Uncle-V wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:55 pm While I expected the Taliban to win it's amazing how quickly this is happening. The pro-Soviet government at least held on for a few years after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and only collapsed in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR when Russia cut off all financial and military.

This is all happening even with the US continuing to provide military and financial aid to the authorities. Just goes to show what an utter shit show this has been.

Total corruption is the simple truth. Almost all the money spent to "develop" Afghanistan was lost to corruption. There is nothing to show for 20 years of occupation. Nothing. 20 years of our soldiers being target practice. Enough is enough. If the people won't fight then they can live in Islam's hell.

A Taliban delegation has begun negotiations with the Afghan government inside the presidential palace in Kabul — Al Arabiya

TWY wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 2:49 pm

Uncle-V wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:55 pm While I expected the Taliban to win it's amazing how quickly this is happening. The pro-Soviet government at least held on for a few years after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and only collapsed in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR when Russia cut off all financial and military.

This is all happening even with the US continuing to provide military and financial aid to the authorities. Just goes to show what an utter shit show this has been.

Total corruption is the simple truth. Almost all the money spent to "develop" Afghanistan was lost to corruption. There is nothing to show for 20 years of occupation. Nothing. 20 years of our soldiers being target practice. Enough is enough. If the people won't fight then they can live in Islam's hell.

Exactly. The government that the US supported there was rotten through and through. (Remember Karzai the Heroine addict?) Not sure why this is. Laziness? Ignorance?" or maybe a corrupt government would be easier to control and do their bidding (as they would be bought off more easily and had no popular legs to stand on)?

A previous poster was spot on. Afghanistan does not have a national identity. Outside of Kabul, everything is clan and family based. The national government did almost nothing for the average Afghani to them feel like a nation.

That also makes it the most easy to conquer. And the quickest way is to keep it together is with violence and military force. The few educational gains will be stripped away. Keeping the people educated only in the Taliban way is enough.

The US should have followed the initial plan. Selective military strikes to take care of a specific problem. Go in and get out. Torch what needs to be torched, and that’s it. Instead, they went with nation building. In a country never ready to become a nation.

800 billion down the toilet. not to mention all the lives lost, maimed, and ruined. This has to be one of the most astounding debacles in the history of US foreign policy. Probably only 2nd to Vietnam, and even worse than Iraq (also a disaster - but at least some kind of "normal" government is in power there).

Tha absolute ease with which the Taliban have waltzed through the country is very troubling for the rest of the regimes in Central Asia and the ME (which are also corrupt and lack popular support). Though those CA oens can be pretty brutal in putting down uprisings.

The US should have followed the initial plan. Selective military strikes to take care of a specific problem. Go in and get out. Torch what needs to be torched, and that’s it. Instead, they went with nation building. In a country never ready to become a nation.

I know I could google it but for the sake of discussion, what was the initial plan? What was the specific problem? Or more to the point, what were the objectives of going in there?

Kabul: Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has left his country, hours after Taliban negotiators entered the city of Kabul seeking the unconditional surrender his government, multiple local media outlets have reported.

The militant group entered through the capital’s four main gates on Sunday morning just as the United States military arrived to begin its final evacuation of embassy staff and visa holders.

The Taliban ordered fighters to remain outside the city walls to avoid bloodshed as they awaited the peaceful transfer of the city, which would return the Islamist group to power two decades after the US invaded Afghanistan.

“We are awaiting a peaceful transfer of power,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Saheen told the BBC.

He pledged that all Afghans would have “participation” under the government led by the Taliban.

“There will be an Afghan inclusive government,” he said.

“Women can have access to education and work and of course, they will observe the hijab, that’s it,” he said.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-eas ... 58isx.html

Is their new "kinder, gentler" Taliban marketing capaign really working? Seems all the young Afghans know what's what and are getting the f@$k out of Dodge asap

IraHayes wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 9:11 pm

Yobbo wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 11:13 am

Surprised this hasn't been posted already.
It's from the AP and shows helicopters removing people from the US embassy in Kabul today.

This looks very much like the pictures of americans leaving Saigon almost 50 years ago. What a striking resemblence!