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Thread: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Exarch View Post
    The PRC is the result of a successful insurgency; China knows how to do insurgency, Mao even wrote a little red book on it which West Point grads have to read- China even knows how to destroy an insurgency eg ETIM in xinjiang.

    I actually would have preferred no americans be killed or continue to be killed because some rich fat white american elite can feel like he's playing julius caesar
    But we’re not talking about building up from an insurgency to take over a country, but an established national military force going into a foreign land and becoming bogged down in a quagmire against the local population hostile to the occupation. In this case, the PRC can’t even be complete experts at destroying insurgencies as they got wrecked by the Vietnamese when China tried to invade, experiencing the same guerrilla war the Americans just left.

    Likewise, the Americans came from an insurgent military movement, but that hasn’t helped them any either. It turns that historical origins as an insurgency don’t actually help regimes combat insurgency when the regime finds itself on the other end trying to quash it.

    ETIM is a small fringe movement that never gained much support among the Uyghurs, who are mostly passive adherents to Islam rather than following the militant schools. They were simply used as an excuse to suppress the entire Uyghur nation and force them into slavery as part of China’s equivalent of NS-Germany’s Ost-Plan for Russia.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    And India. To the extent the Pakistan security forces choose again to the A-stan a plausible deniability base to fund attacks on India I assume India will have words in one way or another.

    I hang the failure on GBjr. Either the US needed to plan for some nation building venture at the outset and not get distracted by Iraq and not rely on the ex warlords as it did at first. Or it should have launched a smash affair as vengeance that cared not what happened after. That is kill as much AQ as you can and make the Taliban pay for sheltering them. Than go home. Honestly would not have done the NATO thing other allies in that case if I calling the shots.
    This war can be compared to the vietnam war which was basically a beancounters war of military profiteering.

    In fact, the war had corrupting effects on US society, not least the many veterans who joined the ranks of Trump and QAnon

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    But we’re not talking about building up from an insurgency to take over a country,.
    Uh, you just said that the PRC has no expertise in counter-insurgency when the Founding Fathers of the Republic were founded as an insurgency on par with the Taliban of today. Ever heard of the Long March? The CPC knows insurgency and counter-insurgency, the US demonstrates it doesnt know counterinsurgency despite promoting fancy terms like COIN, because the purpose of the US military is to generate rentier profits for its plutocratic class.

    but an established national military force going into a foreign land and becoming bogged down in a quagmire against the local population hostile to the occupation. In this case, the PRC can’t even be complete experts at destroying insurgencies as they got wrecked by the Vietnamese when China tried to invade, experiencing the same guerrilla war the Americans just left.
    False analogy; the sino viet war was to ensure viet compliance in SEAsia, which was achieved along with taking back territory, which was also achieved; the sino viet war was not about trying to militarily occupy vietnam as the americans were trying to do in A-stan.

    Compare that to the counter-insurgency program in Xinjiang which was masterfully executed by the CPC; Mao and his team were Pioneers of People's War and insurgencies, they even taught the vietcong, and the fruits of their expertise are demonstrated in the pacified region of Xinjiang and why the CIA is furiously and impotently trying to incite insurrection. In fact, pompeo de-listed ETIM as a terrorist organisation despite the Pentagon droning and killing them 2 years prior as terrorists, and he did so because they were hoping to create an ISIS in A-stan. By losing Afghanistan, the Anglo Americans lost forever the chance to incite insurrection and terrorism in Xinjiang, not even Pakistan will allow them to have bases.

    The defeat is total.
    Last edited by Exarch; July 10, 2021 at 08:04 PM.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    I hang the failure on GBjr. Either the US needed to plan for some nation building venture at the outset and not get distracted by Iraq and not rely on the ex warlords as it did at first. Or it should have launched a smash affair as vengeance that cared not what happened after. That is kill as much AQ as you can and make the Taliban pay for sheltering them. Than go home. Honestly would not have done the NATO thing other allies in that case if I calling the shots.
    Yeah, the invasion against Iraq was a huge strategic mistake. The US lost their only opportunity of somewhat pacifying Afghanistan. I disagree about the warlords, though, because there was no other alternative. Any urban, middle-class Afghanistan possessed had basically gone extinct, since the fall of the Democratic Republic. Even before, though, it was too weak to rely on it for a functioning, unified administration. In fact, this was the social group the Soviets and the socialist government was based on. Afghanistan lacked any serious industrial infrastructure and literacy was very limited, so the members of the Communist Party were not workers or small farmers, but well-educated (usually in Europe) and relatively affluent members of the middle class. They could have cooperated with the Musahiban regime, but the latter was too corrupt, mismanaged and tribal to gain their loyalty. Even in the '80s though, the modernisers and progressives had no real authority outside the major urban centers. The warlords of the Northern Alliance were the only option and there was also the advantage of the previous collaboration, during the Soviet intervention. And, to be honest, their client relations, nepotism and corruption are harmful in the long-term and contradictory to the aim of the US of establishing a legitimate and efficient state, but they were also necessary for the spread of the influence of the Kabul government, while any other group would have probably shown the same traits of corruption and tribalism.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Abdülmecid I View Post
    Yeah, the invasion against Iraq was a huge strategic mistake..
    This is simply a fact. Aside from distracting the US it more or less achieved nothing positive. It fractured the system of US alliances.

    -----

    I take your points on the warlords. I guess my counter point would be if we going to role them we should have never walked down the pretend path of making some great new democracy in A-stan that we not willing to back up with a real up front forever commitment.
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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    The invasion of Vietnam was the first "mistake", the invasion of the invasion of Afghanistan the second "mistake", and the the the invasion of Iraq the third "mistake",
    So many mistakes.
    US left Bagram Airbase at night with no notice, Afghan ... - BBC
    The late-night withdrawal by the US hands control of the base to a much less well-equipped force that could struggle to defend it from the Taliban, which has made swift advances in recent weeks across the country, seizing rural districts and surrounding some larger cities.
    Gen Kohistani has roughly 3,000 troops under his command - significantly less than the tens of thousands of US and allied soldiers that once occupied Bagram airbase.
    About 1,000 Afghan soldiers fighting the Taliban in the north of the country fled over the border into Tajikistan on Monday
    In my opinion, the precipitated departure of American troops inevitably invokes the last overloaded helicopter that left the embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975.




    The longest war in which the US and NATO have been involved had an embarrassing ending.The US financed the Taliban in the war against the Russians, invaded Afghanistan to remove them from power, and entered into a deal with them that may lead to the "theology students" regaining power and taking back Kabul. The Taliban claim to already dominate 85% of the country.
    Biden, like his predecessors, wanted to get out of the quagmire where Bush got in, and disguise his defeat.Biden said that it was not in the country's interest to "maintain an endless war" (sic). But the war is not over yet, with or without the USA.
    Twenty years later, Afghanistan is back where it started, and nothing was worth it, especially for the mothers, wives and children of the young american and NATO soldiers killed in a war that was already lost from the start, just like in Vietnam, or Iraq. The last one to leave turned out the light from the Bagram air base, and Afghanistan returns to the starting point.
    -----
    The third "mistake". Read the full article.From the Rubble of the U.S. War in Iraq, Iran Built a New Order The Intercept

    ABOUT A MONTH before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein’s most trusted comrades, sat in his office in Baghdad in an olive green uniform, cigar in hand, wearing house slippers. The man who for decades had served as the public face of high-stakes Iraqi diplomacy offered a political analysis that might well have gotten him executed in years past.
    “The U.S. can overthrow Saddam Hussein,” said Aziz, an Iraqi Christian and one of the most senior figures in Saddam’s government. “You can destroy the Baath Party and secular Arab nationalism.” But, he warned, “America will open a Pandora’s box that it will never be able to close.”

    The iron-fisted rule of Saddam, draped in the veneer of Arab nationalism, he argued, was the only effective way to deal with forces like Al Qaeda or prevent an expansion of Iranian influence in the region.
    The 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq marked the moment when the U.S. lost control of its own bloody chess game. The chaos unleashed by the U.S. invasion allowed Iran to gain a level of influence in Iraq that was unfathomable during the reign of Saddam.

    Secret documents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, obtained by The Intercept, give an unprecedented picture of how deeply present-day Iraq is under Iranian influence. The sovereignty once jealously defended by Arab nationalists has been steadily eroded since the U.S. invasion.
    The country that Iran assumed influence over had been shattered by decades of war, military occupation, terrorism, and economic sanctions. Iraq is still struggling with the legacy of years of sectarian bloodshed, the emergence of violent jihadi groups, and widespread corruption unleashed by the U.S. invasion and occupation.
    In the years after the 2003 invasion, some U.S. politicians cited the “Pottery Barn” analogy to justify a continued long-term presence in Iraq. It was the invasion that broke Iraqi society. So, as the analogy went, having broken the country, the United States now needed to buy it.

    In reality, the U.S. shattered Iraq and ultimately walked away. It was Iran that ended up figuring out what to do with the pieces.
    While Iran’s role has been far from positive, the United States has long since lost any claim to be a legitimate broker regarding the future of either country. In 1963, the U.S. helped initiate Iraq’s long nightmare when it aided the overthrow of the popular government of Abdel Karim Kassem, who sought to nationalize Iraqi oil and create social welfare programs. The U.S. supported the ascent of Saddam and continued to back his regime over the years, mainly as a bulwark against Iran, even in the face of high-profile atrocities like the gassing of Kurdish civilians in the city of Halabja and the massacres of Shia Iraqis following the Gulf War.

    ...For more than six decades, the U.S. has played a central role in fomenting disasters that have destroyed the lives of entire generations in Iraq and Iran. Any criticisms of Iran’s role today cannot efface this ugly record. How Iraqis respond to the information about Iran’s secret dealings in their country is their business. Perhaps there are international organizations and countries whose advice and counsel would be welcome. But given its atrocious legacy in Iraq, the United States should not be among them.
    Last edited by Ludicus; July 11, 2021 at 12:22 PM.
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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    The US presence in Afghanistan had devolved into keeping rats pinned down in their little holes and keeping a corrupt government in power. When the cat leaves the rats come out of their holes. All this should be expected.

    As for Vietnam, blame that on the Democratic controlled congress of 1975. They passed the 1975 Foreign Assistance Act which left South Vietnam without supplies or provisions to keep its military in operation. The result was inevitable. Before that the North Vietnamese attempted an invasion of the south when there were only 25,000 US troops left in Viet Nam. Those 25,000 troops sent the North Vietnamese Army (110,000 troops) running all the way back to their border. That's the reason why the North waited until all the US troops left.

    They didn't defeat the US at all. They defeated a corrupt government that had an ill-equipped army.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Thread title is very silly. The US has not been defeated militarily. It invaded Afghanistan in bad faith and has chosen not to continue so is definitely a PR failure.

    The US Government (and its military) used to be experienced and effective at COIN ops, from indigenous near-genocide to suppressing Philippine independence. Openly imperialist operations work, that's why we still have US, Russian and Chinese "empires" and the UK and France still have the ghosts of theirs.

    I do no not think the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were strategic mistakes, the strategoi who planned them achieved their outcomes. US Oil companies gained tremendous advantage, Haliburton was enriched beyond the dreams of avarice, and the thugs Cheney and Rumsfeld enjoyed honourable retirement. Like the man said, Mission Accomplished.

    It really was. Those wars were 100% about the money and only a ninny could believe the shameless lies of the Bush administration about WMDs.

    Like Conon and others I could rationalise qualified support for the invasion of Afghanistan as being consonant with revenge but I do not believe that was its motivation. It was the minimum plausible response for an administration bent on invading Iraq. IIRC the Onion, the Daily Show etc were openly joking about Bush Jnr's plans to attack Saddam before his election, it wasn't secret.

    The 9/11 attacks were possibly made easier because Bush had such a hard-on for Baghdad, even filthy Clinton was able to beat his breast at how Bush had taken his eye off the ball. IMHO they probably would still have got through given how privileged a position Saudis enjoy with US elites in all parties (the Egyptian Islamists set off a bomb in the WTC on Clinton's watch, its not a party thing).

    I don't believe the stupid "Bush did 9/11" nonsense, that's brainlet channery. However people have an easier time believing that trash because their government blatantly lie to them about obvious things like WMDs and "we'll be greeted as liberators" (what a stunning lie), and go after obliquely connected groups like Afghan warlords instead of the country where the founder, the leader and funders of Al Qaeda was from (not to mention more than half the operatives).

    Its a shameful end to a shameful episode, and the criminals who caused the greater part of it enjoy honourable retirement in the US and Saudi Arabia, while Islamists trash Syria, Yemen and many other places. In the end the Taliban survived too. A few Islamist foot soldiers, a few allied service men and women, and a whole bunch of Afghans and Iraqis died, the region for Pakistan to the Maghreb made less safe, and the people who died on 9/11 remain unavenged. Cheney and the other Oil Faction scum used all their corpses as a cover for their rorting schemes, what filthy animals.
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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Exarch View Post
    This war can be compared to the vietnam war which was basically a beancounters war of military profiteering.

    In fact, the war had corrupting effects on US society, not least the many veterans who joined the ranks of Trump and QAnon


    Uh, you just said that the PRC has no expertise in counter-insurgency when the Founding Fathers of the Republic were founded as an insurgency on par with the Taliban of today. Ever heard of the Long March? The CPC knows insurgency and counter-insurgency, the US demonstrates it doesnt know counterinsurgency despite promoting fancy terms like COIN, because the purpose of the US military is to generate rentier profits for its plutocratic class.

    False analogy; the sino viet war was to ensure viet compliance in SEAsia, which was achieved along with taking back territory, which was also achieved; the sino viet war was not about trying to militarily occupy vietnam as the americans were trying to do in A-stan.

    Compare that to the counter-insurgency program in Xinjiang which was masterfully executed by the CPC; Mao and his team were Pioneers of People's War and insurgencies, they even taught the vietcong, and the fruits of their expertise are demonstrated in the pacified region of Xinjiang and why the CIA is furiously and impotently trying to incite insurrection. In fact, pompeo de-listed ETIM as a terrorist organisation despite the Pentagon droning and killing them 2 years prior as terrorists, and he did so because they were hoping to create an ISIS in A-stan. By losing Afghanistan, the Anglo Americans lost forever the chance to incite insurrection and terrorism in Xinjiang, not even Pakistan will allow them to have bases.

    The defeat is total.
    I never denied that the CCP started its existence as an insurgency, and I am very aware of the Long March, which was probably one of the most decisive but forgotten events of the 20th century. However, just because you begin your existence as an insurgency, does not mean you can effectively fight insurgencies once you become the occupying force.

    And yes, the Chinese could crush whatever anti-Chinese insurgents were in Xinjiang because they could use the maximum measures possible, measures which the US and NATO could never pull in Iraq and Afghanistan for moral reasons. Those measures include attributes of genocide, including forcing people into slavery, destroying monuments and building tied to the Uyghurs' culture and religion, sterilization of women in order to prevent another generation of Uyghurs from being born, and replacing local populations with Han colonists. All, supposedly, to take down a small group of terrorists which never had widespread support among the general populace, unlike vis a vis the Taliban and Afghan people.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Thread title is very silly. The US has not been defeated militarily. It invaded Afghanistan in bad faith and has chosen not to continue so is definitely a PR failure.

    The US Government (and its military) used to be experienced and effective at COIN ops, from indigenous near-genocide to suppressing Philippine independence. Openly imperialist operations work, that's why we still have US, Russian and Chinese "empires" and the UK and France still have the ghosts of theirs.

    I do no not think the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were strategic mistakes, the strategoi who planned them achieved their outcomes. US Oil companies gained tremendous advantage, Haliburton was enriched beyond the dreams of avarice, and the thugs Cheney and Rumsfeld enjoyed honourable retirement. Like the man said, Mission Accomplished.

    It really was. Those wars were 100% about the money and only a ninny could believe the shameless lies of the Bush administration about WMDs.

    Like Conon and others I could rationalise qualified support for the invasion of Afghanistan as being consonant with revenge but I do not believe that was its motivation. It was the minimum plausible response for an administration bent on invading Iraq. IIRC the Onion, the Daily Show etc were openly joking about Bush Jnr's plans to attack Saddam before his election, it wasn't secret.

    The 9/11 attacks were possibly made easier because Bush had such a hard-on for Baghdad, even filthy Clinton was able to beat his breast at how Bush had taken his eye off the ball. IMHO they probably would still have got through given how privileged a position Saudis enjoy with US elites in all parties (the Egyptian Islamists set off a bomb in the WTC on Clinton's watch, its not a party thing).

    I don't believe the stupid "Bush did 9/11" nonsense, that's brainlet channery. However people have an easier time believing that trash because their government blatantly lie to them about obvious things like WMDs and "we'll be greeted as liberators" (what a stunning lie), and go after obliquely connected groups like Afghan warlords instead of the country where the founder, the leader and funders of Al Qaeda was from (not to mention more than half the operatives).

    Its a shameful end to a shameful episode, and the criminals who caused the greater part of it enjoy honourable retirement in the US and Saudi Arabia, while Islamists trash Syria, Yemen and many other places. In the end the Taliban survived too. A few Islamist foot soldiers, a few allied service men and women, and a whole bunch of Afghans and Iraqis died, the region for Pakistan to the Maghreb made less safe, and the people who died on 9/11 remain unavenged. Cheney and the other Oil Faction scum used all their corpses as a cover for their rorting schemes, what filthy animals.
    I agree with the assessment on Iraq, but the thesis doesn't work for Afghanistan. While the country has some oil and many rare earth minerals, those resources remain inaccessible due to the nature of the terrain and consequential lack of infrastructure. Your thesis might be somewhat more true, however, if you subscribe to the idea that Afghanistan opened up the opium trade, which pharmaceuticals and organized crime families both have profited immensely from. With that said, however, this theory lacks acceptable evidence.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    I never denied that the CCP started its existence as an insurgency, and I am very aware of the Long March, which was probably one of the most decisive but forgotten events of the 20th century. However, just because you begin your existence as an insurgency, does not mean you can effectively fight insurgencies once you become the occupying force.
    Actually it does as the PLA has proven in Xinjiang; the PLA and PAP successfully destroyed ETIM in Xinjiang because the CPC also provided jobs, education and opportunity to the uighur who would have otherwise been left with no prospects save terrorism. Terrorist org. have no access to ready recruits when the so called oppressed are getting better opportunities from the CPC.

    Compare that to the anglo americna approach which was exploitation and trying to pacify the nation long enough for them to try to steal the resources like in Syria; unfortunately for them, this didn't happen.

    And yes, the Chinese could crush whatever anti-Chinese insurgents were in Xinjiang because they could use the maximum measures possible, measures which the US and NATO could never pull in Iraq and Afghanistan for moral reasons. Those measures include attributes of genocide, including forcing people into slavery, destroying monuments and building tied to the Uyghurs' culture and religion, sterilization of women in order to prevent another generation of Uyghurs from being born, and replacing local populations with Han colonists. All, supposedly, to take down a small group of terrorists which never had widespread support among the general populace, unlike vis a vis the Taliban and Afghan people.
    Ridiculous claim, but hey that's what happens when you get all your info from Adrian Zenz.

    Funny how the PAP and PLA soldiers who killed ETIM also happened to be uighur themselves and who had suffered from ETIM terrorist attacks.



    In fact, uighur, kyrgyz et al staff the PLA and loyally guard and fight for China:



    Reminds me of how the CIA kept sending in SPECOPs into Tibet for decades cuz they kept losing operatives only to later discover that the Tibetans were killing and capturing these spies themselves for the CPC


    Anyway, back on topic, the aftereffects of total US defeat are still being felt out:


    Rumour has it the Indians tried to ship some artillery shells to the Kabul government which i'm sure will make the taliban really happy when they start training up Kashmiris to kill hindus.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Nice propaganda. Too bad independent coverage of the region is so restricted. I'm sure they have some experience rounding up Uyghurs to concentration camps but that doesn't translate to military experience which China needs to exert itself. The Taliban are fine to ignore China now but that's because they want to consolidate and don't want to pick a fight with another foreign power. Once they do Chinese projects and investments very much could come under threat. By the Taliban themselves or one of the various warlords or militia groups. You're gonna wanna have military experience to deal with that.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Providing the Uyghurs jobs? Yes, for no pay and in guarded compounds where they can't freely enter or leave.

    As for the string of videos: All a smoke screen for what China is doing, trying to assuage foreign observers and even the Chinese out east that everything over there is fine. In any case, the Turkic soldiers in the service of the PLA are traitors to their people, just trying to serve as collaborators in the hopes that they won't suffer the same fate as their ethnic kin. Sadly, there are many examples throughout history of people collaborating with enemy regimes, even ones that sought to destroy those people's ethnic group. Their service, however, does not stand as an adequate counter-point to accusations of genocide by said regime.



    Soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army (POA), a military unit comprised of Russian and Cossack soldiers in service of Nazi Germany. These men chose to serve with the Germans, even though the Germans wanted to pillage and desolate their homeland and drive all ethnic Russians east of the Ural Mountains.

    When an ethnic minority or an occupied people serves in a military of a foreign power, it says nothing about the fact that minority as soldiers a whole is being protected and accepted. It is merely a statement of individual choice, where the soldiers enter into service hoping only to save themselves and maybe some of their immediate dependents. Some soldiers might idealistically believe that they can redeem their people as a whole through their individual service, but this is a only a hope without any grounds in reality. As for the dominating power, they see these minorities or foreigners in their army merely as useful idiots, good bodies for propaganda or to take care of the lowliest or most dangerous tasks (like counter-partisan activity) in order to spare the troops of the dominant ethnicity.
    Last edited by EmperorBatman999; July 12, 2021 at 05:31 PM.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    I agree with the assessment on Iraq, but the thesis doesn't work for Afghanistan. While the country has some oil and many rare earth minerals, those resources remain inaccessible due to the nature of the terrain and consequential lack of infrastructure. Your thesis might be somewhat more true, however, if you subscribe to the idea that Afghanistan opened up the opium trade, which pharmaceuticals and organized crime families both have profited immensely from. With that said, however, this theory lacks acceptable evidence.
    I didn't think I was offering the oil theory for Afghanistan, rather a minimum military response was required there before the adventure in Iraq could proceed. 9/11 was used to justify instruments like the PATRIOT Act which were used to mobilise resources for the Oil wars. If they hadn't gone to Afghanistan then the reality gap would have been too glaringly obvious.

    I appreciate you're testing my theses, thank you. You're not suggesting the US was actually pursuing a good faith program in Afghanistan? They cannot have been that utterly stupid, I refuse to believe it.
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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    I didn't think I was offering the oil theory for Afghanistan, rather a minimum military response was required there before the adventure in Iraq could proceed. 9/11 was used to justify instruments like the PATRIOT Act which were used to mobilise resources for the Oil wars. If they hadn't gone to Afghanistan then the reality gap would have been too glaringly obvious.

    I appreciate you're testing my theses, thank you. You're not suggesting the US was actually pursuing a good faith program in Afghanistan? They cannot have been that utterly stupid, I refuse to believe it.
    I don't think I've quite heard the argument that Afghanistan was used by neo-cons to "set the stage" so to speak for Iraq, but it does make some sense, considering the fact that the media conflated Hussein's regime with terrorism (although, as it turns out, he was one of the most effective counter-terror forces in the Middle East at that point).

    Otherwise I think that the American public did demand some kind of military response to 9/11, and as intel suggested that the Taliban was hosting Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, the punitive response to the attacks had to take place in that particular country. As the Taliban was implicated as a friend to Bin Laden, that regime had to be dismantled entirely to remove the country as a base for future terror attacks, and thus required a full military commitment to see through the process. The critical mistake was that the US government entirely overestimated the Northern Alliance's capabilities to govern the country following the collapse of the Taliban, and they did a bunch of stupid at the start of the war which alienated the Northern Alliance leaders (Karzai was nearly killed in a misplaced airstrike), which I imagine made them even less likely to cooperate and move the country towards democracy.

    I might also think that the West was pretty high on the idea of rapid and effective democratization, as the collapse of the Warsaw Pact had created a number of fairly promising democracies out of communist dictatorships, all practically overnight, and Germany had shown that even after being re-united for a decade, still did not entertain dictatorial tendencies and was a successful democracy. You also had South Korea and Taiwan finally democratizing as well, which added for more encouragement that this wasn't just a European thing. In the furor, however, they forgot that these nations all had collective national identities which it was easy to build democracy around, compared to Afghanistan, which had always been unified only under a strongman.

    So the US went into Afghanistan without a real plan after the fall of the Taliban, which was pretty stupid...unless, as you said, those leaders were just using the invasion of Afghanistan to introduce the idea of more involvement in the Middle East, helping make Iraq more palatable to the public down the road. Still, you might also say that this approach was risky, considering that the US and international publics have not received war expansions very well (like when Vietnam expanded into Laos and Cambodia).
    Last edited by EmperorBatman999; July 12, 2021 at 08:46 PM.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vanoi View Post
    Nice propaganda. Too bad independent coverage of the region is so restricted. I'm sure they have some experience rounding up Uyghurs to concentration camps but that doesn't translate to military experience which China needs to exert itself. The Taliban are fine to ignore China now but that's because they want to consolidate and don't want to pick a fight with another foreign power. Once they do Chinese projects and investments very much could come under threat. By the Taliban themselves or one of the various warlords or militia groups. You're gonna wanna have military experience to deal with that.

    Like having combat experience saved the Anglo Americans from being railed out of Bagram and A-stan in the dark of night; at least in vietnam JFK had to set up the SEALs to deal with unconventional warfare since it was a new thing but in 2001-2021, the anglos have no excuse. They knew how unconventional warfare works, even armed and trained the Taliban and yet they still failed to keep A-stan.

    China's success in Xinjiang isn't just because of its SPECOPs but because it gave the uighurs a stake in the future and because the uighur themselves are Chinese.


    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    Providing the Uyghurs jobs? Yes, for no pay and in guarded compounds where they can't freely enter or leave.

    As for the string of videos: All a smoke screen for what China is doing, trying to assuage foreign observers and even the Chinese out east that everything over there is fine. In any case, the Turkic soldiers in the service of the PLA are traitors to their people, just trying to serve as collaborators in the hopes that they won't suffer the same fate as their ethnic kin. Sadly, there are many examples throughout history of people collaborating with enemy regimes, even ones that sought to destroy those people's ethnic group. Their service, however, does not stand as an adequate counter-point to accusations of genocide by said regime.
    once again, .
    May as well say that white americans are traitors because they didnt rise up after McVeigh blew up the Federal building and why they didn't start a Revolution after Waco.
    You've demonstrated your ignorance re Chinese history anyhow; turkic peoples have always been a part of China the way celts were a part of Britannia; this is a turkic soldier in Chinese armour of the Tang Dynasty:


    In fact, turks were such a key part of Chinese history that one of them managed to get promoted to the equivalent of Chairman of the JCOS and tried to mount a rebellion. Secondly, the uighur are not the natives of Xinjiang, that would be the Oirats, thirdly Han Chinese have been in Xinjiang far longer than the ancestors of the uighurs.

    @topic
    The Taliban are taking no prisoners when it comes to factions which resist:
    https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world...en-pkg-vpx.cnn

    secondly, Taliban are on the verge of taking the strategic city of Gazni:
    Taliban surround central Afghan city of Ghazni - officials
    Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...ls-2021-07-12/

    If the Taliban take Ghazni, the Afghan gov will be cut off from the Pashtun heartland and defence of Kandahar becomes improbable.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Ah yes, a dive into ancient history in order to escape the accusations of the present. Quite a clever evasion for what is happening today.

    First thing: you can't even get the nativity question over the Tarim Basin and Dzhungaria correct. The Uyghurs moved into the region around 8th century AD, so they've been in the area for over 1,200 years, whereas the Oirats seem to have only migrated to the area around the 13th century: they only become a subject of note immediately following Genghis Khan's unification of the Mongol tribes, whereas sources on the Uyghurs go back far earlier. Secondly, artifacts like the statue tell us merely that Turks were fighting in Chinese armies, but it says nothing of the relationship, over whether they were levied from a client tribe or if they were hired as mercenaries, or so forth, so we don't know the motives of agency of the Turkic warriors, and it doesn't resemble the kind of citizen military service we associate with the present.

    Finally, this discussion of ancient history does not stand in comparison to our expectations of the modern-day nation-state and the idea of national self-determination, especially self-determination for a people who are being ethnically suppressed by another group. The Uyghurs may have lived for a long time under a Chinese emperor and then a Chinese communist regime, but that does not make them Chinese, especially if they no longer want to be part of China. China, for their part, does not recognize the Uyghurs as Chinese, or they'd leave them alone; instead, they want to make the Uyghurs Chinese. China is no longer thinking like Empire, but now as a nation-state, and it is consistently applying this nation-state supremacy onto its minority groups, trying to force them into become like the Han Chinese, whether its the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongols, or Cantonese.

    Finally, I'm not going to address the McVeigh example because it's just ridiculous. Most Americans reject his opinions, and this is the guy who was willing to blow up kids in a daycare center because the same building housed a government office.
    Last edited by EmperorBatman999; July 12, 2021 at 10:37 PM.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    Ah yes, a dive into ancient history in order to escape the accusations of the present. Quite a clever evasion for what is happening today.
    gobbledygook
    Sounds like cope to me, like you're refusing to accept hard truths because they fundamentally challenge your worldview.

    Finally, I'm not going to address the McVeigh example because it's just ridiculous. Most Americans reject his opinions, and this is the guy who was willing to blow up kids in a daycare center because the same building housed a government office.
    Like i said, you're refusing to accept hard truths that challenge your worldview, uighurs in China have made their choice in condemning ETIM terrorism by joining the ranks of the PLA to track down and kill terrorists, no different to how the USG and US citizens tracked down McVeigh and the other Jan 6th insurrectionists who were going to kidnap and crucify Pence.

    @topic
    Sounds like some of the US armed forces persist in their vendetta against the taliban
    https://www.rt.com/news/529041-afgha...s-resignation/

    EDIT:
    btw i thought i might like to share that the anglo Americans have a bad habit of prematurely declaring victory:

    Last edited by Exarch; July 13, 2021 at 04:56 AM.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    No, Exarch, you are just projecting at this point. You believe China can do no wrong, so you write off any notion that the Uyghurs are being targeted for a genocide by the CCP, despite the growing collection of testimonies from those who escaped, the satellite maps of the camps, and the photos coming out of destroyed mosques. As far as you’re concerned, the Uyghurs were always part of China, and thus so shall they remain, even if this political arrangement continues to destroy their identity, blood, and culture. This attitude is disgusting.

    I don’t have a problem with China itself, even if I wish it were a democracy. My problem is that they have no respect for human rights.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    Quote Originally Posted by Exarch View Post

    Like having combat experience saved the Anglo Americans from being railed out of Bagram and A-stan in the dark of night; at least in vietnam JFK had to set up the SEALs to deal with unconventional warfare since it was a new thing but in 2001-2021, the anglos have no excuse. They knew how unconventional warfare works, even armed and trained the Taliban and yet they still failed to keep A-stan.
    And yet the US wasn't militarily defeated. That's exactly why China would fail in Afghanistan if they tried to intervene. Thinking this is a simple war of attrition where you can simply bomb and destroy the enemy eventually is a rookie mistake. You'd have to try and win the support of the populace all while dealing with the very horrible and corrupt Afghan government.

    With a lack of any reliable military experience and any experience dealing with a foreign insurgency China would do horribly in Afghanistan. When the Taliban consolidate China will either end up having to pay bribes or protection money to protect any projects or investments they own. Or they fight to protect their interests. Either way it's going cost China either money men, or both to protect their interests in Afghanistan.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    US military was certainly defeated: Taliban is taking over and US military is retreating. Saying how there was no military US defeat is like saying that you didn't lose a ranked Counter-Strike match because you ragequit halfway through it, its nothing more then desperate cope at this point.
    It seems that US military is powerless against armed insurgencies, as was demonstrated with American military tailing it from Vietnam, then Iraq and now Afghanistan as well, while US soldiers, basically turning from "defender of freedom" in cold war to becoming cheap cannon fodder for corporate profit wars, is demoralized and lacks in fighting spirit.
    I also doubt China is going to invade Afghanistan, it seems more likely China will just negotiate with Taliban directly, so whatever case may be, China will end up in control of Afghanistan, without it costing it nearly as much as it did to USA. If they do invade it like Americans did, they'd absolutely get slaughtered.

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    Default Re: US Forces In Full Scale Retreat From Afghanistan; 20 years of War Ending In Total Military Defeat?

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/blast-hit...053039763.html

    If China thinks it's going to be safe in Afghanistan after the US troops leave they're going to be in for a rude awakening.
    Last edited by Vanoi; July 14, 2021 at 08:07 AM. Reason: Don't think it's the Taliban leaving

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