What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

It’s the american military responsibility to get [..] Afghans Americans to safety, not fuck Air India and the Afghans who bought tickets.

FTFY

(I do realize they are also evacuating translators fwiw, that seems legit)

or do you still think the US runs the country?

― sleeve, Sunday, August 15, 2021 5:12 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

They are, right now, in control of the airport on the military side and the airport itself is under fire.

And no, Air India can not take unilateral decisions of the kind in situations like these, and I have my doubts they will: it would be too big a risk for the pilots and more importantly for people on the ground.

is there no instance of US imperialism you won't defend to your dying breath?

(serious question)

I don’t see US imperialism in seeing a massive security risk, and I don’t see why that risk ought to be taken by civilians at the possible expense of civilians and I’m clear it is up to the US military to clean up that mess.

your version of the US military does not exist. the real one is coordinating with the taliban right now

Clearest indication the British Government will recognise the new goverment led by Taliban, and work with it. This was all planned sometime ago and that is why the Taliban controlled the country within 10 days. US-UK governments purposely allowed this to happen #afghanistan https://t.co/1ly10vGSEC

— مهيار (@Mehiyar) August 15, 2021

xxp I honestly have no idea what that sentence means

mind you, they've been doing it all along, if all those stories about multiple advance surrender negotiations and deals are true. The fearsome peasant warriors mainly talked their way to power.

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) August 15, 2021

go ahead left

Land that plane

dream about me

NEW: Biden admin has curtailed the number of flights to the US for Afghans who worked alongside the US as it prioritizes the evacuation of American personnel from the country, three sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

— Jennifer Hansler (@jmhansler) August 15, 2021

Sorry if someone already posted

https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5

xpost to Raymond: great article, thanks

yeah very good. sad, bitter.

My ex wife asked me about what was up with Kabul earlier tonight while we were waiting to pick up takeout dinner. She didn’t understand the whole thing.

I summarized in a rush, ultimately feeling empty and defeated.

Yeah, that article was a gut punch.

Got into an argument I totally regret with H over this, her taking the line that we should have stayed to protect women’s rights, leaving me in the always horrible position of arguing no we shouldn’t because it’s hopeless and our military isn’t even designed to do that. But it’s still the cynical asshole argument in the moment even if right in the long run. There’s no good position to take. That medium article has it right and I was team taliban.

There are roughly 3.5 billion women on earth. They all deserve good lives. I'm not sure that a nearly unlimited supply of military munitions are the correct means to secure that outcome.

So how do you solve a problem like the Talibans then? Not talking about an US perspective there, but like, how do you secure good lives for the 16 millions women when you face an armed fascist threat.

you are profoundly unqualified to answer that question, that's all I know

OTM

who among us feels qualified to state how to change Afghan society in order to make it accept western liberal ideology? if no one feels qualified, then calling VHS unqualified as all the rest of us isn't exactly a sick burn.

I don’t think it’s a sick burn so much as the point. Even asking the question of what is to be done assumes being in a position of opining on or deciding what is to be done, which I would venture to guess none of us are in or even have the right to be in.

Sometimes the world would be better off if Americans would just say “we aren’t the ones who should answer this question.”

I specified not talking from an US perspective.

then who is the "you" in that question? how is anyone supposed to answer that

are you asking for instructions on how you yourself can carry out a personal delta force mission in kabul

Promoting and facilitating increased immigration from Afghanistan to the US is a thing we could and absolutely will not do.

guys am i understanding correctly that the “security” situation in afghanistan is “deteriorating”

Old Lunch otm. Every person in Afghanistan who wants to come to the US — who dreads living under a newly empowered Taliban — should be allowed to do so.

As cynical as we all were about the prospects of “nation building” there, on the ground in afghanistan were people who thought their country could be better, who remembered secular regimes of past decades. The US didn’t help them build that country even as we said we would. There is a debt.

I don’t know how this could be done logistically but still — it’s stomach churning to think of what will happen to Afghans who worked with the US.

I suspect that decades of arming rogue elements then invading in order to defeat those rogue elements and displacing millions of people and destroying infrastructure and enabling warlord feudalism and then arming rogue elements etc is not the best way to help the people of Afghanistan.

Everyone knows the roots of Afghanistan's problems are in becoming a proxy site of the long cold war. Remove adventurism and provide redress through a transformed refugee and resettlement program that includes closing the vast UNHCR camps that people live in intergenerationally across the global South and provide amnesty for all millions of victims of ongoing legacies of colonialism welcoming instead of demonising all the people who have been made to flee from the violence that we have brought to their homelands.

I agree this sounds pretty far-fetched but compared to trying to change the political culture of another country on the other side of the globe using the tactic of sending people in with advanced weaponry, I would suggest this is the less far fetched.

In any case the immediate statements and actions by the UK home office show quite clearly how little change this is likely to make to the clueless mendacity of the ghouls that run this show.

Anyone serious about helping the people of Afghanistan now should be involved in putting extreme pressure on their governments to provide corridors for refugees and liberalise the asylum process. Everything else is bullshit and there's twenty (plus) years of history to prove it.

yes.

this is the level, step it up ppl

As cynical as we all were about the prospects of “nation building” there, on the ground in afghanistan were people who thought their country could be better, who remembered secular regimes of past decades.

Not saying these people don't exist, and fully behind the thing you're arguing for, but would like to say that anecdotally the only guy from Afghanistan I know, a friend of my parent's who v much remembered those secular regimes and desperatley wanted to go back, was never under any illusion that the US coming in would lead to his country getting better. Whether or not ppl buy the West's propaganda shouldn't be the standard for whether we have a moral responsibility to help them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12024253

worst timeline ever starting from 1838 here

who among us feels qualified to state how to change Afghan society in order to make it accept western liberal ideology? if no one feels qualified, then calling VHS unqualified as all the rest of us isn't exactly a sick burn.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Monday, 16 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Libs be defending each other now their project is in ruins is quite a sight to watch.

politely telling a the bullshit merchant Betamax to stfu is enough, no "sick burn" is required imo.

keep coming across tankies on Twitter celebrating this like it's some sort of great victory for anti-imperialism. cunts.

Yes but to have army racists saying 'nothing' to that question in the headline would be good.

I can think of a few good answers but what I will say is that this energy is going nowhere good, and it certainly isn’t going to either generate a better understanding of what happened and why, or the appropriate lessons to draw. pic.twitter.com/QAM2YRgbHQ

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) August 15, 2021

the last Tony Blair comment on Afghanistan was to an armed forces magazine 5 days ago, he's gone remarkably quiet on the subject since.

president of turkmenistan won't get off his phone probably

keep coming across tankies on Twitter celebrating this like it's some sort of great victory for anti-imperialism. cunts.

― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 16 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

What I'm seeing is that the West should not be directly involved and keep going with the withdrawal and other left wing people are calling on the UK to offer refugees a place here. Now I'm sure there are corners that are almost pro-taliban as much as tweets calling for the UK soldiers to get invade again (I saw one yesterday, it was mocked to shit and deleted in 20 mins) but its not huge numbers on either side.

it's hard to judge numbers, as always on Twitter, but I keep coming across them, the comments on this post have loads for example

This is heart-breaking. Back in 2019, these beautiful Afghan women from Afghanistan's first and only female-only orchestra were full of hope.

As the Taliban have invaded Afghanistan, women like them will be banned from singing. They'll be confined to their homes. pic.twitter.com/OenYV0DcgE

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 15, 2021

meanwhile here's something we can all agree on

When BHL was dressed as a mujahideen pic.twitter.com/jcKex7jihc

— Daniel Zamora Vargas (@DanielZamoraV) August 16, 2021

It must be a feature of who you follow or something but I am seeing no such replies. Lots of weird bad takes of all sorts however.

Almost as though 280 characters is insufficient to say anything intelligible on this