Current Events > Taliban celebrating news the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taliban-greets-pentagon-s-withdrawal-troops-afghanistan-cries-victory-n950811

News that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan provoked widespread criticism that the move would kneecap efforts to broker a peace deal to end America's longest war.

But there was one group on Friday celebrating the reports the Taliban.

Senior members told NBC News the news was a clear indication they were on the verge of victory.

The 17-year-long struggle and sacrifices of thousands of our people finally yielded fruit," said a senior Taliban commander from Afghanistans Helmand province. "We proved it to the entire world that we defeated the self-proclaimed worlds lone super power."

We are close to our destination," added the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the group's leadership had prohibited members from talking to the media about current events. He added that all field commanders had also been told to intensify training efforts to capture four strategic provinces in the run up to the next round of talks between the U.S. and Taliban, which are expected in January.

A Taliban leader in eastern Kunar province, Maulvi Sher Mohammad, said news of withdrawals should serve as a lesson to Americans.

The U.S. people and particularly its rulers should think about what they achieved by invading Afghanistan and by causing so many losses to the citizens of Afghanistan and wasting their own resources on this long war, he said.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the Taliban's claims.

So far, the U.S.'s military campaign, along with billions in aid, have not succeeded in driving out the Taliban and other militants or making the country safe.

In 2017, Afghanistan overtook Iraq to become the deadliest country for terrorism, with one-quarter of all such deaths worldwide happening there. And the number of civilians killed in the country reached a record in the first half of this year, with a surge in suicide attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, according to the United Nations.

Despite years of fighting, only around 65 percent of the Afghan population lives in areas under government control.

The U.S. plans for a withdrawal were due shortly after the new year, according to two defense officials and a person briefed on the matter. They cautioned that no decision has been made, but President Donald Trump wants to see options.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to look into multiple options, including a complete withdrawal, the officials said.

The Taliban sheltered 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and was toppled soon after the 2001 attacks. Since then, the militants have been trying to unseat the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and reimpose their strict version of Shariah. Successes on the battlefield coupled with a recent intensifying efforts to reach a peace deal led by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad have boosted the movement's confidence and power.

Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Nations, has stressed he is "in a hurry" to secure an agreement, a sign of how eager the White House is to withdraw the 15,000 American troops remaining in the country.

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But reducing the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan would mean fewer U.S. air bases, and American firepower will be less responsive and less available for Afghan troops fighting Taliban militants, said Jason Campbell, a former senior Defense Department official and now a policy researcher at the RAND Corp. think tank.

Plans to scale back the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan comes after Washington pressed NATO allies this year to keep troops in the country, and some governments including Britain agreed to expand their contributions following an appeal from Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned on Thursday.

The news shocked and confused NATO allies and the Afghan government, at a moment when the United States is engaged in a major diplomatic push to try to launch peace negotiations.

The abruptness of this I think really hurts our credibility, Campbell said.

For Khalilzad, the move deprives him of his most effective point of leverage before negotiations even have begun in earnest, experts and former officials said.

It will have a devastating effect on peace negotiations, said Seth Jones, a former adviser to the U.S. military now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

The challenge now the U.S. faces is how is it going to get the Taliban to reach an agreement if they can wait and expect a better outcome in the future if the U.S. continues to withdraw its forces?

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Donald Trump: Hero of the Taliban
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19 years of war just to set things back how it was lmao

oh well. thats an unwinnable war anyways
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We should never have had a war in Afghanistan to begin with.
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dude I am not a supporter of the middle east wars and i'm not very nationalist but it really fucking hurts to hear those words. i hate being a loser.
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rikasa posted...

dude I am not a supporter of the middle east wars and i'm not very nationalist but it really fucking hurts to hear those words. i hate being a loser.

The US should mostly be used to it by now.
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metralo posted...

19 years of war just to set things back how it was lmao

oh well. thats an unwinnable war anyways

What was the alternative? An endless war?
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Now they all come out of their rat holes and we unload every bomb we have as we leave.
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We should have left ages ago. Our presence is not creating stability so much as it is delaying the inevitable. We created a government that was less capable of serving Afghans than the damned Taliban. That's the take-away here.
I guess the Afghans can add us to the list of empires they've stymied.

Syria, IMO, is a different can-of-worms where our presence is actually making things better, because we have a stable and relatively decent proxy which we are assisting.

When the terrorists you want to stop are happy with this because it will let them get power... why is it being done?
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Spooking posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

We should never have had a war in Afghanistan to begin with.

And in Syria and in Iraq.

these
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Funkydog posted...

When the terrorists you want to stop are happy with this because it will let them get power... why is it being done?

What's the alternative? This war has been happening for 17 years.
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Pepys Monster posted...

metralo posted...

19 years of war just to set things back how it was lmao

oh well. thats an unwinnable war anyways

What was the alternative? An endless war?

im not saying I don't support it. we're just essentially creating another huge terrorist group again. there's literally no winning, as I said
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Trump: No one claims victory over me, we're going back in! But, Fox News won't be my friend if I don't withdraw now...
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Pepys Monster posted...

Funkydog posted...

When the terrorists you want to stop are happy with this because it will let them get power... why is it being done?

What's the alternative? This was has been happening for 17 years.

I'm not sure, but allowing the terrorism we supposedly want to stop to only grow in strength and likely claim actual land/stability/proper power surely can't be the answer.

Isis are bad enough, do we want a terrorist group with the stability of a country to take root in again?
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ElatedVenusaur posted...

We should have left ages ago. Our presence is not creating stability so much as it is delaying the inevitable. We created a government that was less capable of serving Afghans than the damned Taliban. That's the take-away here.
I guess the Afghans can add us to the list of empires they've stymied.

Syria, IMO, is a different can-of-worms where our presence is actually making things better, because we have a stable and relatively decent proxy which we are assisting.

Afganistan was not changing. People that think it was are delusional, and our presence only made us a bigger target. The fact that the left is criticizing this is like them criticizing Mike Pence for saying he agrees with Roe V Wade. It is beyond absurd. ISIS in Syria...that situation isn't changing much cause we aren't the only ones who were fighting them and they have already been driven in the a corner for about a year. Turkey and abandoning our allies, the Kurds, are the biggest negatives with leaving Iraq and Syria.

metralo posted...

Pepys Monster posted...

metralo posted...

19 years of war just to set things back how it was lmao

oh well. thats an unwinnable war anyways

What was the alternative? An endless war?

im not saying I don't support it. we're just essentially creating another huge terrorist group again. there's literally no winning, as I said

There are ways. But this day and age, its your own crucifixation. They should have swept down and gave one chance to surrender or business is being handled on them. But instead we chose to play by politically correct means while these fuckers commit executions and do roadside bombings that left a lot of good chunk of the people I served with fucked up in the head
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people really will criticize trump for anything and everything
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If there were even 5 taliban members left they would be applauding us leaving Afghanistan regardless of when or how we do it. Being in Afghanistan is a lose-lose situation. Our presence there was never going to do anything except destabilize the region. Our efforts to rebuild infrastructure that we tore to shreds are either never completed or finished and then left to fall apart all over again.

Don't get me wrong, Trump trying to leave on a whim is really stupid, but regardless of what or when we do it there is going to be a big period of unrest once we're gone
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We'll probably just focus on drone strikes so we can safely take them out Nintendo style.

TheMikh posted...

people really will criticize trump for anything and everything

I mean, they should. He's a selfish, incompetent buffoon who screws up everything he's ever done, and this won't be any different. It's quite believable that he's doing this just because he's frustrated about his precious wall not (ever) being built or Mueller being mean to him, but he's managed to stumble into doing the right thing mostly because our political establishment's foreign policy thinking is warped as hell.

Considering the fact that the US put the Mujahideen in power in the first place, who became the Taliban after coming to power in Afghanistan, this is really just a case of the hens coming home to roost. They resisted the Soviets, then they resisted the Americans.
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You guys sure cried when Obama pulled out
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what if the reason all the refugees left and now they're pulling troops is cus they planning on bombing them and stuff
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VTBM posted...

No. Do you realize that Turkey has outright stated that if we leave Syria, they will slaughter the Kurds? Our allies under our protection? That's why Mattis gave Trump the finger. We're betraying allies.
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not gonna work. Obama tried to pull out too, iirc.

and his administration was more educated.
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RickyTheBAWSE posted...

not gonna work. Obama tried to pull out too, iirc.

and his administration was more educated.

Sure, but Obama listened to people smarter and more knowledgeable than him. Trump just insults them on Twitter
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Someone has to pull out of Afghanistan.

It really feels like it could be perpetual war.
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I remember when winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East was an important factor in what we did. Now it seems were leaving in a similar sort of state to how we found it when we went in so history will just end up repeating itself.

If we were never going to go in and do the job properly what was the point of going in at all?
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Crepes posted...

I remember when winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East was an important factor in what we did. Now it seems were leaving in a similar sort of state to how we found it when we went in so history will just end up repeating itself.

If we were never going to go in and do the job properly what was the point of going in at all?

It's a lost cause, bro. We could have 200+ years of war, or we could end it now.
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Pulling out of Afghanistan won't create more terrorists. That is something the Bush Administration would have said in 2005.
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Damn_Underscore posted...

Pulling out of Afghanistan won't create more terrorists. That is something the Bush Administration would have said in 2005.

Pulling out of Syria will get the allies we promised to protect killed though
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Crepes posted...

I remember when winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East was an important factor in what we did. Now it seems were leaving in a similar sort of state to how we found it when we went in so history will just end up repeating itself.

If we were never going to go in and do the job properly what was the point of going in at all?

America doesn't do things for others without having special interest. It was never about the people, and when agendas conflict, something falls short.

Those people have their own culture.
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VictimComplex posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

Pulling out of Afghanistan won't create more terrorists. That is something the Bush Administration would have said in 2005.

Pulling out of Syria will get the allies we promised to protect killed though

yeah but it pleases Putin, so it's obvious why trump is doing it
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What happened to "America is not the World Police"

Any country could say "if you pull out we will kill so and so" and we would be at war forever.
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I think it's pretty damn obvious that another terror cell will spawn in the power gap left behind, the same way ISIS formed from areas the US left under Obama. It's a shitshow either way, either we stay forever to try and keep things in check or we leave and deal with whatever fallout happens in the coming months and years.
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Damn_Underscore posted...

What happened to "America is not the World Police"

Any country could say "if you pull out we will kill so and so" and we would be at war forever.

yup. unfortunately America can't help but want to spread it's "influence" to other nations.

started with European colonization and got more advanced with the times.
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The only reason we are there is to keep the Taliban away from Pakistan's nukes.
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We shouldnt be policing the world. Its time to go home. I just wish fellow Democrats would get their heads out of their asses when it comes to hating Trump no matter what he does. You can beef with any number of his worse policies but this is not one of them, we shouldnt be occupying and policing foreign countries for decades.
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I promise you most currently serving couldn't give a shit about the claims the Taliban or anyone make. The entire country/region is a waste of anyone's time and would've been reduced to complete chaos if we hadn't been there. We only helped prevent the inevitable just a little bit longer.
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Fossil posted...

The entire country/region is a waste of anyone's time and would've been reduced to complete chaos if we hadn't been there.

I dont know. Im not sure I buy this thinking.

Do you feel that if we hadnt gone in in 2001 it still would have ended this way?

Remember up until just before 2001 the taliban, and as an extension the mujahadeen (sp), were actually supported by the US. Hell Bin Laden was trained by the CIA for god sake during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
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Crepes posted...

Do you feel that if we hadnt gone in in 2001 it still would have ended this way?

Well, when you bring up all the additional political crap, maybe, maybe not. Had we never been involved in the first place? Probably. Politics aside, we have no reason to be there.
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Fossil posted...

Crepes posted...

Do you feel that if we hadnt gone in in 2001 it still would have ended this way?

Well, when you bring up all the additional political crap, maybe, maybe not. Had we never been involved in the first place? Probably. Politics aside, we have no reason to be there.

Firstly do we not have a moral obligation to see things out over there after getting involved? Should we not make sure it at least ends up as stable as it was before we went in? Or do you already think its in a better place than 2001?

Secondly can you clarify your politics aside comment? What do you mean by this? What specifics are you defining as politics?
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electricbugs2 posted...

rikasa posted...

dude I am not a supporter of the middle east wars and i'm not very nationalist but it really fucking hurts to hear those words. i hate being a loser.

The US should mostly be used to it by now.

oh canada
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