Afghan Conflict: Iran, Taliban Clashes Appear to Subside

[The Black Forrest]

The Taliban did 9/11?

Our involvement was yet another case of Americans not looking into (probably not caring) the customs and culture of the people. We demanded Bin Laden; they would never have handed him over.

They offered

We declined

Actually they offered to negotiate. Basically; Prove that Bin Laden was behind 9/11 and we might consider it.

[Diarcesia]

Biden must have concluded that Afghanistan is Russia and China's problem now.

[Diahon]

The Taliban didn't have any reason to fly planes on 9/11. Fast forward two decades? Expect change.

[New haven america]

Biden must have concluded that Afghanistan is Russia and China's problem now.

China and Russia actually like Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Surprise surprise, the 2 modern main exporters of authoritarianism in the world like authoritarians. Who coulda guessed?

[Diarcesia]

Biden must have concluded that Afghanistan is Russia and China's problem now.

China and Russia actually like Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Surprise surprise, the 2 modern main exporters of authoritarianism in the world like authoritarians. Who coulda guessed?

But Taliban authoritarianism is not the authoritarianism those two countries like.

[Washington Resistance Army]

China and Russia actually like Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Surprise surprise, the 2 modern main exporters of authoritarianism in the world like authoritarians. Who coulda guessed?

But Taliban authoritarianism is not the authoritarianism those two countries like.

China has already more or less signaled it'll support the Taliban if they end any and all support to Muslims in China, a deal I imagine the Taliban will take.

[New haven america]

China and Russia actually like Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Surprise surprise, the 2 modern main exporters of authoritarianism in the world like authoritarians. Who coulda guessed?

But Taliban authoritarianism is not the authoritarianism those two countries like.

Doesn't matter, they're authoritarian.

China's already stated they're drawing up papers to recognize the Taliban as the legit Afghan government and want to provide aid and support when they take full control if they give up supporting Muslims in China.

[Thermodolia]

Ah yes they do. I’ve seen it myself

The sad part is that the local government is ineffective even after all we did.

I mean ya it was set up that way. This was just a way to make money. We should have left in 2012

[Diarcesia]

But Taliban authoritarianism is not the authoritarianism those two countries like.

China has already more or less signaled it'll support the Taliban if they end any and all support to Muslims in China, a deal I imagine the Taliban will take.

That's assuming Taliban won't go full ISIS. If my recollection serves right, they consider ISIS too crazy.

[Chess Guys]

Taliban is too pragmatic to be ISIS but also to religious to be like regular Muslim countries. They won't support the Uyghurs in even speech but they also won't allow extradition of them and won't interfere with their training there just so long as they don't launch attacks into China directly from there

[New haven america]

Taliban is too pragmatic to be ISIS but also to religious to be like regular Muslim countries. They won't support the Uyghurs in even speech but they also won't allow extradition of them and won't interfere with their training there just so long as they don't launch attacks into China directly from there

Hey, what continent is Algeria on?

[Chess Guys]

You want the US to spend another 20 years at war?

A war that mind you, would've ended in 2001 if Cheney and his puppet Bush weren't Cheney and Bush, as the Taliban did surrender.

Do you want another 9/11 or not? Or, if you can give a fuck about them, do you want another generation of Afghans licking the Taliban's boots?

Best way to avoid another 9/11 is to stop giving military aid to both Saud and Israel as those were ibn Laden's main demands. It's not worth it

[Saiwania]

Best way to avoid another 9/11 is to stop giving military aid to both Saud and Israel as those were ibn Laden's main demands. It's not worth it

Osama bin Laden's core demand was for the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, but thats no reason to listen to him. Fact is, Saudi Arabia wanted a real military to protect them against Saddam's Iraq. Of course Saudi government wasn't going to pick Osama's militia force when they could enter a deal with a major power.

[South Americanastan]

Do you want another 9/11 or not? Or, if you can give a fuck about them, do you want another generation of Afghans licking the Taliban's boots?

Best way to avoid another 9/11 is to stop giving military aid to both Saud and Israel as those were ibn Laden's main demands. It's not worth it

So your solution is to listen to the terrorist? Really?

[Senkaku]

Do you want another 9/11 or not? Or, if you can give a fuck about them, do you want another generation of Afghans licking the Taliban's boots?

Best way to avoid another 9/11 is to stop giving military aid to both Saud and Israel as those were ibn Laden's main demands. It's not worth it

Stop providing any security whatsoever to a threatened & internally compromised nuclear power and a gigantic tottering petro-dictatorship with latent atomic ambitions, yes this sounds like it will be a win for the US and the region

You want the US to spend another 20 years at war?

A war that mind you, would've ended in 2001 if Cheney and his puppet Bush weren't Cheney and Bush, as the Taliban did surrender.

Do you want another 9/11 or not?

No; are you saying if I don’t want that, then the US has to occupy Afghanistan forever?

Or, if you can give a fuck about them, do you want another generation of Afghans licking the Taliban's boots?

Yes, the Northern Alliance, famously Taliban bootlickers lol

This swift collapse was partially Biden's fault. He announced the withdrawal at the beginning of Spring or when fighting could best resume instead of pulling out during winter break.

…in which case spring would have opened with all the Americans gone and a full campaign season for the Taliban to do what they’re doing now?

The USAF isn't doing enough to bomb Taliban offensives into submission whilst covering the retreat.

“The retreat”? Whose retreat? To where? The Afghan government isn’t “retreating” to Kabul, they’re just collapsing; we’re not “retreating,” we’re just leaving, and that won’t require carpet-bombing anything.

Scorched earth should've been used.

By who? Where? And at this point, what’s left to scorch?

[Chess Guys]

Best way to avoid another 9/11 is to stop giving military aid to both Saud and Israel as those were ibn Laden's main demands. It's not worth it

Osama bin Laden's core demand was for the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, but thats no reason to listen to him. Fact is, Saudi Arabia wanted a real military to protect them against Saddam's Iraq. Of course Saudi government wasn't going to pick Osama's militia force when they could enter a deal with a major power.

Of course, Ibn Laden said they hadn't changed since being sell outs to the British. But he also saw the situation was just like the Natives who sided with Europe against Native American rivals, the short term result was nice but it was a long term divide and conquer

[Dowaesk]

But that's literally all that is used as a source. Afghans. You read an article, it uses anonymous Afghans. It's just a question of selection. Now I don't expect you to take me any more seriously than these journalists or whatever, rather I urge you to talk to Afghans living over there who have actually dealt with the Taliban.

This would be a valid argument, if:

A. I had enough money/time to actually go to Afghanistan. Not everyone is Bill Gates

B. The fact that news articles use Afghans combined with documents and on-the-ground reporting

C. The fact that one of these people is clearly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome (Yvonne Ridley)

D. The fact that lowering their gaze is not because of respect, but because they believe they are commiting sin (or something of that nature, I don't know the exact term/usage for it in Islam) by looking at a woman without a Hijab

E. The fact that sexual harrassment is most likely an overstatement. Catcalling is very common in western culture, and is a consequence of allowing women to dress how they want.

F. The fact that you haven't used any sources except your friends, which casts doubt on if these friends are even real, or if your picking and choosing the specific friends that support your viewpoint

D. What the fk. The Taliban probably dont do it out of respect. But we are asked in Islam to do so as not to come out as disrespectful. We are asked to lower our gaze whether its a hijabi or not.

[Dowaesk]

Taliban is too pragmatic to be ISIS but also to religious to be like regular Muslim countries. They won't support the Uyghurs in even speech but they also won't allow extradition of them and won't interfere with their training there just so long as they don't launch attacks into China directly from there

"Taliban wont support Uyghurs even in speech".
This just goes to show how shit they are. They dont actually care about anyone. They just wanna shit.

[Gallia-]

They offered

We declined

Actually they offered to negotiate. Basically; Prove that Bin Laden was behind 9/11 and we might consider it.

No, the exchange was something more like this:

October 7, 2001: USA bombs Afghanistan because Taliban refuse to hand over Bin Laden.
October 7-14, 2001: Taliban and USA conduct negotiations during the bombing campaign to come to terms. America has no real intention of coming to terms regardless, but this isn't known to the Taliban at the time.
October 14, 2001: Taliban offer to arbitrate Bin Laden with a neutral country in exchange for "evidence" Al-Qaeda did 9/11.
October 15, 2001: Al-Qaeda says it will burn all American cities and that Muslims should avoid going into tall buildings or riding in airplanes in the West. United States presents this as a tacit admission of guilt.
October 16, 2001: Taliban rescind demand for evidence, offer to arbitrate with a neutral third party (Pakistan) over handing Bin Laden over. United States refuses, again, because it has no intentions of "negotiating" with the Taliban. Because reasons.
October 16-21, 2001: United States and Taliban continue bickering over Bin Laden, with the US tightening the screws and hitting more and more Taliban military and government infrastructure with cruise missiles.
October 21, 2001: United States decides to throw off all pretenses of a classic punitive expedition and move into a full occupation mode, which was always its intent to begin with. US bombers target Taliban troops in the north of Afghanistan, beginning the Tajik-Uzbek counteroffensive towards Kabul, and the eventual ouster of the Pashtun Taliban to the FATA areas of Pakistan.
October 22, 2001-Present: United States fails to understand the gravity of the situation it finds itself in, and continues to blame its defeat on tangible (and meaningless) physical factors rather than incompetent statesmen, because the latter would probably require taking a long, hard look at the US political system, and the people it chooses to lead it.

The astounding thing is that America, by refusing to treat the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan with a genuine political support of its people (insofar that any Afghan government has political support, the Taliban certainly enjoyed it far more than most), ended up losing a 20 year war on the very first day. Had the US treated Bin Laden like, say, Pancho Villa, and simply left after the Battle of Tora Bora, because Bin Laden was no longer there, then perhaps things might have been different (not much different from now, but certainly cheaper). It would have avoided a pointless occupation to try to change the minds of people towards a form of government and culture that they are, being pious, Islamic, Central Asian peoples, deeply uncomfortable with, for one thing.

Pancho Villa is a pretty good historical analogy of how the United States should treat its punitive expeditions in general. The entire campaign, for all its failures, was short, sweet, and to the point. Pershing went in with one objective: capture Pancho Villa. He failed, so he went home. Nothing more came of it, because it was a minor punitive expedition. Pancho Villa is later killed by assassins sent by Obregon, President of Mexico, who was supported by the US military and fostered Amero-Mexican oil interests' business. I guess Bin Laden is Pancho Villa, the ISI are Obregon, and Seal Team Six are the assassins.

At no point is occupying the nation of Afghanistan, ousting the Taliban, or even engaging them beyond a short term bombing campaign, necessary at all in order to get them to shelter Bin Laden in Pakistan so that he can be killed by commandos at some point in the future as retribution (which ultimately happened anyway, and with the ISI's assistance).

But I guess the invasion of Afghanistan was never really about killing Bin Laden, or a punitive expedition for 9/11, or anything tangible or concrete. It was more about trying to prove that America could rapidly turn even very alien cultures (such as rural, agrarian, deeply religious, Pashtun, opium selling villages) into Massachusetts using B-52s. It failed, like Iraq, and now the best outcome is that the US might give up the whole adventure entirely. Of course I'm not entirely sure why it's was so concerned about it, considering that US music and movies (of which the Internet is an extension, being broadly American) seem to automatically turn anything they touch into somewhat liberal societies by pure cultural osmosis. America just has to wait for that to happen naturally instead of trying to force it, although the very action of trying to force it may have irrevocably poisoned such a path towards liberalization, because now it's clear that the United States cannot be trusted to treat different societies as legitimate, regardless of political support, or even basic pragmatism.

Rather, America can only be trusted to do absolutely bizarre things that make no sense except from the standpoint of old-fashioned colonialism, but it can't even do that properly because it's genuinely too nice to do be a real big boy imperialist in the modern, Marxist-Leninist sense of Hussein, Assad, Lenin, or Stalin (all of which are highly successful colonizers and destroyers of insurgencies of the current industrial/post-industrial eras).

It will take a lot of work and a lot of unpalatable, but serious, considerations of other cultures' differences in beliefs, their genuine and earnest feelings, and recognition that societies beyond the United States and Western liberalism actually exist in the world to undo it I guess. Maybe Biden can ouster the last of the New American Century type neocons who think that you can bomb people into liking picket fences and suburbia (despite that culture and economic class it represents being now long dying in America, but neocons ignoring American economic trends is par the course for them) but I doubt it. The US Democrats seem to be turning into them again in all reality, and may very well start occupying random countries in Africa, South America, or Europe in a few years for minor slights like "supporting a guy who we kinda agree with but not really like until we get bombed and expecting America to understand that even though we both share the same religion we're more than willing to throw this dude under the bus for you if you would just stop carpet bombing us".

Unfortunately it may take the wrong lesson from Afghanistan and try to treat another ISIS like it thinks it should have treated the Taliban. Which would be terrible for everyone except neo-ISIS. But ISIS was crazy enough to say "we don't negotiate with infidels" to America's face: mess with the bull you get the horns I guess. The Taliban weren't that stupid, but they were assuming America was just bombing them for punitive purposes, and not a bunch of overly passionate State Department bureaucrats actually intending to use their territory as a sociopolitical petri dish.

---

But yeah this was pretty much preordained (who didn't see the ANA folding like a wet tissue paper, honestly), although the Taliban are really rapid in their retaking of Afghanistan. I thought it would take at least a year or two given how lackadaisical ISIS was in Syria. I guess a lot of the big men there realized that Kabul is a dumpster fire waiting to happen and just flipped their internal loyalty switch as soon as America said it's leaving. Though I'm really just shocked it took most Americans needing to spend as long as five years in Afghanistan to realize that most Pashtuns are Muslim though. Yikes!

[Chess Guys]

These men died in large numbers for the Deen. You don't do a thing. Be careful with your slander just because you lack hikmah. They didn't vocally support Shaykh Usama either but he had nothing but praise for them because they loved him and helped him. No other Muslim country takes in Uyghurs and trains them in jihad. You don't do this. Most would piss their pants before doing this

[Diahon]

These men died in large numbers for the Deen. You don't do a thing. Be careful with your slander just because you lack hikmah. They didn't vocally support Shaykh Usama either but he had nothing but praise for them because they loved him and helped him. No other Muslim country takes in Uyghurs and trains them in jihad. You don't do this. Most would piss their pants before doing this

Oh, did someone say piss on them in perpetuity? Hang on, lemme unzip my fly --

[Dowaesk]

These men died in large numbers for the Deen. You don't do a thing. Be careful with your slander just because you lack hikmah. They didn't vocally support Shaykh Usama either but he had nothing but praise for them because they loved him and helped him. No other Muslim country takes in Uyghurs and trains them in jihad. You don't do this. Most would piss their pants before doing this

No other Muslim country has a government that so openly rapes little girls either.

[Gallia-]

Taliban is too pragmatic to be ISIS but also to religious to be like regular Muslim countries. They won't support the Uyghurs in even speech but they also won't allow extradition of them and won't interfere with their training there just so long as they don't launch attacks into China directly from there

"Taliban wont support Uyghurs even in speech".
This just goes to show how shit they are. They dont actually care about anyone. They just wanna shit.

Yes, a government that cares about not getting absolutely destroyed by big boys like the PLA or United States. It even respects the sovereignty of nations around it. For all their unpleasant aesthetics and support of sharia, the Taliban at least operate like a legitimate, Westernized government in practice, which is good, because it means they can be reasoned with and negotiated with. After all, what Western country doesn't say x but do y? That's practically a facet of European and American leaders on the daily.

Of course you can't make deals with lunatics like ISIS, but if you can reason and negotiate with the Taliban and you can make a deal with them. Better to discuss something, even the unpalatable and distasteful, than to resort to violence as the first recourse. American tendencies to monolith and silo away very different groups of people ("radical Islamic terrorism" is a great example, considering that homogenizes tons of groups whose ideology varies from Bin Laden's geopolitical focused "stop fucking with the Mideast, losers" to ISIS-style medieval LARPing, and anything in between) into large blobs is a good exercise in cognitive laziness.

If you don't understand who you're fighting how can you possibly hope to beat them?

Afghanistan's lesson is this: When dealing with an unpalatable, distasteful government that is otherwise legitimate and rules over a suzerainty with common support (sure, Afghans aren't going to cheer or anything, but the Taliban are a lot closer to the average rural Afghan's beliefs than some random cubicle bureaucrat in Kabul), you should generally treat them as a government. It's the same lesson it should have learned in Iran, too.

The US should really stop thinking in terms of political aesthetics and more in terms of what actually is happening with who it's talking to. America in 1942 allied with the Soviet Union to beat Hitler's armies, and eventually Imperial Japan. Before then it would have been considered stranger than fiction, given the US was hardly a military power and the British and French were wringing their hands over the USSR potentially invading Iraq, Syria, Iran, or India.

Would the modern United States do that? No, not at all. It would either be bombing the USSR at the same time, or simply refuse to assist it, and quite possibly both. It proved this already, since it couldn't even ally with Marxist-Leninist Ba'athists against ISIS in Syria. Of course, current American political culture heavily disincentivizes long term thinking in favor of firing up the base or whatever.

This is self-destructive in the long term since it destroys legitimacy of a government internationally, and radicalizes entire populations toward ideological aesthetic preferences as opposed to genuine tangible concerns, although for America this will likely not do much given it's the locus of the world economy. What it will do is make America bad at keeping countries from being torn apart by civil wars or something, although I guess if America refuses to trade with countries based solely on political aesthetics it might inadvertently isolate itself economically like the UK has been trying to. That's pretty unbelievable though: The more likely threat is that the United States will just devolve to everyone screaming at each other about minor social slights and faux pas over social media while bridges collapse, water mains rust, and insurance funds collapse or local economies dry up due to lack of investment in infrastructure or something.

That's good news for the rest of the world who will probably be living in fear of clouds of B-52s and Predator drones because they made Twitter mad, though.

These men died in large numbers for the Deen. You don't do a thing. Be careful with your slander just because you lack hikmah. They didn't vocally support Shaykh Usama either but he had nothing but praise for them because they loved him and helped him. No other Muslim country takes in Uyghurs and trains them in jihad. You don't do this. Most would piss their pants before doing this

No other Muslim country has a government that so openly rapes little girls either.

I'm pretty sure rape is a Pashtun cultural virtue or something. They clearly don't need the Taliban to pump the numbers up.

But the Taliban actually being willing to just execute people publicly might at least plateau them, at least for certain kinds of rape (rape of children, mainly), and probably not do much of anything (raising or lowering) for others (family rape, marital rape, etc.) due to lack of concern.

[Dowaesk]

"Taliban wont support Uyghurs even in speech".
This just goes to show how shit they are. They dont actually care about anyone. They just wanna shit.

Yes, a government that cares about not getting absolutely destroyed by big boys like the PLA or United States. It even respects the sovereignty of nations around it. For all their unpleasant aesthetics and support of sharia, the Taliban at least operate like a legitimate, Westernized government in practice, which is good, because it means they can be reasoned with and negotiated with. After all, what Western country doesn't say x but do y? That's practically a facet of European and American leaders on the daily.

Of course you can't make deals with lunatics like ISIS, but if you can reason and negotiate with the Taliban and you can make a deal with them. Better to discuss something, even the unpalatable and distasteful, than to resort to violence as the first recourse. American tendencies to monolith and silo away very different groups of people ("radical Islamic terrorism" is a great example, considering that homogenizes tons of groups whose ideology varies from Bin Laden's geopolitical focused "stop fucking with the Mideast, losers" to ISIS-style medieval LARPing, and anything in between) into large blobs is a good exercise in cognitive laziness.

If you don't understand who you're fighting how can you possibly hope to beat them?

Afghanistan's lesson is this: When dealing with an unpalatable, distasteful government that is otherwise legitimate and rules over a suzerainty with common support (sure, Afghans aren't going to cheer or anything, but the Taliban are a lot closer to the average rural Afghan's beliefs than some random cubicle bureaucrat in Kabul), you should generally treat them as a government. It's the same lesson it should have learned in Iran, too.

The US should really stop thinking in terms of political aesthetics and more in terms of what actually is happening with who it's talking to. America in 1942 allied with the Soviet Union to beat Hitler's armies, and eventually Imperial Japan. Before then it would have been considered stranger than fiction, given the US was hardly a military power and the British and French were wringing their hands over the USSR potentially invading Iraq, Syria, Iran, or India.

Would the modern United States do that? No, not at all. It would either be bombing the USSR at the same time, or simply refuse to assist it, and quite possibly both. It proved this already, since it couldn't even ally with Marxist-Leninist Ba'athists against ISIS in Syria. Of course, current American political culture heavily disincentivizes long term thinking in favor of firing up the base or whatever. This is self-destructive in the long term since it destroys legitimacy of a government internationally, and radicalizes entire populations, although for America this will likely not do much given it's the locus of the world economy. What it will do is make America bad at keeping countries from being torn apart by civil wars or something, although I guess if America refuses to trade with countries based solely on political aesthetics it might inadvertently isolate itself economically like the UK has been trying to. That's pretty unbelievable though.

Although what you say is not wrong. Im all in favour of the US bombing the hell out of the Taliban. Thats just my belief. Seeing Taliban killing girls and raping. And the fact that they are Muslim. Just continues giving us a bad name. I'd rather have a violent Western country bomb and destroy them rather than have the Western media continue talking about the "violent and barbaric Muslims". Sounds hypocritical? Yes, it probably does.

[Picairn]

Imagine downplaying Taliban atrocities as "unpleasant aesthetics".

Cringe. At least play the pragmatist properly, Gallia.