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

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

The Kabul Airport. pic.twitter.com/FEjWsAkZal

— Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪 (@tongbingxue) August 16, 2021

jfc

"Our brave translators", says the Daily Mail. If my eyes rolled any further they'd roll out of my sockets and down my cheeks.

Sorry, my damn eyes, of course.

"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"

Some are saying the US is the invader but that by itself isn't anything. Mostly it's despair at the Afghans who were trained by the US or just sadness at the future for women by n the country.

replying to that that "the US is the invader" is not nothing

It's not a 'tankie' position by itself.

Germany brought back 22,500 litres of beer, wine and champagne from Afghanistan.

Meanwhile people were only given permission if they worked directly for the Bundeswehr in the last two years. No subcontractors, or older translators pic.twitter.com/jE51NmrrEe

— James Jackson (@derJamesJackson) August 16, 2021

The USA took 130,000 Vietnamese refugees in April 1975, so taking 170,000 Afghan refugees SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING@JoeBiden @SecBlinken https://t.co/hCDL0bR47j

— Viet Thanh Nguyen (@viet_t_nguyen) August 16, 2021

pic.twitter.com/2uEvobBijC

— Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) August 16, 2021

🤦‍♀️

Here are liberals, caring about women.

#BREAKING Macron vows EU initiative to protect against migrant flows from Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/qstcbkmAyI

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 16, 2021

well all they're going to do is move to poor neighbourhoods and FLAUNT their HEADSCARVES in everyone's FACES and refuse to learn French so i mean come on am i right people n'est-ce pas??

it's fucking disgusting

this piece of shit needs to die now

not the only one either, death to europe

maybe shouldn't have posted that, not because it's not true or anything

just jokes, but couldn't resist:

when they knock on Left's front door
how are they gonna come
with their hand on their keyboard
or the trigger of their gun