So Kabul has fallen...And so has Afghanistan.

😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

Taliban live off drug money.

The DEA etc have gone way overboard in their zeal to eliminate opioids.

There are people who can’t figure out away around that nonsense who are killing themselves daily.

Besides, this is supposed to be the land of the free where our citizens should be allowed their pursuit of happiness. Provided they’re adults.

I don't know. All I have to go on is the internet, which isn't always fact-based.

And I'm not trying to portray the Taliban as a bunch of really swell guys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi

Which is a capital sin for them.

Bacha bazi, right now, is illegal in Afghanistan. Problem is it is rampant and will continue no matter who runs the country.
Any society that accepts this perverted assault of innocence is not worth our time or effort. Our forces were ordered not to interfere. No way should we have spent a trillion on this filth. These maggots do not deserve our help and we cannot fix a society that is this screwed up.

We spent 20 years and a trillion dollars training and equipping their army. The army stood down in ONE WEEK. If they won't fight for their country why should we.

Their entire economy is based on heroin. Afghanistan produces 80% of the world heroin supply. Our war on drugs in Afghanistan was a total failure! They produce more now than ever.

Thank you Joe. You did the right thing and you are my hero.

Who is willing to let their child to be the last soldier standing. We have our own Taliban right here on the verge of mass murder. Lots of perverted sexual assaulting and child sex perverts right in our own government. These MurKKKan Taliban have no respect for women, or life as is being seen with the ongoing rage. Time to clean our own back yard before telling other countries we will come bring you our Democracy, who the jell wants where we are and are headed.

I knew that as soon as we left that army would stand down.

IIRC back before we invaded, the Taliban rigorously suppressed growing poppies for opium…

Yes, they did. It was on religious grounds. And being the Taliban, yes it was a rigorous suppression. I forget where opium production shifted to, but it shifted away from Afghanistan. Heroin addiction went down, as opium was less abundant.

Funny thing about that though, poor farmers are thrifty folk, and the farmers of that dry soil planned ahead: they buried sacks of seed beneath their floors.

When the US invaded, poor farmers were still poor. Their annual incomes were so low that an intelligent invader who didn’t want opium production to resume on economic grounds could have easily subsidized each and every farmer to produce something else, or even just stay home. But no, who even thinks like that?

So out came the seeds. It is a cash crop where there are few other cash crops and it grows readily where other crops struggle. (As far as I know, heroin was and is produced elsewhere.)

At the time of the rather comprehensive article I read (WaPo or NY Times, probably 2003) opium had started to trickle out of the country. Addiction was starting to rise in the neighboring countries, and some addicts were making their way to border cities for easier access. Heroin production resumed and shipments to Europe and the US were on their way.

Poppy production has dramatically increased from 2001 to 2021 during our occupation.
8000 hectares in 2001 increasing to 328.000 hectares presently.
esri
Will this production be stopped. I can't answer that but I personally doubt it.

At some point, though, the Afghanis, themselves, have to win their own freedoms.

The evil infidel Westerner invaders have been defeated after a long struggle.
We can only see this from our point of view. It's their country and their culture is not
like ours. They don't have "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" on the boob tube.
Going into Afghanistan was a big mistake twenty years ago. The damage is on us.

Someone else if they want to.

In just the last five years, 1600 children were killed by US air strikes.
https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/40-all-civilian-casualties-airstrikes-afghanistan-almost-1600-last-five-years

tens of thousands dead/maimed...and for what?...get the Afghan interpreters out...declare victory and leave

Doug Feith... "the dumbest fuck on the face of the Earth."


Two more Bush piece of shit.

...women and girls and boys had for a brief time.

It is a judgement call to suggest that they should have never had it to begin with. It was a nice attempt but it was totally failed in a part of the world that is just backwards when it comes to human rights and dignity.

There is nothing logical about religion.

Religion is a poison, and the pushers of it infect toddlers in a way most will fight to the death to protect a religion that just takes and takes, without giving anything back. I feel sorry for those who manage to see it as bullshit - it is comparable to slavery.

Nt

And we are losing democracy here as we speak.

I have no idea what the solution is, but the majority of women were vastly better off under the US than they were under the Taliban.

by the Taliban during our occupation . Of course didn’t see any posts here on those poor women before Biden announced his withdrawal. I deleted my post . The rest of my statement still stands though about Biden’s alternative plans.

There is no hope for this putrid culture.
Walk away and thank Joe.

this was inevitable when he commanded the US lash out in an insane spasm of revenge based violence. There was no real plan, he just thought he'd just bask in some righteous WWII-style war-leader vibes. Then he grew bored like a child and admitted he never really thought about Bin Laden that much anymore and anyway, watch this drive.

which president it was who created the images of the last moments of evacuation in Vietnam -- none other than Gerald Ford of which party?

There was no real plan, he just thought he'd just bask in some righteous WWII-style war-leader vibes.


that's how I see it, too.

One thing we might consider is that we spent $70 billion there. In a sense we tried to buy it a structured democracy and a culture where there was a degree of equality for women and minorities. To do so, the military had to be used to effect an environment where that could take place.

So they had a little taste of democracy, but too many of their most aggressive people want rule by religion and extreme religion at that. Their elections never rarely run in a satisfactory fashion, as this story from 2016 will tell: "Democracy in Disarray in Afghanistan; Disunity in the Unity Government."

http://southasiajournal.net/democratic-in-disarray-in-afghanistan-disunity-in-the-unity-government/

By 2019 voter turnout was 26%!

https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/is-democracy-dying-in-afghanistan/


There's just too much of this:




And there is no shortage of work for democracy that we need to take here at home:

Apparently they have been into nation building all along.

Note this is a propaganda video where bidens answers have been chopped up and god knows what else.

Link to tweet

Maybe they need to save themselves.

How many Taliban commandos are there in Afghanistan vs how many women? How many kitchen knives vs. how many AK47s?

with a local village leader because this guy had the power to hire the civilians to work on the base which was a great job for the locals. This leader was very religious but later got into trouble at a village wedding for having sex with a very young boy, not because of the act, which is customary, but because he didn't give the boy or his family any gratuity.

Their religion forbids unmarried males from having any intimate relations with females before marriage. Because of this its is ok for males to engage in sex acts with young boys. I can imagine the generations of messed up men this has produced not to mention the way they treat women, pretty much like prisoners but that's another story.

These disgusting religious practices are generally not a problem in the bigger cities is what I understand but now they will be. Sorry we broke the country but there was no way to ever fix it as long as religious fanatics are a part of their population.

I didn't know this. Makes sense.

I knew from that time on that there was no way we could "tame" that country & what is happening now would be the only outcome but should have happened sooner.

It is a smoldering pot of ethnic tribalism and always has been.

I worked there for a bit trying to teach Imams how to read in English. They wouldn't even shake hands with me.