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https://twitter.com/AP/status/1426948541273067529?s=20 Everything old is new again
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Aug 15, 2021 18:10
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Well gently caress i guess we're out in 72 hrs. I didnt expect to wake up to all this today. Knew it was going to be a poo poo show but didn't think it'd shake out quite like this. Or well not 2 weeks ahead of time.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:11
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https://twitter.com/nocontextafgwar/status/1426929592460353539?s=19
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Aug 15, 2021 18:20
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https://twitter.com/nocontextafgwar/status/1426957391598391300?s=19
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Aug 15, 2021 18:25
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facialimpediment posted:To cut the gloom, here's a sportsball fight in the stands: ...for preseason football?
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Aug 15, 2021 18:28
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https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1426960905972162563 OH GOOD. This is something we definitely need right now!
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Aug 15, 2021 18:40
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But is it good for bitcoin?
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Aug 15, 2021 18:49
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Yeah Matt Taibbi will get those planes in the air
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Aug 15, 2021 19:05
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Looks like normal boarding for a Ryanair flight.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:11
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Looking forward to the book detailing all the intelligence, Pentagon, and State department failures that led to Afghanistan being run by the Taliban again basically overnight while we were unable to get a significant number of Afghan employees of the US out. And looking forward to nobody named in the book facing any consequences whatsoever.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:20
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I'm looking forward to the people named in said book writing their own books about what happened and Lessons Learned as they embark upon a long, tired road of repentance speaking to think tanks and consulting to the MIC
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Aug 15, 2021 19:28
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With any luck this is the coffin lid on American international interventions. What a loving catastrophe
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Aug 15, 2021 19:31
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I give it four years tops. This is very hard on the MIC 
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Aug 15, 2021 19:38
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Naw we're going to go invade Cuba next if you listen to the cuban MAGA idiots down here
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Aug 15, 2021 19:41
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You'd think but we dont seem to be very good at learning from our mistakes.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:47
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Thankfully, we never invaded Venezuela. Just some shady dudes and guns showing up. And that random group of dumbass would-be mercenaries.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:54
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Stultus Maximus posted:Looking forward to the book detailing all the intelligence, Pentagon, and State department failures that led to Afghanistan being run by the Taliban again basically overnight while we were unable to get a significant number of Afghan employees of the US out. There’s actually some material out there by former officials where they’re very sanguine about who to blame for Afghanistan. This is one of my favorites.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:55
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So the guy who just surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban, Ashraf Ghani, is some kinda bigwig academic who was the Finance Minister of Afghanistan first and was considered for the President of the World Bank or Secretary General of the UN. Was he just as corrupt as Karzai was, or was it simply too little too late, or all of the above?
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Aug 15, 2021 20:00
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Sergg posted:So the guy who just surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban, Ashraf Ghani, is some kinda bigwig academic who was the Finance Minister of Afghanistan first and was considered for the President of the World Bank or Secretary General of the UN. Was he just as corrupt as Karzai was, or was it simply too little too late, or all of the above? Yes.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:01
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maffew buildings posted:I give it four years tops. This is very hard on the MIC You’d think there’d be some money in evacuating people but I guess not?
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Aug 15, 2021 20:03
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Lake of Methane posted:Is Kabul a situation similar to Berlin at the end of WWII where different factions were all in a race to claim as much territory as fast as possible? No, that fight happened in the 90s and the Taliban came out on top. With the collapse of the government, there's nobody left to oppose them.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:10
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https://twitter.com/mattaikins/status/1426853489095942146?s=19 https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1426982125576900619?s=19
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Aug 15, 2021 20:12
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hobbesmaster posted:You’d think there’d be some money in evacuating people but I guess not? I guess there really was a lot of wishful thinking that we'd have a few months to do it.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:15
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Sergg posted:So the guy who just surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban, Ashraf Ghani, is some kinda bigwig academic who was the Finance Minister of Afghanistan first and was considered for the President of the World Bank or Secretary General of the UN. Was he just as corrupt as Karzai was, or was it simply too little too late, or all of the above? Having pull with international finance doesnt mean poo poo when you dont have buy-in with the people in the country.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:20
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Just a reminder but if ever given the choice in any kind of situation never ever EVER go it completely alone.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:22
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Stultus Maximus posted:I guess there really was a lot of wishful thinking that we'd have a few months to do it. Those people had zero idea what the reality of the situation was. There was no world where there was a fight with the Taliban once we left. There was zero will in the ANA to object to their control because they were either Taliban themselves, had family that were, were paid off, or otherwise just didn't want to gently caress with people who would kill them and their family without compunction.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:22
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have the hacky thinkpieces about the lack of ideological fortitude of the Afghan government after all we did for them started yet?
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Aug 15, 2021 20:25
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Mr. Nice! posted:Those people had zero idea what the reality of the situation was. There was no world where there was a fight with the Taliban once we left. There was zero will in the ANA to object to their control because they were either Taliban themselves, had family that were, were paid off, or otherwise just didn't want to gently caress with people who would kill them and their family without compunction. This is entirely correct. The only Afghan units that were able to effectively fight on their own without direcr U.S. support / handholding were the various ANA SOF units we created. Every other regular unit had the same problems described above, plus the issue of "ghost soldiers" where a Lt. had soldiers on payroll that didn't exist but still got paid, so he pocketed the money. That was a huge issue across both the ANA and ANP. Look what happened to the ANA SOF units up in the north when they fought the Taliban just a couple weeks ago - they were slaughtered to a man. Even if the rest of the army was prepared to fight the Taliban before, they sure as gently caress weren't after seeing that poo poo. Malcolm Nance makes a great point here https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1426982548148789258?s=19 There's also the fact that the Taliban has had shadow governments in many districts and provinces across the country for years. Plus, commanders of the ANA and ANP acrosd Afghanistan for years have had either non aggression pacts or local deals. We'd have COPs getting hit with rockets or mortars near ANP or ANA compounds, buy mysteriously they wouldn't get hit. Provincial governors and district commanders have made deals with the Taliban for years, even as they said they were our allies. For them to switch sides immediately shouldn't be a shock, because 1) they were making deals with each other since we got there, 2) the long cultural history of changing sides when things look like the tide is turning, and 3) we completely withdrew everything - their only chance was to surrender / join the Taliban. They literally had zero other choice. Bored As Fuck fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 20:34
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Godholio posted:No, that fight happened in the 90s and the Taliban came out on top. With the collapse of the government, there's nobody left to oppose them. The northing alliance was on life support, but the taliban didn't really give a poo poo because the northern alliance didn't really control any cities or infrastructure. They were basically just holed up in some mountains but didn't actually control any cities. PookBear fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 20:37
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This morning I got extremely irritated listening to Admiral Stavridis, whom I used to respect, say that we still have troops in Germany and Japan so what was the rush to leave Afghanistan?, and that Trump had the Taliban ready to negotiate we just needed more time and troop presence. Is everyone who was over there in a leadership position this poisoned? Are they all completely incapable of admitting that if the war was ever winnable, it stopped being so somewhere in 2002-2003 and that we've been doing nothing but burning money and lives since then?
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Aug 15, 2021 20:42
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Stultus Maximus posted:I guess there really was a lot of wishful thinking that we'd have a few months to do it. We couldn’t figure out the first 20 years. Thinking we had a plan for the last 20 minutes is, indeed, wishful thinking.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:49
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Some people just don’t want to accept it for a variety of (some understandable, some deluded) reasons. Blood, treasure, careers, lives, and a whole way of being were invested in the Afghan war. And it all turns out to be for nothing. Real bitter pill to swallow. (Also, as a civilian, I feel for all you vets who served there and/or lost friends there. There must be some real complicated feelings being had right now.) Different topic: feels weird to no longer have Afghanistan and Iraq as major background conflicts. While the US is still majorly involved around the world, I can only barely remember 2000 and the world without major US deployments.
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Aug 15, 2021 20:49
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Will be interesting to see China's relations with the Taliban as they share a border. If big Red cozies up with the Taliban how will it affect their handling of Xinjiang? Seems like the next big islamist target will be China and they'll eventually poke the wasp's nest in the next 20 years
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Aug 15, 2021 20:50
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“You are the tip of the spear in driving the taliban out of the Kandahar province” always sounded like horse poo poo but goddamn if this isn’t a punch in the gut. Honestly not sure how to feel about it since we’ve seen it coming for a decade, but my mil service has never felt more worthless than right now. Thanks for the college I guess. (I swear I made this same post like a month ago…)
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Aug 15, 2021 20:53
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Bored As gently caress posted:https://twitter.com/mattaikins/status/1426853489095942146?s=19 Hey look the Taliban is better at american democracy than trump was
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Aug 15, 2021 20:55
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Thwomp posted:Some people just don’t want to accept it for a variety of (some understandable, some deluded) reasons. Extremely background. Remember when Mittens attacked Obama for running the largest peacetime deficit in history?
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Aug 15, 2021 20:55
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I'm confident that the people who matter in this equation (MIC) view it as a big win overall and that we'll go do something pointless again soon
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Aug 15, 2021 20:59
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In other words, "gently caress the police, I'm goin' straight to the underground."  maffew buildings posted:I'm confident that the people who matter in this equation (MIC) view it as a big win overall and that we'll go do something pointless again soon We're going to be blowing up dirt in Afghanistan for a very long time, just with air-dropped precision weaponry. The country also just became SOCOM's new free-fire playground for the next decade-plus. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 21:01
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boop the snoot posted:“You are the tip of the spear in driving the taliban out of the Kandahar province” always sounded like horse poo poo but goddamn if this isn’t a punch in the gut. I was going to write “I hope this tweet thread makes you feel less bad” and then recognized the absolutely weirdness of that sentence. Here’s a sentiment I’ll share in full: https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689324284841987?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689328453980163?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689332648325122?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689336553222147?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689340369948672?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689343633166341?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689346875297792?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689350700515329?s=21 https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1426689352944570372?s=21
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Aug 15, 2021 21:08
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That's a hell of a thread. They made an article of it: https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5
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Aug 15, 2021 21:14
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