Afghanistan Falls

[Free]

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Matthew Dowd Defends Biden on Afghanistan Withdrawal, Says Media Coverage ‘Way Over the Top’

“We should judge it on the data of what’s happened and not by anecdotes, and sometimes the press has a tendency to judge things by anecdotes and not the data,” he continued. “And the data for the last week shows Joe Biden has basically gotten 30,000 people out of Afghanistan without a single loss of an American life.”


Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte said “there tends to be a bias in the press towards military intervention,” and said, “We also see why it was so hard for presidents in the past to pull out of Afghanistan. They were afraid of exactly this kind of press overreaction.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

In hindsight they stopped being a reliable partner after the Iron Curtain fell. Instead of the quid pro quo nature of Cold War NATO (military support in exchange for a first line of defense) it became an organisation focused on staying in pole position after they "won"* the Cold War.

Spoiler

*they didn't won though, the Ruuskjis just decided the game was stoopid and quit playing

I'm not so sure the citizens of the former European People's Democracies and of the Baltic Republics illegally occupied by the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact would see it quite the same way -- presumably at the time they joined they at least hoped that NATO membership might offer them a degree of security if Moscow ever wanted "the near abroad" back, but those hopes are probably looking pretty thin now, I agree.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

this was from people following those Afghans (1000+) being housed at NVCC in Manassas

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative (though hardly particularly pro-government) chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee and a former army officer, is very critical of the way the withdrawal was handled, fleshes out Blair's "idiotic slogan" jibe, and reminds us that British forces have not seen combat there since 2014 but have been working steadily in rural areas, with the local villages, helping them build and, by their presence, providing protection.

However, what's done can't now be undone and, he says, the important thing is to try to get international support for a UN-led initiative to stave off a humanitarian disaster in the country, as the civil servants, managers and administrators -- the people who actually keep any society going -- are fleeing the country as fast as they can, and funds are rapidly drying up, as US aid ceases and sanctions bite.

The Taliban are a band of different militias, who until now were united by the common goal of expelling foreign forces from the country. That's now happened, and they find they've got a country to run, of which they'll probably make as good a fist as would the Proud Boys and Amon Bundy and his associates if they took over running the federal civil service.

 

[Romana]

 

[danielravennest]

I'm becoming somewhat unconvinced that the withdrawal could have been undertaken in a way that looks meaningfully different from how it does now.

I think any attempt by the US to call for people to start evacuating, say, two weeks earlier, would just have prompted the government to collapse two weeks earlier.

They could have started getting people out quietly, informing them one at a time to leave, but keep quiet about it "I'm going to see family for a few weeks", "I've been reassigned stateside for some training", etc. Once you are down to a manageable level, then pull out the government staff and finally the military.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

And so you do know think that the reason for going to Afghanistan in 2001 was really to fight terrorism? Now that's cute.

Remember when someone typed something along the lines of "The reason WE WERE FUCKING TOLD for the invasion" was driving out Al Qaeda? Oh, right, that was me. Maybe you missed some fucking nuance there, but I made clear that this was THE OFFICAL Reason. And, in point of fact, it turns out that many Americans, including in high policy making positions, actually did believe that. The problem is that Americans, especially the ones in power, believe stupid shit all the time.

On the one hand, that is where Bin Laden packed up and moved to after the Saudis cracked down on inconvenient Wahhabi extremists. And by "inconvenient" I mean the ones who were questioning official Saudi policy, not the ones running the state schools and religious bureaus. Bin Laden had connections there from fighting the Soviets with the blessing of the CIA and some indirect American training and support.

With the Bush administration closely connected to the Saudi government and business elites, we obviously couldn't go after the government that created and supported itself with the Wahhabist establishment. So it was obvious that we needed to invade Afghanistan. And Iran.

The US could have carried out a short, limited operation to reduce Al Qaeda's bases and cut off their support. But instead, we dragged NATO into it and decided to stay and "fix" the place. So I really do think the Bush administration thought they could end the threat there and build up the local government, but they were idiots and they made a typical American mistake: they failed to articulate a clear, concise, limited goal before starting a military operation. If you don't set a goal, you can never achieve them, and you never know when the mission is over. It creeps into nation-building, which defaults to installing a friendly but corrupt and ineffective regime.

It's true that the USA never had much experience with terrorist organisations in their homeland. There were only few incidents which ever happened. This means they also had not so much own knowledge about how to really fight terorrism at home.

You think the US doesn't have terrorists? That's fucking cute. We have the KKK, the Sovereign Citizens, the John Birch Society, the Birch John Society (they demand a return to wooden outhouses), a host of Skinheads, Proud Boys, the 3%, the Tea Party, Operation Rescue, and the LAPD. We are awash with terrorists, and there are regular terror attacks in the US every year. The difference with 9/11 and the earlier Trade Center bombings was that the terrorists were (foreign) and (brown). That made them different from the background noise of domestic terrorism that is daily fucking life in the US. The Iroquois still consider George Fucking Washington a terrorist for his campaigns in the French and Indian War. We have a long history of terrorists, and I still think that John Brown was right, but he was a terrorist.

Going to Afghanistan was mostly about one thing in reality, like always when the USA invade somewhere: access to oil and natural gas.

This is the same really stupid bullshit I keep hearing from people who don't like to think too much but don't like American foreign policy. Including a bunch of sincere but often shallow Americans. It gives one stupid magic fucking bullet to explain everything, and it is wrong far more often than it is right.

The first thing to get out of the way is that Americans and many Europeans like to point out that building a central government in Afghanistan failed because people there are "tribal." That smug assurance brings with it an unstated assumption that we are not. Guess what, many Americans are (and in the wake of the pandemic, it is clear that trialists against people who see the world as a community is at the heart of America's current political divide). And the worst American tribe isn't the petrochemical industry (they are in the top 5). The worst is the fucking Fundamentalists. And the Bush and Trump administrations were awash in them.

Remember one of our Generals making a comment that we would win because "our God is bigger than their God"? They fucking really believe this shit. They see a clash of cultures, with Christians at the top and godless Muslims as a primary threat (except the ones we are in business with). People who formulated American policy really were this stupid, and they appealed to even more idiotic followers who boil most of the world down to US (American and a few countries when they behave) and Them. "US' is Christian and Good. Them isn't. Which is letting the Republicans rehabilitate Russia since Putin has elevated the Orthodox Church there to what many American denominations want to be.

So the first reaction after 9/11 was tribal. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, many people who usually know better, who act globally instead of tribally, hopped on board for a short time. I remember one of the speakers at the hastily organized vigil on 9/11 at the University I was working at spent most of their time blaming Islam, Jews, and Buddhists for the attack without a fucking clue what the actual causes were. It was a tribal reaction to an outside attack, and the Bush administration used that anger to appease fundamentalists, their business interests, and their Saudi and other Arab partners. After the shit hit the fan, opportunists swept in to make money where they could off of the chaos, from military contractors to weapon suppliers to looting oil, gas, antiques, drugs, and anything else they could turn a profit from.

Where the petrochemical industry has made money, it has been opportunistic and after the fact, driven largely by their investment in American politicians. They don't have a board with a list of places the US needs to invade, they have a list of places they can make money and the connections to use global events to turn a profit.

 

[Abigail Longmeadow]

Don't be so quick to rule out "resources" as a motive for the US "nation building" attempt in Afghanistan. US reports (including reports from the US military and published in the New York Times and Reuters) say Afghanistan has enormous untapped mineral resources. Afghanistan is estimated to have $1 to $3 Trillion USD in mineral resources. Oil, gas, iron, copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals critical for high-tech devices. The rare earth minerals are particularly an issue, because China has a near monopoly on production of some specific, critically needed rare earths (such as neodymium). Rare earths are in short supply, and are critical for many "high tech" products such as cell phones, electric cars, batteries, lasers, aircraft parts, and space craft parts.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Don't be so quick to rule out "resources" as a motive for the US "nation building" attempt in Afghanistan. US reports (including reports from the US military and published in the New York Times and Reuters) say Afghanistan has enormous untapped mineral resources. Afghanistan is estimated to have $1 to $3 Trillion USD in mineral resources. Oil, gas, iron, copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals critical for high-tech devices. The rare earth minerals are particularly an issue, because China has a near monopoly on production of some specific, critically needed rare earths (such as neodymium). Rare earths are in short supply, and are critical for many "high tech" products such as cell phones, electric cars, batteries, lasers, aircraft parts, and space craft parts.

If we were after minerals, the US would have to stay to develop them. Funding a break-away republic is a traditional way of creating a dependent state egar to exchange resources for support. But we didn't do that.

If you can show how pissing everyone off for a couple of decades while doing sweet fuck all to develop mines for resources that exist in the Rocky Mountains leads to the US gaining more rare earth elements then I will entertain the suggestion.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

If we were after minerals, the US would have to stay to develop them. Funding a break-away republic is a traditional way of creating a dependent state egar to exchange resources for support. But we didn't do that.

Well... not necessarily. It's all about trust, and how you do honor the feelings of the locals.

Of course when a country is of the opinion that this is only doable with maintaining a steady military presence, then the number of soldiers in Afghanistan was way too low for that purpose. The country really has harsh mountains, and the West only ruled some cities, but not the harsh area of the land. And stocking up the presence to a point that the whole country was "pacified" would just create one result: even more the feeling that it's an occupied country, more resistance, and the urge to throw the West out. What we got was a war of attrition, no conventional army can really cope with such a thing easily.

Stocking up the number of soldiers to that point would have never been something which in the home countries of the participating armies would get a majority. Aside that it would have been a bad idea, because it would increase the inner tensions.

In 1954 there were inner tensions in Algeria, between the local 8 million population and 1 million French settlers. France back then send over 500000 soldiers to pacify the situation. It lead to a war of over 8 years and ended in Algeria becoming independent. In the end France withdrawed because De Gaulle realised that despite his army had a good grip on the country they will be never safe until they pull out. And so he did. Trying get a firm grip on a country like Afghanistan probably also requires a number of soldiers in the same league.

The other way is to work with the locals, let them do whatever they do and just do trade with them. That's what the Chinese are now trying to do, making some treaties, get the stuff out and otherwise let the Taliban do whatever they want in their wasteland. As long as they are getting the money and China the ressources, both sides are happy. Basically the same thing the West does with Saudi Arabia. The West does not care about public stoning of women in that country, sharia being law or Wahhabism at all. As long we do get our oil from them and petrochemical products we are happy, and otherwise shut the fuck up.

The plain truth is that the change to a Western style democracy in that country most come from within. All attempts otherwise are doomed to fail.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The West does not care about public stoning of women in that country, sharia being law or Wahhabism at all. As long we do get our oil from them and petrochemical products we are happy, and otherwise shut the fuck up.

I don't think it's the case that "The West does not care," any more than it's a case of "The locals don't care," when presumably at least the women subjected to this cruel punishment must care quite a lot, as must their friends and families, as must everyone there who fears they may face a similar fate.

Before the end of apartheid in South Africa, lots of people (including me) boycotted South African oranges and other produce, which did certainly have an effect over the years, but that was possible only because there were alternative sources available and it's easy for shoppers to identify the source of the fruit and veg on offer.

However, since I have no way knowing whether the fuel in the pumps at any particular petrol station come from Saudi or the North Sea, there's no way I can boycott Saudi petrol in the way I could refuse to buy South African oranges and grapes, so I don't really have much choice in the matter, and neither does anyone else, any more than do I have any realistic decisions to make about the working conditions of people in Asian factories who assemble the components of my phone or laptop, or the labourers who mine and extract the rare metals and minerals required in their manufacture.

It's not that people, whether in the KSA, Afghanistan, "the West" or anywhere else "don't care" but that there's a limited amount they can do about it. If it were possible for me to buy fuel knowing that it originated from countries with a decent human rights record, I'm sure I'd pay a premium to use it, but that's simply not an option.

 

[Free]

Remember who didn't want them to immigrate to the US:

Veteran eviscerates ‘privileged brat’ Stephen Miller for blocking Afghan refugees

Matt Zeller told CNN former Trump adviser should be ‘held accountable for war crimes’

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Free]

 

[Jolene Benoir]

They were headquartered there.

I would add that they, and other potential terrorists, were trained there as well, all under the watchful and accomodating eye of the Taliban. I find it highly dubious to suggest anything otherwise. It fits an agenda of implying that we never needed to enter Afghanistan at all, but it's false to suggest that Afghanistan was not a terrorist training ground who also harbored terrorists, namely Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

For the sake of the discussion, here's the data on Rare Earth element (REE) exploitation:

Locations of Deposits

Afghanistan's Rare Earth Element Bonanza

U.S. agencies estimate Afghanistans mineral deposits to be worth upwards of $1 trillion. In fact, a classified Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium. (Although lithium is technically not a rare earth element, it serves some of the same purposes.)

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Biden pours salt into wounds of relations with Europe at G7 meeting

Analysis: US president dashes hopes he might acknowledge damage done by handling of Afghan withdrawal

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

 

[Innula Zenovka]

U.S. agencies estimate Afghanistans mineral deposits to be worth upwards of $1 trillion. In fact, a classified Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium. (Although lithium is technically not a rare earth element, it serves some of the same purposes.)

Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars

At just short of 20 years, the now-ending U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan was America's longest war. Ordinary Americans tended to forget about it, and it received measurably less oversight from Congress than the Vietnam War did.

apnews.com

.

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.
Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

 

[Abigail Longmeadow]

Yep. The cost of the Afghanistan war has been immense. It was foolish in the extreme to try to take over and reshape Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.

 

[bubblesort]

WhatsApp shut down the Taliban's complaint line...
(sorry that's paywalled, here's an article that probably isn't)

The taliban had a complaint line! Holy crap, that must have been the craziest job in the world. I thought working at Cingular/AT&T was bad, but the Taliban complaint line sounds like a monty python sketch.

"Hello? Yes, this is the Taliban complaint line... we behead problems for you! ... ah, yes, I see... you want to go outside without a head scarf because it's 120 degrees in the shade? ... uh-huh... yes, I can absolutely help you with that problem. Just give me your present location, and we will send our problem solvers over to fix you... I mean, fix your issue right away... Allah Ackbar, and have a nice day! ... *clicks to next caller* ... hello? Yes, taliban complaint line... oh, your family was beheaded in the street? ... are you sure it was the taliban? I mean, lots of people behead people, it happens all the time. It might have been the French. The french are famous for their beheadings! ... well, how can you be sure? Did they use a guillotine? ... an axe! ... Well, they could have been vikings. ... oh, you have video? ... I'm going to have to escalate this to the family dismemberment department. Please hold..."

Also... can the US government please open a complaint line? I got a bunch of complaints, and I need a line for them!