Afghanistan Falls

[Ellie]

Hmm.

Certainly men in a lot of different Afghan militias -- the sort of outfits members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and Amon Bundy and his friends and members of the Second Amendment Free Baptist Church of Christ the White Supremacist dream about belonging to -- didn't want the changes, but I'm not sure they're synonymous with "the country ."

Clearly a lot of women must welcomed these changes, and so too, in many cases, must have their families and (in many areas) village, clan and tribal leaders, or there wouldn't now be so many women who have, during last 20 years, enjoyed the benefits of an education and career, and find themselves forced to flee the country or go into hiding, burning all their degrees and diplomas.

I could be misinformed, but had heard that the advancements in womens rights mostly benefitted those in the cities, while the same reforms hardly reached the village level.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I could be misinformed, but had heard that the advancements in womens rights mostly benefitted those in the cities, while the same reforms hardly reached the village level.

Yes, just as if you live in a remote part of the rural US or UK you'll probably have to move somewhere larger if you want to pursue your education beyond a certain level, and you'll probably end up living and working in a city rather than back home in rural Texas or rural Helmand Province.

That you'll find a lot easier to do if your parents support you, and even though you continue living in the big city and eventually make your home there, that doesn't mean you're necessarily estranged from the family.

 

[WolfEyes]

Everything We did in Afghanistan and Iraq was for nothing. Worse than nothing as things are worse not even the same. I often wonder, are we the bad guys? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Start with Korea and work your way forward in time.

 

[WolfEyes]

At no time am I asking you to respect it or like it or give it a free pass for anything. This is not about some kumbah-ya social tolerance nonsense. It's just that "primitive" is a term that you are in fact using in a pejorative sense by applying it to a group of people you don't happen to like (neither do I).

I wouldn't give a damn about you insulting the Taliban or even the Afghans, but the word primitive is used to describe many indigenous native populations that in no way reflect the barbarism that you are equating with that word. Stop perpetuating the myth that any current society is "primitive."

At best, the term might apply to some paleolithic humans, but even there I'm doubtful they were as uncomplicated as we like to think.

Thank you. For opening your mind, ears and eyes and closing the mouth to understand. Thank you.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I think that's why the Taliban encountered so little resistance this time -- people remembered what happened when the Soviet forces left, and didn't want to see it happen again when the Americans left in their turn.

One of the (several) reasons the Taliban didn't encounter much resistance is because they adopted the age-old strategy of Genghis Khan and bribed the leaders of some of the next city/cities to avoid a battle. In a feudal system like theirs, bribes are a traditional way of negotiating.

How Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so quickly

(To be fair, the Allied forces practiced the same bribe methods. They work.)

 

[Cindy Claveau]

The War in Afghanistan Was a Scam

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.… It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

These words, penned by Major General Smedley Butler in 1935, nearly a century before the global war on terrorism began, decades before the notion of a “military-industrial complex” became a glint in Dwight Eisenhower’s imagination, could sum up the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Butler’s tract gives a good answer to one of the basic questions of war: Who benefits?

This question should be central to our interrogation of this moment, as our withdrawal from Afghanistan sets off a paroxysm of recriminations about how the war was “lost” and how the United States has been “humiliated.” For those who built the racket, the whole 20-year fracas was a victory. After all, as any Vegas casualty can tell you, the house always wins.

 

[Ellie]

Yes, just as if you live in a remote part of the rural US or UK you'll probably have to move somewhere larger if you want to pursue your education beyond a certain level, and you'll probably end up living and working in a city rather than back home in rural Texas or rural Helmand Province.

That you'll find a lot easier to do if your parents support you, and even though you continue living in the big city and eventually make your home there, that doesn't mean you're necessarily estranged from the family.

Agreed, in part. I wasn't just speaking about education. Electricity and water supplies have a huge impact on the way women live.(I worded my comment poorly.)

What Afghan Women Want

A long and heart-rending article from some years ago by wartime journalist, Anna Badkhen.

Trigger and kleenex warning

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

*drops this in here*

As I understand it, it was a bit more nuanced - because it started with the UK trying to talk Truman into this and he refused. It took waiting a few years for a different president.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

After the chaos in Kabul, is the American century over?

The ‘forever war’ has finished with a debacle. If this marks the end of American interventionism, what will take its place?

www.theguardian.com

“One of the great dangers for analysis that seeks to be critical of imperialism is the assumption that only the west, indeed only the USA, has imperial ambitions and scope. This is fatal,” said Priyamvada Gopal, professor of postcolonial studies at Cambridge University. “By the end of this century, if the world makes it there, the centre of imperial power will have shifted entirely.
“What is important is that the centre of gravity of capitalism is shifting southwards, and players from Russia and China to India are emerging.”

Evernote link

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

After the chaos in Kabul, is the American century over?

The ‘forever war’ has finished with a debacle. If this marks the end of American interventionism, what will take its place?

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

In regards the quote you included - last I looked on a map, Russia and China aren't exactly -south-

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Clearly a lot of women must welcomed these changes, and so too, in many cases, must have their families and (in many areas) village, clan and tribal leaders, or there wouldn't now be so many women who have, during last 20 years, enjoyed the benefits of an education and career, and find themselves forced to flee the country or go into hiding, burning all their degrees and diplomas.

I don't think that follows.

I'm sure a lot of those women's decision to go for an education bucked their families' wishes. And there's always a certain component of families who will outwardly support their children's working toward their aspirations because it's their children, while not completely believing in those dreams or thinking it's the right choice for their daughter to be making. And on top of that there's likely plenty who felt that women being able to go to school was a nice thing when it happened but that's about it, and don't view a Taliban prohibition as necessarily devastating.

If the majority of the country passively yielding to the Taliban takeover isn't to be taken as sympathy with the Taliban, then passively yielding to women's rights to education and work - which were, again, created and protected by foreign militaries using deadly force - shouldn't be taken as sympathy with those rights.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Afghanistan: Labour demands urgent action over evacuation crisis

People being beaten, shot at or raped while trying to secure documentation in Kabul, Lisa Nandy says.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Also, as an aside, that guy's opinion that the American press has adopted and is pushing the attitude that "nothing was accomplished in Afghanistan" is.....I don't know how else to put it, it's kind of ignorant. The American press is SOLIDLY negative and critical about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan.


As of today the Pentagon says that more than 17,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan, but right now the media is solely focused on the "chaos" and "complete abandonment" angles.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I could be misinformed, but had heard that the advancements in womens rights mostly benefitted those in the cities, while the same reforms hardly reached the village level.

Of course it is like that, because Western armies rarely spread out into the rural areas where the Taliban had a big advantage and our soldiers were unsafe. The president of Afghanistan never really wielded much power there.

 

[Stora]

Blair calls US withdrawal tragic and unnecessary

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has described the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as "tragic, dangerous, and unnecessary" in his first statement since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
He said the decision was made "in obedience to an imbecilic slogan about ending 'the forever wars'".
Mr Blair led the UK when it invaded the country alongside the US in 2001, following the 11 September attacks.
He said the exit of allied troops would have Jihadist groups "cheering".

Afghanistan: Blair calls US withdrawal tragic and unnecessary

 

[Innula Zenovka]

In regards the quote you included - last I looked on a map, Russia and China aren't exactly -south-

Beijing is about as far north as Washington DC, I think, and there's a lot of China (including some of the most prosperous areas) to the south of there, Much of China is no further north than much of India, certainly..

I think she means "south and east" -- away from the US, Canada and Europe, certainly.

 

[Free]

American media can't quit the forever war

Respecting the troops means keeping them in Afghanistan forever, it seems

theweek.com

At a White House press conference Friday, reporters pressed Biden with highly unusual aggressiveness. The American mainstream press, particular its television outlets, just can't quit the forever war.

As Judd Legum writes at Popular Information, big outlets have almost exclusively turned to critics of the Afghanistan withdrawal in their coverage, and in virtually every case people who supported the invasion and occupation. A public relations specialist told Popular Information that TV bookers were straight-up refusing to have anyone on who supports the decision to withdraw. Indeed, as Eric Alterman writes at The American Prospect, many people now being given a platform to hector Biden about his supposed failures were not only directly involved in the catastrophically bungled occupation but were revealed in The Washington Post's "Afghanistan Papers" to have blatantly lied to the public about how well it was going. The Post itself is not innocent either — a recent David Ignatius op-ed compared Biden's team ending a war to the infamous Vietnam-era "best and the brightest" who started one.

It goes without saying that until this outbreak of hysterics, the mainstream media had almost totally ignored Afghanistan for the last decade. Nobody except a handful of intemperate critics read the dozens of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reports showing the occupation was a cataclysmic disaster through and through. The main evening news programs on broadcast TV spent a grand total of five minutes combined on the country in 2020, and even before the pandemic barely more than that. As Jim Lobe writes at Responsible Statecraft, "the three networks devoted a total of only 362 minutes to Afghanistan in the preceding five years, or just two hours of coverage per network, or an average of only 24 minutes per network per year."

 

[Romana]

Blair calls US withdrawal tragic and unnecessary



Afghanistan: Blair calls US withdrawal tragic and unnecessary

So it's "imbecilic" to not want to be there forever, and have US and UK troops keep dying? I thought Blair was at least better than that.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

So it's "imbecilic" to not want to be there forever, and have US and UK troops keep dying? I thought Blair was at least better than that.

Had, God forbid, Trump won the election, and were we now watching similar scenes unfold in Kabul, would you disagree quite so strongly with Blair's characterisation of what was, of course, originally Trump's slogan and policy?

Biden, after all, is simply completely the process Trump somewhat unexpectedly began last November.