[AMV] #978 copy the Burr conspiracy

quote:

Op zondag 15 augustus 2021 23:43 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
Ik zou eerder zeggen dat de Taliban de bevolking is, althans een groot deel ervan.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 08:59 schreef IndoorKite het volgende:
Achteraf wel makkelijker praten, maar ze hadden, binnen 6 maanden nadat ze OBL te pakken hadden, helemaal uit Afghanistan terug moeten trekken.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 09:29 schreef VoMy het volgende:

[..]
Gewoon het deel met wapens en gesteund vanuit Qatar en Pakistan.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 10:01 schreef viagraap het volgende:

[..]
En op welk punt begin of eindig je met het wijzen naar financierders? Qatar wordt dik en dun gesteund door de VS, en het is nota bene de VS zelf die de Taliban wapens en geld heeft gegeven vanaf de jaren '80 tot ze hen niet meer nodig hadden.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 09:30 schreef VoMy het volgende:

[..]
Maar Bin Laden zat bij vondst in Pakistan.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 09:12 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]
Voorlopig zijn bladen als WaPo ook kritisch.

quote:

Joe Biden’s Surrender Is an Ugly, Needless Disaster

With the Taliban retaking Afghanistan amid a frenzied U.S. exit, I am reminded that Robert Gates, Barack Obama’s defense secretary, famously said that Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That isn’t an exaggeration.

Biden opposed the Persian Gulf War (later, reversing his decision and saying George H.W. Bush should have gone all the way to Baghdad) and supported the Iraq War, before opposing the surge in Iraq (not to mention famously wanting to partition Iraq into three countries). As vice president, he opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

This brings us to Afghanistan. As recently as a month ago, Biden denied a Taliban takeover was inevitable. Everyone knew that was wrong. Everyone except Biden, I suppose. Based on his horrible track record, we can assume he was being sincere. If he wasn’t, he would have demanded a more responsible exit plan before proceeding.

Biden inherited an Afghanistan where Americans were suffering few casualties, and where a small residual force was seemingly maintaining some semblance of order (not to mention preventing the country from once again being used as a staging ground for international terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S.). With his what-could-go-wrong withdrawal, he has managed to turn it into the tragic debacle that is happening now in front of our eyes.

To be sure, Biden didn’t do it alone. His predecessor, Donald Trump, deserves much of the blame. Biden claims that, by withdrawing forces, he’s honoring his predecessor’s commitment. But he has reversed lots of other Trump policies, didn’t adhere to Trump’s May 1 deadline for withdrawal, and could have easily cited examples of the Taliban not living up to their side of the agreement as reason enough to scuttle the deal.

[..]

It could have been even worse. Biden originally had this insane idea of linking the Afghanistan withdrawal to September 11, and that may be why he couldn’t wait for the fighting season to end before giving in. In his mind, he somehow thought that ending a 20-year war on this particular date would be romantic and symbolic. And it would. For the Taliban!

In this pathetic departure, with American arms again ending up with our enemies as they did in Iraq, Biden is reinforcing the notion that our enemies can simply outlast us. Likewise, he is demonstrating (as Trump before him did with the Kurds) that putting your neck on the line for this nation is a fool’s errand. These decisions will make any future military interventions that more difficult.

This naivete is on full display with the anemic threats the U.S. is now issuing. Their behavior could lead to “international isolation.” Executions, our embassy warns, show a lack of “human rights.”
..
The Taliban are pillaging, executing and pressing 15-year-old girls into “service” as Taliban brides while we are threatening to, what, ruin their reputation in the international community?

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 11:36 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]
Ja, mooi verhaal maar vooral emotie en weinig inhoud eigenlijk want het gaat totaal voorbij aan het feit dat de Amerikaanse kiezers het zat zijn dat er meer dan 2000 miljard is gestoken in Afghanistan zonder dat het ook maar iets opgeleverd heeft.

Kun je wel brullen over meisjes die niet veilig meer zijn maar de andere realiteit, namelijk dat je dan nog tientallen jaren als VS in Afghanistan moet blijven wordt dan even niet gemeld terwijl dat nu juist het probleem is.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 11:36 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]
Ja, mooi verhaal maar vooral emotie en weinig inhoud eigenlijk want het gaat totaal voorbij aan het feit dat de Amerikaanse kiezers het zat zijn dat er meer dan 2000 miljard is gestoken in Afghanistan zonder dat het ook maar iets opgeleverd heeft.

Kun je wel brullen over meisjes die niet veilig meer zijn maar de andere realiteit, namelijk dat je dan nog tientallen jaren als VS in Afghanistan moet blijven wordt dan even niet gemeld terwijl dat nu juist het probleem is.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 11:23 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]
Nah, dat is ook geen reeele insteek, de VS had de regio waarin Bin Laden toendertijd zat al heel snel onder controle en het stond vrij snel vast dat Bin Laden niet in Afghanistan was. Men had zich toen zonder veel problemen kunnen terugtrekken uit Afghanistan, de Taliban was militair gezien

In December 2001 wist men al dat Bin Laden ontsnapt was en was er een interim regering in Kabul zonder de Taliban, op dat moment had de VS zich probleemloos kunnen terugtrekken.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 11:58 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]
Er vielen de laatste jaren in verhouding minder doden dan onder active duty militairen in de VS. En ze hebben in zoveel landen een permanente aanwezigheid. 64000 in Europa, 55000 in Japan.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 17:25 schreef Harvest89 het volgende:


Ook hier in dit topic zij men altijd fel dat de VS zich moest terugtrekken uit Afghanistan.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 17:13 schreef Zwoerd het volgende:
Achteraf toch wel een behoorlijke blunder van Biden. Wat een chaos

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 20:41 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Dealtje met de Russen?

[ twitter ]

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 21:39 schreef Dutch_view het volgende:
Straks weer sleepy Joe met Teleprompter

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 21:52 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]
Jij denkt dat zijn voorgangers het Amerikaanse volk uit hun hoofd toespraken op dit soort momenten?

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 21:55 schreef Dutch_view het volgende:

[..]
Trump wel, die veegt de teleprompter gewoon opzij

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 21:59 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]
Nee, niet bij dergelijke officiële momenten, waarbij de president het volk toespreekt. Dat zou ook flink stupide zijn.

Trump deed het wel bij de coronapersco's en we zagen waar dat toe leidde. Begon die gek plots te speculeren over het injecteren van bleekmiddel om corona te bestrijden.

quote:

Poll: Majority of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of Afghanistan

A majority of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, according to a new poll.

The survey, conducted by The Trafalgar Group, found that 69 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the U.S.’s military presence in the war-torn country, with only 23 percent approving.

When broken down by party, 48 percent of Democrats disapprove of the president’s handling of the situation, while almost 40 percent of those polled gave him positive marks.

But the gap was much wider among Republicans: 89 percent said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing when it comes to Afghanistan, with only 7 percent saying they approve.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 22:14 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]
https://thehill.com/homen(...)f-bidens-handling-of

quote:

Bipartisan Support
When asked whether they support or oppose the decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the 2021 Chicago Council Survey finds that 70 percent of Americans support it (29% oppose). This support spans partisan affiliations, though larger majorities of Democrats (77%) and Independents (73%) than Republicans (56%) agree.

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 22:06 schreef Dutch_view het volgende:

[..]
Het had wel een hoge amusementswaarde die coronapersco's

quote:

Op maandag 16 augustus 2021 23:56 schreef Tweek het volgende:
PR technisch is het niet goed voor Biden. Grootste fout is het opgeven van het militaire vliegveld in Bagram voor de terug trekking van alle troepen. Dat had de chinooks boven Kabul kunnen verkomen. Voor de rest is het een gifbeker die op een dag leeg gedronken moest worden door een Amerikaanse president. Biden doet het nu, pirma, maar hij zal toch ook wel moeten weten dat hij geen tweede termijn tegemoet gaat nu.

quote:

The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s military that allowed Taliban fighters to walk into the Afghan capital Sunday despite 20 years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan government’s lowest-ranking officials.

The deals, initially offered early last year, 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.

Within a little more than a week, Taliban fighters overran more than a dozen provincial capitals and entered Kabul with no resistance, triggering the departure of Afghanistan’s president and the collapse of his government. Afghan security forces in the districts ringing Kabul and in the city itself simply melted away. By nightfall, police checkpoints were left abandoned and the militants roamed the streets freely.

The pace of the military collapse has stunned many American officials and other foreign observers, forcing the U.S. government to dramatically accelerate efforts to remove personnel from its embassy in Kabul.

The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches.

“Some just wanted the money,” an Afghan special forces officer said of those who first agreed to meet with the Taliban. But others saw the U.S. commitment to a full withdrawal as an “assurance” that the militants would return to power in Afghanistan and wanted to secure their place on the winning side, he said. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because he, like others in this report, was not authorized to disclose information to the press.

The Doha agreement, designed to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, instead left many Afghan forces demoralized, bringing into stark relief the corrupt impulses of many Afghan officials and their tenuous loyalty to the country’s central government. Some police officers complained that they had not been paid in six months or more.

“They saw that document as the end,” the officer said, referring to the majority of Afghans aligned with the government. “The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself. It was like [the United States] left us to fail.”

The negotiated surrenders to the Taliban slowly gained pace in the months following the Doha deal, according to a U.S. official and an Afghan officer. Then, after President Biden announced in April that U.S. forces would withdraw from Afghanistan this summer without conditions, the capitulations began to snowball.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Kabul has fallen. America lost its 20-year war.

Nixon wanted--and got--his decent interval between the United States pullout of Vietnam and the inevitable North Vietnamese takeover. Afghanistan's interval was never going to be decent, but I confess I expected an interval. We're scrambling to leave in time, we're racing for the helicopters as the Taliban burns through Afghanistan like a forest fire.

I remember Afghanistan well. I deployed there twice--once in 2008, and again in 2009-2010. It was already obvious that the Taliban would sweep through the very instant we left. And here we are today.

I know how bad the Taliban is. I know what they do to women and little boys. I know what they're going to do to the interpreters and the people who cooperated with us, it's awful, it's bad, but we are leaving, and all I feel is grim relief.

This is what I remember:

I remember Afghanistan as a dusty beige nightmare of a place full of proud, brave people who did not fucking want us there. We called them Hajjis and worse and they were better than we were, braver and stronger and smarter.

I remember going through the phones of the people we detained and finding clip after clip of Bollywood musicals, women singing in fields of flowers. Rarely did I find anything incriminating.

I remember finding propaganda footage cut together from the Soviet invasion and our own Operation Enduring Whatever. I remember laughing about how stupid the Afghans were to not know we aren't the Russians and then, eventually, realizing that I was the stupid one.

I remember how every year the U.S. would have to decide how to deal with the opium fields. There were a few options. You could leave the fields alone, and then the Taliban would shake the farmers down and use the money to buy weapons. Or, you could carpet bomb the fields, and then the farmers would join the Taliban for reasons that, to me, seem obvious.

The third option, and the one we went for while I was there, was to give the farmers fertilizer as an incentive to grow wheat instead of opium poppy. The farmers then sold the fertilizer to the Taliban, who used it to make explosives for IEDs that could destroy a million dollar MRAP and maim everyone inside.

I remember we weren't allowed to throw batteries away because people who worked on base would go through the trash and collect hundreds of dead batteries, wire them together so they had just enough juice for one charge, and use that charge to detonate an IED.

I remember the look on my roommate's face after she got back from cutting the dead bodies of two soldiers out of an HMMWV that got blown up by an IED that I have always imagined was made with fertilizer from an opium farmer and detonated with a hundred thrown-out batteries.

I remember an Afghan kid who worked in the DFAC (cafeteria) who we called Cowboy. He always wore this cowboy hat and an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt someone had given him, always with a big smile, high school age.

Cowboy was a good student. His family, who all worked on base, was incredibly proud of him. He wanted to go to college in America. But there weren't colleges that took Afghans, the education system was too shit. No program to help kids like him. I looked.

I wonder if he's dead now, for serving us food and dreaming of something different.

But if Cowboy is dead then he died a long time ago, and if Cowboy is dead it's our fault for going there in the first place, giving his family the option of trusting us when we are the least trustworthy people on the planet.

We use people up and throw them away like it's nothing.

And now, finally, we are leaving and the predictable thing is happening. The Taliban is surging in and taking it all back. They were always going to do this, because they have a thing you cannot buy or train, they have patience and a bloody-mindedness that warrants more respect than we ever gave them.

I am Team Get The Fuck Out Of Afghanistan which, as a friend pointed out to me today, has always been Team Taliban. It's Team Taliban or Team Stay Forever.

There is no third team.

And so I sit here, reading these sad fucking articles and these horrified social media posts about the suffering in Afghanistan and the horror of the encroaching Taliban and how awful it is that this is happening but I can't stop feeling this grim happiness, like, finally, you fuckers, finally you have to face the thing Afghanistan has always been. You can't keep lying to yourself about what you sent us into.

No more blown up soldiers. No more Bollywood videos on phones whose owners are getting shipped god knows where. No more hypocrisy.

No more pretending it meant anything. It didn't.

It didn't mean a goddamn thing.

quote:

Op dinsdag 17 augustus 2021 06:18 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Ah ja en dan staat het welkomscomité al klaar natuurlijk

[ twitter ]
[ twitter ]