Lmao endless war's not looking too endless now
Nicholas Kristof is a ghoul, but I still think about this tweet sometimes.
My own realization that we were over our heads in Afghanistan came when I interviewed farmers who pretended to set up Taliban camps that the US would then bomb. The farmers would collect the remnants of millions of dollars worth of bombs and sell them for $100 as scrap metal.
Reminds me of the stories of how the Taliban would pay random villagers to go to the top of a hill, fire a magazine at a nearby US base, and then just leave, so that the US would have to go into battle-readiness and send out search parties for nothing.
Ah yeah, I remember reading or seeing that somewhere. Really wore down the soldiers because they had to be mentally and physically alert all the time while those Taliban fighters could just fuck off and drink tea together or whatever. Guerilla warfare is pretty easy when you think about it from that level.
Per this article the actual figure is around 250,000 in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.
-Sebastian Junger
The funny thing is hundreds of American troops could die while they kick our asses out and no one without family there would give a single solitary fuck at this point imo
Pretty much. Outside of one of my friends that got deployed there and almost got blown up by the Iranian missiles because of trump, I honestly have no personal attachments to anyone there
I’m sorry your friends made the horrible decision to join the armed forces
the story behind why he did's pretty funny, because it was literally a last resort choice. I'd tell ya, but it'd actually dox both of us. All I'll say was everyone, even his dad who was a careerist in the military, said "you dumbass lmao".
yep, and that's why I praise Iran, being the theocratic reactionaries they are, to the high heavens for their wise pragmatism and vast kindness for not completely destroying all of the U.S bases in their region, and simply performing a show of force after Sulimani was assassinated. Hopefully my dipshit friend'll bail after his contract's up.
Iran is actually a hyper pragmatic regime which is why the portrayal of them as insane and unhinged is very frustrating. Compare them to Saudi Arabia. I wanna trade them tbh.
Iran's a beautiful land. I honestly want to go there as a tourist just to see the history of one of the most ancient civilizations of Earth. Also I hear their pistachios are way better than our californian ones, which is why Iranians joke about how their pistachios are so good the U.S had to sanction them to let their shitty pistachios dominate the global market.
Lmao. The Californian pistachio industry actually lobbies intensely to maintain sanctions so they’re not even wrong.
If I had to chose to live in either Iran or Saudi Arabia, I would choose Iran every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Oh for sure. In every way but GDP Iran is better. Women's rights, LGBTQ rights, democratic rights, human rights in general, culture, civil society, Iran tops Saudi in every way. I mean it’s still not real wonderful, but it’s VASTLY better than Saudi.
It's fucking nuts. Even the American propagandists who work Middle East foreign policy will tell you: Iran is only a moderately strong player in the region who just happens to know how to play their hand very effectively. They're pretty even keeled when considering what they're up against.
Not singing their praises or anything. They're just not these religious zealot savages who crave blood (we reserve those countries as allies).
They’d be a very strong regional power if they weren’t devastated by sanctions for the past 40 years. But because of the sanctions they have become a very resourceful and efficient player in terms of the regional geopolitics, as well as a very internally cohesive one because sanctions don’t turn people against regimes, they unite behind them against an exterior enemy.
It blows my mind that the military is the only thing we spend money on as a country and it doesnt even wkrk right
Like the actual war fighting and the soldiers themselves stay in the public domain
That really isn't even true anymore. There are so many private contractors fighting in our wars right now it's insane.
I think the way to look at it is that the US military is a publicly-funded education and selection process for the private military companies, in much the same way that some white-collar folks get a start in like the DoJ and then move on to a highly-paid position in the private sector.
Absolutely. I remember watching a documentary about the subject where a British guy basically said anyone who was at all good at being a soldier was now a private contractor.
Almost nothing we spend money on works right.
We spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country and we have the worst fucking system in the developed world.
It works as our substitute for a welfare state
When viewed through that lens a lot of its dysfunction actually means its more effective in that role. But on the other its a machine that substitutes blood for machine oil and gas.
Idk the persians did it. That's just something states say to cope.
Your talking about way differnt way of warfare. Talking face to face hand combat with hand weapons.
Not guerrilla warfare in remote mountainous terrain you know like the back of your hand.
We don’t want a terrorist safe haven to reemerge
A little late about that; should've thought about it before invading the country and killing uncounted civilians.
I have to say, this is a bad take. Millions dead from Covid, so who cares if 9-11 is a recurring event? Why can't both just be bad and preventable disasters?
No, he's trying to justify leaving Afghanistan, saying there's no reason to fight terrorism since we now see thousands of preventable deaths a day is acceptable.
“For a good number of days in the winter, we were losing more people per day than we lost on 9/11,” he said. “That means leaving is a viable strategy.”
Can't defeat the Taliban but expects to defeat China, just Americrap things :xi:
Lol the US will never leave Afghanistan as long as they need to persist the cold war with China. They will sooner weather the killings or make allies with the Taliban. They need that land to be little more than an airstrip to bomb some part of the BRI in under 30 minutes. It's gonna be real funny real real soon.
Possibly, but we withdrew from Vietnam smack dab in the middle of the Cold War. At some point -- if there's enough domestic opposition to re-escalating and the situation on the ground becomes too difficult to maintain -- it becomes "get a bunch of troops killed and get kicked out or just leave."
I don't think the Taliban's willing to play with America any more fam.
I think the “make allies with the Taliban” ship sailed somewhere between Clinton bombing them in the 90s and Trump bombing then in the 2010s. Can’t quite put my finger on where.
Yeah Clinton is many things, a rapist, a war criminal, a pedophile, a ghoul, but smart he is not.
Afghanistan is very rich in resources especially rare earth elements. That’s probably one of the main reasons why they are still there, to stop China from accessing that treasure trove.
The US doesn't have the ability to exclude Chinese companies from the market. Not that it matters with China already controling most Rare Earth Metals.
America and loosing wars to peasants, name a more iconic duo. I'll wait.
Don't wanna seem like i'm rooting for the taliban of all the shitty factions out there, but if this got us to finally fuck off from one of our pointless conflicts it'd be nice. 'Course it might open up the budget for more shit in south america, so idk. Everything always presents a chance of just getting way worse.
Women in Afghanistan are fucked whether the US is there or not. We're celebrating the fact that America is failing to turn the whole country into a giant meat grinder.
America cares as much about women's rights in Afghanistan as it does about women's rights in its ally Saudi Arabia: none.
Yep. Personally I think the only reason we're in Afghanistan is for it's strategic value vis-a-vis Xinjiang. As someone else said, Central Asia is the new "great game" and a presence in Afghanistan is crucial to that.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Who made that comment about Central Asia? I think it’s 100% correct
If the US would care about women's rights, it would supply weapons and GPS to Rojava's YPJs.
To create a stronghold of women's rights and further that influence so that YPJs are also created in Iraq, in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan,..., in the USA, in France, in Germany, in the UK.
For women’s rights to be at risk, they would need to exist in the first place.
Yes. Suposedly they have become more moderate. They used to ban women from leaving their houses. Now they say they're willing to accept women in most government positions. Though, those statements came as part of the peace process, so they could be lies. I'd play it safe and say the Taliban is somewhere between ISIS and Saudi Arabia in women's rights.
Still, the US is in no position to do anything about this (not that they really care in the first place). If you can't build a stable, popular political system that includes women's rights, you can't protect women. America's failure to achieve such a system in Afghanistan is why the Taliban is winning.
So the us spent 2 trillion and 20 years and all they got was 👏🏻more👏🏻women👏🏻in👏🏻charge👏🏻of👏🏻oppressive👏🏻governments 👏🏻
lmao.
IDK how oppressive the Afghan government is. Certainly less than the Taliban. I'd say it's probably more corrupt than oppressive.
The oppressiveness is probably left up to the CIA ghouls swarming the country.
This whole situation is an American-caused disaster from start to finish, but I think the Americans leaving now and just letting the Taliban reign free is gonna be even more of a disaster for the people there.
I know, which is why the whole situation is so terrible. The Americans basically drove a tank into a fragile house, broke the foundation, and now if they leave, the whole house collapses, and if they don't leave, the foundation of the house is still a fucking tank. They should have never driven a tank into the house in the first place, but pulling the tank out isn't gonna help anybody.
It doesn't matter. Afghanistan will never be stable while the US continues its war. Whatever the ambitions of the local powers are, the US military has no possibility of improving anyone's lives there, they can only make things worse. If you believe otherwise, that the presence of the US can provide peace and stability, then you should be advocating for invasions all over the world. Let the house collapse, the people who live there will rebuild it.
A tank is a hunk of metal with compressive strength and inertia.
We slammed a bouncy castle into the house and now we need to keep attaching generators to keep it inflated, or else the house collapses.
I agree that the Taliban shouldn't be allowed to take over Afghanistan, but America remaining isn't going to stop them if Biden sticks to the current strategy. The Taliban are the only ones with any sort of vision for the country. The rest are just like "why don't we take out another IMF loan we can use to acomplish absolutely nothing?"
Then again, the "vision" the Taliban has for the country is not much better than the hellish state the country is currently in. Which is the terrible twist of the situation.
Shout out to the mod who deleted the comments shitting on the neocon, and left the comment by the neocon up. can you spell F-E-D, children?
You can check the modlog to see why your comment was removed. Hint hint: ableism. And as for my (removed by mod) take being fed shit, I am literally from a country the Americans bombed to hell, I would know about despising America. But really, what would the Americans leaving achieve? The Taliban would gain control, life for the average Afghan Person would suck at least as much as it does right now, AND the Americans get to focus their efforts somewhere else. I also really like this attitude of automatically assuming the worst from people saying anything you disagree with. Yeah right, a neocon is totally gonne be on some mega-obscure ten-thousand member communist Forum, from what is literally day one till now.
Keeping the lesser of two evils involves pumping billions of dollars a year into it, fueling resentment and blowback, and ultimately making the situation worse.
The only path to stability for Afghanistan is if they figure their own shit out without Western interference. Maybe that means they have to have the Taliban again, amd hopefully overthrow them organically in another 4-10 years. But kicking the can down the road is not really a valid solution, and it is precisely the same program that neocons have been propagandizing us with for 20 years, and this is why you are getting dragged.
And right there is the issue: There is no way in hell there won't be any foreign interference, and if the Afghan people aren't too exhausted from decades of civil war, maybe they'll start another one to overthrow the Taliban, and then there'll be another round of death, destruction and poverty in the country.
And that is beyond the fact that people here seem to be awfully eager to put Afghanistan under the rule of the fucking Taliban, you know, the people who got their clout killing communists, who banned women from getting literally any education, and who recently killed like 50 university students in Kabul for the unspeakable sin of getting an education. The State the country is in right now is no good, but letting the Taliban take over again is guaranteed to ruin it for good.
This fate is always destined to happen: as long as there are Salafis with oil money who will bankroll the fundamentalists, and as long as America has military occupations across the Muslim world, organizations like the Taliban will have a compelling draw to potential recruits.
Endless war and occupation is not a workable policy- in fact, it's counter-productive. Would you rather it ended this year, with a Taliban that's stronger than 5 years ago, or in 2026, with a Taliban that's stronger than today? The best time to leave would have been Bush II's first term, and the more presidents we go through who keep it up, the worse it's going to get.
It's an escalation of commitment. You can't keep escalating forever, especially when that means you make the worst people stronger. You have to recognize it and cut your losses.
With any luck, though, China's influence will be less disastrous for Central Asia.
I would say the "best" (with gigantic parentheses) case scenario is making the Taliban negotiate in exchange for the US leaving. At least some conditions can then be set.
Here's a little math for you: Afghanistan+ American occupation: pretty fucking bad for Afghanistan, but also not good for the Americans either. Afghanistan- American occupation: pretty fucking bad, for Afghanistan and also the surrounding regions, since the Taliban will take over, but the Americans get to use their soldiers and money somewhere else. You-Chapo.Chat: You get to calm down a little, because you are much too enraged at literally anything. To think anything else is to put excessive Anti-Americanism over the actual material conditions on the ground.
Nope, and here is the difference: The Americans can't keep this up, the Israelis can bomb the Gaza strip all day long and then some. And to equate Hamas with the fucking Taliban is ridiculous. Apart from the fact that Israel itself is the imperialist base here. We could equate the situations if Israel is based in New Jersey, but since they occupy the same territory they currently live in, it is another situation entirely. The Hamas fights Israel, a settler-colonialist state whose goal is to wipe out the Palestinian people and establish an ethnostate on their territory. The Taliban fights both the Americans and the current civilian government they set in place, which, while corrupt, inept and authoritarian, is better than living under the Taliban. Or need I remind you of who the Taliban fought literally 30 years ago?
Better them than the narco-warlords we helped put in power. At the very least it then becomes an internal issue as opposed to the current situation in which the imperialist contradictions force people into either pro-US imperialism or pro-taliban camps.
People will be a lot more willing to overthrow whatever crazed theocrats are in power once there is the assurance that some powerful empire wont slink in during the power vacuum and steal all of the nation's resources.
