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Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:36 pm
by Randomizer
Taliban supporter Republican Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lauren-boebe ... 55865.html

After praising Biden for agreeing to the Trump plan to withdraw all troops after a 20 year war and criticizing him for taking too long, she now jokingly praises the Taliban.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 9:30 pm
by orathaic
Octavious wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:07 pm


US treasury mismanagement is irrelevant to this debate. I do find it more than a little amusing that the costs of the Afghan adventure are being trumpeted by the likes of yourself and ora when only months ago, in the Israel thread when the similar cost of Iraq was mentioned, great lengths were made to argue that the true cost is in fact far lower than the headline figure
I agree, treasury management is irrelevant. But i don'y recall arguing that Iraq was less costly, only that the US spent huge money which returned to US corporations, private entities profitting from war.

I think scamming the US tax payers is wrong whether it was for Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel... and that giving the money to build homes for the homeless would be a much better cause (whether Palestinian, American, of Afghan refugee currently fleeing). Private companies profiting from building houses seems to be a massively betger morally than 'security' and failed nation building...

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 10:48 am
by Octavious
Ah, my apologies. I'd taken your argument to be that the war was far less costly for America than the headline figure suggests because much of the money stays in American hands. I was clearly giving it weight that was unwarranted. I shall endeavour to avoid doing so in future :-)

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:20 pm
by orathaic
Oh no, i was being critical of the disengenous way 'nation security' is often used to line the pockets of the capitalist class in the military-industrial complex.

How you got anything else from that is beyond me.

Specifically, i don't see it as 'staying in American hands', more taking from tax payers and given to wealthy capitalist warmongers. It is a great scam.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:26 pm
by orathaic
In this case, how ever, it seems that a lot of the money went to a corrupt and ineffective administration and military in Afghanistan.

How much money did the President take with him as he fled the country? And how many US made weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban (a huge change from the 80s, where the weapons were given direcrly to insurgents to fight the Soviets).

I mean, the weapons producers still got paid, so they still see their profits. And arguably Biden was right that this has been a huge waste and needed to be stopped. And that is small comfort to all those Afghanis who worked with the US and have been left behind...

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:39 pm
by orathaic
Apparently i wasn't listening when wikileaks said this 10 years ago: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1 ... 32806?s=20

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:20 pm
by Octavious
orathaic wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:26 pm
How much money did the President take with him as he fled the country?
Do tell :-)

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:22 pm
by orathaic
Octavious wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:20 pm
orathaic wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:26 pm
How much money did the President take with him as he fled the country?
Do tell :-)
I don't know. But most people seem to have had trouble getting to the airport and leaving... i can only infer that the President didn't have the same d
ifficulties.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:33 pm
by Octavious
Well worth a watch...

https://youtu.be/niR_9VacIEE

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 6:03 pm
by flash2015
Octavious wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:07 pm
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 4:01 pm
More info on the crazy costs of the Afghan occupation. Apart from the 2 trillion cost, by 2050 it is estimated that the US will likely have to pay 6.5 trillion dollars in interest on this debut.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-ne ... 37345.html
US treasury mismanagement is irrelevant to this debate. I do find it more than a little amusing that the costs of the Afghan adventure are being trumpeted by the likes of yourself and ora when only months ago, in the Israel thread when the similar cost of Iraq was mentioned, great lengths were made to argue that the true cost is in fact far lower than the headline figure ;).
Perhaps you are talking about ora only? I definitely didn't say that. I worry a lot that both sides of politics are not taking the deficit seriously...which is why I am not too keen on flushing even more money down the drain of failed nation building. The US government is effectively broke anyway with the debt level the worst since the second world war.
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
He just made it very costly
Costs are relative. I suspect the cost of the choice Biden has taken will prove to be massively greater in the long term.
I don't think so but let's see where we are in 5 years.
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
We would probably need another "surge" to push them back
If you wanted immediate gains, yes, but there was no pressing need to take the fight to the Taliban. Drawing a line in the sand would not have required a surge, or the associated cost in lives and financial burden.
I would beg to differ. From the Congressional report from April 2021:

"By many measures, the Taliban are in a stronger position now than at any point since 2001, controlling as much as half of the country"

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45122.pdf

Perhaps you could delay a surge to push them back but you would have to do it eventually.
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
Given the substantial gains the Taliban had already made, I don't see any evidence to suggest that the financial cost or the risk to servicemen was low.
The low US casualty rate should be evidence enough that the risk is low, surely?
Did you miss the part where the Taliban already controlled half the country soon after Biden took office?
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
I am kind of ambivalent to the situation
Clearly so, and it is for this reason that Biden is pursuing this shameful strategy. He believes that ultimately the American population don't give a shit about Afghans and throwing them to the wolves won't cost him at the ballot box. He may well be right.
I don't see it as shameful. The Afghanistan nation building adventure has failed. At some point you have to say enough.

It isn't just my opinion the Afghanistan nation building adventure was a complete and utter failure. The inspector general just said as much in a recent report:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-miss ... d=79484073

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/1 ... ort-505567
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
The goal of going into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden. He is dead for over a decade. He only existed because of an earlier US intervention decades earlier. The original mission is long over.
Some would profoundly disagree. I refer you to these voices from the US Senate
"Our hope is that we will see a relatively stable government in Afghanistan, one that… provides the foundation for future reconstruction of that country."
- Senator J Biden, 2001
"the alternative to nation building is chaos, a chaos that churns out bloodthirsty warlords, drug traffickers and terrorists".
- Senator J Biden, 2003
Oh, the quote game!:

"Our soldiers are making measurable progress on the overarching goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan" - Joe Biden November 11, 2010

"It is not our intention to govern or to nation build" - Joe Biden January 11 2011

"We have decimated Al Qaeda central, we have eliminated Osama Bin Laden. That was our purpose" - Joe Biden October 11 2012

"We have been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed...Kabul government in a position to maintain their own security. It is their responsibility not Americas" - Joe Biden October 11 2012
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:38 pm
We will see how things play out, but I don't believe the Taliban will be so stupid as to immediately turn around and foster terrorists.
I refer you to the UN.

https://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/8930020.33233643.html
Nice 404 File Not Found you have there.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 7:27 pm
by Octavious

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:17 pm
by flash2015
It is a sad indictment of the US political process that Afghanistan was not even mentioned in the 2020 US Presidential debates:

https://www.businessinsider.com/no-ment ... es-2020-10

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 9:59 am
by orathaic
23- The Taliban came to power now as part of an international game. This gives a feeling of optimism and pessimism at the same time. It is not a question of whether the Taliban is an Islamic movement or not, but rather about its ability to achieve security and stability. The West is no longer focusing on "democracy" as it used to be, which may give an opportunity to achieve security.


Again from twitter.

https://twitter.com/anasalhajji/status/ ... 20739?s=20

Long thread detailing how neighbouring countries (China, Pakistan, India, Turkmenistan) all benefit from stability in Afghanistan (and how it is thought the Taliban have a better chance of bringing stability). And how the US also has interests in this happening.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:15 pm
by Octavious
I think that you'd benefit hugely from giving twitter a miss for a while, ora. You're reading a hell of a lot of weird shit there.

Yes, totalitarian dictatorships that rule with an iron first can be quite stable, especially when combined with religious extremism. Other exciting examples of stability can be found on Mars and Venus, where the lack of life (be it intelligent or otherwise) promotes eternal peace and equality.

But whilst I can follow the logic behind the Taliban exterminating all resistance and freedom as a recipe for stability, I can't for the life of me follow how the US benefits from removing a dependent government and replacing it with a hostile one that greatly favours American rivals.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 6:55 pm
by orathaic
The United States and Europe are benefiting from the new mineral resources that are important for climate change policies without causing any pollution in their territories

The major international mining companies belong to the major countries in America, Europe and Asia
The problem with lithium and cobalt reserves is that they are concentrated and the number of countries that produce them is counting on a finger. Cobalt is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and lithium is concentrated in southern Latin America.
seems that the West, or the Americans at least, are convinced that the Taliban can achieve some kind of political stability and provide a legal and governmental entity to bring these investments and develop the mines of these minerals.

Based on this:
When Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran's oil reserves in 1951, an international court was resorted to to settle the dispute between Iran and the British company, of which the British government owns a part. At the time, Iran was able to convince the court that the contracts that Britain demands were signed under duress under the British occupation!


So to be perfectly honest, given how a US withdrawal was inevitable, and how the Afghan state failed to stop the Taliban without US support, it seems the US thinks this is a better option than not having access to those minerals.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 9:25 pm
by flash2015
I think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that the US got out to let the Taliban mine Lithium for them.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:51 am
by orathaic
They are suggesting the Taliban can sign away right to the Lithium (to large foreign firms).

And not 'this is why they left' but more 'since they are leaving, might as well get some Lithium'

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:47 am
by orathaic
orathaic wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:22 pm
Octavious wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:20 pm
orathaic wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 12:26 pm
How much money did the President take with him as he fled the country?
Do tell :-)
I don't know. But most people seem to have had trouble getting to the airport and leaving... i can only infer that the President didn't have the same d
ifficulties.
Hey look, some evidence to backup my unsupported assumption that some Afghans were making lots of money from the US tax payer...


Afghan government corruption, and the U.S. role enabling and reinforcing it. The last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani, I recently learned, is a multimillionaire, thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram. Is this the type of government people are likely to risk their lives to defend?


From:https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:16 am
by Octavious
Ora, a reporter saying she's "heard" something is not evidence. And the idea that you let the lunatic murderer society win because some government officials are a bit corrupt is a tad bizarre in itself.

Re: After 20 years of fighting the Taliban

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:53 am
by Octavious
Meanwhile in the European Union...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58289893

#MakeEuropeGreatAgain
#BuildThatWall