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clearspira wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 8:25 am
The Taliban is about to take Kabul.
Cheers, Joe.
So do you no longer agree that the war was lost long ago, and the US Army has just been puttering around for years trying to find a way to save face? Or do you think if we'd just stuck in there another year we'd somehow turn this around and declare victory?
In 1950 the US went into Korea. 71 years later and 28,500 of them are still there, making sure that the North Koreans know to leave the South alone.
So let me ask you this: What is the difference between that and keeping a force of 4,500 in Afghanistan (as of Jan 2021) to make sure that the Taliban leave Afghanistan alone? How is one just right and the other too long despite the former being 50 years longer?
Oh, and let me just keep you apprised of a recent development: Most of the Taliban come from Pakistan. Pakistan is a major Chinese ally because China hates India. We now know for a fact that members of the Taliban from Pakistan have been in high level talks with the Chinese government as the Chinese are worried that the Taliban may join with the increasingly radicalised Uyghur Muslims that the Chinese currently have in death camps. In return for leaving them alone, the Chinese are offering to build the Taliban a modern road network which will allow them to much more efficiently transport their main export - which happens to be heroin.
Did you follow all that? Well let me TL;DR that for you: Diamond Joe Biden has not only increased the heroin trade for the world but has also made the lives of the Uyghur Muslims worse despite previously condemning what China is doing to them.
"I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking 'Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!'" When I am writing in this font, I am writing in my moderator voice.
Spam-desu
Two of these clips come to mind. The RAMBO III clip is especially rich with the American colonel telling the Russian that Afghanistan will be their Vietnam.
The US and the international community has been in Afghanistan for 20 years now. How much longer should we stay? 1 year? 10? A houndred? I'm very sorry for all the people who are being left and I am certain the vast majority of afghan people are "people like you and me" (minus modern education, modern infrastructure, modern standards of a community and so on and on), but there's one simple fact. We trained an army for their central government for the last 20 years. We equipped them, paid them and we can argue all day and night in regards to what went wrong with our nation-building efforts, but the fact remains nontheless: They choose not to fight or outright sided with the Taliban, over and over and over again. This is a very simple and very painful truth, but if they do not want to fight for a right to live their own lives free of religious extremism... What should we do? What can we do?
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Madner Kami wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:53 pmWhat can we do?
This isn't an argument I entirely endorse, but:
The Taliban's previous offensives were quashed through the application of air power. By the late 2010s & 2020, almost all of what was left of the Coalition forces were base security, air support, and contractors to support the Afghani Air Force. Last year or before, Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban. One part of this requirement was for the Coalition forces to withdraw. Biden decided to follow through with the withdrawal, the Taliban went on the offensive, and without air power the concentrated masses of Taliban were not destroyed and Afghanistan imploded over the last four months. Had the support not been withdrawn (either because Trump didn't make the deal or Biden refused to go through with it), Afghanistan would have had the air power necessary to smash the Taliban offensive and the government wouldn't have collapsed.
"I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking 'Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!'" When I am writing in this font, I am writing in my moderator voice.
Spam-desu
clearspira wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 8:25 am
The Taliban is about to take Kabul.
Cheers, Joe.
So do you no longer agree that the war was lost long ago, and the US Army has just been puttering around for years trying to find a way to save face? Or do you think if we'd just stuck in there another year we'd somehow turn this around and declare victory?
In 1950 the US went into Korea. 71 years later and 28,500 of them are still there, making sure that the North Koreans know to leave the South alone.
So let me ask you this: What is the difference between that and keeping a force of 4,500 in Afghanistan (as of Jan 2021) to make sure that the Taliban leave Afghanistan alone? How is one just right and the other too long despite the former being 50 years longer?
Great. Lets get out of Korea too. Fewer forever wars the better.
You still haven't addressed my question, much less answered it.
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
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Madner Kami wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:53 pmWhat can we do?
This isn't an argument I entirely endorse, but:
The Taliban's previous offensives were quashed through the application of air power. By the late 2010s & 2020, almost all of what was left of the Coalition forces were base security, air support, and contractors to support the Afghani Air Force. Last year or before, Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban. One part of this requirement was for the Coalition forces to withdraw. Biden decided to follow through with the withdrawal, the Taliban went on the offensive, and without air power the concentrated masses of Taliban were not destroyed and Afghanistan imploded over the last four months. Had the support not been withdrawn (either because Trump didn't make the deal or Biden refused to go through with it), Afghanistan would have had the air power necessary to smash the Taliban offensive and the government wouldn't have collapsed.
That's the theory. In practise, no amount of airpower is ever going to hold any ground. This is and forever will be the job of the boots on the ground and without them, all you'll get are pictures of accidental drone-strikes on marriage parties and I think we've had enough of those already, because this is the tactic that was used in the past 20 years, for the most part. It didn't work, it can't work.
Besides, the mirror-question to that solution is: Why are (and have been) the Taliban so much more effective at gaining ground, despite not having any air-power themselves? Part of the answer to that question is undisputably: Pakistan. But still, this is only part a part of the problem.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
clearspira wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 8:25 am
The Taliban is about to take Kabul.
Cheers, Joe.
So do you no longer agree that the war was lost long ago, and the US Army has just been puttering around for years trying to find a way to save face? Or do you think if we'd just stuck in there another year we'd somehow turn this around and declare victory?
In 1950 the US went into Korea. 71 years later and 28,500 of them are still there, making sure that the North Koreans know to leave the South alone.
So let me ask you this: What is the difference between that and keeping a force of 4,500 in Afghanistan (as of Jan 2021) to make sure that the Taliban leave Afghanistan alone? How is one just right and the other too long despite the former being 50 years longer?
Great. Lets get out of Korea too. Fewer forever wars the better.
You still haven't addressed my question, much less answered it.
I did address your question by addressing America's hypocrisy. But at least you're honest. America has always been in love with trying to perpetuate a self-image of being the world hero. It seems that you guys are starting to reject your own propaganda and that is a good thing. Millennials and Gen Z are far less eager to open wide and swallow their respective government's bullshit as those before us were.
But remember this well because I intend to repeat myself in a few years time when the War on Terror returns to its 2001 peak: regardless of the rights or wrongs of leaving Afghanistan, the West lost. America lost. The UK lost. The Coalition lost. This is a second Saigon and it will only empower our enemies.
clearspira wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:09 pmThis is a second Saigon and it will only empower our enemies.
I don't see how. The Fall of Saigon and the subsequent history of Vietnam isn't actually that bad for the most part. Arguably, this was the best possible outcome from the mess this country got brought into, by western colonization efforts and if Afghanistan ends the same way Vietnam did, then there's reason to be mildly pleased by the outcome.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
