Afghanistan Crisis

[WhiteRoseKillie]

21 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Maybe they should have turned Kabul into a Berlin, a little Disneyland of liberal values with big walls keeping medievalism out.

Kinda what they did, in reality. A couple more cities, as well, but large areas of the country won't even have noticed the US/UK invasion or withdrawal. 

[dirty dingus]

2 minutes ago, Left Back said:

Just switched it on to hear Starmer banging on about democracy in Afghanistan.  Clueless.

Chocolate teapot comes to mind when he appears.

[Ivo den Bieman]

 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

20 hours ago, Ad Lib said:

No don’t be stupid that would trigger a nuclear war, wouldn’t free a single Uyghur from any domestic oppression, and would lead to catastrophic loss of life that makes every war fought in the last 200 years look like a playful skirmish.

So, only impose Western Values on countries too weak to stand up for themselves, then?

[BigDoddyKane]

2 minutes ago, Ivo den Bieman said:

 

for both countries to do that could it be the staff were informed they couldnt tell anyone they were leaving?

Edited August 18, 2021 by BigDoddyKane

[WhiteRoseKillie]

20 hours ago, Ad Lib said:

No one is asking them to be a liberal democracy. No one is asking them even to treat women, LGBT people or religious minorities equally.

The standard is a really basic one: don't treat women like war trophies and don't systematically rape and dehumanise them.

OK to rape and dehumanise any blokes they disagree with, then? 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

20 hours ago, Ad Lib said:

Not far. I'm not denying that the Taliban had effective control over substantial parts of Afghanistan for most of the last 20 years. But the lives of millions in Kabul are not trivial.

I agree we should be doing everything feasible to free women and girls in Saudi society. I'm not convinced any military strategy that could be thought up and plausibly implemented in the foreseeable future would have the effect of doing that for even part of Saudi Arabia.

By contrast it did happen for Kabul. It would not have happened if we had withdrawn at any point in the last 20 years, and it will revert to not happening because we have withdrawn. That is the reality.

You've unwittingly nailed it there. Yes, it did happen for Kabul. For the rest of Afghanistan, not so much. But then, the oil/gas and rebuilding contracts were all being signed in Kabul, and the window-dressing was concentrated in the major population centres, so who, really, gave the slightest fúck what was going on elsewhere in the country?

[Ivo den Bieman]

Arguing the toss over whether we should have more Western "liberal interventionism" to solve the Taliban problem is like asking whether we should elect Chartists to eradicate the deficit.

Whatever moderate credibility "we" may have had there evaporated in the exhaust fumes of fleeing, shamefaced consular staff who turned their backs on colleagues and friends with nary a word.

The various Afghan factions , Chinese & Russians will decide what happens there now. I'd imagine being friendly with the Taliban and blocking any UN security council action- ha ha- in return for first dibs on mineral extraction and safe passage for Chinese goods westward.

That's the harvest of "Operation Enduring Freedom". It's not a reflection at all on the sincere efforts of soldiers and support staff who genuinely went in there with an aspiration to do their best, some of whom posted on this thread. It's a lead weight around the necks of the politicians responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths. Of course they'll die peacefully in their beds and no one will hold them to account.

 

[Ivo den Bieman]

4 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

for both countries to do that could it be the staff were informed they couldnt tell anyone they were leaving?

you're actually trying to defend this behaviour?

[BigDoddyKane]

1 minute ago, Ivo den Bieman said:

you're actually trying to defend this behaviour?

No im just wondering why and could that have been the case for the staff ?

 

Maybe dont jump to conclusions and engage in conversation first

[Ivo den Bieman]

Just now, BigDoddyKane said:

Maybe dont jump to conclusions and engage in conversation first

Physician, heal thyself

[HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows]

On 16/08/2021 at 16:16, welshbairn said:

These Taliban look quite genial coves..

 

 

I've got a beard and like to do f**k all but mill about all day, reckon I'd do well in Taliban

[ICTChris]

I read a very funny comment when I was reading some old stuff about the civil war followign the Soviet invasion.  The Najibullah (Soviet supported) regime defeated the Mujahadin in a battle for Jalalabad, after the factions backed by Pakistan staged a conventional assault on teh city.  Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik mujahadin commander, refused to take part in it and asked "why are the Afghans, who have never lost a war, taking advice from the Pakistanis, who have never won one?". 

 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

17 hours ago, Ad Lib said:

If you honestly think that NATO forces have tortured more people than the Taliban in Afghanistan or that they’ve killed even close to as many civilians on the basis that “it’s classified” you are beyond help.(1)

Nonsense. They are incapable because the Taliban has too much military and civic influence on their society and the Taliban are theocratic savages.(2)

The presence of NATO forces is not in itself “colonial brutality”. It is, on the contrary, the only guarantee they have against brutal theocratic oppression.

This is not like India or Egypt. We aren’t in Afghanistan to plunder its non-existent natural resources. We aren’t there to exploit cheap Labour to prop up an empire. Our presence there comes at great but justifiable cost to our own Exchequer.(3)

And our presence, on the whole, was a guarantor not of some great woke third wave feminist utopia, but of really fucking basic expectations about how women, on the whole, should be treated in the bits of their society not controlled by the Taliban. That you would give precedence to the wishes of godbothering patriarchs who treat women as chattels is very revealing and suggests people probably shouldn’t listen to you on questions of morality in this country either. (4)

 

1,. I know you want to turn this into a numbers game, but I'm just going to say that almost fifty thousand civilian deaths and millions of refugess created aren't exactly figures the US and NATO should be proud of. 

2. That, with all due respect, is appalingly racist.

3. Nope, "we" are there because we can't help following the Yanks in any intervention they ask. The Yanks, in turn, have made more than a few quid, especially through rebuilding areas which they bombed back to the stone age in the first place.Then there's that oil/gas pipeline..

4. "Godbothering patriarchs". Firstly, you are aware that the Yanks truly believe they are favoured by God, right? The Christian God, of course. Secondly, I would really like you to put up some kinnd of defence of the credentials our PM and the lately-deposed US President have for treating women with respect. I really can't wait for this. 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

11 hours ago, Ad Lib said:

The exit plan should have been “we don’t exit until we can say with Well founded confidence that the Taliban will not displace the Government”.

We weren’t trying to impose “Western democracy”. We were imposing “actually have elections” and “stop theocratically state sanctioning the raping, flogging and stoning to death/beheading of women and girls”. Thats several orders of magnitude short of Western democracy and is the absolute bare minimum necessary to drag a society out of the dark ages.

It can, and for twenty years did, impose a clear societal expectation in Kabul and other provincial capitals that women are human beings. Something the Taliban do not do.

Horseshit. There are plenty of Muslim majority countries and peoples that manage to afford women basic human rights. The Taliban do not speak for the Muslim world and it’s frankly disgusting that you are willing to equivocate in this way and basically engage in a racism of low expectations. You are in effect suggesting that Muslims by dint of their religion and political history are in some fundamental sense more predisposed towards barbarity towards women.

It is when they beat, rape, forcibly marry and stone women, you mealy mouthed coward.

You’re an excuse.

..and live in a country that won't fight back. All very noble, wee man, but when you exclude Saudi and China from your crusade because, well, reasons, you undermine youself. 

[NotThePars]

Looking forward to Ad Lib receiving all these notifications when he logs on

[GordonS]

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

I imagine British troops are in far more countries than we think.

Why?

[invergowrie arab]

WRK turning this into an MRA debate was not the turn I saw this taking 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

I remember someone publishing a story back in the days when everything was in redwhiteandblue-vision, and they'd been talking to one of the recently deposed Taliban. 

"What will the Taliban do now that US-led forces have control of the country?"

"We wait."

 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

2 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

WRK turning this into an MRA debate was not the turn I saw this taking 

MRA? Sorry, you've lost me.