes.com

Abandoning Afghanistan Is a Historic Mistake​

Leaving proves Osama bin Laden right: Eventually, America cuts and runs.

I once boarded a flight from Dubai to Kabul alongside a team of Afghan soccer players — teenage girls in red uniforms, chatting and laughing much as they might have anywhere else in the world. I thought of those players again after President Biden announced plans for America’s complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I hope they have the means to get out before the Taliban take over again, as sooner or later will most likely happen.

The United States did not go into Afghanistan after 9/11 to improve the status of women. We did so anyway. Millions of girls, whom the Taliban had forbidden to get any kind of education, went to school. Some of them — not nearly enough, but impressive considering where they started from and the challenges they faced — became doctors, entrepreneurs, members of Parliament. A few got to watch their daughters play soccer under the protective shield of Pax Americana.

Those women are now being abandoned. So is every Afghan who struggled to make the country a more humane, hospitable, ethnically and socially tolerant place — some by taking immense personal risks to help U.S. troops, diplomats and aid workers do their jobs. As George Packer writes in The Atlantic, there are some 17,000 such Afghans waiting for the wheels of U.S. bureaucracy to turn so they can get their visas.

If Joe Biden wants to distinguish his immigration policy from that of his predecessor, he should sign an executive order to grant every one of those visa applications. Quickly. It would lift the death sentence that now lies on their heads. It would be in the best American tradition of welcoming political refugees from places like Hungary, Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union and northern Iraq. And it would send the useful signal that helping America when America asks isn’t the dumbest thing a person can do.

But those 17,000 are still a tiny fraction of who we are leaving behind. There’s a rational argument to be made that the United States went into Afghanistan to serve our national interests, coldly considered, and not the needs of an impoverished country of nearly 40 million people. Foreign policy is ultimately about self-interest, not the interests of others.

But what was the American interest in staying in Afghanistan beyond the fall of the Taliban? It wasn’t, centrally, to kill Osama bin Laden, who was just one in a succession of terrorist masterminds. It was to prove Bin Laden wrong about America’s long-term commitments, especially overseas.

In August 1996, Bin Laden issued his notorious fatwa declaring a war on the United States that he hoped would be long and bloody. He observed that, in one conflict after another, the Americans always cut and run. “God has dishonored you when you withdrew,” Bin Laden wrote, “and it clearly showed your weaknesses and powerlessness.”

The attacks of Sept. 11 were a direct consequence of that observation. That’s why Barack Obama was right when, during his first campaign for the presidency, he called Afghanistan “a war that we have to win.”

To lose would not just demonstrate our weaknesses and powerlessness. It would be a vindication of the strategy of jihad. How safe will America be when that strategy succeeds not only in Kabul but also in Islamabad?

​

Blah, blah, blah.

What do YOU believe The United States should have done? Did YOU convey those feelings to your representatives?

I wanted out after 2 May 2011 but we choose to nation build instead. That nation's government failed them, not us.

Furthermore, I take offense to those that claim we lost the war in Afghanistan and that we cut and ran. Pfft, we kicked the Taliban's arse on a daily basis, they American public lost its will to continue doing so because most realized that you cannot defeat a belief that had been allowed to fester for centuries. I would have been perfectly fine with us setting up a permanent presence there, but since the majority wanted out, I was fine with that as well.

I'm not gonna birch and moan about how our withdrawal went or how it looked because the end result would have been the same no matter how it was implemented.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Blah, blah, blah.

What do YOU believe The United States should have done? Did YOU convey those feelings to your representatives?

I wanted out after 2 May 2011 but we choose to nation build instead. That nation's government failed them, not us.

Furthermore, I take offense to those that claim we lost the war in Afghanistan and that we cut and ran. Pfft, we kicked the Taliban's arse on a daily basis, they American public lost its will to continue doing so because most realized that you cannot defeat a belief that had been allowed to fester for centuries. I would have been perfectly fine with us setting up a permanent presence there, but since the majority wanted out, I was fine with that as well.

I'm not gonna birch and moan about how our withdrawal went or how it looked because the end result would have been the same no matter how it was implemented.

So, you're fine with leaving. You would have been fine with staying. We really didn't lose and we really didn't run.

I get it. You're neither here, there, or anywhere. That sure makes things easy.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

I get it. You're neither here, there, or anywhere. That sure makes things easy.

OK, let me make MY position clearer: I would have set set up a permanent force in Afghanistan, much like what we did in Korea, as long as its government would allow.

Your turn...again I ask, What do YOU believe The United States should have done? Did YOU convey those feelings to your representatives?

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

OK, let me make MY position clearer: I would have set set up a permanent force in Afghanistan, much like what we did in Korea, as long as its government would allow.

Your turn...again I ask, What do YOU believe The United States should have done? Did YOU convey those feelings to your representatives?

I think it's obvious what I believe. I think we should have stayed with enough force to keep the Taliban from regaining control. It won't have taken much.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

I think it's obvious what I believe. I think we should have stayed with enough force to keep the Taliban from regaining control. It won't have taken much.

So, you would have gone with the Dennis Allen doctrine..."Keep doing what you are doing"!

Nope, I would have put both feet in, this one foot in and one foot out BS showed a lack of of commitment. I would have also further defined our presence in their country as a "peace keeping force" and if they weren't cool with it, then we leave.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

I don't know anything about Dennis Allen. I'm from Boston. I root for the Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox, and against the Taliban.

 

[CoolBrees]

I don't know anything about Dennis Allen. I'm from Boston. I root for the Taliban.

You named all of the Boston sports teams but you really could have just said this.

Because fork Boston sports and your cheating arse football team. You’re lucky the L cheated the Saints out of the Super Bowl in 2018 because NOLA would have beat you by 3 touchdowns

Who Dat!

Disclaimer- This was all in fun

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

You named all of the Boston sports teams but you really could have just said this.

Because fork Boston sports and your cheating arse football team. You’re lucky the L cheated the Saints out of the Super Bowl in 2018 because NOLA would have beat you by 3 touchdowns

Who Dat!

Disclaimer- This was all in fun

Frankly I would rather have lost to the Saints than the Eagles.

 

[CoolBrees]

It was the Rams that year but whatever - 2018/2019 sorry for the confusion

You guys have so many (Ill- gotten) championships it’s hard to keep track I know.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Part 3 tonight

America and the Taliban | FRONTLINE

Watch FRONTLINE's documentary examining how America's 20-year war in Afghanistan culminated in Taliban victory.

www.pbs.org