Chaos As Kabul Falls

Thanks. I await the sort of GB News type writers and politicians you follow announcing Britain is full when the refugees come, while still moaning that we drop our allies.

Given the timeline that developed on the orderly withdrawal, what would you have had the US and UK do?

 

We can't relocate every single Afghan but we've had plenty of time to process the asylum applications of those that risked so much to help us and get them out. These people are our friends and they are in real danger - surely you can see the difference between them and those that choose to paddle across the channel to take advantage of our over-generous benefit system?

 

Depends who you mean as ‘allies’ in this context. If you mean the US has done something the UK, NATO etc would have preferred them not too do them that’s probably true. If you mean Afghan allies though I’m not sure there really were any. The low level guys should be relocated - but that should have been done 5+ years ago.

With the rise of China to be the number one global superpower within a generation I’m not sure the US will be too bothered by the short term dent to their brand this withdrawal will cause. The days of rounding up a coalition of the willing and sending soldiers en masse into a conflict to try and nation build or regime change are dying out for them. They don’t work, they’re wildly unpopular with the electorate at home and it’s more fun for a president to just press the big button and plonk a missile on someone’s head instead of committing men and materiel to a fight their way in - see what Trump did to Soleimani as an example. Plus the next big war will be fought with drones of various types and in cyber space (and probably actual space too) anyway.

 

Not really. They are all people.

 

They are all people. Are all people anywhere on the planet equally entitled to residence in the UK should they so wish ?

 

No. I really wish we’d stop letting in rich criminals from Russia, China and the Middle East just because they like to donate to certain parties.

And also don’t tell me that the reaction to asylum seekers is usually warm if they definitely have a case and are undoubtedly not economic migrants.

Ultimately no, not everyone can come to the UK. It would help if we try to build a World where they didn’t need to rather than carpet bombing it for oil.

 

Ok was just responding to your comment that "they are all people" suggesting you felt that no special effort should be made to help Afghan's who put themselves at risk to help the US/UK and are now at risk as a consequence.

 

After World War II European countries got their act together and once communism in Europe collapsed, other than the Yugoslav wars, the continent has been largely peaceful and out of that we have the EU, whether you were pro or anti EU it can't be disguised that European co-operation has got us where we are today. In Africa and South America politicians are going down a similar path of creating the Andean trade union and the African union, we are seeing mutually beneficial co-operation (despite the odd civil war in Africa). The question has to be asked why is the Middle East like it is? It is not solely the actions of the West, what are neighbouring countries doing to help stability and co-operation in the region? From my perspective it seems places like Yemen are encouraged to fight each other by their wealthier neighbours.

If there is one lesson to be learned from this, stay out of the Middle East because there isn't a simple solution to all of this.

Then you get China, I was reading an article yesterday that the Chinese have already reached out to the Taliban, if the Taliban genuinely cared about their religion they would tell the Chinese where to go considering the treatment of the Uigyurs. However if they do deal with the Chinese then it will merely show them to be hypocrites, on the other side of the coin are the Chinese going to care about the treatment of women and liberals living in Afghanistan? Of course not.

 

Exactly!

 

No, that wasn’t the intention. We do need to help people who will be in immediate peril.

 

At least this absolute pillock got out:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...liday-Afghanistan-evacuated-safety-Kabul.html

 

He probably had more fun on his holiday than I'm going to have on mine in the 'artisan cottage' (that's a garden shed to you and me) in Suffolk that my wife has arranged for us later this month!

 

You’ve sallowed the Biden bull that there were only ever 2 options - stay or cut and run.

There weren’t.

He’s only briefing that to save his skin.

 

That guy got out at the expense of someone else though, and will forever have blood on his hands.

 

I'm not sure that's the motive. He was elected saying he'd get out of there, a healthy majority of the US population support the move and I suspect he's rightly banking on the fact a lot of them simply won't be interested in what happens to the Afghans next. And certainly won't be interested by the time Nov 2023 rolls around.

Plus what are the other options realistically? I've seen people comparing it to the US military presence in Japan or South Korea, but they're widely welcomed or tolerated by the local populations. Until Trump did his ceasefire deal with the Taliban in return for released 5000 prisoners and a rapid withdrawal of US forces they were still coming under attack.

 

What were they then? What’s the view from Somerset?

 

I forbid the students of Loughborough to have sex with this knobhead for at least a year.

I hope my plea will be heard.

 

As someone who is from Loughborough and still commutes there every day, forcing him to have sex with a local would be a far greater punishment.

‘Ey up me duckeh!

 

Having invaded a country, then doubling down on the mistake by changing the country… there are no good options.

Withdrawing is no good option. I wish people wouldn’t talk like it is.

Withdrawing in a chaotic mess is beyond forgiveness. There are >85,ooo Afghans registered as having worked for the Coalition who might not see next week.

Whilst we’re at it the idea ‘if they won’t defend themselves why should we’ needs addressing. I read more Afghan soldiers died in an average year than US soldiers in 20 years. Whilst not being paid, whilst not getting fuel, ammunition etc. That sounds to me like people deserving or more support than being thrown under a bus.

One option would have been to follow the US governments own focus group recommendation, maintain a modest >5000 garrison to provide the Afghan military with training and leadership, and air power.

 

Whats the view from Somerset? You can be a right prat at times. I’m done talking with you right now.

 

Sounds possible, but what then if the garrison comes under sustained attack? And for how long to stay there? Forever?

 

I’m not sure there’s a example of a modern occupation force that has withdrawn and not left behind a vacuum filled by chaos, extremists and retribution, whether for weeks or permanently. Hence I’m not convinced there’s a flavour of withdrawal that doesn’t lead to chaos… at least outside of the armchair generals’ handbook. (That’s not a jab at you but the wider commentariat by the way).

The question to be answered in the fullness of time is how many of the 85,000 wanted to leave before the start of this month? I’ve seen it said at least some had resisted earlier attempts to move them out because they’re patriots, optimists who thought their country had changed for good and who felt if their government and military stood up for them they could prevail. Unfortunately for them their state apparatus turned out to be a mirage.

And, personally, I think the ‘if they won’t defend themselves why should we’ thing has legs. At least in the sense that Afghanistan is not a country that speaks with one voice. While undoubtedly a lot of those in Kabul and other big cities are prepared to look to the west and want to live a liberal lifestyle, the country is also made up of poor rural religiously-conservative types who live hand to mouth. The Taliban walked though those areas largely because no one there wanted to fight them but instead wanted to welcome them.

 

I’m highlighting your tendency to swipe from the comfortable sidelines, which in fairness is a charge we could all have levelled at us.

 

The garrison proposed would be permanent thing until such time as its not needed anymore. Lets not be shocked by that, the US has garrisons all over the world.

Why should the US do it?

Because it's their mess. They clean it up

Or perhaps the US should prefer it to having their reputation in tatters, NATO reputation in tatters, Taiwan and Ukraine wondering if US promises are worth the paper they are written on, and China all over Afghanistan

What makes you think I haven't served?

 

I don’t know. Have you? If you have, fair play to you and I imagine that informs your usual view that we shouldn’t meddle.

It doesn’t seem possible for the US to clear up its messes. It can only make more by staying.

 

Some good points in this thread.

https://twitter.com/phillipspobrien/status/1426982762062532614?s=21

 

Immigrants are far less likely to leech off our state than natives.

People who are willing to leave everything behind and go to a place they hardly know to earn money and build a life, tend to be pretty ambitious and hard-working people.

We’d be in a much better place if we could swap leeches in our own country for people who value education and hard work.

 

The US has spent over 80 billion dollars providing training and equipment to the Afghan military since 2001.

It didn't even last 72 hours against militants numbering under 25,000. Afghan military personnel totals are estimated at over 185,000.

If 20 years and 80 billion dollars can't make 185,000 people capable of holding against 25,000, I'm not sure anything will ever make them ready.

There's clearly no appetite to resist the insurgents, which to me implies local sympathies towards the Taliban run deeper than we'd like to think.

 

I think one of his responses to a point someone else made on that thread sums the problem up succinctly.

And hence where we are right now.

You can't bring democracy at the barrel of a gun. Most of the local population has to want it, and the notion of a civilian government has to have widespread support. It seems pretty clear that's not the case in Afghanistan, hence the almost immediate collapse of the installed government.

 

yeh, yeh, yeh

 

"Just in whose name do these brave young heroes fall
And how many more are going to answer that call?
They're going to fight and die in another country's war,
They're going to die for a religion they don't believe in at all,
They'll die in a place they should never have been at all,
No, never have been at all."

"No matter what country
Under the sun,
You can't mete out justice
From the barrel of a gun."

 

Then the US shouldn’t have started it in the first place! But they did, and that makes them responsible for cleaning up their own mess, and morally they don’t get to walk away and wash their hands of it.

 

There's no way to clean up the mess.

That's the entire problem.

Pointing fingers at the US is also pretty misplaced. The Taliban were there before the US, brutally suppressing people, and now things are heading back to the status quo of 20 years ago. It's not like things have got any worse by any objective standard.

If 80 billion dollars, 20 years and countless foreign soldiers can't prepare the government of Afghanistan, its ~190,000 strong military and its able bodied population of close to 4 million to handle an estimated top end of 25,000 insurgents then it's clearly never going to happen. It's clear most Afghans don't really want it.

 

The Taliban morphed out of the mujahideen armed by the US under operation cyclone

The Taliban are the monster created by the US they then lost control of

 

Oh look, and with impeccable timing Boston Dynamics release this video which underlines how screwed we all are:

https://twitter.com/bostondynamics/status/1427617735765278722?s=21