They won’t want another invasion? Invasion? What exactly are you talking about? The American forces in Afghanistan who haven’t left yet? They don’t want another of that thing that is still ongoing? Jeepers.
I read an article written by a former Viet Cong a few years ago and he pointed out that the anti-American side (whichever it may be - VC or Taliban) gets tired and weary of fighting, too. It’s not just our guys that get tired of being IED’d, their guys also get tired of being drone-missiled and bombed year after year. So yeah, give peace a chance.
We’ve only been in this current conflict for nearly 20 years and we missile strike them before the ink has dried on this peace agreement…I’m sure this one will stick.
holding up peace sign :rolleyes:
I think invading and defending invoke different sorts of weariness. What “anti-American sides” have learned since the VietNam adventure is that if you pick at the Gringos long enough, they’ll go away, because they have no idea what “victory” looks like.
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop’s Afghanistan
(or Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, whatever)…
The US taxpayers have been forced by the Washington Military Industrial Complex to fund this debacle for over 19 years to the tune of $2 trillion!!! Not to mention the 2,440 soldiers that came home in body bags and the over 20,000 soldiers injured fighting. We need to bring every last American soldier home to be with their loved ones and let the Shiites and the Sunnis fight it out between themselves as they have been doing for the last 1500 years. We have no dog in this fight.
Obama promised to get the US out of Afghanistan, but after 8 years as Commander in Chief, our troops were still getting killed there even though Obama and his Democrats controlled the entire government (both the House and Senate) in his first two years. Its not a GOP vs. Democrat situation. Both parties are controlled by the Military Industrial Complex which makes billions of dollars a year off of the US military’s continuous wars. If this President or any President can actually bring our troops home, it will be a great thing. What about the “terms” in the agreement? Screw the “terms”. Neither the Afghani government forces nor the Taliban are going to abide by them anyway. Kissinger hammered out great “terms” with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong overran Saigon shortly thereafter. Declare victory and go home.
The peace treaty is holding rock steady:
“The mounting civilian toll belies U.S. expectations that the peace deal would lead to reduced violence in the war-ravaged country. Civilian casualties caused by Afghan government and Taliban attacks in April increased by more than a quarter when compared with the same month last year, according to the report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).”
I guess it should’ve been named an anti-peace treaty.
We lost the war the minute we started talking about invading Iraq. When you lose, you don’t get a lot of say in what happens next.
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” Thucydides.
Bumping this thread a bit:
This article is two weeks old, but it’s time to ponder what it means if the Taliban retakes all of Afghanistan again. If so, and they go back to hosting terrorist groups like they did before 2001, then we’re back at square one again - and then it’s time for a talk on whether that’s acceptable (in terms of what that would mean.)
It might be wishful thinking, but I think the above quotes capture my views. I’m no fan of the Taliban, but they seem to have a following in Afghanistan.
Turning Afghanistan into a western liberal democracy was always a pipe dream.
It may not have been had we dedicated ourselves to a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan immediately after the Taliban was deposed. Building up the country’s infrastructure, holding the corrupt governments that followed the Taliban accountable, giving the people of that nation something to believe in.
Let’s not delude ourselves; that was never going to happen. We can barely fix our own infrastructure let alone another country that has no natural resources that we want to exploit.
@Velocity The goal (at least since Biden was sworn in) was that there would be a peacekeeping force from elsewhere. The goal from Iran, as part of getting Iran back in the deal. From what I understand, that didn’t work, but China has promised to step in.
Whether they can handle it, I don’t know. But it kinda makes it their problem for now.
We’re moving back to fighting with near peers, with each of China, Russia, and the US engaging in something closer to the Cold War.
If you haven’t checked him out already, I very much recommend Beau of the Fifth Column. Pretty much any of his videos on foreign relations since Biden took over are relevant, but I’ll see if I can find the one that I think is the most useful.
Here is the one I was thinking of:
But also check out this earlier one that explores what the US pulling out actually means. They’re not likely leaving them completely defenseless:
(Yeah, I know they’re videos, but they’re pretty short, and you can speed them up if you need to.)
^ This about sums up my thinking as well. Afghanistan was always a long shot, but there was at least an opportunity to achieve a lot more than we did. Instead we pissed away resources that could have gone into Afhganistan on a war that destabilized the entire Middle East and even fueled the rise of the European far right.