Afghanistan

[Refreshpage]

More US troops killed today than over the last 4 years . Pulling put has cost more deaths of US troops than staying there.
Afghans now being slaughtered.
Massive fail from Biden following Trumps pull out.

Very, very 😔

Afghanistan was running like a well oiled machine until just a few weeks ago?

I cannot believe I have just read that. So far from reality.

PlanDeRaccordement I completely disagree. Girls were back in school, women were working - there was visibility and choice. It was the closest thing they could get to a functioning secure society for a time. The security situation was not perfect by western standards but it was functioning and much better than it was. Fractions have always existed in the country, but were at least mitigated by a strong and powerful military power.

I do not think there should ever have been a total withdrawal until the country was completely stable. We had and could have continued with a NATO force with a small complement of peacekeepers and forces to ensure a much smoother exit than the one we are currently witnessing now! You are wrong about the extra time, had the withdrawal been properly supported by a full military presence over a period of months then it would have plainly been a much safer operation than the frantic, chaotic and deadly disaster we are seeing now.

The Afghan army felt abandoned and terrified, with no real plan and no air support they were left to the Taliban wolves. It was too quick, it was ill thought out and there isn't a single country in the world that is looking on at this situation and thinking this turned out well for Biden or the US.

We are all much less safer now because of it.

If any country needed invading after 9/11 it was Saudi Arabia

If any country has blood on their hands, it's Saudi Arabia.

@sadperson16

I swear when I saw Bush's shocked little monkey face on 9/11, I thought people will pay for this.

Quite. And when I saw Biden's beady eyed "we'll make you pay" Die Hard bollocks last night I knew he'll try to drag us into more war.

No, Joe, we had a stable Afghanistan, you fucked it up, that's done, and we aren't going to war with you again.

You're on your own. So fuck off.

I think Biden’s handled this really badly, but the idea that Afghanistan was being smoothly run and all was well is just not right. Yes women may have been working and girls in school in Kabul, but most Afghans don’t live in Kabul. Millions of Afghans lived in areas where that was not the case, because they were under Taliban control. The speed with which Kabul has fallen has clearly shocked the Americans in a way it shouldn’t have, and the fact is that millions of Afghans have never really seen Taliban rule end. Rural areas have never really been under control of the US-led coalition.

madame It was not perfect, but it was better than what is to come now. It is going to be a bloodbath, it already is, and the fragile stability they had, and I am not talking about political leadership - but food supply, medical supplies, utilities, functioning banks and everyone else is about to evaporate. You do not seem to be aware of what is about to happen. The complete collapse of the country. This is more than just who is living in rural Taliban areas and who is living in the cities and their bloody living standards. There is a very real risk now of millions of Afghans starving to death as a minimum.

It is not a secure place for any charity to help, as much as they want to. There is ZERO security for any charity to operate.

This is going to be an unmitigated humanitarian disaster, and Biden is responsible.

I agree with that. As I said earlier, I’m expecting a violent struggle for power between IS and the Taliban and a real collapse of centralised authority (such as it was). I teach children who have family back in Afghanistan and I dread to think what may happen to their loved ones now.

Being better than the chaos that is to come is not the same thing as “running very well” though.

How weird, just seen a short clip on sky and three men are injured and in an empty ward? Thy look like taliban fighters? °°where the heck is everyone else??

Esp the women?
And are women working at the hospital??

Step up I agree.

Was the un or anyone else warned about how bad the crumble could be?

Yes it was mainly kabul and some other cities that enjoyed western freedoms esp for girls...

Women have killed themselves and their daughters.

[quote youvegottenminuteslynn]@chaosrabbitland

That's ok, I thought it sounded like your thinking on this is so outside the 'norm' (for want of a better word) that there was more to it than trolling or anything.

If you really would save a pet rabbit before a human child, for example your DD's friend / schoolmate then I mean this in the kindest way possible, there is no benefit in you sharing that belief with people as it's truly abhorrent to almost everyone and also quite upsetting to hear.

Particularly when children are dying in such inhumane, unthinkably terrifying ways in Afghanistan as we speak.

Saying you would prioritise your own rabbits life over one of those poor children is deeply shocking and, as you have reflected on yourself, shows a lack of empathy that is both shocking and disturbing to most people.

I hope that makes sense and doesn't sound like I'm asking for an argument. It sounds like you perhaps aren't neuro typical (not armchair diagnosing, just supposition based on your last comment) so you don't understand how disturbing a thing that is to think / feel. [/quote]
Please keep your comments and thoughts that people who show a lack of empathy in the way you expect them to are not neurotypical - the thinking around neurodiversity has moved on a lot from this trite and simplistic view. It is deeply offensive that someone says they would save a rabbit over a child and some numpty says the equivalent of ‘oh! You must be autistic!!’

@StoneofDestiny

If any country needed invading after 9/11 it was Saudi Arabia

If any country has blood on their hands, it's Saudi Arabia.

Which country/countries should have invaded Saudi Arabia?

@stepupandbecounted

PlanDeRaccordement I completely disagree. Girls were back in school, women were working - there was visibility and choice. It was the closest thing they could get to a functioning secure society for a time. The security situation was not perfect by western standards but it was functioning and much better than it was. Fractions have always existed in the country, but were at least mitigated by a strong and powerful military power.

I do not think there should ever have been a total withdrawal until the country was completely stable. We had and could have continued with a NATO force with a small complement of peacekeepers and forces to ensure a much smoother exit than the one we are currently witnessing now! You are wrong about the extra time, had the withdrawal been properly supported by a full military presence over a period of months then it would have plainly been a much safer operation than the frantic, chaotic and deadly disaster we are seeing now.

The Afghan army felt abandoned and terrified, with no real plan and no air support they were left to the Taliban wolves. It was too quick, it was ill thought out and there isn't a single country in the world that is looking on at this situation and thinking this turned out well for Biden or the US.

We are all much less safer now because of it.

You are just plain wrong. What you describe is Kabul and a few major cities like Khandahar. It wasn’t the case all throughout Afghanistan. An estimated 50 million, equal to the population of all England, were always under Taliban rule. Girls were not going to school there. Women were not working there.

The fact is the US and Allies lost the war with Afghanistan. They held only the major urban areas and even then there were constant terror attacks and assassinations. It is a well known fact such that numerous documentaries have recorded the idiocy of the war in Afghanistan.

@stepupandbecounted
We had and could have continued with a NATO force with a small complement of peacekeepers and forces to ensure a much smoother exit than the one we are currently witnessing now! You are wrong about the extra time, had the withdrawal been properly supported by a full military presence over a period of months then it would have plainly been a much safer operation than the frantic, chaotic and deadly disaster we are seeing now.

But what you recommend is what was actually done? U.K. and other allies left Afghanistan in 2014, leaving behind a few hundred peacekeeping troops to train and liaise with the Afghan military. The US stopped combat operations in 2011 and began withdrawing troops, also were switched to peace-keeping, training by 2014. You day only a few months of this would have done the trick but don’t seem to know the first thing about what was actually done. They did this. For seven years. And it still didn’t work.

The truth is that your list of “smooth” “safer operation” is a wish list. It’s what everyone wished for and did in fact plan for, but it is not the US fault or Allies that the Taliban had other intents and went on the offensive to do what is essentially a military coup.

Hope Boris has managed to 'shift heaven and earth' to get our Britons out safely like he said

Not much time left now

@sadperson16

Women have killed themselves and their daughters.

Do have a source please? That's shocking

I’m getting a really horrible feeling that the Taliban are lining themselves up to be the next Saudi Arabia, the USA’s new ally in the region. I really hope that the Biden administration will denounce the Taliban unequivocally once their evacuations are over. Unfortunately, I think they may be about to decide that the Taliban are a regime that they can work with, with the Taliban agreeing to facilitate US drone strikes on IS and share intelligence on terror suspects. I don’t believe a word of what the Taliban are saying about allowing women to have rights or not taking revenge on “collaborators” but the US-Saudi relationship suggests that human rights abuses are unlikely to be a deal-breaker.

Plan your comments don't make sense in the frame of Bidens own comments.

There will be more saigon, taliban won't be running wild everywhere..

No saigon

Madame.. It's unthinkable isn't it.

A regime we can work with.

Under the circumstances all trroop have done incredible job. Some did no shifts working two days and nights straight in searing heat, human crisis..

@Brighterblighter

Under the circumstances all trroop have done incredible job. Some did no shifts working two days and nights straight in searing heat, human crisis..

Yes and the border force staff who volunteered to go out there to get people processed. I fear alot will suffer with what they have seen. It is bad enough seeing it on TV, being face to face with desperate people must live with you.

I hope there will be help for them all going forward.

We had and could have have continued with a NATO force with a small complement of peacekeepers and forces to ensure a much smoother exit than the one we are currently witnessing now!

Not so sure about that. In July, Biden, had the choice of abiding by the deal first made by Trump for US and NATO allies to withdraw this summer - Biden extended US withdrawal by 4 months to Aug 31 -or confronting an anticipated expansion in Taliban attacks once Aug 31 passed if US went back on this. The Taliban had been growing in strength since the Trump Administration’s deal with Taliban in Doha in Feb 20.

This article says:

“According to the Washington Post, a series of negotiated surrenders began across Afghanistan in early 2020, shortly after Trump announced the US would be leaving: “The deals…were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official. Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers.”

However, a better withdrawal at the end may have been possible especially US and U.K. expediting visa’s quicker for Afghans that had worked with them, France began theirs in May.

@Brighterblighter

Under the circumstances all trroop have done incredible job. Some did no shifts working two days and nights straight in searing heat, human crisis..

Agree