Afghanistan Crisis

[Ad Lib]

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

After that the troops should have left but humanitarian efforts continued. This would have made it much more difficult for the Taliban to return imo.

As soon as we withdrew troops, at any time in the last two decades, the Taliban would have simply done what they've done now, and retaken control of the country. Humanitarian operations would have been completely and utterly futile without a military presence to hold them back.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

The borderlands for the Taliban was the countryside where most Afghans live. To be out there telling a most likely poorly or uneducated farmer that he is doing his life wrong and he must change is tantamount to being a modern day missionary.

Giving him the vote, as mentioned before, although good, is nothing, means nothing at this point.

I would hazard a guess that the average Afghan would not be setting his sites on his daughter going to university or having equality and the thought of that today would be questionable. The average Afghan would probably want his daughter to be safe and secure and married to a supportive husband within the local and religious values he holds dear and despite us not fully agreeing with that we should accept that at this point.

Except no. We shouldn't accept that a father gets to decide whether his daughter gets married, or to whom. Anywhere. Ever. It is never acceptable, regardless of cultural sensitivities, to whip and beat a woman for being outside without "her minder".

You aren't calling for us to be sensitive to the cultural concerns of those living in Afghanistan. You are calling for us to privilege the desires and power of a specific subset of abusive men, and saying that we should tolerate the subjugation of women to such an extent that it is almost worse than when the US Constitution treated non-free people as 3/5 of a person.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Cities and countryside everywhere is hugely different and more magnified in developing countries. All the developments in Kabul count for little if the majority of the population is outside it unless you built a wall. All that we created was a have and have nots and the Taliban could sail through the have nots without resistance, leaving Kabul exposed. The idea that the west knew Kabul would fall is an admission of their f**k ups, how quickly it fell shows how much they fucked up. To go back and repeat is stupidity and a huge amount of human suffering.

Sorry but this is just nonsense. While the West had a concerted military presence, the major provincial capitals, not just Kabul, were under Government control. We are right now seeing anti-Taliban protests in some of these capitals, which are being brutally suppressed and leading to deaths of civilians.

Saying that the lives of women and girls in Kabul somehow "count for little" just because other people's lives haven't really changed because they're living under the Taliban now and were living under the Taliban before simply doesn't stack up. The gains in Kabul were real, and could have been effectively permanent if we'd just kept our troops there.

Kabul wouldn't have been exposed (to anything like the extent that it was) if we hadn't withdrawn our troops.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

The more we pushed our ideas onto the population no matter how right we believe we are, the more we allowed the Taliban the ability to walk back in. 

This is rubbish. The Taliban did not gain support because little girls started going to school in Kabul.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

If the left of the scale is moderate Islam and right of the scale is Sharia Law, where does the western, Christian based value sit? Not on the scale at all. The west need to move the scale first, get it to the left first, then….. Otherwise the west will always be wrong at the ‘baseline’.

1. Western values aren't Christian values and vice versa.

2. We aren't imposing Western values. We are imposing values that are entirely consistent with those of hundreds of millions of Muslims on the planet.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

It takes multiple generations to change ideals.

We're not trying to change ideals. We're using military power to stop specific people physically beating, raping and killing other people.

9 hours ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Being humble and willing to learn from anyone, even an Afghan farmer, is something of huge value than considering your values are unequivocal. 

Anyone who "respects the opinion" of someone who says his daughter shouldn't be allowed to choose if and who to marry, that she should be publicly beaten with a whip if she goes outside unaccompanied by her male minder, that she should be banned on pain of beating from going to school, that if she refuses to have sex with her husband or a soldier that has just turned up at the door, and that she will be stoned to death if she shows her face or her hair in public, is unequivocally wrong and doesn't themselves deserve to have their opinion respected.

[btb]

Francis "History is dead" Fukiyama, who declared this famous statement about the triumph of Western Capitalism upon the collapse of the USSR in the wake of it's own Afghan debacle has declared he might be wrong - a significant day for an old class warrior like myself.

I don't agree with the "something had to be done" mantra, it was a bad decision by the US (and it's client states) to invade Afghanistan in 2001 just as international pressure was beginning to change the Taliban's initial belligerence, it was always more about restoring Dubya's image and his 2004 re-election prospects.

[Tight minge]

25 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

As soon as we withdrew troops, at any time in the last two decades, the Taliban would have simply done what they've done now, and retaken control of the country. Humanitarian operations would have been completely and utterly futile without a military presence to hold them back.

Except no. We shouldn't accept that a father gets to decide whether his daughter gets married, or to whom. Anywhere. Ever. It is never acceptable, regardless of cultural sensitivities, to whip and beat a woman for being outside without "her minder".

You aren't calling for us to be sensitive to the cultural concerns of those living in Afghanistan. You are calling for us to privilege the desires and power of a specific subset of abusive men, and saying that we should tolerate the subjugation of women to such an extent that it is almost worse than when the US Constitution treated non-free people as 3/5 of a person.

Sorry but this is just nonsense. While the West had a concerted military presence, the major provincial capitals, not just Kabul, were under Government control. We are right now seeing anti-Taliban protests in some of these capitals, which are being brutally suppressed and leading to deaths of civilians.

Saying that the lives of women and girls in Kabul somehow "count for little" just because other people's lives haven't really changed because they're living under the Taliban now and were living under the Taliban before simply doesn't stack up. The gains in Kabul were real, and could have been effectively permanent if we'd just kept our troops there.

Kabul wouldn't have been exposed (to anything like the extent that it was) if we hadn't withdrawn our troops.

This is rubbish. The Taliban did not gain support because little girls started going to school in Kabul.

1. Western values aren't Christian values and vice versa.

2. We aren't imposing Western values. We are imposing values that are entirely consistent with those of hundreds of millions of Muslims on the planet.

We're not trying to change ideals. We're using military power to stop specific people physically beating, raping and killing other people.

Anyone who "respects the opinion" of someone who says his daughter shouldn't be allowed to choose if and who to marry, that she should be publicly beaten with a whip if she goes outside unaccompanied by her male minder, that she should be banned on pain of beating from going to school, that if she refuses to have sex with her husband or a soldier that has just turned up at the door, and that she will be stoned to death if she shows her face or her hair in public, is unequivocally wrong and doesn't themselves deserve to have their opinion respected.

You have some reading comprehension issues.

You have some comprehension issues.

You have some issues.

[Kye Powell]

It's very scary because of what is happening in this country. It is very scary in general that in the modern world, in the era of development of digital technologies and civilization in general, there are local political and economic conflicts that lead to disastrous consequences for the population of the entire planet. Yesterday on the page https://envrexperts.com/free-essays/chernobyl/ I read some very interesting essays that relate to the Chernobyl tragedy and its consequences. The ecological disaster of Chernobyl is an event after which we all need to draw the right conclusions.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Kye Powell

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, Kye Powell said:

It's very scary because of what is happening in this country.

I know what you mean. Cutting down the number of crisps in a bag without telling us for instance. What the hell's going on?

[WhiteRoseKillie]

43 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

As soon as we withdrew troops, at any time in the last two decades, the Taliban would have simply done what they've done now, and retaken control of the country. Humanitarian operations would have been completely and utterly futile without a military presence to hold them back.

Except no. We shouldn't accept that a father gets to decide whether his daughter gets married, or to whom. Anywhere. Ever. It is never acceptable, regardless of cultural sensitivities, to whip and beat a woman for being outside without "her minder".

You aren't calling for us to be sensitive to the cultural concerns of those living in Afghanistan. You are calling for us to privilege the desires and power of a specific subset of abusive men, and saying that we should tolerate the subjugation of women to such an extent that it is almost worse than when the US Constitution treated non-free people as 3/5 of a person.

Sorry but this is just nonsense. While the West had a concerted military presence, the major provincial capitals, not just Kabul, were under Government control. We are right now seeing anti-Taliban protests in some of these capitals, which are being brutally suppressed and leading to deaths of civilians.

Saying that the lives of women and girls in Kabul somehow "count for little" just because other people's lives haven't really changed because they're living under the Taliban now and were living under the Taliban before simply doesn't stack up. The gains in Kabul were real, and could have been effectively permanent if we'd just kept our troops there.

Kabul wouldn't have been exposed (to anything like the extent that it was) if we hadn't withdrawn our troops.

This is rubbish. The Taliban did not gain support because little girls started going to school in Kabul.

1. Western values aren't Christian values and vice versa.

2. We aren't imposing Western values. We are imposing values that are entirely consistent with those of hundreds of millions of Muslims on the planet.

We're not trying to change ideals. We're using military power to stop specific people physically beating, raping and killing other people.

Anyone who "respects the opinion" of someone who says his daughter shouldn't be allowed to choose if and who to marry, that she should be publicly beaten with a whip if she goes outside unaccompanied by her male minder, that she should be banned on pain of beating from going to school, that if she refuses to have sex with her husband or a soldier that has just turned up at the door, and that she will be stoned to death if she shows her face or her hair in public, is unequivocally wrong and doesn't themselves deserve to have their opinion respected.

Strange that, where most of us are trying our best on this thread to differentiate between the actions of, amongst other groups, the US, various UK Governments, "The West" in general, and NATO, you continue to use this nebulous "we". Can I just ask, outside of casting your vote in a GE, how much influence you believe you have brought to bear, or can bring to bear on this situation? Who are you actually speaking for?

[Ad Lib]

6 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

Strange that, where most of us are trying our best on this thread to differentiate between the actions of, amongst other groups, the US, various UK Governments, "The West" in general, and NATO, you continue to use this nebulous "we". Can I just ask, outside of casting your vote in a GE, how much influence you believe you have brought to bear, or can bring to bear on this situation? Who are you actually speaking for?

"We" clearly refers to "the member states of NATO who have withdrawn a military presence from Afghanistan". Those states. One of which you and I live in, and which has an elected government which acts on the behalf of the people living here on the international stage.

This isn't complicated.

I am not suggesting that you personally as a voter had any real say in this. Thank goodness you didn't.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Ad Lib

[welshbairn]

31 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

"We" clearly refers to "the member states of NATO who have withdrawn a military presence from Afghanistan". Those states. One of which you and I live in, and which has an elected government which acts on the behalf of the people living here on the international stage.

This isn't complicated.

I am not suggesting that you personally as a voter had any real say in this. Thank goodness you didn't.

Out of interest, would you have been in favour of invading Afghanistan to enforce women's rights if 9/11 hadn't happened or if Al Qaeda didn't have a presence there? 

Edited August 20, 2021 by welshbairn

[WhiteRoseKillie]

3 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Out of interest, would you have been in favour of invading Afghanistan to enforce women's rights if 9/11 hadn't happened or if Al Qaeda didn't have a presence there? 

[Ad Lib]

20 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Out of interest, would you have been in favour of invading Afghanistan to enforce women's rights if 9/11 hadn't happened or if Al Qaeda didn't have a presence there?

Possibly, yes.

But one doesn’t have to have been in favour of that at the time to be in favour of NATO forces pursuing those objectives once they are there.

And the mere fact that it might not have been the only, or primary, or a main objective underpinning the initial intervention doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be relevant and dominant in the assessment about whether and when to withdraw.

Because as I said earlier, once a state or group of states initiates military intervention it owns the consequences of that intervention and assumes responsibility for the protection of those over whose lives they have established a degree of control.

If an army goes into a country with an appalling record on women’s rights, it and its state has a duty to protect and guarantee the basic physical safety and autonomy of as many women in that country as is feasible, until such a time that their presence is no longer required to ensure that basic physical safety and autonomy.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Ad Lib

[WhiteRoseKillie]

44 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

"We" clearly refers to "the member states of NATO who have withdrawn a military presence from Afghanistan". Those states. One of which you and I live in, and which has an elected government which acts on the behalf of the people living here on the international stage.

This isn't complicated.

I am not suggesting that you personally as a voter had any real say in this. Thank goodness you didn't.

So, of all those many NATO states, how many have had a sustained, substantial involvement in this shambles? And are you ignoring the presence of troops from non-NATO nations?

It actually is pretty complicated. Which is kind of why "we" should be demanding that our Ls and Ms have an exit strategy before committing to actions of this magnitude. 

I never suggested I ever did have say in this. I will guarantee, however, that I have voiced my opposition to this, and other, shambolic interventions publicly, and both before and after the fact. I feel sure the same cannot be said of yourself. 

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, btb said:

Francis "History is dead" Fukiyama, who declared this famous statement about the triumph of Western Capitalism upon the collapse of the USSR in the wake of it's own Afghan debacle has declared he might be wrong - a significant day for an old class warrior like myself.

Actually feel bad for him at this point. I think there's a way to frame his argument where he's correct as well but lol.

[welshbairn]

17 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Possibly, yes.

But one doesn’t have to have been in favour of that at the time to be in favour of NATO forces pursuing those objectives once they are there.

And the mere fact that it might not have been the only, or primary, or a main objective underpinning the initial intervention doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be relevant and dominant in the assessment about whether and when to withdraw.

Because as I said earlier, once a state or group of states initiates military intervention it owns the consequences of that intervention and assumes responsibility for the protection of those over whose lives they have established a degree of control.

If an army goes into a country with an appalling record on women’s rights, it and it’s state has a duty to protect and guarantee the basic physical safety and autonomy of as many women in that country as is feasible, until such a time that their presence is no longer required to ensure that basic physical safety and autonomy.

If the world adopts this as a rule, that if you attack a country for a military objective you can't leave until the culture has transformed into accepting and enforcing a set of liberal norms, then peace will be upon us as the cost of military action will be way too great. Hallelujah!

Edited August 20, 2021 by welshbairn

[101]

3 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

If the world adopts this as a rule, that if you attack a country for a military objective you can't leave until the culture has transformed into accepting and enforcing a set of liberal norms, then peace will be upon us as the cost of military action will be too great. Hallelujah!

Going to be fun pretending that Qatar is fine during the world cup as the cameras try and not film the hundreds of not thousands of slaves.

Or perhaps we should cut ties with the Saudis who are one of our closest trading partners in the region.

And maybe we should have a word with our commonwealth partners that still criminalise homosexuality. 

Plenty of work to be done around the world, almost none of it involves sending in the army even if we could afford it. Which is assume is your point?

[WhiteRoseKillie]

8 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

If the world adopts this as a rule, that if you attack a country for a military objective you can't leave until the culture has transformed into accepting and enforcing a set of liberal norms, then peace will be upon us as the cost of military action will be too great. Hallelujah!

I just can't wait for his reaction when the SC overturns Roe Vs. Wade - fairly basic oppression of women's rights right there. 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

Going to be fun pretending that Qatar is fine during the world cup as the cameras try and not film the hundreds of not thousands of slaves.

Or perhaps we should cut ties with the Saudis who are one of our closest trading partners in the region.

And maybe we should have a word with our commonwealth partners that still criminalise homosexuality. 

Plenty of work to be done around the world, almost none of it involves sending in the army even if we could afford it. Which is assume is your point?

Absolutely the point that we need to hammer home. Unfortunately, and Saudi is the prime example, the Profit Motive is a much more powerful obstacle than any ideology. Something that seems to have bypassed plenty of warmongering flag-shaggers - both in the HoC and in wider society. 

[Ad Lib]

5 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

So, of all those many NATO states, how many have had a sustained, substantial involvement in this shambles? And are you ignoring the presence of troops from non-NATO nations?

I'm sure you think you're being clever here, but both the International Security Assistance Force (for the actual war in Afghanistan) and the Resolute Support Mission (from 2014 onwards when the main combat mission drew to a close) were NATO-led missions. As recently as February, seven countries had more than 500 troops deployed in Resolute Support Mission, including six NATO member states (US, UK, Germany, Italy, Romania and Turkey) and one NATO partner state (Georgia). In total, almost forty countries, most of which are either NATO members or NATO partners, had a continuing military presence in Afghanistan just six months ago.

It was very clearly a mission that would not have been possible without NATO, was led and co-ordinated by NATO's joint command, and which involved predominantly NATO military personnel.

5 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

It actually is pretty complicated. Which is kind of why "we" should be demanding that our Ls and Ms have an exit strategy before committing to actions of this magnitude. 

Equally, since the laws of thermodynamics prohibit travelling backwards in spacetime, there's not much point demanding an exit strategy before committing to something that happened 20 years ago. I stand here today and demand that Neville Chamberlain gives us a clear exit strategy for World War 2!

More importantly, given the severity of the consequences of withdrawal from Afghanistan, we should have had a clear exit strategy before we exited the country. Something Joe Biden and his "poodles" (as you like to call them) sorely lacked.

5 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

I never suggested I ever did have say in this. I will guarantee, however, that I have voiced my opposition to this, and other, shambolic interventions publicly, and both before and after the fact. I feel sure the same cannot be said of yourself. 

I don't care whether you supported, or did not support, the original intervention. For the record, I supported it, albeit I was ten so you probably shouldn't read too much either way into the perspective I took then (even though it was demonstrably right).

As I explained before crowing away about how we should "never have gone in" is not itself a justification for withdrawal, or indeed for withdrawal at this point in time. It can only be such a justification if you think that the countries who sent their military into Afghanistan in the first place somehow have no moral responsibility for the stability of the region and safety of those in Afghanistan as a result of having intervened.

If you'll forgive the analogy, you are basically saying that someone who fathers a child in an extramarital affair should stop paying child support because "he never should have had the affair". But he did have the affair. And he fathered a child. That he's upset his wife and that the finances for bringing up her children are diminished is neither here nor there. The father has a duty, an obligation, to clean up his own mess and to set up his kids until they are able to look after themselves.

[101]

1 minute ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

Absolutely the point that we need to hammer home. Unfortunately, and Saudi is the prime example, the Profit Motive is a much more powerful obstacle than any ideology. Something that seems to have bypassed plenty of warmongering flag-shaggers - both in the HoC and in wider society. 

I don't know if it would work but public comparison between Afghanistan and the new regime and Saudi Arabia might make the Saudis get their arse in gear so as to look more liberal than a militant mob. 

Although I highly doubt it, if we are giving the Afghans a wide berth for human rights abuses (rightly so) it makes a mockery to then have a best pals act with the monarchy in Saudia Arabia.

[Ad Lib]

16 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

If the world adopts this as a rule, that if you attack a country for a military objective you can't leave until the culture has transformed into accepting and enforcing a set of liberal norms, then peace will be upon us as the cost of military action will be way too great. Hallelujah!

I'm not asking "the world" to "adopt this rule".

It is not a set of "liberal norms" that women and girls should not be forcibly married, beaten for being alone in public, raped by soldiers as trophies. It is among the absolute bare fucking minimum set of norms that gives moral legitimacy to the existence of political power.

And no, the West just sitting back and passively doing nothing does not mean there will be "peace" in the world. It means that Russia and China will dominate more of the planet, enable more despotic and brutal regimes to oppress their people, and will destabilise the peace in the West that you and hundreds of millions of others take for granted.

[Ad Lib]

12 minutes ago, 101 said:

Going to be fun pretending that Qatar is fine during the world cup as the cameras try and not film the hundreds of not thousands of slaves.

The World Cup shouldn't be going to Qatar, we agree.

12 minutes ago, 101 said:

Or perhaps we should cut ties with the Saudis who are one of our closest trading partners in the region.

The US and UK shouldn't sell arms to Saudi Arabia and should impose economic sanctions on them for how they treat women, LGBT people and ethnic minorities and for their role in the conflict in Yemen. We agree.

12 minutes ago, 101 said:

And maybe we should have a word with our commonwealth partners that still criminalise homosexuality.

Yes we should. We agree.

12 minutes ago, 101 said:

Plenty of work to be done around the world, almost none of it involves sending in the army even if we could afford it. Which is assume is your point?

But in some cases it does require military force to be used. People who go door to door looking for teenage girls to rape as a trophy aren't interested in "negotiating" their way out of barbarity.