Afghanistan. It's fucked

[Tero]

With improvised explosive devices? No thanks.

[JimC]

That's just the after-dinner farts, Tero...

[Svartalf]

Trumpster politicians/ governors: we don't want those 60 000 illegal aliens in America.

what illegal aliens? they are bona fide political refugees and I assume they'll have all the paperwork to prove it.

[Scot Dutchy]

It does not make any odds Svarty. For Trumpsters every brown face is an illegal alien.

[Tero]

Trumpster politicians/ governors: we don't want those 60 000 illegal aliens in America.

what illegal aliens? they are bona fide political refugees and I assume they'll have all the paperwork to prove it.

This is the exact wording of Lauren Boebert. For the Mexico entry. All that walk in are illegals.
https://twitter.com/laurenboebert

[Svartalf]

laurie boob art is kindly allowed to go to Alaska watch Putin's house with her big sister.

[Tero]

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
1h
"I'd start killing bad guys" -- Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) on how he'd respond to the attack in Kabul
Video:
https://mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/stat ... 9424762882

[Svartalf]

well, wind hath been sown, and the storm of its reaping just started...
The one thing we should have done, while we had armed forces there should have been to hunt down the taliban, one by one, even in the jakes as Putin would advocate.
That, we didn't do, we just held the area around Kabul with enough force to keep them away, but let them take control of the rest of the country, and as a dominant faction, their strength grew and we did nothing to keep it down.
Of course they did conquer Kabul as soon as they knew they'd get away with it. and now they unleash what's been waiting ever from the start, and which we did nothing to prevent.

[Joe]

The trouble is hunting down the Taliban would involve going into Pakistan. That wasn't an appealing option.

[Scot Dutchy]

The Taliban are a lesser problem than IS which carried out the bombings. The two dont mix well.

[Hermit]

The one thing we should have done, while we had armed forces there should have been to hunt down the taliban, one by one...

O man, why didn't anyone think of this before you came up with that brilliant idea??

[Joe]

The Taliban are a lesser problem than IS which carried out the bombings. The two dont mix well.

In the long run, who knows? Consider Al Qaeda for instance. What will their long relationship with the Taliban bring now?

Food for thought.

In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-Linked Haqqani Network Rises to Power

After taking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have pledged to be a responsible member of the international community that doesn’t pose a threat to any country’s security.

However, the Islamist movement’s victory in Afghanistan has elevated its most radical and violent branch, the Haqqani network. Having perpetrated some of the deadliest attacks of the 20-year war, the network—unlike the broader Taliban—has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. since 2012.

Closely linked to al Qaeda, the network also has for decades been involved in the hostage-taking of Westerners, and currently holds at least one American citizen captive, according to U.S. officials.

“I do not believe that anyone in the West fully understands the reach of the Haqqani network,” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, a former director of strategy for the National Counterterrorism Center. “It is the single most impressive nonstate militant group I have ever seen, with the exception of ISIS in the first two years of the caliphate.”

Experts who have followed the group for years worry that its consolidation of power will enable the kind of transnational terrorism that the U.S.-led invasion of 2001 aimed to eradicate.

Since the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, the normally elusive Haqqani network, which is built around a family of the same name, has assumed a public role in the Afghan capital. Khalil Haqqani, brother of the group’s founder, Jalaluddin, addressed the faithful in public in Kabul’s Pol-e Khishti Mosque last week—despite a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head.
...
“Relations between the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage,” a May United Nations Security Council report said. The U.N. says between 400 and 600 al Qaeda fighters are active in 12 provinces, and the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still based in Afghanistan.

Born out of the Central Intelligence Agency-funded anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement in the 1980s, the Haqqani network pledged allegiance to the Taliban in 1995. Since then, the family has been an integral part of the Taliban, but has maintained its autonomy and relations with a host of international jihadist groups, particularly al Qaeda.

Sirajuddin Haqqani also had close relations with a prominent al Qaeda commander, Abdul Rauf Zakir, who was responsible for protecting Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, according to U.S. intelligence.

“Al Qaeda is in lockstep with the Taliban,” said Rob French, a retired senior analyst with the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, a multiagency U.S. intelligence organization. “They are basically a subsidiary of the Taliban at this point.”

And to ice the cake, some analysts say the Haqqani's get along better with IS better than most Taliban.

[rainbow]

The Taliban are a lesser problem than IS which carried out the bombings. The two dont mix well.

The Taliban was created by the US to give the Russians a hard time, IS was created by the US to bring down Assad.

...maybe the CIA should start a secret army, to beat them?

[Scot Dutchy]

America loves creating monsters. (good for gun sales)

[Woodbutcher]

America loves creating monsters. (good for gun sales)

Precisely. None of the wars are really to protect the people of any country, even the US, but to make money for the war industry. Sending troops over and maintaining them is expensive, but the public gladly pays that following a proper "information" campaign. Wars create huge profits for certain people, capitalism at its best.