Have we morally failed Afghanistan?

In My Humble Opinion
163

I thought through all of history it’s been well known, that a land war in Afghanistan will always end in a disaster. Through the centuries hasn’t this always proven true?

Several countries poured two decades worth of support, millions in resources, training troops, nation building, trying to bring a modernity no one really asked for. It cost those nations not just fortune but many lives. I fail to see how that’s a moral failure.

Nothing changes that Afghanistan, has always been, an unruly collection of tribal factions each pressing the other for dominance. There is no single solution to such a situation, never was, never will be.

Nothing changes that it is one of the most corrupt environments on the planet. Much of the monies that were being poured into troops, schools, really anything, never reached where it was intended. And after all that investment when it came time, the Afghan troops literally put up no fight, they just gave up. You can’t force people to fight for their freedom if they’re not willing.

I don’t think it could be any clearer that the ONLY solution for Afghanistan MUST come from within Afghanistan. On their schedule, and not one minute before they are ready to sacrifice and find one.

Look no one in the west, no country that lost soldiers or invested resources, is happy with this outcome. But that doesn’t mean continuing a doomed enterprise is a option to consider.

I read an interview that said while everyone is displeased at the way it’s ending, the Afghans are all glad it’s ending. After twenty years of this many just want peace.

If you lived through twenty years of on going 21st century warring, you might feel the same.

164

I vaguely remember “Gunga Dan” Rather being widely mocked for prancing around in ‘native garb.’ I don’t remember the term for the religious rebels being “Taliban,” though (can’t recall if there was any term in use other than Noble Rebels Against Soviet Domination).

165

@Just_Asking_Questions keep reading.
The Northern Lights Pipe Line, guess what that has to do with Biden?

Northern Lights pipeline system has a total length of 7,377 kilometres (4,584 mi), of which around 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) is used to transport Russian gas to Europe.

A third parallel line will be added to this branch to supply the Nord Stream pipeline.

Guess what the Nordstream significance is?

Here is the History of Nordstream Nordstream 2, Gazaprom, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Biden, and more. Bookmark it it a long read.

The ending.

  • Problem is, the project is 90 percent complete, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set on getting it done before she leaves office this fall. So “ the Biden administration judged that… killing it with US-imposed sanctions would fail and inflame relations with Germany, giving Putin a win,” Dan says.

  • This was, in sum, a “calculated decision” by the Biden administration that an “agreement was far better than the pipeline being completed with no agreement,” Dick says.
    FAST THINKING: Nord Stream 2 gets the green light - Atlantic Council

166

Here’s an editorial, dated yesterday, from a newspaper I expect the Taliban will close, saying something else:
Message of Historical Revolution

Maybe I misunderstand an article that could be a poor English translation of a Dari original. But it sounds to me to advocate civil war in event the Taliban don’t improve.

167

I don’t think that was the reason we were in Afghanistan, but that pipeline was a real project being negotiated between the US and Taliban - that’s not conspiracy theory. It does lend credence to the idea that we weren’t in Afghanistan just because we wanted to turn it into some kind of liberal democracy.

168

Fascinating–thanks.

Today I heard a plausible (and related) point from (I think) Wesley Clark: that when the Trump Administration negotiated with the Taliban to withdraw all US troops by 1 May 2021, that negotiation took place without ANY involvement by the Ghani government.

And everyone in Afghanistan knew that the Ghani government had been excluded, and that this meant that it was considered irrelevant by the USA—and that the USA would no longer support it with money or supplies.

And this message was received loud and clear by all the “Afghan forces” the USA had trained/equipped, etc. So that when the Taliban started making their move, the “government forces” knew to throw in their lots with the people that the USA had clearly signaled were in charge: the Taliban.

169

We were in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda was based there with their (the Taliban) approval. Al-Qaeda flew airplanes into our cities.

My moral qualms revolve around common Afghanis. The people of Afghanistan. People who go to work and feed their children. Love their parents and children, just as everyone else does.

If the Taliban gathered their army in a stadium next Saturday to celebrate, I’d have no problem dropping a daisy cutter on them all. But would I flatten Kabul? No.

As the days I have progressed, and I see desperate people at the airport, as I see very nervous interviews we Aghanis on the street. I am increasingly of the opinion that we promised something that we did not deliver. And have morally failed.

170

One way or another this must be true.

Either we made an empty promise we couldn’t keep or we made a promise we could have kept if we stayed the course but pulled out before being able to fulfill it.

I think unless we were willing to radically rethink what we were trying to do in Afghanistan from the start it’s the former, but the question is when we failed Afghanistan, not whether we did.

171

Either you’re confused or deliberately trying to obfuscate…

Are you serious? Northern Lights pipleine doesn’t run ANYWHERE near Afghanistan. Pipleines serving Europe are a thousand miles north of Afghanistan. Look at a map!

The 911 conspiracy was that Unocal wanted to build a pipeline for oil from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan. It had nothing to do with Russian gas.

172

My point to shh1313 was that this particular pipeline was being sold as “the” reason for invading Afghanistan. And I wanted to know whether in the last 20 years it had been built, considering how “certain” this was back in 2002. And he’s trying to sell me a pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea.

173

Agreed - that pipeline had little relevance to what’s happening in Afghanistan.

174

@asahi @Just_Asking_Questions give me a second it does tie in. I’ll show you. It in the 1st link.

175

Mujahideen was the most common term. I believe it translates as “the ones who struggle”.

This was not the Taliban. That organization didn’t exist yet. But the communist regime in Afghanistan was secular, so a lot of the opposition groups were based on Islam. And the United States was supporting these groups. A lot of the people that we were supporting in the eighties would go on to become founders of the Taliban in the nineties, including Mohammad Omar.

176

I would speculate that the current Taliban will have learned something from this and they will confine their crimes to the domestic scene and will not support international terrorists who might draw American attention back to them.

177

As they built out the :arrow_right: Northern Lights pipeline system has a total length of 7,377 kilometres (4,584 mi), of which around 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) is used to transport Russian gas to Europe. Source Wikipedia

Then➡️
The total amount of Russian gas transmitted through Belarus to Europe was 70.1 bcm in 2007.[1]

Ownership Editing Northern Lights (pipeline) (section) - Wikipedia)

Then
The Russian section of the pipeline system is a part of the unified gas system of Russia and is owned and operated by Gazprom.

“Gazaprom is a reliable supplier of gas to Russian and foreign consumers. The Company owns the world’s largest gas transmission system, the total length of which within the boundaries of Russia reaches 175.2 thousand kilometers. Gazprom sells more than half of its gas to Russian consumers and exports gas to over 30 countries within and beyond the former Soviet Union.”
https://www.gazprom.com/about/]

Now do you get it?

178

Now thinking ahead… According to GAZAPROM Here’s what they say their strategy is from their company website.

“Due to Russia’s geographical location, the Company has the potential to become an energy “bridge” between the European and Asian markets by supplying its own natural gas and providing gas transit services to other producers. This predetermines the essence of the Company’s strategy in its key business areas.”
https://www.gazprom.com/about/strategy/

The Belt and Road Initiative BR This is huge! Texas is already making money.

Exclusive: Russian gas giant to relocate Houston office to recently renovated tower

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2017/10/24/exclusive-russian-gas-giant-to-relocate-houston.html

179

I am inclined to agree. I also think the Coalition were screwed no matter what. If they said “Wow, this place is a mess, we’re going to stay here indefinitely and run this place as an exclave so the people in it can enjoy their basic human rights and education”, people would scream about the evils of colonialism/imperialism; if they Coalition had said “Job done, we got the people we needed to get, we’re off now, bye!” then this whole thing would have happened a decade ago, but with louder cries of “How can we abandon them? We’ve destroyed their country and now we’re just up and leaving???”

The only saving grace from this is that there’s been 20 years of effort to get Afghanistan to function as a ‘modern’ country and the fact it has utterly failed means the brass can at least say “We genuinely tried to make this work for them”.

180

Let’s bring up IRAN in 2017 Gazaprom was in talks it was discussed.

181

Yes, I totally see how a gaz pipeline made in the 70s through Northerm Europe, supplying Russian gas to Germany, connects politically to an oil pipleline entirely within Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that the desire to have such a pipeline caused the US to use 911 (probably an inside job) as a pretext to invade Afghanistan to build said pipeline, which 20 years later hasn’t even been started. How could anyone not see that?

182

It built. It name is Northern Lights Pipeline. Read the Northern Lights Pipeline wikipedia article. Then read The Atlantic