The Afghan War is over

[Makeshift Python]

The Taliban wasn’t behind 9/11.

[ProfessorDetective]

The Taliban wasn’t behind 9/11.

Yeah, that was Al-Queda. And, apparently, ISIS is a bitter rival to the Taliban, too. Folks are worried they'll pull a two-bird/one-stone attack on Kabul Airport.

[Makeshift Python]

Right, there's different factions of Muslims with very different and contradictory agendas. But if you go on Fox News they seem to act like they're all exactly the same and are about to band together to destroy America "because they hate our freedom".

Taliban literally means them focusing on their country and theirs alone. The idea of world domination is antithesis to their goal.

[Jonathan101]

Right, there's different factions of Muslims with very different and contradictory agendas. But if you go on Fox News they seem to act like they're all exactly the same and are about to band together to destroy America "because they hate our freedom".

Taliban literally means them focusing on their country and theirs alone. The idea of world domination is antithesis to their goal.

Aha...no.

Taliban and Al-Qaeda have been in cahoots for years, and they still are. Both groups want a global Islamic Caliphate based on a radical fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

They are currently fighting with an offshoot of ISIS called ISIS-K but that is mostly because ISIS-K keeps poaching their members and trying to conquer Afghanistan for themselves rather than their doctrinal disputes.

Afghanistan under the Taliban will be like it was pre-9/11- a haven for global Jihadists. The territory they controlled before the fall of Kabul was like that already.

Just because they don't want to conquer the world doesn't mean they don't want it to be conquered by their ideology; isolationist states are often every bit as meddlesome in other countries as any other, as they often have to be to be. It is easier to keep Afghanistan the way the Taliban want if the rest of the world (and especially their immediate neighbours) share the same values, and many of their internal targets and enemies they view as having been "corrupted" by decadent Western ideology so they would hardly be sorry to see that go too.

Global jihad might not be the primary goal of the Taliban, but they certainly do not renounce or disapprove of it.

[clearspira]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58349010

Dozens of civilians killed in Kabul bombing, including US soldiers. I maintain what I said earlier: if Trump was spearheading this disaster of an evacuation, the US, including this forum, would be up in arms. The silence is deafening.

And incidentally, Biden is easily the most fragile looking president that I have seen in my lifetime. I only really realised that this week. The man looks like a stiff-breeze could knock him down whenever he is on stage. I genuinely and without exaggeration believe that he could be the first US president since William Henry Harrison to die one night from a cold.

[sayla0079]

I can't say for the others but this could have happened with either president in charge while I dislike Trump blaming him or Bidan wouldn't make a difference.

[McAvoy]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58349010

Dozens of civilians killed in Kabul bombing, including US soldiers. I maintain what I said earlier: if Trump was spearheading this disaster of an evacuation, the US, including this forum, would be up in arms. The silence is deafening.

And incidentally, Biden is easily the most fragile looking president that I have seen in my lifetime. I only really realised that this week. The man looks like a stiff-breeze could knock him down whenever he is on stage. I genuinely and without exaggeration believe that he could be the first US president since William Henry Harrison to die one night from a cold.

What silence? Where have we been silent about this? We got pages already talking about how this was a lose/lose situation no matter who the president was.

And what is your point? Trump supporters are loud as hell right now about Biden.

Victim complex?

[Makeshift Python]

Stop feeding the troll. He’s got no integrity.

[Yukaphile]

Stop feeding the troll. He’s got no integrity.

Nothing clearspira said to me looked like trolling. I mean, granted, there was a bit of hyperbole about how "your silence is deafening" when the news had only just broke, but so what? Yes, I think clearspira was wrong there because I suspect we'd have got more comments as time passed, and forum activity is very low, but who cares? I've disagreed with clearspira before, but nowhere do I think he's a troll.

Seems more you're just perverting the word "troll," ie. to libel somebody as not operating in good faith, to which clearspira clearly was. And we are all damaged, even as an online community, when that happens. As more and more words are just so misused, they wind up diluted, and mean nothing anymore, so that you wind up pushing away potential new students to your ways of thought. Or at least take on a meaning past their original context I think is bad in some cases (like Nazi - that word is now so abused, no one really pays attention anymore, which is bad for the real alt-right groups). I think you're just being a bully. There. Is that direct enough?

If you're gonna criticize someone, at least use accurate terminology. Would you not insist that for a man who identified as a woman? Or vice versa?

Though I wanna add, clearspira, the reason I suspect many hate the presence over there now, is just that WE WERE LIED TO. It feels like we were sent to war for nothing, but greed and oil. So the flip side to the opposing viewpoint, and their counterargument, is that. I suspect a few simple-minded activists - and not even accusing anybody on this forum, so much as out there in the world - hope once we're gone, it might go back to the way it was. But it won't go back to how it was before 9/11. And you know, in the absence of trying Bush and his cohorts for war crimes, what else do we have? I feel bad both for how our solders gave their lives for nothing, and the inhumanities some of them inflicted on the Iraqi people, beyond the pale, on women and children. It's a sticky mess, and I have no idea how to handle it.

And that's kinda my thesis statement. It's NOT over. Not on your ass. Just wait, we'll be back over there in a generation, if not less. We're the monkey that gets shocked every time you reach for the pellet. Monkey never learns.

[McAvoy]

Clearspira ain't no troll.

Reality that dude was a straight up troll.