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icantfindaname posted:Nope I know the fervor for war was really high back then, but I kind of doubt we invade Afghanistan if we were already parading Bin Laden through Manhattan in handcuffs on his way to the electric chair. If anything, Bush probably would've just pivoted to Iraq even sooner. Who the hells know though.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:32
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it’s a classic that the Taliban offered to try bin Laden before the invasion, but many forget that the Taliban offered to surrender with a singular condition that Omar be protected in December 2001.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:35
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good job junior, https://twitter.com/natsecjeff/status/1429901799633338373?s=21
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Aug 23, 2021 21:44
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the failson-industrial complex
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Aug 23, 2021 22:08
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GreyjoyBastard posted:
Bin Laden had run several terror attacks out of of Afghanistan in the years before 9/11, such as the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the boat bomb attack on the USS Cole. Then-President Clinton had been trying to get the Taliban regime to turn him over for years and they repeatedly refused. They contained to stonewall or make unacceptable demands when then-President Bush asked for bin Laden to be handed over. It's difficult to believe they didn't know what they were in for.
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Aug 23, 2021 22:18
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Yeah I don't think the Taliban had specific knowledge of 9/11, and were probably alarmed by the scale of what happened, but they absolutely knew who they were hosting and what his general aims were, and allowed him to continue his activities unimpeded even after the US bombed an Al Qaeda camp on their territory as a response to the embassy attacks. It was still a mistake for the US to treat them as just as necessary to hunt down and kill as Al Qaeda after the invasion, which made any surrender impossible, but they deserved to be driven out of power in the first place.
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Aug 23, 2021 22:27
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Wheeljack posted:They contained to stonewall or make unacceptable demands when then-President Bush asked for bin Laden to be handed over. It's difficult to believe they didn't know what they were in for. that's a rather convenient way to characterize any attempt on the Taliban's part to negotiate any conditions whatsoever on trying bin Laden
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Aug 23, 2021 22:45
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The Taliban didn't care for bin Laden, and their refusal to address him before 9/11 was a thorough failure of US diplomacy.
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Aug 23, 2021 22:45
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Conspiratiorist posted:The Taliban didn't care for bin Laden Says who? My understanding is that he had a fair amount of influence with them. He wasn't just some guy who happened to be in their country, he was running an international terrorist organization there with training camps and poo poo and they were fine with that.
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Aug 23, 2021 23:12
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Plucky Brit posted:A minor point: The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 and then annulled by the Pope in 1216. It didn’t work out so well. A minor point(s). A) the Pope didn't actually have the legal authority to do that, and B) a couple of clauses from the 1297 reiteration of it are still in force in English law.
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Aug 23, 2021 23:23
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Sinteres posted:Says who? My understanding is that he had a fair amount of influence with them. He wasn't just some guy who happened to be in their country, he was running an international terrorist organization there with training camps and poo poo and they were fine with that. The Taliban themselves, who saw him as a legacy of the previous administration, and the average Afghan, who had no idea who he was until the US fired cruise missiles at them in '98.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:09
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Sinteres posted:Says who? My understanding is that he had a fair amount of influence with them. He wasn't just some guy who happened to be in their country, he was running an international terrorist organization there with training camps and poo poo and they were fine with that. I think the Al-Qaeda/Taliban relationship mostly came down to money. The Taliban needed money and Bin Laden had money. The Taliban may not have liked Bin Laden that much but he paid his rent on time and never bounced a check.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:12
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Meanwhile the west lost all interest in Afghanistan after the Soviets left, so why should the Taliban, who were struggling with legitimacy, cede sovereignty to appease the US? It was a failure of diplomacy, namely America's failure to engage in it. And it was repeated again in 2001, against a Taliban who were much more open to negotiate, even.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:18
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You can't corner the northern alliance.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:35
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The Taliban seem highly uninterested in letting the US stay past August 31 to let the retreat play out. Is there any way they change their minds on this? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/23/us-evacuates-37000-from-afghanistan-as-taliban-calls-august-31-withdrawal-deadline-red-line.html quote:“It’s a red line. President Biden announced that on 31 August they would withdraw all their military forces. So if they extend it that means they are extending occupation while there is no need for that,” Suhail Shaheen said, according to the report. I have to own up to being one of the many Americans who tuned out of Afghanistan after the Trump deal. What happened the last time when Biden pushed the deadline to August 31?
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Aug 24, 2021 01:41
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Eric Cantonese posted:I have to own up to being one of the many Americans who tuned out of Afghanistan after the Trump deal. What happened the last time when Biden pushed the deadline to August 31? They conquered Afghanistan.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:44
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Conspiratiorist posted:They conquered Afghanistan. Right. But I mean... was there back and forth and an ultimate acceptance of that or did Biden make that call unilaterally and everything just unfolded in the lovely way we're seeing now?
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Aug 24, 2021 01:46
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Eric Cantonese posted:Right. IIRC, they basically kept quiet about it and left US/Western forces alone. They just focused their fire on ANA and other Afghan targets while letting the US and other Western Militaries withdraw. Which was the smart move because I have no doubt if they decided to throw everything they had against the US/Western forces as they were attempting to pull out, it'd have resulted in a delayed withdrawal and more fire coming down on them that they didn't need to deal with. Or put more simply. They won, and they knew it. It was just a matter of waiting for the US to leave, which they saw us doing so no need to force the issue.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:01
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Eric Cantonese posted:Right. It was an unilateral decision by the Biden admin. They did not make any efforts to coordinate talks between TB and the Afghan government. TB then began their push shortly after the April announcement.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:06
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Conspiratiorist posted:The Taliban themselves, who saw him as a legacy of the previous administration, and the average Afghan, who had no idea who he was until the US fired cruise missiles at them in '98. They had plenty of opportunities to get rid of him or curtail his activities and they didn't. Of course the average Afghan wasn't responsible for him, but the Taliban definitely shared culpability. That doesn't make them unique--obviously the US is culpable for all kinds of poo poo around the world. But any great power with the capacity to do so would have attacked the Taliban after experiencing a 9/11 style attack masterminded by someone they were harboring. The failure wasn't in attacking the Taliban, which was already a miserable pariah regime with no international legitimacy, but in deciding we needed to occupy the country forever to make up for our failure to murk bin Laden. Conspiratiorist posted:Meanwhile the west lost all interest in Afghanistan after the Soviets left, so why should the Taliban, who were struggling with legitimacy, cede sovereignty to appease the US? So they didn't lose their country for 20 years? As much of a disaster as the war has been for the US, it was obviously a much, much bigger failure for the Taliban until very recently, since they started off ruling the country. They may actually emerge stronger than they started it now, as a result of stupid mistakes the US made after the invasion, but if I told you that you could be a little more well off in 20 years if you had to be mostly homeless and enduring crippling personal losses until then, I don't think you'd accept that trade, and they shouldn't have either. They let bin Laden draw them into a whirlwind of poo poo by harboring him before 9/11, and compounded the problem by not immediately handing him over for something he was 100% guilty of once the enormity of that mistake was made clear. The US also made mistakes, but the US has the luxury of making enormous mistakes and surviving.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:17
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Sinteres posted:So they didn't lose their country for 20 years? I'll not blame them for failing to predict that the US would mount a large-scale invasion followed by a 20-year-long occupation in response to their request to see the evidence and proposal to have OBL extradited to a third party country.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:21
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Conspiratiorist posted:I'll not blame them for failing to predict that the US would launch a 20-year-long occupation in response to their request to see the evidence and proposal to have OBL extradited to a third party country. It was very easy to predict that they were going to lose control of the country if they didn't immediately give the US everything they demanded at that point. I don't know how old you are/were at the time, but pretty much everyone in the world knew what the next step was.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:23
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I was old enough to expect another Gulf War-style action once I saw the war drumming ramp up. Instead we got this clusterfuck.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:31
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Eric Cantonese posted:The Taliban seem highly uninterested in letting the US stay past August 31 to let the retreat play out. Is there any way they change their minds on this? Probably not? They seem like they’re pretty set on holding the US to agreements already set in stone. 37K have been flown out already, with like 16K in the last day or so. Still have a whole week left, I don’t see how the deadline gets extended if this rate keeps up.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:41
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People blame the US failure on the inchoate and ever expanding/shifting goals that were set, but the events of the past week show that the real goal of the Afghan War was the friends we made along the way 
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Aug 24, 2021 02:42
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You know, if you went back to late 2001 and told them how few Americans would die in terrorist attacks over the next 20 years, they'd be loving thrilled, so by that standard the war on terror was a massive success (or maybe just unnecessary, but at the time nobody would have believed that). If you told them how many members of the military would die, I think they'd be pretty unhappy to hear that, and might assume Saddam used chemical weapons or something instead of most of it just being insurgent level poo poo. What would really boggle people's minds, I think, is how much money we spent on the wars though.
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Aug 24, 2021 02:51
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And then the mindboggling thing is between the 2 trillion of the War in Afghanistan, and 3 trillion that was flushed down to prop up the stock market and the billionaires who go richer around March 2020, it's a struggle for the US to pass a 3.5 trillion infrastructure deal. Admittedly that's US Pol more than this thread but man, the priorities.
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Aug 24, 2021 03:07
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The writing on the wall is that a very lucrative deal was made to guarantee taliban non-aggression against americans trying to leave the country. However this can not have been popular even though the reasoning for such a deal is straight forward. I don't doubt that the US earnestly wants to be done pulling people out by then, but yeah if they aren't out it puts the taliban leadership in a rough spot and it's a pretty poo poo sell to tell people that they just took the country but also the US is still here and you can't do anything about it at all
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Aug 24, 2021 03:27
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I mean, I don't know if the Taliban watches U.S. News but with the current vibe of people over here basically jonsing like meth addicts for war all of the sudden, the Taliban should probably do themselves a favor and take their victory quietly, while giving the U.S. a wide berth on our way out the door.
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Aug 24, 2021 03:45
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https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1429888237082906637 Are those kids US Citizens now?
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Aug 24, 2021 03:52
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1429888237082906637 Only if it was US Territorial Waters or US Airspace. The plane/boat doesn't count by itself. Also, there's a legal requirement that the parents be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States even if they're not citizens, which I'm not sure what the rules would be concerning foreign military evacuees like these people are. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 03:57
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Sinteres posted:It was very easy to predict that they were going to lose control of the country if they didn't immediately give the US everything they demanded at that point. I don't know how old you are/were at the time, but pretty much everyone in the world knew what the next step was. Seriously the Taliban's conditions were unacceptable. The US could never agree to putting a CIA asset on trial in a country where they don't control the courts, not offering to murk Bin Laden before he could talk was essentially the same as blackmailing the US. And you don't want to blackmail the US unless you want to get bombed then kick their rear end in a long drawn out guerrilla war.
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Aug 24, 2021 03:57
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1429888237082906637 I hope so
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Aug 24, 2021 03:58
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1429888237082906637 Sadly not. Check 8 FAM 301.1-3 here: https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam030101.html
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Aug 24, 2021 04:02
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:
No, but hopefully they will be soon enough. I saw a clip on CNN of Afghans waiting in line to board a plane, it really chocked me up for moment. The adults looked tired but were smiling, and most of the kids were beaming and flashing V signs at the camera. I am so glad we are pulling so many people out of there, those folks deserve to escape the salafist hell-government that's coming. I hope we can pull tens of thousands more out in the next week.
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Aug 24, 2021 04:03
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Sadly most of them will end up in short-term turned long-term makeshift refugee camps in Qatar and other places for multiple months or years, then get repatriated back to Afghanistan.
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Aug 24, 2021 04:12
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Has anyone made a good-faith effort to calculate the number of Afghan allies that we should be extracting if ideal conditions (instead of the looming deadline we have) were in place? Like, are we talking about a number in the hundred thousands? I was reading that there was an initial wave of 130,000 people who made it out of South Vietnam in 1975, but if you start looking at the other people who had to flee later due to government repression, you get to more than 1,500,000 refugees for people fleeing from all the violence, instability and poverty in Southeast Asia.
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Aug 24, 2021 04:13
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Last I checked there were around 40-50k SIV qualifiers plus their immediate families, and probably triple or quadruple that collaborators who worked through contractors and were kindly told to gently caress off re evacuation ("check with the UNHCR at the border").
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Aug 24, 2021 04:16
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Uhhhh a Ukrainian Transport plane has just been hijacked and redirected to Iran:- https://twitter.com/ajabreaking/status/1430069897879511043?s=21
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Aug 24, 2021 08:39
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Conspiratiorist posted:Last I checked there were around 40-50k SIV qualifiers plus their immediate families, and probably triple or quadruple that collaborators who worked through contractors and were kindly told to gently caress off re evacuation ("check with the UNHCR at the border"). And given we've moved something around 10K so far, currently held at Rammstein and Al-Uedid in Qatar, and if you factor in the time it's going to take for our broke-rear end immigration system to process all these folks, then we are looking at October at the least JUST for the SIVs to get out of the country. We may have 6k troops in the country until New Years if we are serious about getting as many out as we can. That means we are going to need long-term logistics to keep security vehicles running, troops and refugees fed, and ammunition in case ISIS-K comes knocking.
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Aug 24, 2021 09:29
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