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

[Lord Thesaurian]

It's not written in the agreement.It seems that it was a secret deal,why? why a secret deal?

Your own references have refuted this claim.

Its not a false claim, and I said it in a previous post:refusing an interim government, Ghani automatically refused any last chance of peace. That's the reason why Blinken in his letter"bluntly warned" (sic) Ghani to accept an interim government.

It is a false claim as per your own reference, regardless of how many times you said it. None of your references claim Ghani refused peace. On the contrary, your own reference is entitled, “An interim government would bring ruin to Afghanistan, [because] dissolving the Afghan government will not bring peace, but tear down any hope of it.”

I've already warned you, moderate your tone.

Stating the fact that you’ve repeated the same lies many times is not a “tone,” any more than your own references exposing those lies have an “immoderate tone”

Not exactly. The rapid collapse of the Afghan government turned the departure into chaos. Biden did the right thing, but the decision was ultimately made by the Americans- as usual.

Lol. NATO allies have condemned Biden’s withdrawal as a “betrayal….a serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration……. the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez….[causing] fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West” - the opposite of “doing the right thing.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/euro...an-withdrawal/

[Ludicus]

The US/Taliban agreement did not foresee new elections.Get real,it was designed to hand over the government to the winner of the war.Last March Blinken recommended an interim power-sharing government composed of Taliban and other Afghan leaders. Ghani, detached from reality, asked for a electoral process (!!) waiting for a miracle.For Ghani, an interim government was the last chance of a fragile peace, and yet he refused it.We all know that the “democratic” GOA (government of Afeghanistan) was nothing more than an American corrupt installed oligopoly.

According to Brookings Institution researcher Vanda Felbab-Brown,The black hole of corruption that swallowed up US investment

...But the real black hole is the country’s endemic corruption, which in 2010 was already swallowing 25% of the national GDP, and into which billions more dollars have vanished.
... “We turned a blind eye or simply were ignorant of how regularly some portion was going to payoffs, bribes, and bank accounts in Dubai.” Now former president Ashraf Ghani has had to deny that he fled Afghanistan with $160 million in his suitcase.
A statement from the archive upon the documents’ release said White House policy since 2001 was not a miscalculation but deliberately misleading.
“The US government under four presidents misled the American people for nearly two decades about progress in Afghanistan, while hiding the inconvenient facts about ongoing failures inside confidential channels,” the statement said.
Everyone was well aware of the widespread corruption at the highest levels of power. (1)

Unlike the authorities propped up by the international community, she added, “the Taliban have not been corrupt, the drug profits [from opium trafficking] were enough for them, and they were not the only ones involved in that; there were also people from the government.”
In the 1990s they built up a reputation for integrity, with very sporadic cases of diverting money into private pockets, for the benefit of their families, but not systematically like the country’s authorities, Felbab-Brown added.
“Although their legitimacy is questionable”, she concedes, “the Taliban could not be accused of being corrupt given that bribing judges was eradicated in the Islamic courts as a practice during their first term [1996-2001]. This argument may partly explain the popular support for the Taliban in large parts of the country”

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(1) Afghanistan 20/20: The 20-Year War in 20 Documents Relevant excerpts,

Document 1
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Douglas Feith, "Strategy," October 30, 2001, with Attachment, "U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan," National Security Council, October 16, 2001, 7:42 a.m., Secret/Close Hold/Draft for Discussion, Secret, 7 pp.
Oct 30, 2001

This is the foundational document for the first phase of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, approved by the National Security Council on October 16, 2001 (just five weeks after the 9/11 attacks)...emphasizing that "The U.S. should not commit to any post-Taliban military involvement since the U.S. will be heavily engaged in the anti-terrorism effort worldwide."

Document 2
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Larry Di Rita, Subject: “Weekly Meeting on Afghanistan,” March 28, 2002, 7:21 a.m., not classified, 1 p.
Mar 28, 2002

Exhilarated by swift victory over the Taliban in late 2001, the Bush administration quickly switched its attention to Iraq, but by March 2002 Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was worried again about Afghanistan, writing a snowflake to top aides about setting up a weekly meeting because the situation was “drifting.”

Document 3
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Doug Feith (cc to Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Dick Myers, Gen. Pete Pace), Subject: “Afghanistan,” April 17, 2002, 9:15 a.m., Secret, 1 p.,(“Help!”)
Apr 17, 2002

On April 17, 2002, President George W. Bush announced new objectives for Afghanistan in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute, including a stable government, a new army, and a new education system for boys and girls. In effect, Bush’s speech revoked the previous Rumsfeld insistence about not committing “to any post-Taliban military involvement.”. Rumsfeld’s concerns about no clear exit strategy from Afghanistan crystallized in a short snowflake addressed to his top policy aide Douglas Feith and copied to his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and to the chair and vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs. “I know I’m a bit impatient,” he writes, but “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.” “Help!”

Document 4
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Douglas Feith, Subject: “Pakistan,” June 25, 2002, 12:31 p.m., not classified, 1 p., (“Get the Paks to really fight”)
Jun 25, 2002

This Rumsfeld memo to his policy aide, Douglas Feith, on June 25, 2002 captures how naïve top American officials were about Pakistani motivations, and how throwing money at any problem came to be the core U.S. modus operandi around Afghanistan. Rumsfeld asks, “If we are going to get the Paks to really fight the war on terror where it is, which is in their country, don’t you think we ought to get a chunk of money, so that we can ease Musharraf’s transition from where he is to where we need him.”
Rumsfeld does not see how Pakistan and its intelligence service were playing both sides in Afghanistan, and the net for Pakistani leader Musharraf was some $10 billion in U.S. aid over the following six years.

Document 5
Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, Coalition Coordination Cell, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Roger Pardo-Maurer, email, “Greetings from scenic Kandahar,” August 15, 2002, with “snowflake” cover note from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Larry Di Rita, Subject: “E-mail,” September 13, 2002, 2:26 p.m., not classified, 15 pp.

“Kandahar is like sitting in a sauna and having a bag of cement shaken over your head.” To those who call it dry heat, Pardo-Maurer, a member of Yale’s class of 1984, rejoins, “you don’t stay dry for long when you are the Lobster Thermidor inside a carapace of about 50 lbs. of Kevlar and ceramic plate armor, with a sweltering chamber pot on your head.” “If there is a landscape less welcoming to humans anywhere on earth, apart from the Sahara, the Poles, and the cauldrons of Kilauea [Hawaii], I cannot imagine it, and I certainly don’t intend to go there.”

Document 6
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld memo to President George W. Bush, Subject: “Afghanistan,” August 20, 2002, not classified, 2 pp., (“Slow progress”)
Aug 20, 2002

He wrote President Bush on August 20, 2002, arguing, “the critical problem in Afghanistan is not really a security problem. Rather, the problem that needs to be addressed is the slow progress that is being made on the civil side.” More troops would backfire, “we could run the risk of ending up being as hated as the Soviets were”

Document 7
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to [redacted], Subject: “Meetings with President,” October 21, 2002, 5:50 p.m., not classified, 1 p., (“Who is General McNeill?”)
Oct 21, 2002

By the fall of 2002, the White House focus centered on the buildup to invading Iraq, to the point that President Bush didn’t even know who his latest commander was in Kabul... General McNeill, and noticing that Bush was quite puzzled. “He said, ‘Who is General McNeill?’ I said he is the general in charge of Afghanistan. He said, ‘Well, I don’t need to meet with him.”

Document 8
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Steve Cambone, no subject, September 8, 2003, not classified, 1 p., (“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are”)
Sep 8, 2003

This September 2003 memo from the Secretary of Defense to his top intelligence aide, Steve Cambone, laments that nearly two years into the Afghan war, they still don’t know the enemy.

Document 9,
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Subject: “Afghan National Police,”February 23, 2005, For Official Use Only, 3 pp.
Feb 23, 2005

...the police force seemingly had gained little from years of training by State Department contractors, perhaps mainly because police pay was so low that they extorted the very people they were supposed to protect.
...Later in 2005, the U.S. military would take over police training, and still fail to produce a professional force, not least because the whole idea was foreign to rural Afghans, who settled disputes primarily through village elders.

Document 10
U.S. Embassy (Kabul), Cable 003681, Subject: "Confronting Afghanistan’s Corruption Crisis,” September 15, 2005, Confidential, 7 pp. (“A long tradition grows like Topsy”)
Sep 15, 2005

... Neumann’s cable ascribes the endemic corruption to multiple factors, “privation” in the form of low official salaries, “insecurity” in the form of 35 years of war, “more foreign ‘loot’” especially the billions coming in from the U.S., “exposure to the outside world” of people better off materially, and “universality” in the sense that everyone was doing it.
Neumann also acknowledges the reality that the U.S. was working with “some unsavory political figures” out of necessity. Redacted when the cable was declassified in 2011 are the specific names Neumann reported, and the specific actions he was recommending, but the full version released in 2014 revealed that at the top of his list was an untouchable – Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, whom the CIA had paid for years, along with a number of provincial governors, most on U.S. covert payrolls as well.

Document 13
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld “snowflake” to Gen. Pete Pace [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs], June 15, 2006, Subject: “General McCaffrey’s Report on Afghanistan,” Secret, 1 p., [attachment dated June 3, 2006 is not classified, 9 pp.]
Jun 15, 2006

...McCaffrey warns that the Afghan leadership are “collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming few years” ... McCaffrey saw the Afghan police as “disastrous” but could only think of more money plus adding “a thousand jails, a hundred courts, and a dozen prisons.

Document 14
U.S. Embassy (Kabul), Cable 003863, Subject: "Afghanistan: Where We Stand and What We Need," August 29, 2006, Secret, 8 pp., (“We are not winning in Afghanistan”)
Aug 29, 2006

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann warns Washington in this cable that "we are not winning in Afghanistan; although we are far from losing" (that would take another 14 years).

Document 15
Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, Kabul, Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Subject: “Commander’s Initial Assessment,” August 30, 2009, Confidential, 66 pp.
Aug 30, 2009

This is the key document behind the Obama “surge” in Afghanistan that produced the highest U.S. troop levels in the whole 20-year war. This 66-page assessment had a convoluted public history: written in August 2009, it leaked to the Washington Post in September, likely as part of Pentagon pressure on Obama to approve more troops, and the Pentagon declassified it right away.
Testifying to the Senate in December 2009, McChrystal flatly declared “the next eighteen months will likely be decisive and ultimately enable success. In fact, we are going to win.” His 66 pages remain a testament to American military hubris, full of questionable assumptions – that most Afghans saw the Taliban as oppressors and would side with a government installed by foreigners, that most Afghans shared a national identity...

Document 16
U.S. Embassy (Kabul), Cable 3572, “Subject: COIN Strategy: Civilian Concerns,” November 6, 2009, Secret NODIS ARIES, 4 pp. [by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry]
Nov 6, 2009

This highly classified November 6, 2009, cable, captioned NODIS ARIES, is couched as a personal letter from Eikenberry to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, opposing the proposed troop influx, the vastly increased costs, the concomitant need for yet more civilians, and the resulting increase in Afghan dependency. Eikenberry spells out his reasons: first that Hamid Karzai “is not an adequate strategic partner” – “[h]e and much of his circle are only too happy to see us invest further. They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending war on terror and for military bases to use against surrounding powers

Document 17
U.S. Embassy (Kabul), Cable 3594, “Subject: Looking Beyond Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan,” November 9, 2009, Secret NODIS ARIES, 3 pp. [by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry]
Nov 9, 2009

Neither the Afghan army nor government “has demonstrated the will or ability to take over lead security responsibility

Document 18 is quite interesting, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Lessons Learned Record of Interview, Richard Boucher, October 15, 2015, 12 pp.
Oct 15, 2015

Boucher candidly told the SIGAR interviewers in October 2015, “Did we know what we were doing – I think the answer is no. First we went in to get al-Qaeda, and to get al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and even without killing Bin Laden we did that. The Taliban was shooting back at us so we started shooting at them and they became the enemy. Ultimately, we kept expanding the mission.”
Boucher confessed, “If there was ever a notion of mission creep it is Afghanistan.” His 12 pages of interview transcript include multiple striking observations worth reading in full, about corruption, about local governance and the lack thereof, about the U.S. military’s can-do attitude and where it leads, about roads not taken.
His judgment about Afghanistan comes down to a long view: “The only time this country has worked properly was when it was a floating pool of tribes and warlords presided over by someone who had a certain eminence who was able to centralize them to the extent that they didn’t fight each other too much. I think this idea that we went in with, that this was going to become a state government like a U.S. state or something like that, was just wrong and is what condemned us to fifteen years of war instead of two or three.”

Document 19
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Testimony Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, “U.S. Lessons Learned in Afghanistan,” Unclassified, January 15, 2020, 48 pp.
Jan 15, 2020

“The problem is there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie.”
Sopko told Congress that the system of rotation of U.S. personnel after a year or less in Afghanistan amounted to an “annual lobotomy.” Sopko gave specific examples of fake data and faulty metrics
Unchecked corruption in Afghanistan undermined U.S. strategic goals – and we helped to foster that corruption” through “alliances of convenience with warlords” and “flood[ing] a small, weak economy with too much money, too fast.”

Document 20
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Quarterly Report to Congress, July 31, 2021 [Security Contents], 34 pp.
Jul 31, 2021

The SIGAR report comments on the $88 billion invested in those forces: “The question of whether that money was well spent will ultimately be answered by the fighting on the ground

I understand that war addition puts a major strain on the lives of some warmongers, willing to stay in Afghanistan forever.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The US/Taliban agreement did not foresee new elections.Get real,it was designed to hand over the government to the winner of the war.Last March Blinken recommended an interim power-sharing government composed of Taliban and other Afghan leaders. Ghani, detached from reality, asked for a electoral process (!!) waiting for a miracle.For Ghani, an interim government was the last chance of a fragile peace, and yet he refused it.We all know that the “democratic” GOA (government of Afeghanistan) was nothing more than an American corrupt installed oligopoly.

Under the Doha agreement, the Taliban publicly committed to seeking a permanent ceasefire and political settlement with the Afghan government. Instead, they broke that agreement by militarily conquering the country. None of your deflections will change that. “Get real” indeed. Repeating the same lies again and again is nonsensical given they contradict your own sources. Simultaneously arguing Afghan democracy was illegitimate because it was a “US puppet regime” while also complaining Ghani rejected an undemocratic proposal from the US calling for dissolution of the democratic government highlights the self refuting nature of your sophistry. Spamming links that do not support your argument will not confer legitimacy on your false claims.

According to Brookings Institution researcher Vanda Felbab-Brown,The black hole of corruption that swallowed up US investment

Nothing in this citation substantiates your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement.

Arguing that USG omission of inconvenient facts and the corruption in Kabul renders Afghan democracy illegitimate is a non sequitur, and Felbab-Brown does not make that claim, you did. She questions the legitimacy of the Taliban even as she notes that corruption facilitated the collapse of the government.

Her argument that the Taliban are not corrupt is based on the self-contradictory idea the group is inherently corrupt as a criminal organization operating through illicit means, and therefore is less susceptible to other kinds of corruption. She even points out that the international crackdown on the Taliban’s drug cartel operations backfired because so many people in Afghanistan were benefiting from that corruption.

There is a natural symbiosis between the Taliban and narcotics traffickers, whose smuggling and money laundering networks would be of great help in the Taliban’s efforts to circumvent UN sanctions. And the Taliban, we know, has given aid, training, and sanctuary to various Islamic terrorist and separatist groups in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden’s al Qa’ida group. Al Qa’ida fighters have taken an increasingly prominent role in the Taliban’s war against the Northern Alliance, reportedly because war-weary indigenous Afghans are reluctant to fight.

The UN reports that campaigns against the Northern Alliance are used by foreign terrorist groups in Afghanistan as live fire exercises for their fighters. In addition, we are aware that Osama bin Laden has close relations with top Taliban leaders. Press reports indicate that bin Laden encouraged the Taliban to increase its drug trade as part of his war against the West.

https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rl...p_oct/5210.htm

According to a June 2021 U.N. report based on member-state intelligence, most of the money comes from criminal activity such as opium production, drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping for ransom.

Other analysts say the Taliban also continue to get money from Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, Iran.

However, while the Taliban appear to have raised enough money to take Afghanistan by force, there are some doubts they have sufficient funding to govern Afghanistan on their own.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-afghani...y/6209559.html

Shilling for a jihadist drug cartel while complaining about corruption in the democratic Afghan government further underscores the self refuting nature of your sophistry.

(1) Afghanistan 20/20: The 20-Year War in 20 Documents Relevant excerpts

None of these excepts and documents substantiate your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement.

These documents tell the story of a government unprepared for an endeavor paradoxically necessitated by circumstance, a government whose naive deference to its democratic partners caused the failure of that endeavor. It is the opposite of your narrative determined to portray the US as an insidious, all-powerful world conquerer depriving Afghanistan of its rightful Taliban rulers.

No one claimed the Afghan government was corruption free.

No one denied corruption facilitated its collapse.

No one denied the Iraq war distracted attention and resources from Afghanistan, nor that the USG relied too much on money to solve complex problems.

No one denied it is hot in Kandahar.

No one denied the US did a poor job building the ASF

No one denied US planners made poor decisions

If the US hadn’t reversed its position against negotiating any political settlement with the Taliban, you wouldn’t have gotten the withdrawal you wanted. I’ve no idea why you would complain about that.

You’ve essentially flipped your own argument at this point, complaining that the so called “puppet regime” and “fake democracy” rejected undemocratic proposals from the so called puppet master. You’ve cited documents that highlight all the ways the US potentially needed to take far more direct and systematic control of the country if it hoped to achieve its objectives, rather than relying on the democratic Afghan government to make better use of the support it was getting. In other words, you’ve presented an extensive case why the US might have benefitted from behaving as precisely the kind of imperial overlord caricature you’ve projected for pages and pages.

[Ludicus]

As can be seen by reading the above-mentioned documents,over many years American citizens have been deceived and have not fully understood the impact of three fundamental points to American military failure in Afghanistan:
1-Generalized corruption, well known to American politicians, who thought it was possible to build a nation by offering money to the tribal lords and the corrupt GOA- yes, the puppet master, installed by the US.
2-the non-existence of an Afghan nation.It had been known for many years that the GOA would only fight the Taliban as long as American forces remained in the country. (1)
3- The Doha agreement was understood correctly by the Afghans: it meant, sooner or later, the passage of power to the "government-in-waiting," of Taliban.


'9/11 millionaires' and mass corruption: How American money

...has helped create a tiny class of young, ultra-rich Afghans, many of whom made their fortunes as government contractors. Over time, these contracts helped fuel a system of mass corruption that engulfed the country.

Austin Gives Senate Hard Truths of Lessons From Afghanistan

" ...we could not forge a nation," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told the Senate Armed Services Committee today, encapsulating America's 20-year involvement in Afghanistan.

Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S.Miscalculations-N.Y.Times

An Afghan military that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed in brought an ignoble end to America’s longest war.

"Ignoble" is a misnomer. It is more accurate to say "inevitable end". What would be ignoble: to remain indefinitely in Afghanistan.
History teaches,
Afghanistan: A history of failed foreign occupations - Financial

Afghanistan is “a graveyard for colonialist, or neocolonialist foreign powers that aim to rule”, said Romain Malejacq, a political scientist and author of Warlord Survival, about state building in Afghanistan. In his 2010 history of the country, anthropologist Thomas Barfield wrote that “Afghanistan got rid of foreign occupiers by making the country so ungovernable that they wanted to leave”.
Imperial Britain viewed Afghanistan, a landlocked country along the ancient Silk Road trade route, as a vital buffer between its Indian colony and Russia. Rebellions forced a British retreat in 1842. They marched a force of nearly 20,000 out of Kabul only to be picked off by tribal forces along the way. A sole British survivor made it back. Britain continued trying to incorporate Afghanistan into its empire, fighting two more wars in 1878 and 1919 before ending its ambitions.
Soviet invasion, 1979-89
One million Afghans were killed and another 4m displaced. “The Soviets came to the same conclusion that the British had reached a century earlier: the direct occupation of Afghanistan had a high cost for few benefits,” Barfield wrote. After the Soviets left, mujahideen factions turned on each other. Ultimately, this chaos gave rise to the Taliban.
US and Nato invasion, 2001-21
...Historians and political scientists will long debate how and where the US got it so wrong. Malejacq argues that — like other powers before — the US mistakenly believed it could remake the country using force.

Precisely.
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(1)
Jason Dempsey is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He's a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and served as an adviser to Afghan forces in 2012.Military Analyst: U.S. Trained Afghan Forces For A Nation That Didn't Exist.
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A very interesting analysis...with a wrong conclusion, The West's Unspoken Failure in Afghanistan

No country in recent times is more in need of a common identity than Afghanistan, which has 14 officially recognized ethnic groups that, broadly speaking, live in four separate geographic regions, and between 40 and 59 mother-tongue languages. The country was divided by civil conflict for decades, if not centuries, when the US-led coalition invaded it in 2001
An element of shared identity failed to materialize by the time the West withdrew. The endless civil war and recent events in the country have shown that its ethnically and linguistically driven political divisions are just as deep today as they were when the US began its occupation 20 years ago.

Twenty years is far too long for a war, but far too short to build a stable national identity. It is thus not surprising that the West failed the Afghan people, because it was never willing to foster national unity in a meaningful way.

Well, "willing" is a very confident word in the miraculous powers of the west.

[Lord Thesaurian]

As can be seen by reading the above-mentioned documents,over many years American citizens have been deceived and have not fully understood the impact of three fundamental points to American military failure in Afghanistan:

Nothing in your citations substantiates your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement - your latest three fundamental lies. Citing public information while claiming that same information has been withheld from the public just shows a desperation to divert the subject away from your own narrative and toward a self-contradictory mess of another variety. The extent to which the US government painted a far rosier picture of the situation on the ground than it should have at any point has nothing to do with your false claims attempting to delegitimize Afghan democracy and shill for the Taliban.

1-Generalized corruption, well known to American politicians, who thought it was possible to build a nation by offering money to the tribal lords and the corrupt GOA- yes, the puppet master, installed by the US.

'9/11 millionaires' and mass corruption: How American money

The fact that corruption facilitated the collapse of the Afghan government - something I just said in my last post - does nothing to substantiate your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement. You’ve already refuted your own false claim that Afghan democracy was an illegitimate puppet, attacking Ghani for rejecting an undemocratic proposal by his alleged American puppet masters.to dissolve the democratic government.

2-the non-existence of an Afghan nation.It had been known for many years that the GOA would only fight the Taliban as long as American forces remained in the country. (1)

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-St...m-afghanistan/

Cropping Austin’s quote to make it sound like he questioned the legitimacy of the Afghan government is pathetic:

"We helped build a state, but we could not forge a nation," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told the Senate Armed Services Committee today, encapsulating America's 20-year involvement in Afghanistan.

He was referring to the failure of the ASF to stand on its own, for which he blames the US surrender to the Taliban and other miscalculations for facilitating the Taliban’s agenda:

The Doha Agreement — negotiated between the United States and the Taliban — had a negative effect on Afghan government forces, he said. "We did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha Agreement, that the Doha Agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on Afghan soldiers, and that we failed to fully grasp that there was only so much for which — and for whom — many of the Afghan forces would fight," Austin said.

Over 20 years, tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police died in battle. Many fought bravely, he said. "But, in the end, we couldn’t provide them with the will to win. At least not all of them," the secretary said.

He’s also trying to cover for his boss by blaming Kabul for the “unforeseen” situation, but his own recommendations to the POTUS, which Biden rejected, are part of the overwhelming consensus that the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan was foreseen to be a catastrophic mistake.

Last month, Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopolous that none of the commanders had advised him to leave a small troop presence in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Milley testified that commanders’ concerns — that a full withdrawal could hasten Taliban takeover—were conveyed to the Biden White House in the months leading up to the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/20...ubious/185667/

3- The Doha agreement was understood correctly by the Afghans: it meant, sooner or later, the passage of power to the "government-in-waiting," of Taliban.

Nowhere in the Doha agreement was the Taliban recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. In fact it specifically says it does not in several places. I don’t know why you would lie about something so basic. The Taliban committed under the Doha agreement to seek a permanent ceasefire and political settlement with the Afghan government. The Taliban violated that agreement.

Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S.Miscalculations-N.Y.Times


"Ignoble" is a misnomer. It is more accurate to say "inevitable end". What would be ignoble: to remain indefinitely in Afghanistan.
History teaches,
Afghanistan: A history of failed foreign occupations - Financial


Precisely.
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Nothing in these citations substantiates your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement. As per your own FT reference, “The whole point of this intervention was not about building a state, a democracy…..It was about counterterrorism.” And yet a democratic state was being built by the Afghan people, one that took over combat operations against the Taliban from the US since 2014. It was an internationally recognized and supported government, including the international force that assisted the ASF on the ground for years. Once that support was withdrawn, terror groups like al Qaeda are once again resurgent, regaining the ability to strike the US homeland within the next year or two, according to official analyses by Sec Def and the Pentagon.

(1)
Jason Dempsey is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He's a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and served as an adviser to Afghan forces in 2012.Military Analyst: U.S. Trained Afghan Forces For A Nation That Didn't Exist.
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A very interesting analysis...with a wrong conclusion, The West's Unspoken Failure in Afghanistan


Well, "willing" is a very confident word in the miraculous powers of the west.

Neither Jack Dempsey nor Nancy Qian even attempt to substantiate your false claims that Ghani rejected peace, nor that Afghan democracy was illegitimate, nor that the Taliban didn’t violate the Doha agreement. Once again, the blame is put on western “diffidence,” the exact opposite behavior of your “imperial overlord” sophistry. Both analyses suggest the US and its allies needed to behave more assertively and comprehensively to control the country and build a colonial, national identity the way the British did in India or America. You can’t have it both ways. All you’ve done is further undermine your own narrative with the same self contradictory talking points reiterated in the last several posts.

[Ludicus]

Once again, the blame is put on western “diffidence,” the exact opposite behavior of your “imperial overlord” sophistry.

Not, its the same thing,the US believed it could remake the country by force, expressing an overly confident imperial/neo colonial mentality.I ironically wrote the "miraculous powers of the west".
The GOA was created by the US military occupation in a premodern, tribal country, in a non existing nation, Ghani is a corrupt clown, and above all there is no legitimacy in any Vichy government. In 2009 elections the New York Times wrote, "fraud was so pervasive that nearly a quarter of all votes were thrown out." A simulacrum of democracy in the "liberated areas", in 2009 the Taliban controlled half of the country,





GOA collapse can be traced to the DOHA agreement,which represented in practice the handing over of power to the Taliban.Yesterday, today or anywhere in the next 20 years/ future, the absence of American troops on Afghan soil means the immediate handover of power to the Taliban. "You have the watches" a Taliban commander apparently told General Rick Hillie, chief of defence staff from February 2005 to July 2008 -"but we have the time".
---

Interesting developments,

Taliban to Implement Monarch-era Constitution in Afghanistan

The Taliban’s acting justice minister promised on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic’s Constitution would be replaced with 20th-century monarchy-era legislation.
The statement added: “The Islamic Emirate (Afghanistan under Taliban rule) will implement the constitutional law of the former King Mohammad Zahir Shah for a temporary period without any content that contradicts Islamic law and the principles of the Islamic Emirate.
Sharaey further stated that the outfit would follow laws and international treaties that are not against Islam and the Taliban government, as well as ideals.

It is worth noting that Former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani said Monday his Facebook account was hacked when it posted a message telling people to accept the Taliban rule.
A post was shared on Ghani’s verified Facebook page at 12:15 p.m. Afghanistan time on Monday, which said the world should engage with the Taliban government.
“The international community should interact with the current government instead of alienating the Afghan people,” it said.

I wonder who hacked his account... i know it wasn't you, Lord.

Isaczai Withdrew from Representing Afghanistan at the UN ...

Former Afghan envoy to the United Nations Ghulam M. Isaczai was scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Afghanistan on Monday. He was thought to be speaking out against the Taliban.
Meanwhile, a statement was posted on Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s official Facebook page yesterday, saying he was ashamed of Isaczai’s intention to representing his government at the UN. The statement called on the international community to support the Taliban government.

Earlier, the Taliban sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General, asking him to allow Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to address the UN General Assembly. The Taliban have appointed Suhail Shahin as their representative to the UN.

"ashamed", take note.
Ghani, pure, kind soul, you break the heart of some of your warmonger sympathizers.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Not, its the same thing,the US believed it could remake the country by force, expressing an overly confident imperial/neo colonial mentality.I ironically wrote the "miraculous powers of the west".
The GOA was created by the US military occupation in a premodern, tribal country, in a non existing nation, Ghani is a corrupt clown, and above all there is no legitimacy in any Vichy government.

Rejecting the conclusions of your own references just so you can repeat the same lies over and over makes one wonder why you bothered posting them in the first place. Comparing the US to Nazi Germany yet again, while relying on similarly libelous comparisons to declare the Afghan democracy illegitimate, proves your narrative is nothing but empty propaganda. Your position has nothing to do with legitimacy, democracy, or sovereignty, but in fact a perennial and seething hatred of the US.

In 2009 elections the New York Times wrote, "fraud was so pervasive that nearly a quarter of all votes were thrown out." A simulacrum of democracy in the "liberated areas", in 2009 the Taliban controlled half of the country,

GOA collapse can be traced to the DOHA agreement,which represented in practice the handing over of power to the Taliban.Yesterday, today or anywhere in the next 20 years/ future, the absence of American troops on Afghan soil means the immediate handover of power to the Taliban. "You have the watches" a Taliban commander apparently told General Rick Hillie, chief of defence staff from February 2005 to July 2008 -"but we have the time".
---

The Doha agreement explicitly stated the Taliban is not recognized as a state nor as the government of Afghanistan. Shilling for a jihadist drug cartel backed by Pakistan and justifying its rule by right of conquest proves your propaganda slandering the US as an “imperial overlord” and its democratic allied government as “illegitimate” due to corruption is as disingenuous as your criticisms are self refuting.

Interesting developments,

Taliban to Implement Monarch-era Constitution in Afghanistan


I wonder who hacked his account...

i know it wasn't you, Lord.

Isaczai Withdrew from Representing Afghanistan at the UN ...


"ashamed", take note.
Ghani, pure, kind soul, you break the heart of some of your warmonger sympathizers.

The Taliban is “temporarily” borrowing some parts from the monarchist constitution as an interim governing document, just as the coalition forces did 20 years ago until elections could be held. Since there are no elections to be held now, this development suggests the Taliban is trying to appeal to historical institutions because it lacks legitimacy and capacity as a government, further undermining your claims.

[The Noble Lord]

People here think that it was full-blown defeat and they do blame the Americans for leaving Afghanistan. It's very interesting view of the Afghans, on one hand they always said how all foreign forces
should leave the country on the other hand they are now blaming the Americans for the Taliban takeover of the country. However, the situation is still fluid and it changes day to day.

[antaeus]

People here think that it was full-blown defeat and they do blame the Americans for leaving Afghanistan. It's very interesting view of the Afghans, on one hand they always said how all foreign forces
should leave the country on the other hand they are now blaming the Americans for the Taliban takeover of the country. However, the situation is still fluid and it changes day to day.

Who are the "they" you are talking about?

[Ludicus]

For my part, I blame no one. It was inevitable, that's what I've been saying. My point of view: we must hope that peaceful and collaborative pressure from all countries (America, China, Russia, EU, Pakistan, etc,etc) can somehow moderate the radical Islamism in Afeghanistan. There are some faint signs that this might happen- the new constitution; some promises made regarding women's right to work and study; the fact that the Taliban need financial support from the international community to manage the country in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe; IS terrorist attacks (e.g. Several people killed by bomb attack near a Kabul mosque -The Islamist group is violently opposed to the Taliban.It is much more difficult to govern a country than to fight in the opposition or for a country's independence,this is a universal truth.
So, let's wait and see. That said, what we all need is to exterminate what is left of blind,inhumane, radical international terrorist Islamism: in Africa, and everywhere. For that, I don't think it's necessary to invade countries.
---
Btw, Ashraf Ghani

In an interview with Afghan outlet TOLO News, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ghani had told him the night before he fled Afghanistan that he was “prepared to fight to the death”.

I refuse to take this guy seriously. Meanwhile Ghani's brother swears allegiance to Taliban (head of the Grand Council of Kuchi/nomads) and says Afghans need to accept Taliban rule, says Hashmat Ghani

----

Edlt.
Thanks to an international rescue effort - in collaboration with the Taliban, this is what I call quality immigration (j/k)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

... and their 54 family members.
“You are a fantastic nation for impacting the lives of so many girls and for supporting us in so many ways and providing these girls with asylum,” Muhtaj said, thanking Portugal for taking them in.

[Ludicus]

From the news,
Afghan Uyghurs Fear Deportation as Taliban Cozy Up to China -New York Times

IS bomber kills 46 inside Afghan mosque, challenges Taliban

In its claim of responsibility, the region's IS affiliate identified the bomber as a Uygher Muslim, saying the attack targeted both Shiites and the Taliban for their purported willingness to expel Uyghers to meet demands from China. The statement was carried by the IS-linked Aamaq news agency.

--
Tribal Afghanistan was never a real, unified country. Karzai said in 2016 that Afghanistan had never accepted the Durand Line as an official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and would never accept it. Karzai described it as "a line of hatred which raised a wall between the two brothers." Here, The Fault Line Between Pashtuns and Punjabis in Pakistan-New York Times
There are 40 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries, the Pashtuns are the largest tribal group in the world.
The Durand Line | National Geographic Society

[The Noble Lord]

Who are the "they" you are talking about?

Afghan people themselves, Afghans here on the ground in Kabul. Because of the shock of the fall of the Ghani government and Taliban just walking in to Herat, Mazar and Kabul. People
here are kind of angry in a interesting way, Americans are being blamed for staying in Afghanistan for so long and for leaving it the way they did. It's very contradictory but you can expect
that from people who are still in shock that Ghani government has fallen.

I knew something was wrong when between the 11th and 13th of August cities of Herat and Mazar fell, they literally fell without a single shot being fired, these two cities were full of warlords
who had money, men and decades of experience in local politics and frontline fighting. When they didn't fight I knew that Kabul was in problems, Ghani government could've attempted to defend
the capital. They had the capabilities, men and equipment.

[Ludicus]

The President spoke the truth when he said, "We faced one of two choices: Follow the agreement of the previous administration and extend it to have...more time for people to get out; or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war." Biden's use of the term "escalate" was based on the post-Vietnam strategic lessons...

...,Americans are being blamed for staying in Afghanistan for so long and for leaving it the way they did

A very interesting comment.That's right.

Anyway, let's read Sonali Koholtar’ interview with RAW A Sonali Kolhatkar - SheSource - Women's Media Center
RAWA is an independent political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights.

Sonali Kolhatkar: For years RAWA spoke out against the U.S. occupation and now that it has ended, the Taliban are back. Could President Biden have withdrawn U.S. forces in a manner that would have left Afghanistan in a safer situation than currently? Could he have done more to ensure the Taliban were not so quickly able to take over?

RAWA: In the past 20 years, one of our demands was an end to the US/NATO occupation and even better if they take their Islamic fundamentalists and technocrats with them and let our people decide their own fate. This occupation only resulted in bloodshed, destruction and chaos. They turned our country into the most corrupt, insecure, drug-mafia and dangerous place especially for women.
From the very beginning we could predict such an outcome. On the first days of the US occupation of Afghanistan, RAWA declared on October 11, 2001:
“The continuation of US attacks and the increase in the number of innocent civilian victims not only gives an excuse to the Taliban, but also will cause the empowerment of the fundamentalist forces in the region and even in the world.”

The main reason we were against this occupation was their backing of terrorism under the nice banner of “war on terror”. From the very first days when the Northern Alliance looters and killers were installed back into power in 2002 to the last so-called peace talks, deals and agreements in Doha and release of 5000 terrorists from prisons in 2020/21, it was very obvious that even the withdrawal won’t have a good end.
The Pentagon proves that none of the theory invasion or meddling ended up in safe condition. All imperialist powers invade countries for their own strategic, political and financial interests but through lies and the powerful corporate media try to hide their real motive and agenda.

It is a joke to say values like “women’s rights”, “democracy”, “nation-building” etc. were part of the US/NATO aims in Afghanistan! US was in Afghanistan to turn region into instability and terrorism to encircling the rival powers especially China and Russia and undermining their economies via regional wars. But of course the US government did not want such a disastrous, disgraceful and embarrassing exit that left behind such a commotion that they were forced to send troops again in 48 hours to control the airport and safely evacuate its diplomats and staff.
There are two significant reasons for this withdrawal.

The main reason is the multifold internal crisis in the US. The signs of the US system decline was seen in the weak response to Covid-19 pandemic, attack on Capitol Hill and the great protests of the US public in the past few years. The policy-makers were forced to withdraw troops to focus on internal burning issues.
The second reason is that the Afghan war was an exceptionally expensive war whose cost has gone into trillions, all taken from taxpayer money. This put such a heavy dent on the US financially that it had to leave Afghanistan.

The war-mongering policies prove that their aim was never to make Afghanistan safer, let alone now when they are leaving. Furthermore, they also knew that the withdrawal would be chaotic yet they still went ahead and did it. Now Afghanistan is in the limelight again due to the Taliban being in power but this has been the situation for the past 20 years and everyday hundreds of our people were killed and our country destroyed, it just was rarely reported in the media.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Why did the Afghan National Army and the U.S. backed Afghan government fall apart so quickly?

RAWA: Some major reasons out of many are:

1) Everything was done according to a deal to handover Afghanistan to Taliban. The US govt. negotiating with Pakistan and other regional players had agreement to form a govt. mainly composed of Taliban. So the soldiers were not ready to be killed in a war that they knew there was no benefit of the Afghan people in it because finally it is set behind closed doors to bring Taliban to power.

2) Most Afghans understand well that the war going on in Afghanistan is not the war of Afghans and for the benefit of the country, but waged by foreign powers for their own strategic interests and Afghans are just fuels of the war. Majority of the young people are joining the forces because of severe poverty and unemployment so they have no commitment and morals to fight. It is worth mentioning that the United States and the West have tried for 20 years to keep Afghanistan a consumer country and have hindered the growth of industry. This situation created a wave of unemployment and poverty, paving the way for the recruitments of the puppet government, the Taliban and growth of opium production.

3) Afghan forces were not so weak to defeat in the course of a week, but they were receiving orders from the presidential palace not to fight back Taliban and should surrender. Most provinces were peacefully handed over to the Taliban.

4) The puppet regime of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani were calling Taliban “dissatisfied brothers” for years, and released many of their most ruthless commanders and leaders from prisons. Asking Afghan soldiers to fight a force that is not called “enemy” but “brother”, emboldened the Taliban and hit the morale of the Afghan armed forces.

5) The armed forces were unprecedentedly plagued by corruption. The large number of generals (mostly former brutal warlords of the Northern Alliance) sitting in Kabul grabbed millions of $, they cut even from food and salary of soldiers fighting in the frontlines. “Ghost soldiers” was a phenomenon exposed by SIGAR. High-ranking officials were busy filling their own pockets; they channelled salary and ration of tens of thousands of none-existing soldiers into their own bank accounts.

6) Whenever forces were besieged by Taliban in the hard fight, their call for help was ignored by Kabul. In numerous cases tens of soldiers were massacred by Taliban when they were deserted without ammunition and food for weeks. Therefore the rate of casualties among armed forces was very high. In the World Economic Forum (Davos 2019), Ashraf Ghani confessed that since 2014 over 45,000 Afghan security personnel have been killed, while in the same period only 72 personnel of US/NATO were killed.

7) Overall in society growing corruption, injustice, unemployment, insecurity, uncertainty, fraud, vast poverty, drug and smuggling, etc. provided a ground for reemergence of Taliban.

[Heathen Hammer]

Biden's government reviewed its murder of 10 Afghani civilians and concluded that it did nothing wrong.
Nothing surprising here, committing war crimes and then just basically covering them up has been MO of US since Vietnam days. Just goes to show how fake the media's attempts to paint Biden as peacenick are.

[alhoon]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/i...urnalists.html

A good article.

[Ludicus]

Where is Poirot when we need him?

August 20, 2021
Image shows crying baby being given to a US soldier in Kabul

The Marine was filmed plucking the baby, reported to be a girl, from a crowd of desperate Afghans at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Standing guard on top of the fence, he lifted the girl up by her arm and passed her off to a fellow marine alongside him. The two marines are with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a Marine corps spokesperson told the Post. Following the ordeal, the baby was taken to a medical treatment facility at the airport.
The baby seen in the video was taken to a medical treatment facility on site and cared for by medical professionals. I can confirm the baby was reunited with their father and is safe at the airport,” Maj. Jim Stenger told CBS News.

But...published a few hours ago,
Exclusive: Baby lost in chaos of Afghanistan airlift found

Ahmadi told Reuters in early November in his desperation that day, he handed Sohail over the airport wall to a uniformed soldier... it would be another half an hour before Ahmadi, his wife and their four other children were able to get inside. But by then the baby was nowhere to be found. Ahmadi said he searched desperately for his son inside the airport and was told by officials that he had likely been taken out of the country separately and could be reunited with them later. "We are working to reunify the family," a State Department official said.

A taxi driver enters the scene,

LONE AT THE AIRPORT
On the same day Ahmadi and his family were separated from their baby, Safi had slipped through the Kabul airport gates after giving a ride to his brother's family who were also set to evacuate. Safi said he found Sohail alone and crying on the ground. After he said he unsuccessfully tried to locate the baby's parents inside, he took the infant home to his wife and children.

Newborns can’t walk.How in the hell did that happen?

[Ludicus]

Afghanistan revisited.

Poor children are sometimes tempted to steal a small, insignificant toy, easy to hide in a pocket. When discovered, they take refuge in stubborn silence, or they make up some absurd excuse.The ones you see here, more grown up, are not poor, they are rich, and they don't steal a dinky toy, they steal a whole country. The silence of the compromised is the same.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Biden's Decision on Frozen Afghanistan Money Is Tantamount to mass murder

A senior Democratic foreign policy aide, who was granted anonymity to openly share his thoughts on the Biden administration’s actions, said the policy “effectively amounts to mass murder.” According to the aide, Biden “has had warnings from the UN Secretary General, the International Rescue Committee, and the Red Cross, with a unanimous consensus that the liquidity of the central bank is of paramount importance, and no amount of aid can compensate for the destruction of Afghanistan’s financial system and the whole macro economy.”

[conon394]

Ahh I see only the US has any agency. Right Ludicus. Hey Maybe the Afghan people could you know not essentially acquiesced to either the Taliban or the a corrupt government for the last 20 years.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60923196

You pick a government from the 13th century than figure out how to live with it.

[Condottiere 40K]

The Afghan people had a twenty year reprieve, to figure out what they want, and how badly they want to keep it.

[Cyclops]

The Afghan people had a twenty year reprieve, to figure out what they want, and how badly they want to keep it.

I disagre it was a reprieve. We barged in, did a lot of performative bull****, implemented some cynical reforms (often using good faith avtors and agents, but just often profiteering crooks like Cheney and Karzai) for our own purposes. They were props for US domestic consumption.