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

The singular is Talib.

It’s from french in which we say les Talibans and dyslexia probably why I didn’t pick up the difference in english.

So yeah just a honest mistake, thanks for noting!

My apologies, I should not have asked that so aggressively!

ON the plus side, I didn't know about Talib as the singular, so thank you for that CGLDI

a great bunch of Taliblads

just some harmless Talibantz

i missed that the afghan embassy in tajikistan is trying to get interpol's carlos D involved, regarding the whole "the president stole all the money" thing

On Wednesday, the Afghan Embassy in Tajikistan urged Interpol to serve an arrest warrant for Ghani and two senior aides, Hamdallah Mohib and Fazal Mahmood Fazli, for allegedly stealing the country’s wealth, according to Afghanistan’s ToloNews network.

although, i guess if i were fleeing a country and there were 4 carloads of cash sitting around, and it was just going to go the taliban anyway, i would think about taking some? maybe Ghani was going to give it to mutual aid afterward, we don't know all the facts

“I had to talk guys out of just shooting farmers because they thought it would be fun,” Kirell told me. “They literally didn’t care by that point.”

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, August 18, 2021 11:49 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

In 2013 I went to a party where there were some guys who just got back from Afghanistan. I was appalled by the contempt they had for the Afghani people, who they said were “too stupid” to be trained to operate military equipment. I don’t want to be bashing US veterans, and these guys probably encountered things I could only imagine, but I have always been haunted by the attitude they had—I completely believe the accounts of US soldiers using Afghan property for target practice and worse.

I suppose the Talibans are neither humans, active, real or influential in the region.

― Van Horn Street, Wednesday, 18 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

These guys must stop them

"I am concerned about human rights after America leaves Afghanistan" pic.twitter.com/SG3bfJX3oz

— يوسف 🇲🇦 (@sonofadam_eve) August 17, 2021

I don’t want to be bashing US veterans

Why not?

Hate the game not the player shouldn’t apply to all-volunteer militaries.

Word to bill hicks, i've always been for the war, but against the troops lol

These guys must stop them

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, August 18, 2021 1:57 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It shouldn't be hard to imagine that someone might oppose a Taliban regime and also be against US intervention in the region.

Seems this position is shared by most boarders itt.

I have always been haunted by the attitude they had—I completely believe the accounts of US soldiers using Afghan property for target practice and worse.

It's the same attitude American cops have about the people in the communities they police.

'I want to state a hard but clear truth some don't want to hear. The 20 year war in Afghanistan was a mistake of catastrophic proportions causing untold human tragedy...we must rid ourselves of the delusion that the answer to failed intervention is yet more intervention.' pic.twitter.com/jt4HfIOTRl

— black lives matter (@jrc1921) August 18, 2021

Reading Goodall's thread on the debate:

...it once was either. It all led, despite some very memorable and powerful speeches, to at times an air of unreality about the debate, or at least one where the participants seemed to avert their gaze from a crucial bit of context- the power realities of the world...

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) August 18, 2021

I guess the nicest thing you could say is that minus the intervention of US and its allies, Taliban would've been in charge for the past 20 years. Instead Afghanistan got a 20 year experiment in having a different form of government, albeit one not without flaws. That experiment has now ended, but would it have been better for Afghanistan if had never happened?

hamid karzai and his family got rich at least

That experiment has now ended, but would it have been better for Afghanistan if had never happened?

You could ask the 100k dead, maybe.

Like seriously, fuck off with that shit.

Curious what Afghans would say.

the one consistent story I've heard from people who returned from there (regardless of political persuasion) is that the Afghani people they encountered were just extremely uneducated...I've heard several stories of their allies there messing things up because they couldn't do simple math or tell time. it's a real sad situation and makes it pretty clear that a heavily armed military presence was probably not the right way to "fix" Afghanistan

also obviously it's horrible what's going on over there but I can speak to the extent it's fucked up people here too. I had several close friends and family members serve over there and not a single one of them came back okay. either they came back with PTSD, addiction issues, or lifelong injuries, or they became alcoholics who developed a callous view on life. none of them believes we did any good over there nor thinks there was anything we could've done anyway. two of them attempted suicide, and failed, thankfully. I know this isn't about ~me~ at all but it did fucking suck to have half of your group of friends leave for war and to think "well they'll be back in a few years and we can hang out again" only to find them turn into very different people afterwards.

Curious what Afghans would say.

Which ones? The view of the educated and relatively well-off class who live in Kabul? The average villager in a remote province? The many Afghans who fight for the Taliban?

Not forgetting... male or female?

Can we have conversations without telling people you disagree with to fuck off? It's so tiring.

There's no disputing the extent of Afghan suffering during the endless civil war against the Taliban, but lets not forget there was an ongoing civil war in Afghanistan before 2001. Afghanistan is unfortunately not a country which has known long periods of peace in modern times.

Frogbs, what adds to the heartbreak is that the same story could be told verbatim about Vietnam vets.

xpost In my opinion, it's hard to guess a 'what if' the size of twenty years. However I will try, if the objective is to liberate a nation from Taliban, there are probably much better ways of doing so. The US military completely ignored alternatives (because the liberation part was extremely secondary, if not inexistant) and twenty years of increased chaos is a heavy price for the Afghan people having to go back to square one. It did allow more people to flee the country, that's the only sort of silver lining I can think of.

"I guess the nicest thing you could say is that minus the intervention of US and its allies, Taliban would've been in charge for the past 20 years."

Maybe without the endless incursions Afghanistan has been subjected to we could say it might have been a lot more stable. So much so that a thing like the Taliban would not have come into being. Who can tell.

The Taliban resurgence is also the consequence of foreign interference so it's not like the departure of American troops is really going to change the paradigm of Afghans having complete self determination over their nation.

I think maybe there have been some gains in education, attitudes towards women, etc which will have lasting effects. Of course no one is going to cite this as a model intervention. Only looking for silver linings at this point, perhaps a mug's game.

Outside the diaspora I think the effects will be very short lived unfortunately.

I hope I'm wrong.

You may have stepped on a rake there.

Stepping on rakes and learning is the purpose of discussions.

General Mark Milley: "There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days." pic.twitter.com/z5gVBpBHnN

— The Hill (@thehill) August 18, 2021

Starting to think maybe Trump DOES know more than the generals

Well, one thing seems clear: assets are being frozen, foreign aid is suspended, military payroll has ended, and it's probably going to be a miserable winter for most Afghan civilians; high food prices, scarcity of goods, etc. Hopefully the Taliban don't try to immediately replace all the qualified civil servants with fighters from the ranks.

xp I can see why Trump wouldn’t have wanted to do a coup with that guy.

pic.twitter.com/oJMo5lsL2H

— the thicc husband & father (@lukeisamazing) August 18, 2021

A gajillion hours of debate and acres of print; the smartest people in politics applying their full intellect to the weightiest issues at the pinnacle of global politics, and every one of them would’ve been absolutely trounced by a parrot trained to squawk “No”.

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) August 19, 2021

That sounds like vapid stop the war politics to me, better to let the grownups keep knocking it out of the park

CNN is just saying

a lot of interesting things in this article

Afghanistan has rare earth minerals and, perhaps most importantly, what could be one of the world's biggest deposits of lithium — an essential but scarce component in rechargeable batteries and other technologies vital to tackling the climate crisis. https://t.co/HYBTEVne4u

— CNN (@CNN) August 18, 2021

Surely these minerals must be protected for democracy

in general the apparent lack of consensus* from media, political, military establishments in recent days has been very interesting to see, I’m not sure how it breaks down between/within those groups, what kinds of internal struggles it reflects, how far back this goes, or how much longer it will last, but there’s a hell of a lot of mixed messaging atm

*on things like how or if to deal with the taliban, on normalising relations, on further military action, on sanctions etc. for the most part there’s still an assumption that “we” are fundamentally righteous and well-meaning, an acknowledgment that we made mistakes, but not much agreement on what the specific mistakes are, who should be blamed, what should be done about it, etc

Plenty of that on this thread ffs

No one has justified the intervention in this thread, at least since early august. 'Plenty of that' is hyperbolic.

👀 pic.twitter.com/DYvAEtWY5d

— Mukhtar (@Mukhtar_iam) August 19, 2021