Afghanistan. It's fucked

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-16/ ... /100379184

Armed militants took the palace hours after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, saying in a Facebook post he did not want to see bloodshed in Kabul.

I rather suspect that he meant his own blood...

[Tero]

From Bella

[NineBerry]

At least they are not burning the flag. Must be conscious of the threat of global warming.

[JimC]

To the victors the spoils...

[Woodbutcher]

To the victors the spoils...

Stupid saying. I don't want anything spoiled, gimme the fresh stuff!

[aufbahrung]

Most of the old stick in muds have died of Covid-19. These are not restrained by their elders. They will go far more radical than before. Watch.

[Hermit]

"America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished." George W. Bush, message to the troops in Afghanistan on June 5, 2003.

Prez Bush's announcement was premature.



At least the US had not funded the army that finished up driving them out of the country on the previous occasion. The Mujahideen, which morphed into the Taliban, was funded, armed and supported in other ways by several western nations, but chiefly by the US.

"Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan."
"Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken. Funding officially began with $695,000 in 1979, was increased dramatically to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987, described as the "biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency"."

"In total, the combined U.S., Saudi, and Chinese aid to the mujahideen is valued at between $6–12 billion."

"The program funding was increased yearly due to lobbying by prominent U.S. politicians and government officials, such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ikle, and William Casey. Under the Reagan administration, U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua."


Reagan sitting with people from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in February 1983

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

[Sean Hayden]

I thought we all agreed the US never faced a grave threat and hasn't ever been in the business of liberating oppressed people.

[Hermit]

I thought we all agreed the US never faced a grave threat and hasn't ever been in the business of liberating oppressed people.

No, the US did face a grave threat once, but it ended when the rebel army began surrendering in April 1865.

Yes, the US has never been in the business of liberating oppressed people.

[Scot Dutchy]

Another balls up...

[aufbahrung]

Afghanistan maintains its reputation, graveyard for empires...

[aufbahrung]

Reading flights suspended and planes being shot to pieces. Thousands of Westerners still in there. Could be hideous gruesome. Biden Jonestown massacre or some such?

[Hermit]

Biden Jonestown massacre or some such?

What? Bush sent the troops into Afghanistan, Trump initiated their withdrawal and Biden gets the blame for what they did and everything else that happened in the intervening years?

Also, Jonestown was about its dictator forcing his subjects to commit mass suicide, so your allusion to that event does not even start to make sense.

Not that I'm expecting you to start making sense one day, but I'm still not used to the utter bizarreness of your posts.

[aufbahrung]

Biden Jonestown massacre or some such?

What? Bush sent the troops into Afghanistan, Trump initiated their withdrawal and Biden gets the blame for what they did and everything else that happened in the intervening years?

Also, Jonestown was about its dictator forcing his subjects to commit mass suicide, so your allusion to that event does not even start to make sense.

Not that I'm expecting you to start making sense one day, but I'm still not used to the utter bizarreness of your posts.

Seventy years. How long it takes. Should have stayed there the full stint to turn a medieval society fully modern. Now everyone half westernised will either turn on the west or be killed. All this flim-flam twenty years is enough idea done is guarantee another savage state with nuclear intentions.

[Sean Hayden]

It's difficult to believe the cowboys could make the same mistakes every generation, so it's tempting to look for a hidden agenda to explain what really happened.

But what if they're just delusional?