American Politics

[M3J]

Is that supposed to have anything to do with Biden?

Yes.

Closest thing I've seen to Biden being defended is folks saying "Yes, I agree that we needed to leave Afghanistan, just not like this." But I dunno, I'm terminally online so I'm paying attention to political streamers and stuff. I might be looking in the wrong place.

I'm looking on Twitter.

 

[Newkerzy]

Will someone refresh my mind on whether the Taliban has ever supported Al-Qaeda explicitly, or any other terrorist cells?

I think they do, but I can’t really remember whether that was 2 decades ago, and only recently broke off ties with them and focusing on their domestic conflict.

 

[kkck]

Damn, who even remembers which muslim wants to kill or ally whichever other muslim nowadays.... It's just hard to keep track.

 

[Newkerzy]

Damn, who even remembers which muslim wants to kill or ally whichever other muslim nowadays.... It's just hard to keep track.

Yeah. I figured as much. That’s kinda my point too, tbh.

 

[xi0]

Does it matter whether it was explicit or not? He was clearly given safe harbor there due to his participation in the war in the 80s and they refused to extradite him after 9/11.

 

[Sanity Check]

Will someone refresh my mind on whether the Taliban has ever supported Al-Qaeda explicitly, or any other terrorist cells?

I think most cells in the region are funded through iran or turkey.

Al qaeda was supposedly funded by saudis. But that may have been a cover story. Saudi arabia lacks history / motive for funding terrorism.

Me being american, take what I say here with a grain of salt.

 

[Xeroxed]

About Afghanistan, I dont think leaving was a mistake. It was something that had to be done and should probably have been done 10-15 years ago to be frank. The problem was with how it was executed. Before Trump left office he invited the Taliban leaders to the US and sat down with them and negotiated an american withdrawal. The plan was that the US would exit Afghanistan during the winter 2020-2021 by first removing the soft targets and expensive installations and then gradually removing the fighting forces and retreating towards Kabul. This withdrawal was supposed to have been finished in may 2021.

Problem was that as soon as Trump lost (or "lost") the election the generals in Pentagon who opposed leaving Afghanistan canceled these plans. And when Biden entered office he officially canceled the plans. May 2021 came an went and when the Talibans saw that the Americans had not followed through on their promise they went on the offensive. In the summer and Biden got the choice of either withdrawing or sending in even more troops to squash this attack. He chose withdrawing.

The execution however was awful. Trump had chosen to withdraw in winter because Afghanistan is pretty much all mountains that will be full of snow or be flooded in the winter. This makes it very hard to move for the Talibans, but not so much on the Americans that have heavy vehicles and choppers. So it would have been safer. The second problem was that Biden removed soldiers and security forces first and just left their equipment and civilian people behind.

The third big problem was that the Americans did not realize how popular the Talibans were with the common population in Afghanistan. The normal government had no support from its soldiers and was seen as completely corrupt. Thus despite the fact that the government forces outnumbered the Taliban 300k to 75k. (On paper) Most soldiers just turned over their weapons or even joined the Talibans when they came. Thus the Talibans could conquer the entire country in two weeks without ever fighting a battle.

You might not like it, but this is democracy in action!

I think most cells in the region are funded through iran or turkey.

Al qaeda was supposedly funded by saudis. But that may have been a cover story. Saudi arabia lacks history / motive for funding terrorism.

Me being american, take what I say here with a grain of salt.

Wait? What! You do realize that 16 out of 21 the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis right? And that Osama Bin Laden himself was a Saudi? Also, Saudi Arabia was one of the primary sponsors of IS in Syria (Other significant sponsors includes the USA and Israel. At least before they realized that maybe IS were bad people.)

The only reason that america did not invade Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan was that the saudi princes were buddy buddy with the Bush and Clinton families as well as other deep state creeps and thats how they escaped the terror label.

 

[xi0]

I don't really know how you can say the Taliban conquered the entire country in two weeks without fighting a battle when there were thousands of casualties on both sides since May. Not to single you out but the media has sort of glossed over this fact and acted like no attempt was made by Afghan forces to stay the offensive. The reality is everyone knew this would be the outcome the entire time, maybe they were surprised with how quickly it happened, but it was inevitable once US forces left.

 

[Xeroxed]

Its a figure of speech. It does not mean that there were no fighting whatsoever. Only that it was mostly no fighting compared to the size of the forces involved. And even if there were battles in may and forward, I was talking about the last two weeks when the Taliban took over all province capitols almost without a fight.

But you know all of this already.

 

[kkck]

TBH I don't see how waiting until winter would have made that big a difference. Ok, they wait until winter but then... comes spring, the afghan president flees and the military largely surrenders anyways? Is that a good enough reason for the US military to extend its already pointless stay in Afghanistan? The bare minimum for the US to extend its stay in Afghanistan should be a semblance of a chance of victory at least. Something that's worth fighting for... But annoying the Taliban so that they take over a few months from now instead of now is by no means that.

The main reason Biden is getting shit over this is US folk and allies potentially being stranded in Afghanistan but at least to me it seems pretty clear the majority of the intelligence Biden had (or listened to anyways) didn't suggest the Taliban takeover would be immediate.

 

[M3J]

I think it's just the republicans/Trump supporters giving Biden shit. Dems are shifting it all onto Trump while majority of the further-left-than-Dems are blaming every president from Bush II or Reagan. I don't remember what Reagan did, but I do agree that Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden are guilty of what's going on in Afghanistan, and Bush the most guilty. It's also scary how not enough Dems are bringin him up and are instead just shifting all blame to Trump.

 

[xi0]

It doesn't matter who is president when the pullout happened, they'd be taking the L regardless. But of course that doesn't stop either side from politicizing the fuck out of it despite the entire fiasco exemplifying the type of imperialist nonsense this country needs to move away from.

 

[shionoro]

To me that points to a larger problem beyond biden.
US intelligences seem to have ignored information about the Afghan army only existing on paper.

That begs the question whether more intelligence is tainted by wishful thinking and how reliable the information that gets relegated to the decision makers is.

 

[Franckie]

Afghanistan was never "winnable". The quagmire started with the Bush II administration's bungling of things. While they did succeed in dismantling Al Qaeda, they screwed up badly on gunning for Osama Bin Laden, which was thankfully rectified by the Obama administration. Pulling out of Afghanistant is the right thing to do as "nation building" was never our job to begin with. The evacuation is going well. Hopefully Biden will continue giving the Middle East the giant middle finger it deserves.

 

[kkck]

TBH I don't object to the national building part. Or at least providing substantial relief after the facts.. Sure, it's not the US's job but when you bomb a nation, whether there is good reason to or not, the ones that pay the price are normal ass folk who did nothing and it makes sense to provide help in a variety of forms. As far as google goes the afghan war has so far cost over 150k afghan lives, at least 50k of those being civilians... It's absurd to think that the US can just bomb a place and then it can retreat without providing any sort of relief going forward. Such a thing wouldn't even be in the US's national or security interests. Heck, if there actually was an Afghan government putting up a fight against the Taliban it'd even make sense for the US and other countries to actually provide support going forward.. The issue of course being that there currently isn't an Afghan government to ally with. Unless the new Afghan presidents pulls out of a hat...

 

[xi0]

Any leader that emerges while under military occupation is largely going to be seen as a puppet, even if by some miracle they're not a corrupt stooge.

 

[M3J]

Any country that had a hand in the shit that Afghanistan is seeing now has a duty to take in refugees. They're the ones who created refugees out of greed, it only makes sense they give them safe havens.

 

[shionoro]

The teaching that should be taken from Afghanistan imo can only be that the US has to put effort into stabilizing southern america.

 

[M3J]

no, US has to fuck off everywhere and stop interfering.

 

[kkck]

The teaching that should be taken from Afghanistan imo can only be that the US has to put effort into stabilizing southern america.

What?