What Has Been Achieved

[Bazile]

After 20 years in Afghanistan , the US has pulled out .


The Taliban has retaken large swathes of the country

What has been achieved ?

[douglas9401]

Maybe a weekend retreat with campfires and sausages to set the mood?

[andy-hughes]

Scoff all you like, it does not invalidate the point I have made.

[jno]

ymb, Major and then Blair decided it was worth talking to the IRA, after years of obstinate refusal to talk to anyone had proved a total failure. And talking seems to have worked out okayish, though Brexit has clearly reopened some old wounds. Nobody's bombed Harrods for decades now.

[teacake44]

I would think that anyone who has served there over the last 20 years, from whatever country and have lost limbs, and sitting at home now must be thinking, what was that all about.

[Untitled]

We only make peace with our enemies... war war had two decades to work and didn't - jaw jaw might be worth a go.

[New Judge]

//And talking seems to have worked out okayish,//

Depends what you mean by "okayish." If you are willing to accept that the only way to stop terrorists murdering and maiming people is to let them run the country then I suppose you're right. Brexit has not opened old wounds. All Brexit has done is to scratch at the wounds that were always there. The Unionists want NI to remain part of the UK; the Republicans don't. The "Good Friday Agreement" did nothing to end that. What Brexit did was to see NI treated differently to the GB and that was the fault of the person who signed the agreement which included the NI Protocol. However, we digress.

[Untitled]

It's much better to live with the current compromise however nasty the other parties are New Judge... the results speak for themselves:

https://theatlas.com/charts/rkTUTO-zZ

[davebro]

I think John Lennon had some good ideas:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothin' to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace

[naomi24]

Talk to the Taliban? What a good idea. :o/

[Peter Pedant]

she is full of them

// Nobody's bombed Harrods for decades now.// - plan must be working then !

what has been achieved? - Taliban victory - as the T said. America is creeping away - you dont do that when you have won. The importance? Huge area for opium poppies

oh whilst I am here
extract from Times obit of Rumsfeld (*)

Bush was finally forced to dismiss Rumsfeld. By then he had become a deeply unpopular and largely discredited figure. Rumsfeld was a principal architect of the of the calamitous US invasion that plunged Iraq into a civil war that it has yet to recover from, that cost trillions of dollars and that caused the deaths of 4500 US soldier and it is thought hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

er and afghanistan

(*) gives you some idea even if the av ABer doesnt know who Rumsfeld was and the evil he got up to - - - ( torture: they told us we could do it) obviously a man to have around.

[Peter Pedant]

asa fantasy - - - altho Lennon's words are coy rubbish and werent they written when the Vietnamese were giving America a thrashing?

one could think of the trillions (*) spent in Viet and then in Iraq and Afghanistan and think - what if they had been spend improving either american infrastructure or the three name nations - what then?

and then come back down to earth by thinking what absolute shoop-holes French Indochine ( Viet, Cambodia and Laos,) have become . throw in Thailand and Myanmar

and consider liberation in Mali Chad and Centre-Afrique Niger, Burkina Faso ( old upper volta) - you liberate the town by marching in and asking who wants to join us Jihadis and have fun?
and you shoot the men who say no...

[Ellipsis]

What has it achieved?

20 years is about a generation. I think for many people who've lived in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, bad as it has been, they're probably happier we were there than we weren't. They've had more chance to see what their world could be like. They have more of an idea of what's possible. They're more likely to overthrow a totalitarian regime, faster, than if we hadn't been there.

[Peter Pedant]

// They're more likely to overthrow a totalitarian regime, faster, than if we hadn't been there.//

um - no - ish - - werent the Russians there for twenty years before the greatest power in the w world ? - - - Russia's vietnam
The puppet head of state scored a first in - - - trying to commit suicide. Failed

the russian bear crept back to its cave and the Americans jostled in and said -" Let US have a go !"

[Ellipsis]

I said "more likely", not "likely". Change has to come from within, and showing people something better gives it more chance. Added to which, I think if you'd been living in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, you'd have been pleased we were there rather than not there.

[andy-hughes]

New Judge - // Depends what you mean by "okayish." If you are willing to accept that the only way to stop terrorists murdering and maiming people is to let them run the country then I suppose you're right. //

Bit it is their country NJ.

We may not agree with their ideology, or their methods, but does that actually give us the right to force our ideas of how things should be, with military intervention?

I think the concept of freedom is the very bedrock of humanity, but then I would, I grew up here.

For other people, and the Afghans are a prime example, the structure given to them by the Taliban may be what they are actually comfortable with - and again, is it for us to tell them that they are wrong?

[davebro]

" but does that actually give us the right to force our ideas of how things should be, with military intervention?"

Does it give the Taliban the right to force their ideas on how things should be by military suppression?

[andy-hughes]

Douglas and naomi - heavy on the superior pompous sarcasm, bereft of anything approaching a workable solution.

No change there then ...

[andy-hughes]

Davebro - morally not, but the question is, how right is it for the West to intervene, if at all, and if so, how much?

It is abundantly clear that force had failed, dialogue is the answer, but that will be seriously hard to set up.

The Taliban hate the West with a deep inherited passion, and so far, all the West has done is reinforce that hatred.

The West has to have a different approach.

[Peter Pedant]

er I think it is about the opium trade to be honest

ironic to think of the chaos in the ungovernable country - but the poppy juice always gets thro'!

[davebro]

Yes - poppies are a big factor. Maybe just dowse the whole place with agent orange?

PS. Afghanistan is a baby - Pakistan is the daddy.