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https://twitter.com/laraseligman/status/1427463598092206081
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Aug 17, 2021 04:47
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:after the invasion the us poured a ton of money into infrastructure projects. a big part of that was grafted off by corrupt officials and sweetheart deals to american contractors, but enough money was pushed through to build or improve significant amounts of infrastructure. it turns out this didn't solve any of the underlying problems just as with previous guerilla wars were the occupier figures infrastructure investments will equal popular support So not only did tons of US contractor money get siphoned off by corrupt officials and even more corrupt American CEOs, it was also common practice to pay off local warlords, including the Taliban, for protection. The US also loved to dump giant stacks of money at the feet of whoever claimed to be a local leader with little to no accountability, and a chunk of that money also ended up in Taliban hands. And given the lack of background checks and frequency of desertion from the ANA, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a significant number of Taliban went through basic military training on the US's dime. So much like the US funded and trained fanatic extremists to battle the Soviets, the US most likely funded and trained the same fanatic extremists to battle the US. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Flayer posted:Option 1: Watch your enemy retreat to their country 10,000 miles away while you take total control of your own country If the US could enact option 2, wiping out the Taliban over the next couple of years, why did they elect not to do so? Seems like a bit of a military oversight. Should have just sent in the brave boys of the 182 to gun down all the Taliban twenty years ago and saved us the trouble.
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Aug 17, 2021 05:16
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Nix Panicus posted:So not only did tons of US contractor money get siphoned off by corrupt officials and even more corrupt American CEOs, it was also common practice to pay off local warlords, including the Taliban, for protection. The US also loved to dump giant stacks of money at the feet of whoever claimed to be a local leader with little to no accountability, and a chunk of that money also ended up in Taliban hands. And given the lack of background checks and frequency of desertion from the ANA, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a significant number of Taliban went through basic military training on the US's dime. Looking pretty smart to pay the Taliban off so they would let us retreat even when we completely bungle the process.
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Aug 17, 2021 05:23
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Carth Dookie posted:Just some pie in the sky wishing on my part here but: The Taliban garnered the support they enjoy right now by turning into a competent government alternative to the US puppet administration. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/12269.pdf
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Aug 17, 2021 06:08
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Conspiratiorist posted:The Taliban garnered the support they enjoy right now by turning into a competent government alternative to the US puppet administration.
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Aug 17, 2021 06:41
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Normalcy returns to the Islamic Emirate https://twitter.com/afp/status/1427505318804660226?s=21 https://twitter.com/bsarwary/status/1427505626847096840?s=21 https://twitter.com/MiraqaPopal/status/1427497536219123712 wisconsingreg fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 06:48
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Vasukhani posted:Normalcy returns to the Islamic Emirate Sounds very good, but we'll have to see if they actually honour it over time.
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Aug 17, 2021 07:22
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TheRat posted:Sounds very good, but we'll have to see if they actually honour it over time. Yeah, I genuinely hope the taliban dont go back on the conciliatory moves they’ve been making.
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Aug 17, 2021 07:24
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Al-Saqr posted:Yeah, I genuinely hope the taliban dont go back on the conciliatory moves they’ve been making. They've pretty much entirely come out of the taliban international pr office, meaning they're about as trustworthy as the public statements from any other government. I think it's likely that they are earnestly offering amnesty for bit players just as a practical thing, but I would be exceedingly surprised if there aren't going to be massive repercussions for anyone who was in the ana sof or the anp. Like if there's one thing the taliban have never remotely been known for being it is forgiving.
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Aug 17, 2021 09:06
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Herstory Begins Now posted:They've pretty much entirely come out of the taliban international pr office, meaning they're about as trustworthy as the public statements from any other government. Be prepared for very long arguments and pinhead dancing over whether the Taliban are engaging in specific acts of retribution, or whether they are establishing their generically oppressive rule.
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Aug 17, 2021 09:19
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Taliban just put out a statement urging women to join their government:- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/17/evacuation-flights-resume-as-biden-defends-afghanistan-pullout quote:
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Aug 17, 2021 09:53
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Can't say I'd feel upset over the Taliban quietly disappearing members of the alphabet-trained death squads the puppet admin had running around warcrimeing villages.
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Aug 17, 2021 09:56
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on an emotional level, sure in practice though, solving death squads with death squads really does not work well.
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Aug 17, 2021 10:10
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Al-Saqr posted:Taliban just put out a statement urging women to join their government:- That's gotta be bait.
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Aug 17, 2021 10:19
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Taliban is going to have its first female President just to spite Hillary
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Aug 17, 2021 10:46
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Carth Dookie posted:That's gotta be bait. Why? Plenty of repressive Islamist countries have female government officials. And the Taliban aren’t even the most misogynistic group in Afghanistan, let alone the Middle East overall.
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Aug 17, 2021 11:08
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Herstory Begins Now posted:on an emotional level, sure yeah it does
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Aug 17, 2021 11:25
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Taliban Asking local traders to continue work and not be afraid to travel abroad and invite foreign investment into the country lol https://twitter.com/natsecjeff/status/1427590741589741586?s=21
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Aug 17, 2021 12:24
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Nix Panicus posted:If the US could enact option 2, wiping out the Taliban over the next couple of years, why did they elect not to do so? Seems like a bit of a military oversight. Should have just sent in the brave boys of the 182 to gun down all the Taliban twenty years ago and saved us the trouble. That's what we did though? But the thing is you can't just slaughter the Taliban out of existence. We pushed them out of power and into remote camps or underground insurgencies within a year. That accomplished little to nothing, but that's not what the Taliban in 2021 wants to have happen all over again. They are literally in the presidential palace right now, they last thing they want is for it to get leveled. Which is why they are not zerg rushing the Americans at the airport in some insane attempt at reigniting an ended war. Edit: Apparently the Taliban has issued a general amnesty to govt workers. Its going to be extremely funny if we spent 20 years and trillions of dollars for what amounts to Saudi Arabia 2 in terms to how lovely it treats its citizens. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 12:36
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Alchenar posted:Be prepared for very long arguments and pinhead dancing over whether the Taliban are engaging in specific acts of retribution, or whether they are establishing their generically oppressive rule. Well, the Taliban did acquire the biometrics database left behind by the US puppet government, so they certainly have the means to enact very specific acts of retribution if they cared. Yet another way the incompetence of the American withdrawal has betrayed their collaborators. https://www.reuters.com/article/afghanistan-tech-conflict/afghans-scramble-to-delete-digital-history-evade-biometrics-idUSL8N2PO1FH WoodrowSkillson posted:That's what we did though? But the thing is you can't just slaughter the Taliban out of existence. We pushed them out of power and into remote camps or underground insurgencies within a year. That accomplished little to nothing, but that's not what the Taliban in 2021 wants to have happen all over again. They are literally in the presidential palace right now, they last thing they want is for it to get leveled. Which is why they are not zerg rushing the Americans at the airport in some insane attempt at reigniting an ended war. Maybe its because the Taliban arent blood thirsty monsters only held in check by the threat of force, and they know the Americans have no hope of doing anything with their guns on the ground and it was incredibly good PR to contrast the calm city against the horror of the airfields to highlight the general incompetency of the Americans  Does this look like somebody in charge to you? Its some idiot soldier screaming at a civilian because they know they have no control over the situation except the ability to mow down civilians. This is what the US showed the world.
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Aug 17, 2021 13:22
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Nix Panicus posted:Well, the Taliban did acquire the biometrics database left behind by the US puppet government, so they certainly have the means to enact very specific acts of retribution if they cared. Yet another way the incompetence of the American withdrawal has betrayed their collaborators. I'm not disagreeing with you. It was the discussion about the Taliban rushing the airport to surround and destroy to Americans there.
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Aug 17, 2021 13:23
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A bloodbath at the airport, no matter how it would go, is something literally no group wants, even the average US warhawk seems to want to turn their nationkilling gaze towards another country. Nobody would 'win'. The current status quo, of US soldiers shooting terrified civilians trying to board a plane while taliban sit across the street going "hey, whats up, take your time", is far more damaging to the US's image than any dead soldier could cause, and they have more than enough modern equipment without needing to rush some jarheads down. On the US side, there is no appetite at all among US civilians for randomly kickstarting a new Afghanistan incursion, it would make Biden's statements more embarassing than they already are, and after twenty years of failure absolutely nobody is genuinely under the delusion that the country is winnable (currently. Give it a few years, get that Vietnam nostalgia going).
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Aug 17, 2021 13:38
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Why would the Taliban care about how America looks at this point in time? I don't understand the tactical or strategic benefit that they might gain (by making the US look even worse) that outweighs the billion other higher priority issues that come from taking over an entire country.. or is it just that everyone posting here is American? Apologies if that's a dumb question, I'm just not following the thought process people are attributing to the Taliban here
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Aug 17, 2021 13:49
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boofhead posted:Why would the Taliban care about how America looks? I don't understand the tactical or strategic benefit that they might gain (by making the US look even worse) that outweighs the billion other higher priority issues that come from taking over an entire country.. or is it just that everyone posting here is American? Apologies if that's a dumb question, I'm just not following the thought process people are attributing to the Taliban here I mean, you dont need to think too hard on why a victorious force would be into making their former occupiers look terrible at no cost beyond "dont shoot at the airport". It's not exactly framing the US for an elaborate false flag attack.
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Aug 17, 2021 13:52
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boofhead posted:Why would the Taliban care about how America looks at this point in time? I don't understand the tactical or strategic benefit that they might gain (by making the US look even worse) that outweighs the billion other higher priority issues that come from taking over an entire country.. or is it just that everyone posting here is American? Apologies if that's a dumb question, I'm just not following the thought process people are attributing to the Taliban here What people are trying to talk about here (as far as I can see) is how the Taliban care about the possibility of America coming back with more troops and bombs and guns. The Taliban would have to retreat again. As bad as the US are at actual governance and cultivating client states, they are pretty good at killing people. They don't care about America looking "good." They just want America out and less willing to come back. Don't give the US an excuse to stay and get vengeance. They also want the US less capable of interfering with their hold on Afghanistan in the future through alliances with internal enemies, so the fiasco about the withdrawal from Kabul is helpful for them too because potential enemies will be wary of trusting the US when the US says it will come to their aid. (Honestly, I don't know why anyone has trusted the US or any other western nation since the 70s, but it's supposedly still a thing.)
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Aug 17, 2021 13:55
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Edit: Apparently the Taliban has issued a general amnesty to govt workers. Its going to be extremely funny if we spent 20 years and trillions of dollars for what amounts to Saudi Arabia 2 in terms to how lovely it treats its citizens. TBH getting Saudi Arabia 2 would be a huge improvement in Afghanistan compared to 1991-2001. Now getting Yemen 2, that would be the really lovely outcome. I don't see why people are still talking about the Taliban attacking the airport at this point. The Taliban have been in full control of Kabul for like 48 hours by now and they haven't bothered the airport, and they have made not even the slightest indication they will bother the airport in the near future. Their intents and actions in that direction, at least for the next few days, seem pretty clear. Now if the Americans took like a month to get out of Kabul International maybe at some point they would get pissed and start doing something, but it seems they're in no rush at all. Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 13:58
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Eric Cantonese posted:What people are trying to talk about here (as far as I can see) is how the Taliban care about the possibility of America coming back with more troops and bombs and guns. The Taliban would have to retreat again. As bad as the US are at actual governance and cultivating client states, they are pretty good at killing people. That's what I mean. They just want the Americans out, and the Americans are doing their best to accommodate that, so what's the point in 4D Chess-ing the final stretch for global propaganda purposes? They lost and they're leaving, so let them leave. They've got more than enough things to think about besides that, the risk of loving it up by doing something sneaky for some weird non-tangible propaganda game seems really not worth it. Maybe I misunderstood the people talking about one final attack on the airport or whatever, because I don't understand at all what purpose that would serve
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Aug 17, 2021 14:01
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Nix Panicus posted:So, one positive that might come out of all this, we might see a break in the global supply of opium and a corresponding break in the opiate crisis now that the US isnt around Opium production has no impact whatsoever on the opiate crisis. The most important fact about the modern opiate crisis that people need to know and don't is that carfentanil, a synthetic fentanyl structural analog, is ~5000 times stronger than heroin. This is why "fentanyl" is flooding every market. You can fit roughly the equivalent amount of doses of carfentanil in a medium-sized suitcase that would require a full 20ft container if you were transporting heroin. It's manufacture costs about 2x of what making heroin does, by weight, or in other words it's about 2500 times cheaper by dose. Individual criminals can purchase that suitcase full of Chinese carfentanil for relatively cheaply, and then if they can get it into the country they can run a major drug operation for decades without ever needing to resupply. There is enough of the stuff in the US today to satisfy the market for probably a century. And this is also why so many people are dying of overdose. Because when the base drug is that strong, if the criminals cutting it down to street level doses are even the tiniest bit careless, they can accidentally sell stuff where the contents of a single syringe is 100 times stronger than the user expects it to be, and they die. mobby_6kl posted:Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit It's not about thinking about behavior. US used to have a hardon for assassinating TB leadership, they have had something like 500% turnover at the top. This cleared out the hardliners and hardcore Pashtun nationalists, and they were replaced with a much more reasonable and diverse cadre. Changing conditions have also had an impact. Pre-2001, Taliban actually wanted to ban all sources of potential foreign influence, including radios. Today, every guy in Afganistan owns a cellphone, including every TB fighter, and they are not giving them up. But still, more reasonable doesn't mean reasonable. They are still the worst repressive shitheads in government on the globe.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:12
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Eric Cantonese posted:(Honestly, I don't know why anyone has trusted the US or any other western nation since the 70s, but it's supposedly still a thing.) Not really that hard to understand. People in power stand to gain a lot of money for working with the US, and trust is secondary to greed.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:16
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It's cool that people realized how dumb the minerals explanation for the war was so the CIA wanting to control the world's supply of opium became the new conspiracy theory (or the new old one anyway) when just accepting that we lost our minds after 9/11 and had enough hubris to think we could remake Afghanistan is a sufficient explanation without any of that.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:23
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There’s also the pure pragmatism that if your nation of less than 40 million lost over 150,000-200,000 men while women were getting some level of school, maybe you let women do bureaucratic work and other skilled work.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:24
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What I think we've learned over the last few weeks is that you do in fact gotta hand it to the Taliban.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:25
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shirunei posted:Not really that hard to understand. People in power stand to gain a lot of money for working with the US, and trust is secondary to greed. people everywhere are also dumb as hell, if often smarter than the average american as we are the stupidest people on the planet.
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Aug 17, 2021 14:26
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boofhead posted:Why would the Taliban care about how America looks at this point in time? I don't understand the tactical or strategic benefit that they might gain (by making the US look even worse) that outweighs the billion other higher priority issues that come from taking over an entire country.. or is it just that everyone posting here is American? Apologies if that's a dumb question, I'm just not following the thought process people are attributing to the Taliban here The Taliban cares very much about establishing its legitimacy at home and abroad. It has a huge vested interested in convincing Afghans that they can more competently administer the nation than the previous group of idiots, and also a huge vested interest in convincing the world they aren't murderous thugs who need another round of nation building. Tuna-Fish posted:Opium production has no impact whatsoever on the opiate crisis. http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/20210217_report_with_cover_for_web_small.pdf The Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019 posted:Overall size of the opiate economy remained stable in 2019 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47861444 The BBC, for you dumbasses who think news can't be real if a Russian observed reality posted:And, of course, Afghanistan is by far the biggest producer of opium in the world. According to the US military, 90% of the world's heroin is made from opium grown in Afghanistan. Looks like someone is still making money on opium production. Just because synthetics exist doesn't make them readily available to everyone in the desired quantities, or that the regular stuff doesn't affect the calculus of supply and demand. Also from the article  I'm sure getting invaded in 2001, despite having nothing to do with 9/11 and repeatedly offering up Bin Laden for trial in a neutral country, was completely unrelated to anything happening in that chart
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Aug 17, 2021 14:45
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boofhead posted:That's what I mean. They just want the Americans out, and the Americans are doing their best to accommodate that, so what's the point in 4D Chess-ing the final stretch for global propaganda purposes? They lost and they're leaving, so let them leave. They've got more than enough things to think about besides that, the risk of loving it up by doing something sneaky for some weird non-tangible propaganda game seems really not worth it. Maybe I misunderstood the people talking about one final attack on the airport or whatever, because I don't understand at all what purpose that would serve The context was explaining that the Taliban were graciously letting the Americans 'control' the airport and evacuate at their leisure as a magnanimous gesture because the Taliban controlled literally everything else, and then some American-chauvinists popped in to say that it wasn't a favor, the Taliban were afraid of the awesome fighting force of America.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:01
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Nix Panicus posted:The context was explaining that the Taliban were graciously letting the Americans 'control' the airport and evacuate at their leisure as a magnanimous gesture because the Taliban controlled literally everything else, and then some American-chauvinists popped in to say that it wasn't a favor, the Taliban were afraid of the awesome fighting force of America. No, we were explaining why reigniting the war by slaughtering the troops in the airport is a stupid and terrible idea that the Taliban are not dumb enough to do.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:06
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Sinteres posted:It's cool that people realized how dumb the minerals explanation for the war was so the CIA wanting to control the world's supply of opium became the new conspiracy theory (or the new old one anyway) when just accepting that we lost our minds after 9/11 and had enough hubris to think we could remake Afghanistan is a sufficient explanation without any of that. Bah, my conspiracy was the neocons wanted to conquer Iran but needed bases to the east and west first and thought Afghanistan and Iraq would be simple to pacify.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:08
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Bel Shazar posted:Bah, my conspiracy was the neocons wanted to conquer Iran but needed bases to the east and west first and thought Afghanistan and Iraq would be simple to pacify. No conspiracy needed to see that as a happy coincidence at the very least. It's well documented that Iran and Syria were both planned to be future targets following a successful Iraq war.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:18
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Sinteres posted:It's cool that people realized how dumb the minerals explanation for the war was so the CIA wanting to control the world's supply of opium became the new conspiracy theory (or the new old one anyway) when just accepting that we lost our minds after 9/11 and had enough hubris to think we could remake Afghanistan is a sufficient explanation without any of that. https://twitter.com/westonpagano/status/1426938674277765128
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Aug 17, 2021 15:21
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Wow I guess that's why Bush did 9/11 then good to know.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:31
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