Afghan government collapse.

[Crumpets]

Some info on the evacuees. [Thread]

https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1427054069038952456

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Where the refugees should go is an important thing that needs to be decided, but right now the issue seems to be logistically getting them out of the country. Kabul fell more suddenly than Saigon, and Saigon was on the coast, while the only way out seems to be through Kabul airport, which isn't the safest place right now.

[The Free North]

I can't remember much from 2001 but i'm curious if it would have been possible to try to root out Bin Laden without doing much to the established order in Kabul?

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban obviously have serious cultural, ethnic, and political differences and I haven't read much about the Taliban seeking to attack the US homeland directly.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah, as long as Pakistan was providing aid and support to the Taliban the 2% chance of things working out was cut in half.

Once we evacuate everyone we should evacuate - as many Afghans as we can - and leave entirely, can we at least cut off all aid to those treacherous Pakistani snakes?

Pakistan's position is more or less delicate management of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations (a good offense is the best defense) through any means it feels are necessary, even if that means getting one's hands messy and doing things that might look hard to justify to an outward observer.
Not that I expected anything besides misinformed views from most Americans on this issue.
Reality tends to be nuanced. Pakistan is in a tough neighborhood. I suggest you read up on the history of the Durand Line and consider the difficulties Pakistan's geography presents.

Hold on there, are you justifying the actions of the Pakistani government as a whole and the ISI in particular in Afghanistan? Because they have indirectly and directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and many, many more Afghanis of all stripes. Those are the actions of a hostile power, not one the U.S. should be giving aid to.
I know damn well about Pakistani geography issues. There were plenty of articles about Pakistani needs for strategic depth versus India as well as the artificial nature of the border with Afghanistan. I can see their desire for a friendly power in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan didn’t have to choose to support the most brutal and extreme Afghani factions, now did they? They chose to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and then the Taliban. They chose to give aid and refuge to both the Taliban and Al-Qaida. They chose to send their own military against Ahmad Shah Massoud, the one Afghani leader who actually wanted something better for the Afghani people.
As long as the U.S. was dependent on the logistical supply chain through Pakistan little could be done about any of this. But that’s coming to an end.
So why in the hell should the U.S. give a penny to Pakistan after they leave the region? They’re not even our ally, but China’s!
A lot of people on this forum want the U.S. to cut ties with Saudi Arabia. There’s at least as good of a case to do so with Pakistan.

I didn't say Pakistan's doings are wholly justified or even necessarily smart (their track record of doing good things for Afghanistan is no better than that of the British). But to treat Pakistan as if it is a hostile actor is oversimplifying things to an insulting degree, given the fact that either way they would have an Afghanistan that would be a uncertain place for them. Additionally, it is an utter oversimplification to say they chose to do X and Y. What's new under the sun? A lot of decisions - choices - are made by states in the belief, correct or otherwise, that it will help their strategic interests. The US has a right to make those kinds of decisions, the Russians do, the Indians and Pakistanis do, etc. And those choices need to be understood in context, in the moment. Far from all these decisions are justified but they are both a normal part of statecraft and not in and of themselves justification for such outrage.

The ISI's decisions are comparable in rationale and context to the actions taken by Chinese states over the centuries to involve themselves in the affairs of so-called barbarians. Afghanistan is a wild, untamed land, a black hole of sorts where money comes in and seems to disappear. It is among the most militarily weak corners of the globe yet among the hardest to govern. Pakistan doesn't have a choice - the Taliban and related groups will always be knocking, just as there always would be nomads menacing or harming China somehow. So they feel that trying to pick winners (so that those winners will have something to owe them hopefully) is a worthy enterprise. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. ISI has no real obligation to put the interests of the people of Afghanistan above the interests of Pakistan or even consider it a strong factor in their decisionmaking. ISI works first and foremost for its interests and secondly for the welfare of Pakistan. The same goes for Indian intelligence agencies and Afghan ones, which probably are all involved in much the same kinds of clandestine activities. The game is innately "dirty". But what's new?

Deaths from terror attacks in Pakistan are declining and have been doing so for years, and it is clear there is some success on that front. Pakistan, much like the US, has been trying to pay down a bill it incurred for the way it saw off the Soviet threat (the greatest triumph in the history of the American-Pakistani relationship thus far). In this context Pakistan is a vital working partner that we need to cultivate, and Pakistan is an important player close to sea lanes (vital for US strategic interests) and Central Asia (an area where we need to try to counter Russian influence). We should wish Pakistan success in reducing, over time, the number of their citizenry whose lives are claimed by terrorism; they would do the same for us if asked.

I don't favor the zeroing out of aid to nations on this basis, aid is a basic thing to give to solidify a working relationship on a given issue, and nations work with each other on various things both military and civilian. Anger and high-and-mighty feelings of superiority makes for ruin in the long term and wastes resources. It reeks of the arrogance that costed us an easy win in Afghanistan, and can only harm the nation in the long run. Pakistan has its own interests, so do we, many of those overlap, but also many do not. And their intelligence agencies do try to help those interests, doing an imperfect but not completely terrible job. So do ours as well. And maintenance of those interests are key for national prosperity and thus the lot of every citizen. Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

The "zero out aid for X and Y and Z" crowd either doesn't know foreign policy well, or is  careless on foreign policy, or both. Thankfully the people actually in charge are not often from their ranks.

In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. has just suffered a major international defeat. A monumental humanitarian crisis is unfolding. And the foreign power most responsible for this is Pakistan. And you want to explain that away as just a normal day in statecraft that the U.S. shouldn’t get too upset about.

I am treating Pakistan as a hostile actor because that is exactly how they have acted. This isn’t some minor kerfluffle about some border post being moved ten feet. This isn’t some case of diplomats dueling with briefcases at dawn over the exact wording of Subparagraph 57-L in Section 66 of the Fourth Appendix of a Mohair Agreement. This is actively assisting in a U.S. strategic defeat.

You keep on talking about how Pakistani interests in Afghanistan explain their actions there. I am not disagreeing with that. I am disagreeing with the idea that the U.S. should continue to treat Pakistan the same way as if nothing has happened.

Gee, “major non-NATO allies” should, perhaps, act as allies? Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

Once the U.S. is fully out of Afghanistan what interests do we have in Pakistan? What interests do we have there that justify continuing to fund a government, military, and intelligence service that hates the U.S. and acts against U.S. interests whenever possible? What is so goddamned important that the very idea of the U.S. doing anything to Pakistan is so opposed by you? That’s what countries do to each other in geopolitics in pursuit of their interests as you have gone on and on about. Why is it okay for Pakistan to act against the United States and not okay for the United States to act against Pakistan? What is driving this double standard of yours?

I am pleased to hear you seem to share my geopolitical philosophy.

That being said I fundamentally disagree with your framing of what has happened and Pakistan's role in what has happened. What has happened is no doubt a humiliation but it's also one that 1) is not really most succinctly described as a defeat and 2) not really most heavily caused by Pakistan. We have the Bush administration most to blame, if we're going to blame any single government, because of the high-and-mighty style in which they handled the Taliban (for example, refusing Mullah Omar's surrender offer) and because they used a playbook that dates back to the British Raj and has failed probably almost every time it has been tried. They also had the bad idea of imposing ultra-centralized government in a place where it was not feasible (due to the central government lacking the reach and resources) and the structure of society (actual governing authority in Afghanistan is in practice highly disparate). Afghanistan has historically been a federal state.

They also distracted themselves with an invasion and occupation in Iraq (allowing the Taliban to recover). Other distractions appeared on the horizon, making it completely impossible to have a politically uncontroversial exit as our hand grew weaker and weaker and the Taliban knew they could simply play the waiting game as the pot boiled. Sure enough, the decaying "national" "government" lost its legitimacy and became the equivalent of a wood-framed house terminally infested with termites. Once the US withdrew, all the Taliban had to do was kick it really hard once, and the whole thing collapsed in on itself, leaving them to fill the power vacuum.

Make no mistake - this was a failed nation-building experiment in a land where it was hard to do that, with bad decisions made from the very start, where maintenance was delayed and partially done by a disinterested quasi-landlord, all resulting to a very predictable failure. This isn't a defeat as much as it is the end of a d**k-waving contest the US decided to stop participating in because it had duties to do elsewhere. There were only 10k troops at the very end anyway. And this defeat is not to be blamed on Pakistan to any major extent. A lot of the blame simply goes to the fact it's Afghanistan we decided to try this nation building thing, and most of the rest falls to poor decisions from American leaders acting on basis of misguided theory. It's not productive to just blame Pakistan for something it really didn't cause anyway. If we refuse to acknowledge our mistakes, even if merely to ourselves, we are likelier to repeat them. We ought to treat what happened here as a learning experience - how NOT to nation-build. If we go back into Afghanistan (and we may need to at some time in the future) and come with the goal of nation-building again, we need to do things differently. But it's not like anyone else who has involved themselves in Afghanistan has learned much from failure, so if we don't change our ways, then we're just joining the "I wasted money and time in Afghanistan" club.

[Big Abraham]

Not the best timing for Zablon Simintov, the last known Jew living in Afghanistan. He was planning to emigrate from Kabul to Israel this fall.

[Third Party]

Here is a key point that no one is making: if Biden had actually stuck to the terms of the Doha Agreement signed by the Trump admin and the Taliban, this massive humiliation for Washington would not have happened. According to the terms of the agreement, the US/NATO were supposed to be totally out of Afghanistan by May 1st of this year. But Biden wanted to stick around a little longer, probably to score some cheap domestic political points with the Neocons that backed his election campaign.

Yes, the Taliban would have still launched this year’s spring offensive that eventually took the entire country in dramatic style. But the US would have already been out if Biden had honored the agreement and left by May. The Taliban warned that there would be big consequences for this, but pretty much no one in the West took them seriously. Oops! Now we got to see Saigon 2.0, for real.

Also, one last important point to be made. This massive defeat for the Neocons has totally discredited them and their crazy ideology for all time. History did not end in the early 1990s and the US was clearly not destined to rule the entire world. The demented “Unipolar Moment” is now but a distant memory. For anyone that has been living under a Neocon rock for the last ten years: we are now living in a fully multi-polar world with multiple different power centers (most notably: the US, China, Russia and India).

[WMS]

To Phil: notice I said the main “foreign” power responsible. I am sadly aware of how utterly the U.S. has botched things. The reveal of this utterly infuriating incompetence finally blew the lid off of how far down the rot went.

I’m not sure I agree that there is anything to be salvaged in this region. Central Asia was always the most remote region of the planet for the U.S. to reach. I’m not surprised we’re ultimately getting kicked out. Cutting our losses and leaving entirely seems the wisest course of action.

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

Vietnamese Americans have long held a grudge against Biden because he famously was one of the most strident voices against taking in South Vietnamese collaborators with the U.S. government in 1975, famously saying 'The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001 South Vietnamese. Gerald Ford decided that that was immoral and chose to evacuate up to 200,000 refugees. I probably wouldn't be an American today if Biden had had his way in 1975. It also means that I am not surprised by how much this administration has botched this evacuation, particularly of Afghan collaborators at risk of being killed due to their connection to the U.S. The simple explanation, consistent with Biden's track record is that he doesn't care.

As I recently wrote, Biden has a relevant personal history. In April 1975, as a first-term senator, he was an outspoken opponent of using American money and risking Americans’ safety to rescue the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had bet their lives on American promises. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese,” he said in a Senate speech. President Gerald Ford tried to sway Biden by reminding him of the American tradition of welcoming refugees from war and oppression, but Biden was unmoved. Vietnam was a lost cause, and Americans wanted to forget.

As South Vietnam fell, 135,000 endangered Vietnamese were evacuated through the heroic efforts of American officials, military veterans, and private citizens. Ford later said, “To do anything less would, in my opinion, only add moral shame to military humiliation.”

Now I understand the political context in 2021 is different from 1975, and that an influx of Afghan refugees nowadays may be considerably less sympathetic than Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees in 1975. But I do think under a different president than Biden (certainly not under Trump, but under other possible presidents of either party) there may have been a bigger priority placed on making sure there was a better process in place for Afghan resettlement & refugees compared to what is taking place right now, which is basically nothing at all.

EDIT: For anyone looking for a primary source on what was said above, I found it on page 736 of 1393 of the pdf here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/United_States_Congressional_Serial_Set/mh9QAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Specifically what Biden said in 1975 was - 'I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals - other than perhaps an estimated 1,800 diplomatic personnel assigned to foreign embassies in Saigon. The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese. As I read the language of the bill, the evacuation of Americans in South Vietnam conceivably could be endangered because of the provisions also permitting the evacuation of untold numbers of foreign nationals. The President's representatives inform us that as many as 175,000 South Vietnamese are considered eligible for evacuation.'

Just asking, did you vote for Biden? Also, if you don't mind, what about your family as well? Who did they vote for last year?

[jaichind]

Here is a key point that no one is making: if Biden had actually stuck to the terms of the Doha Agreement signed by the Trump admin and the Taliban, this massive humiliation for Washington would not have happened. According to the terms of the agreement, the US/NATO were supposed to be totally out of Afghanistan by May 1st of this year. But Biden wanted to stick around a little longer, probably to score some cheap domestic political points with the Neocons that backed his election campaign.

Yes, the Taliban would have still launched this year’s spring offensive that eventually took the entire country in dramatic style. But the US would have already been out if Biden had honored the agreement and left by May. The Taliban warned that there would be big consequences for this, but pretty much no one in the West took them seriously. Oops! Now we got to see Saigon 2.0, for real.

Also, one last important point to be made. This massive defeat for the Neocons has totally discredited them and their crazy ideology for all time. History did not end in the early 1990s and the US was clearly not destined to rule the entire world. The demented “Unipolar Moment” is now but a distant memory. For anyone that has been living under a Neocon rock for the last ten years: we are now living in a fully multi-polar world with multiple different power centers (most notably: the US, China, Russia and India).

I actually did make this point

Looking back I think what Biden should have done is actually just carry out the May 1st deadline.  That would have in theory locked the Tailban into talks with the Ghani government for a while.  The end games would most likely been the same but those talks would have provided the time for various people that fear the Taliban to get out.  This Sept 11th deadline gave the impression that up until Sept 11th everything will be fine.

[NOVA Green]

800 people on one plane!

For context, a Boeing 747 seats about 600 and has about a 15% larger wingspan (not a perfect analogy, but it gives you an idea).

https://twitter.com/MilMonWorld/status/1427025918652977156

I think this audio recording is someone in the Air Force relaying the info:
https://m.soundcloud.com/metal57/rch-871

Is that real? Do we have any veracity that this is any way an official communication?

I believe the airplane number is identified in the video, but who the hell would be recording this, let along leaking it when it could potentially get into the hands of the "Baddies" in real time, where there still most be a few actionable SAMs floating around from the old dayz, although I believe there is a certain limited life-span when it comes to the Stinger Missiles we gave to the mujahideen back in the days, would have imagined they would no longer be viable max (30) years after we started to dump them in the hands of extremist factions against the former USSR.

A Stinger is a portable SAMl launcher, useful only against helicopters or aircraft at low altitudes.

As for old equipment, age doesn't necessarily render a system completely useless.

The only F117 (stealth plane) ever shot down was taken down over Yugoslavia by 70s equipment, but it was an actual SAM installation (S125), not a portable launcher, and was manned by professional soldiers who figured out a good frequency for tracking stealth planes, not guerillas.

Don't believe I was talking about Stealth Planes, but rather a C-17 which obviously could be taken down very easily.

Not sure what you are disputing exactly, since even slightly less advanced weapon systems could easily take down choppers and aircraft at low elevations....

Multiple incidents in the Iraq War 2.0 where insurgents were able to take down US Military Aircraft, not to mention many similar incidents in Afghanistan under the Soviet Occupation and the subsequent American Occupation.

Techs that killed my friend in Iraq were exported to Afghanistan....

Don't think it's the right place to post it but the UK leaked certain military tech to the IRA, which ended up decades later in Afghanistan and Iraq, which accounted for a significant amount of IEDs both in SE Iraq during War 2.0, as well as in districts in SE Afghanistan with significant UK Military PRES.

Basically the concept is that you could use a laser beam and trigger a massive explosion, which tends to hit Armored Cars and convoys much more dramatically than Tanks...

One of my Son-In-Laws was stationed down at Camp Pendleton and scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan back in November 2010, and he had a combo vaccination in order to be deployed, which although the records are not yet released included (19) different chemicals injected into his veins.

He was less than 1% of US Military Members who suffered an extremely dangerous incident, where he was in a coma for about a week, before we visited our daughter and son-in-law, and it wasn't until something like ten days later when he came out of his combo...

Not an Anti-Vaccer, Not an Anti-Military guy....

Not even going to delve into my friend who died in Iraq because of all the bulls**t, stop-loss, and general fuc*ed US Foreign Policy decisions from US Presidential Administrations going back decades ago.

[StateBoiler]

MARGARET BRENNAN: I was rereading your memoir before we sat down to talk and you said in your memoir, Joe Biden is impossible not to like.

Quote: "He's a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."

Would he be an effective commander-in-chief?

ROBERT GATES: I-- I don't know. I don't know. I-- I think I stand by that statement. He and I agreed on some key issues in the Obama administration. We disagreed significantly on Afghanistan and some other issues. I think that the vice president had some issues with the military. So how he would get along with the senior military, and what that relationship would be, I just-- I think, it-- it would depend on the personalities at the time.

"Duty" was written while Obama was still president and all pre-Joe Biden looking he would seriously become a president one day, but Gates in the book was none too kind to Biden's geopolitical instincts.

Back in the 2008 primaries, Biden's idea for Iraq was to split it into a federation of 3 states based on ethnicity, which would've never happened (Saudis, Iranians, Turks would've all been against for starters) but is also quite Sykes-Picotish. I think it's polite to say that would not have turned out well. Probably turned into a Vietnam/Korea deal of one of the federal states once created seek full independence or turn on one of the other two.

Tom Ricks who has written about defense issues in Washington forever while lambasting Ben Rhodes in a famous news article that come out in 2016 (Rhodes was Obama's foreign policy guy) said this of Biden. (This was again written mid-2016, when it did not look like Joe Biden would ever become president.)

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/06/a-stunning-profile-of-ben-rhodes-the-asshole-who-is-the-presidents-foreign-policy-guru/

Rhodes and others around Obama keep on talking about doing all this novel thinking, playing from a new playbook, bucking the establishment thinking. But if that is the case, why have they given so much foreign policy power to two career hacks who never have had an original thought? I mean, of course, Joe Biden and John Kerry. I guess the answer can only be that those two are puppets, and (as in Biden’s case) are given losing propositions like Iraq to handle.

[Red Velvet]

Here is a key point that no one is making: if Biden had actually stuck to the terms of the Doha Agreement signed by the Trump admin and the Taliban, this massive humiliation for Washington would not have happened. According to the terms of the agreement, the US/NATO were supposed to be totally out of Afghanistan by May 1st of this year. But Biden wanted to stick around a little longer, probably to score some cheap domestic political points with the Neocons that backed his election campaign.

Yes, the Taliban would have still launched this year’s spring offensive that eventually took the entire country in dramatic style. But the US would have already been out if Biden had honored the agreement and left by May. The Taliban warned that there would be big consequences for this, but pretty much no one in the West took them seriously. Oops! Now we got to see Saigon 2.0, for real.

Also, one last important point to be made. This massive defeat for the Neocons has totally discredited them and their crazy ideology for all time. History did not end in the early 1990s and the US was clearly not destined to rule the entire world. The demented “Unipolar Moment” is now but a distant memory. For anyone that has been living under a Neocon rock for the last ten years: we are now living in a fully multi-polar world with multiple different power centers (most notably: the US, China, Russia and India).

Superpowers tend to fall when they get too arrogant and entitled about their power because that makes them lazier on the long term. It’s always the same story over and over again across history but all of them convince that this time it won’t happen to them because they’re all supposed to be “different”. Roman Empire lasted four centuries, these people calling the “end of history” in early 90s were just telling the narrative they WANTED to believe in. It was never realistic on any sense.

US rised in the XX century a lot in thanks to the creativity, optimism and also the idealistic spirit and ideas they convinced people of. Elites from mid-XX century weren’t saints but they were much more confident and competent than the soulless technocrats leading today. Who gets inspired by them?

In the past people were literally reaching to the moon. Nowadays all you hear from US is that they cannot do anything good to their people, like universal healthcare, while still actively working and investing a fortune to make other distant places worse.

USSR fall ended up being a curse in the long term to USA precisely because it gave them these false certainties. Will be fun seeing the development and reaction of the opportunistic international submissive rats spread in multiple countries along the coming decades though.

[The Ex-Factor]

Vietnamese Americans have long held a grudge against Biden because he famously was one of the most strident voices against taking in South Vietnamese collaborators with the U.S. government in 1975, famously saying 'The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001 South Vietnamese. Gerald Ford decided that that was immoral and chose to evacuate up to 200,000 refugees. I probably wouldn't be an American today if Biden had had his way in 1975. It also means that I am not surprised by how much this administration has botched this evacuation, particularly of Afghan collaborators at risk of being killed due to their connection to the U.S. The simple explanation, consistent with Biden's track record is that he doesn't care.

As I recently wrote, Biden has a relevant personal history. In April 1975, as a first-term senator, he was an outspoken opponent of using American money and risking Americans’ safety to rescue the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had bet their lives on American promises. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese,” he said in a Senate speech. President Gerald Ford tried to sway Biden by reminding him of the American tradition of welcoming refugees from war and oppression, but Biden was unmoved. Vietnam was a lost cause, and Americans wanted to forget.

As South Vietnam fell, 135,000 endangered Vietnamese were evacuated through the heroic efforts of American officials, military veterans, and private citizens. Ford later said, “To do anything less would, in my opinion, only add moral shame to military humiliation.”

Now I understand the political context in 2021 is different from 1975, and that an influx of Afghan refugees nowadays may be considerably less sympathetic than Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees in 1975. But I do think under a different president than Biden (certainly not under Trump, but under other possible presidents of either party) there may have been a bigger priority placed on making sure there was a better process in place for Afghan resettlement & refugees compared to what is taking place right now, which is basically nothing at all.

EDIT: For anyone looking for a primary source on what was said above, I found it on page 736 of 1393 of the pdf here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/United_States_Congressional_Serial_Set/mh9QAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Specifically what Biden said in 1975 was - 'I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals - other than perhaps an estimated 1,800 diplomatic personnel assigned to foreign embassies in Saigon. The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese. As I read the language of the bill, the evacuation of Americans in South Vietnam conceivably could be endangered because of the provisions also permitting the evacuation of untold numbers of foreign nationals. The President's representatives inform us that as many as 175,000 South Vietnamese are considered eligible for evacuation.'

Just asking, did you vote for Biden? Also, if you don't mind, what about your family as well? Who did they vote for last year?

Sure no problem. I've voted for the Democratic candidate my whole life.

My mom became a citizen in 1997. She's pretty far-left (big Bernie fan) who usually votes for the Democrat unless she is disgruntled with them and wants to register a protest vote in California. Her record is Nader, Kerry, Obama, Stein, Clinton, Biden. This is quite atypical for an old Vietnamese person.

My dad was a lifelong Republican because he thought they were more anti-Communist (his parents had their land expropriated and they were imprisoned by the North Vietnamese in the 1950s. The whole family later fled to South Vietnam). For reasons I still don't entirely understand he then voted for Obama in 2012 and Hillary in 2016. However he switched back to Trump in 2020, out of support for Trump's anti-China posturing and a strong dislike of Biden.

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

Sure no problem. I've voted for the Democratic candidate my whole life.

My mom became a citizen in 1997. She's pretty far-left (big Bernie fan) who usually votes for the Democrat unless she is disgruntled with them and wants to register a protest vote in California. Her record is Nader, Kerry, Obama, Stein, Clinton, Biden. This is quite atypical for an old Vietnamese person.

My dad was a lifelong Republican because he thought they were more anti-Communist (his parents had their land expropriated and they were imprisoned by the North Vietnamese in the 1950s. The whole family later fled to South Vietnam). For reasons I still don't entirely understand he then voted for Obama in 2012 and Hillary in 2016. However he switched back to Trump in 2020, out of support for Trump's anti-China posturing and a strong dislike of Biden.

Very interesting. Thank you for the response!

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1427068129839042564
This.....is.....brutal.

[Red Velvet]

https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1427068129839042564
This.....is.....brutal.

I didn’t fully understand it until I read the author’s name. Wow. Just wow.

He celebrated the same situation that ended up backfiring on his face years later. How does someone like that gets to sleep at night, knowing he sold out his own people and country? This is heavy stuff.

[The Mikado]

I can't remember much from 2001 but i'm curious if it would have been possible to try to root out Bin Laden without doing much to the established order in Kabul?

The Taliban did reject Bush's initial ultimatum to give bin Laden and Al Qaeda over, but honestly even if the Taliban had been interested in cooperating, American bloodlust was so high it's impossible to explain. America wasn't going without a war here even if the Taliban had bent over backwards to cooperate.

What MIGHT have worked is if the US actually had gotten bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the rest at Tora Bora in December 2001. If Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were captured or killed just three months after 9/11, it's quite possible the US public opinion would be so happy we'd be more open to declaring victory and calling it quits rather than staying another two decades. It's more or less the failure of the punitive aspect of the Afghanistan war that forced us into the nation building aspect to look for SOMETHING to be a win.

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1427132404079108096

[H. Ross Peron]

It's been overshadowed by the Covid pandemic, but there's been many geopolitical developments the past year including Armenia being pushed out of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan, Ethiopia falling into civil war, and now this.

[TheTide]

It's been overshadowed by the Covid pandemic, but there's been many geopolitical developments the past year including Armenia being pushed out of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan, Ethiopia falling into civil war, and now this.

Although the Covid situation isn't over, this particular saga has the feeling of the first major post-Covid event.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It's been overshadowed by the Covid pandemic, but there's been many geopolitical developments the past year including Armenia being pushed out of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan, Ethiopia falling into civil war, and now this.

Although the Covid situation isn't over, this particular saga has the feeling of the first major post-Covid event.

Well, it's certainly something that will be remembered in decades.

[Meclazine for Israel]

"More than 150,000 people died during the war. The US lost more than 2,000 soldiers and spent trillions of dollars. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and soldiers lost their lives."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-16/who-are-the-taliban-what-want-afghanistan-kabul/100379404

Apart from sharpening up the US military spear, or flexing the war machine, it really did not achieve a whole lot. Killing Osama was a highlight I guess.

Perhaps the Europeans can go over and have a crusade or two to eradicate the Islamic fervour.

This feels so medieval.

[H. Ross Peron]

https://twitter.com/alihashem_tv/status/1427184588204478468

This is somehow a morbid callback to the 9/11 jumpers for me.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/FinchHaven/status/1426734162988257288

[CumbrianLefty]

I can't remember much from 2001 but i'm curious if it would have been possible to try to root out Bin Laden without doing much to the established order in Kabul?

The Taliban did reject Bush's initial ultimatum to give bin Laden and Al Qaeda over, but honestly even if the Taliban had been interested in cooperating, American bloodlust was so high it's impossible to explain. America wasn't going without a war here even if the Taliban had bent over backwards to cooperate.

What MIGHT have worked is if the US actually had gotten bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the rest at Tora Bora in December 2001. If Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were captured or killed just three months after 9/11, it's quite possible the US public opinion would be so happy we'd be more open to declaring victory and calling it quits rather than staying another two decades. It's more or less the failure of the punitive aspect of the Afghanistan war that forced us into the nation building aspect to look for SOMETHING to be a win.

Alternatively, the US might have tried to "finish the job" in Afghanistan (not just militarily but in the sense of creating a viable post-Taliban country) but as we know their REAL target was elsewhere - Rumsfeld told his staff just hours after the Twin Towers fell "we are going into Iraq". Even though of course that country had literally nothing to do with Sept 11 (which did not prevent a massive tide of obfuscatory disinformation propaganda in the US that they *had* been in some undefined way)

The irony is that, as of today, Iraq is in a somewhat less bad situation than Afghanistan - though it would very likely be in a similar place had the neocons left well alone and allowed the Saddam regime to decompose naturally (as was already slowly but surely happening)