Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 377: Nonconsent of the Governed

(+) Yeah! (+)

Speaking of China, their state media is now publicly saying that the USs abandonment of Afghanistan means that we wont actually aid Taiwan if China invaded them:

https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/1427310401402773517?s=21

So yeah, pray to god they dont actually believe that

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RE: the discussion of womens rights and safety in Afghanistan from before:

https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1427304050853355525?s=21

Its not going to be better now, and its definitely awful, but uh, we were there for 20 years and didnt do much! Anyone using that as justification to not have left is disingenuous (surprise)

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If accurate, that ranking for Iraq is truly tragic. Things have gotten so much worse for women's rights there since 2003.

For anyone who may not know: my family immigrated from Iraq when my parents were in their early 30s. Both of them attended medical school there in mixed-gender classes. My mom out-performed my dad in school and thus was out-earning him as a physician - this was back in the 80s and very early 90s.

If Iraq is now among the worst countries in the WORLD in terms of women's rights and empowerment, it is a direct result of our going over there and making almost everything worse.

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Imagine getting moderated for saying that a moderate political belief is better than subjecting yourself to extremism

What on earth

IIRC, the women's rights situation in Afghanistan had a massive disparity between rural and urban areas like Kabul (mostly because the US backed regime still nominally held them) where girls were genuinely getting education, etc.

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Heroic_TuRtLe posted...

Imagine getting moderated for saying that a moderate political belief is better than subjecting yourself to extremism

What on earth

it's not like you said everyone who disagrees with you has no more than two braincells or something

(also, lol @ the idea that non-centrist beliefs are automatically "extremist")

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lol @ the idea that centrist beliefs are automatically not extremist

no idea how we got to this point but thems the facts

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

it's not like you said everyone who disagrees with you has no more than two braincells or something

(also, lol @ the idea that non-centrist beliefs are automatically "extremist")

Centrism is such a dumb label to describe the concept of not jumping to one extreme or the other about a topic.

Moderate political leanings are by their very DEFINITION not extremist

Order(s) of magnitude too low but still better than I hoped and hopefully they do more of this.

DoD says it's preparing to house thousands of Afghan refugees on American military bases.

https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1427113848126021636

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Part of the original agreement with the Taliban was that they were going to let anyone who wanted out out of the country. Curious as to whether they will hold up their end of the agreement, and if the international community will do anything about it when they inevitably don't.

In other news:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvjzm/covid-patients-who-wont-get-vaccinated-arkansas?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

Best part:

When Dr. Meena attempts to educate his patients, he finds that the process itself can cause his patients to get unstable. If they get too agitated, then they get more short of breath, then they require more support and then they get intubated, which then leads to a longer hospital stay, he said.

People LITERALLY dying because of their extremist political beliefs. Insane

Heroic_TuRtLe posted...

In other news:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvjzm/covid-patients-who-wont-get-vaccinated-arkansas?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

Best part:

People LITERALLY dying because of their extremist political beliefs. Insane

Sounds like they should do this more often

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I'm surprised the Republicans hate the Taliban so much. They have a lot in common.

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Dancedreamer posted...

I'm surprised the Republicans hate the Taliban so much. They have a lot in common.

what are you talking about, christian theocracy and islamic theocracy are absolutely nothing alike

except for the theocracy part

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Dancedreamer posted...

I'm surprised the Republicans hate the Taliban so much. They have a lot in common.

Relevant: Ohio GOP admits that their only differences to the Taliban are their responses to those who don't follow their beliefs, not that their beliefs differ!
https://twitter.com/BrettPransky/status/1427258502007898114?s=19

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Tons of buck-passing in Biden's address. Very disappointing.

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Dancedreamer posted...

I'm surprised the Republicans hate the Taliban so much. They have a lot in common.

A quick search and you can find many calling for the execution of their enemies.

So they don't even have that going for them anymore.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Tons of buck-passing in Biden's address. Very disappointing.

I need to have a discussion on this.

Im seeing a lot of people I usually agree with call it disgusting that hes pointing out the Afghan military didnt fight hard enough, but I mean, isnt he right?

The army was 300,000 strong, trained and equipped by us, and they lost to 45,000 Taliban in like 2 days?

What exactly happened here and what could we have realistically done differently that doesnt involve stay there forever?

Im genuinely asking, maybe Im not looking at this right?

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I need to have a discussion on this.

Im seeing a lot of people I usually agree with call it disgusting that hes pointing out the Afghan military didnt fight hard enough, but I mean, isnt he right?

The army was 300,000 strong, trained and equipped by us, and they lost to 45,000 Taliban in like 2 days?

What exactly happened here and what could we have realistically done differently that doesnt involve stay there forever?

Im genuinely asking, maybe Im not looking at this right?

I mean, it's correct that the Afghan Army is a failure, but that's an explanation, not an excuse. At minimum, we had a responsibility to evacuate the Afghans that helped us, and if the Afghan Army couldn't be relied upon then they should have started evacuating months ago. From the speech, the thing that most grossed me out was his refusal to admit that we had that obligation and had fucked up in fulfilling it.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Im genuinely asking, maybe Im not looking at this right?

I'm looking at it similar here.

We spent 20 years training these guys and they didn't last a week. I'm not sure there was anything to accomplish there. It is pretty clear no matter how we left the military was going to collapse.

I guess the alternative would have been to go "The Taliban wins everyone leave". But I'm not sure that actually goes different.

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Anyway, I'm sure people will take care of this, but prior to this there was a big consensus to Afghanistan of basically "lets just leave lol.

Now everyone is mad that we just left(with what, 6 months or so of warning?)

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red13n posted...

I'm looking at it similar here.

We spent 20 years training these guys and they didn't last a week. I'm not sure there was anything to accomplish there. It is pretty clear no matter how we left the military was going to collapse.

I guess the alternative would have been to go "The Taliban wins everyone leave". But I'm not sure that actually goes different.

That's where I'm at too. Blame Biden all you want for not being immediately prepared to handle the refugee situation, but being there for 20 years and then failing is not Biden's fault. When the alternative is "literally stay there forever" I don't see how you advocate for that. Like we were there 20 years and trained them and providing them equipment, and they literally all just quit because of course they were that's what experts were saying for decades. Another 8 max years under Biden isn't going to fix that.

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I'm not blaming Biden (I'm one of those people who appreciates that he at least pulled the bandage off, because it had to come off eventually), but I also hesitate to call the Afghan army a failure when it's pretty clear those guys had no loyalty to their American-backed government in the first place. Why risk your life fighting if you don't care about the difference between Taliban control and US control? With all the reported corruption among Afghanistan's top level military officers, do we even know if the everyday soldiers were getting paid?

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Also, why the fuck are we still insisting on processing all of the paperwork in Afghanistan when we know that these people are going to be murdered if we don't get them out ASAP? Shred the red tape, get them all out, and deal with the red tape later once they're safe.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Im seeing a lot of people I usually agree with call it disgusting that hes pointing out the Afghan military didnt fight hard enough, but I mean, isnt he right?

The army was 300,000 strong, trained and equipped by us, and they lost to 45,000 Taliban in like 2 days?

What exactly happened here and what could we have realistically done differently that doesnt involve stay there forever?

Im genuinely asking, maybe Im not looking at this right?

I'm not advocating for staying because I don't think that would have solved anything but...

My understanding is that the "300,000" was basically just on paper and the actual number of Afghan military was perhaps closer to 50,000 in reality. Also, the Afghan government had stopped paying them in some instances, for months even so when the Taliban offered them money to defect or just surrender many just took it rather than fight. Especially since the government was also in many cases severely undersupplying them with rations and ammo.

I think a large reason why the Afghan military just surrendered en masse is because the Afghan government was just that incompetent and/or corrupt that they were stiffing the military to skim money off the top and cutting deals with the Taliban themselves in some instances.

That's why I think staying probably wouldn't have solved the underlying problems here. It sounds like we just let the government become super corrupt and absent deposing our own backed regime to prop up another one that wasn't... which would probably require an elevation in troop levels that Americans don't support at all... I dunno what could have been done. I think it's true we probably lost this war waaaaay back in like 2002-2003 with the decisions we made and it was only our continued occupation that kept the house of cards up as long as it did.

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CaptainOfCrush posted...

With all the reported corruption among Afghanistan's top level military officers, do we even know if the everyday soldiers were getting paid?

There have definitely been reports going back months that soldiers weren't getting paid. I'm not sure how widespread it was though.

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xp1337 posted...

I'm not advocating for staying because I don't think that would have solved anything but...

My understanding is that the "300,000" was basically just on paper and the actual number of Afghan military was perhaps closer to 50,000 in reality. Also, the Afghan government had stopped paying them in some instances, for months even so when the Taliban offered them money to defect or just surrender many just took it rather than fight. Especially since the government was also in many cases severely undersupplying them with rations and ammo.

I think a large reason why the Afghan military just surrendered en masse is because the Afghan government was just that incompetent and/or corrupt that they were stiffing the military to skim money off the top and cutting deals with the Taliban themselves in some instances.

That's why I think staying probably wouldn't have solved the underlying problems here. It sounds like we just let the government become super corrupt and absent deposing our own backed regime to prop up another one that wasn't... which would probably require an elevation in troop levels that Americans don't support at all... I dunno what could have been done. I think it's true we probably lost this war waaaaay back in like 2002-2003 with the decisions we made and it was only our continued occupation that kept the house of cards up as long as it did.

The war wasn't lost.

We just were dumb and tried to rebuild a nation we shouldn't have.

Two different things.

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Corrik7 posted...

We just were dumb and tried to rebuild a nation we shouldn't have.

aren't you a GWB fan? you didn't agree with his foreign policy regardless of that?

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Here is a devent thread going around on the "training" of the Afghan forces that really just serves to show how doomed our approach was imo

https://twitter.com/MEvstatieva/status/1426874533022162945?s=19

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blaming Biden for this is so fucking annoying lmao. Not a soul on this planet could've stopped this from happening. May as well blame Obama and Trump for not trying to do it better before Biden got here

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ExThaNemesis posted...

blaming Biden for this is so fucking annoying lmao. Not a soul on this planet could've stopped this from happening. May as well blame Obama and Trump for not trying to do it better before Biden got here

I mean, we absolutely should blame them too. And Bush Jr.

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i mean yeah, the foreign policy of all presidents since at least W has been disastrous.

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ExThaNemesis posted...

blaming Biden for this is so fucking annoying lmao. Not a soul on this planet could've stopped this from happening. May as well blame Obama and Trump for not trying to do it better before Biden got here

No, it's all Biden's fault because he's left hold the bag at the end! Why don't you libs understand this?!?

<I'm joking! I tried to use a different term for liberals and GFaqs didn't like it...>

But in all seriousness, this IS the reason why we continued to stay in Afghanistan. Because it's such as massive political loss that no President wanted to be the one to have to endure that. So, you know, just kick the can down the road for the next guy.

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Biden isn't to blame for the Taliban taking over. There wasn't a way to prevent that without, as others said, staying forever

Our evacuation response has been atrocious though

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I mean, you guys all know I'm one of the biggest Biden apologists on this board, but this is not acceptable:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1427364363598454789

And yes, other presidents (especially Trump who set this initial timeline in motion) absolutely share blame here.

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If you're playing the blame game and anybody that wasn't part of the Bush administration is on top of your list, you're doing it wrong.

Fuck Bush, fuck Cheney, fuck Rumsfeld, fuck Powell, etc

Oh there is absolutely a hell of a lot of blame to go around for Afghanistan.

Nearly 20 years spent to accomplish absolutely nothing(the mission was finished in what, 6 months?).

Corrik7 posted...

The war wasn't lost

Lol our enemies are stronger than they were when the war started. It was absolutely lost.

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I feel like in order to truly snuff out the Taliban you'd need the combined efforts of all the major world powers. You'd need to first take over Pakistan, or at least the entire Afghan/Pakistan border. And then you'd have to slowly and methodically take them all out while also starving them of resources.

And who has the money for that right now. It seems like every single major world power is stupid fucking broke right now

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ExThaNemesis posted...

I feel like in order to truly snuff out the Taliban you'd need the combined efforts of all the major world powers.

The US military is obscenely huge. We could do it ourselves. But it would take years and cost a lot of lives and global good will.

Any President that did it would get absolutely obliterated in an election before it finished.

Also as soon as we left Afghanistan would just fall to whatever Taliban 2 decided to call themselves.

Leafeon13N posted...

Also as soon as we left Afghanistan would just fall to whatever Taliban 2 decided to call themselves.

This is the real problem. I think we should jack up our humanitarian aid not our army because this is really the big issue.

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Hey, if we're playing the blame game we can go back as the 80s when *checks notes* the CIA funded a conservative religious rebel group to compete against Soviet interests, and said group later went on to overthrow the Afghani government and form the Taliban in the 90s

So yeah, I suppose Biden is not totally to blame here. But the thing is, the situation is so much of a shitshow that just about any spin is going to feel like a cop-out.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I mean, you guys all know I'm one of the biggest Biden apologists on this board, but this is not acceptable:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1427364363598454789

And yes, other presidents (especially Trump who set this initial timeline in motion) absolutely share blame here.

That actually makes perfect sense. The Afghan government was trying to prevent what happened this week (mass surrender) from happening. If they had earlier gone and told everyone to evacuate immediately the same thing would have happened even earlier.

If you're in the Afghan army, are you going to risk your life fighting a war you know you cannot win so that other people who are close with foreign powers (but not you) can have more time to escape? Of course not.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Hey, if we're playing the blame game we can go back as the 80s when *checks notes* the CIA funded a conservative religious rebel group to compete against Soviet interests, and said group later went on to overthrow the Afghani government and form the Taliban in the 90s

I feel like I already covered this with "Fuck Bush"? But it is worth specifically calling out.

Really, all of the CIA's funding and backing of far-right groups throughout the world is beyond disgusting.

It started under Jimmy Carter, believe it or not! If we're holding people accountable for this, we start with this god damned peanut farmer.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Biden isn't to blame for the Taliban taking over. There wasn't a way to prevent that without, as others said, staying forever

Our evacuation response has been atrocious though

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I'm not very well versed in the conflict. Why did the Soviets want to invade that place anyway? Oil?

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ExThaNemesis posted...

I'm not very well versed in the conflict. Why did the Soviets want to invade that place anyway? Oil?

It was to try to prop up the existing government as the country went into a civil war (With the US-backed mujahideen on the other side)

red13n posted...

Anyway, I'm sure people will take care of this, but prior to this there was a big consensus to Afghanistan of basically "lets just leave lol.

Now everyone is mad that we just left(with what, 6 months or so of warning?)

It's almost like the average person on Twitter/Reddit has no fucking clue what they're talking about. The intricacies of geopolitical forces are something almost noone has a good handle on. After 20 years of their supporters telling them to leave Afghanistan/Iraq, Democrats finally get the job done and now their voter base is eating them alive for it.

I bet if I could go back far enough, each and every person in this topic (myself included) at some point in the last 15 years said "We need to get out immediately, NATO has no business in Afghanistan and nothing good can possibly result from it".

Its crazy if you think about it though, we got so much further along with far less casualties than the Soviets did in the 80s yet everything unraveled much quicker.