The glimmer of hope that former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, can facilitate a safe withdraw and peaceful transition is more or less all that anyone any longer has. — thewonder

I wouldn't bet on those guys, especially Hekmatyar (he has to be very old). Gulbuddin and Hamid are the people who always are trying to bounce back into power or some role in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar is one of those mujaheddin that CIA sponsored during the Soviet war through Pakistani Intelligence Services and then was one of the main warlords responsible of the anarchy in the 1990's.

(These Afghans didn't like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar)


The glimmer of hope is that basically you have now had for many hours US and Taleban forces quite close to each other and no firefights have been broken between them.

So what else might you have been able to do with 5.6 trillion dollars...? — Banno

No takers?

I wonder what the situation might now be if, say, one of those trillions had been used to foster a very large number of Afghani teenagers for a few months in a western country.

It's a very real possibility that what could happen within the negotiations is that the people there will become a mere cynical vying for some form of formal administrative position within the new coalition government.

What I mean to, however, point out is that Karzai, regardless as to what anyone wants to say about his presidency, is the only person there, the only person within any position of any form of authority whatsoever, and the only person who may have any will to change the course of what the transition to Taliban rule could look like.

In a very practical consideration of the situation on the ground, there are thousands of people waiting for, and often in an unfortunate desperation, and interfering with flights taking off from the airport in Kabul. A situation that I think is avoidable, but that we can't rule out, is that, upon reaching a critical mass of foreign nationals and the occasional Afghan, the United States, and the rest of the world long with it, will just simply abandon everyone else there. What is going to happen to those people once they leave? Should the Taliban imprison or execute them, what kind of precedent will that set for their regime?

The glimmer of hope is that basically you have now had for many hours US and Taleban forces quite close to each other and no firefights have been broken between them. — ssu

I agree with that this is a very good sign. It would terrible to see an attack by the Taliban motivated by impatience and subsequent "swift" retaliation of "devastating force". Let's hope that it holds out for longer than anyone could possibly hope for.

Basically the Taleban has to form a government. Then the Chinese, the Pakistanis, Russians or the UN can sit down with them and talk. If things go smoothly, even the West can come back after a while. But they need a government.

And quickly. That's what Karzai and guys want too. Not to have anarchy. Because if you have anarchy, implementing sharia law publicly is a quick way to stop theft. I assume that the Western mood isn't open for public executions and hands been cut off with all the smartphone cameras around.

I think that Karzai's appeal to the Taliban was quite sincere. I'm not saying that he's Mahatma Gandhi; what I am saying is that he has made a difficult decision to deal with the situation as he has, one that I do think was noble on his part, and just simply is who is negotiating with the Taliban right now. Regardless as what anyone thinks about anything, he is who is there whom we can even trust.

There are plenty things that can happen as the new nation develops. The facts on the ground now, however, are that there are thousands of people stranded at the airport. I don't think that this should happen, but it is quite possible that the United States could just simply abandon them on the runway surrounded by the Taliban. If, and I hope it does not, that happens, they are going to have to granted some form of amnesty. If they aren't granted amnesty, though the Taliban has thusly done nothing to lead us to suspect that something like this could happen, we may end up as witnesses to a massacre of thousands of people on the tarmac. This is a situation that requires some form of mediation.

I have no faith in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar either. Abdullah Abdullah, whom I previously just hadn't considered, and Hamid Karzai, who does seem to have initiated that the peaceful transition can be brought about as such, are the only people who are even capable of mediating the situation. It is only they whom we even can have faith in that they will do so. No amount of political analysis can change that.

I think that Karzai's appeal to the Taliban was quite sincere. — thewonder

Of course. Especially when the acting President went AWOL.

You see it's really important to get SOMEBODY to surrender. Nearly anybody will do. So I guess Hamid and gang opted to do it.

(These kind of moments are important. Notice that it didn't happen now in Afghanistan.)

I wonder what the situation might now be if, say, one of those trillions had been used to foster a very large number of Afghani teenagers for a few months in a western country. — Banno

Great idea.
Use some on mining, farming (not opium), schools, teachers.
Don't know how easy/difficult all that would have been some 20 years back.
A decade ago, it might have been easy enough, maybe.

FYI ...

"The Exodus from Kabul"

Chaos at Kabul Airport

"Inside a US transport taking off from Kabul. Extraordinary."

I see what you're saying, but think that you are mistaken.

Perhaps you, and maybe even I, ought to prefer Abdullah Abdullah?

As I estimate the parties involved, however, while Abdullah may be moreso inclined to petition for the demands of the international community, something of which there is much to say of and really ought to be done, Karzai is the only one of the two of them whom the Taliban are all that likely to listen to. This is all fairly speculative, but, the point that I am making is that he is the only person who can do anything about the current situation whom we even can trust.

Whether the United States stays at or leaves the airport in the immediate future, some sort of negotiations need to be made. Perhaps, there is a way to facilitate dialogue with the Taliban so as to do so that I haven't considered?

I am, in part, though I'm trying to be understanding, frustrated by the Afghan people at the airport presently. People need to get off of the runway and organized within an orderly enough fashion for the planes to be able to take off as quickly as they possibly can. I don't even know that they're even capable of evacuating people at this point in time.

The crisis at the airport is going to take a lot longer to resolve than either the Taliban or the United States are willing to admit. At the very least, Karzai and Abdullah can buy them both some much needed time.

Apparently, we are negotiating with them, and, so, we don't have put all of our faith in Karzai and Abdullah, though I do think that, they too, in some small way or another, may be able to ease the transition, despite whatever there is to say about whatever.

The people at the airport need to be made calm and to become organized enough to get on to the planes in an efficient manner. The only way that I can see this happening is for them to become convinced that they will, in point of fact, make it onto one of the planes. Somehow, some people out there are going to have make some sort of negotiations so as to resolve the crisis.

Reports suggest that the airport has now reopened and that the West has two weeks to fully withdraw, and, so, the lucky few who make it on the planes in that amount of time will probably be the only ones to get out. If a cargo plane can hold a maximum of 640 people, though let's cut it down to 500, take off once an hour, two planes per hour, that's a thousand people an hour, and, if the airport stays running for 18 hours in a day, there's a maximal potential of evacuating around two-hundred thousand people. That's, of course, in a purely hypothetical and perfect world where the Kabul airport is run as efficiently as humanly possible.

It might be possible to fly 200,000 people out of Kabul, but that's not the end of the problem. The next thing is, "Where do they go?" Which nations will accept how many? 200,000 is a huge settlement project, and will take a lot longer than 2 weeks. In the mean time, the evacuees have to be kept someplace reasonably decent until they can move on to a settlement location.

I can understand and empathize with anyone wanting to get the hell out of Afghanistan RIGHT NOW, but chaos at the airport will backfire badly.

Biden said, "there is never a good time to leave" which seems to me very true. I don't think it is terribly surprising that suddenly the Taliban was in a position to take over. Any complex organization can fall apart very rapidly if the people lose faith in the long-term stability of 'the situation'. And clearly the Taliban had been moving into position to take over.

Another quote: "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." J. F. Kenney. I don't know whether he made that up or remembered it from reading. It's true, anyway.

We need to find the cure for reactionary religion, whether it be Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or anybody else. Reactionary religion is nothing but trouble. Some would include all religion as troublesome, and that may be the case.

It might be possible to fly 200,000 people out of Kabul, but that's not the end of the problem. The next thing is, "Where do they go?" Which nations will accept how many? 200,000 is a huge settlement project, and will take a lot longer than 2 weeks. In the mean time, the evacuees have to be kept someplace reasonably decent until they can move on to a settlement location. — Bitter Crank

Of, most definitely. I was just suggesting that the current airport situation doesn't have to be looked at as something that we will ultimately abandon. The question as to what to do about the Afghan refugees, I think, is something that the international community should have begun to prepare for more or less as soon as the Taliban entered the presidential palace, if not, as there have been consistent reports put forth by various human rights organizations and the United Nations, much earlier. People will need to be granted asylum within and outside of Afghanistan. It is my hope that people in the West will be willing to take them in with open arms.

Biden said, "there is never a good time to leave" which seems to me very true. I don't think it is terribly surprising that suddenly the Taliban was in a position to take over. Any complex organization can fall apart very rapidly if the people lose faith in the long-term stability of 'the situation'. And clearly the Taliban had been moving into position to take over. — Bitter Crank

I agree with the withdraw and Joe Biden's statements that it wouldn't have made a difference as to whether we left ten years ago or ten years later. I think that this conclusion was inevitable.

I didn't like that Biden shifted the blame onto the Afghan military like he did during his speech, however. They did lose the war because of that they lost their will to fight, which was because of that they knew that they were partaking within a half-hearted nation-building project and spurious counter-terrorism operation undertaken by an invading Western military, but he just kind of took the easy way out of slinging mud at our nearest ally so as to shirk what the larger questions of our motivations for being in the war and what the contrary insurmountable political will of the Taliban ought to have brought us to ask.

We need to find the cure for reactionary religion, whether it be Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or anybody else. Reactionary religion is nothing but trouble. Some would include all religion as troublesome, and that may be the case. — Bitter Crank

I am highly doubtful of that there is a catholicon to any form of ideology whatsoever. In my opinion, people ought to just simply create a world outside of the various cults that comprise it and hope that others are willing to join them. There's no talking anyone out of religious fanaticism or political ideology. They can only discover a world otherwise.

We need to find the cure for reactionary religion, whether it be Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or anybody else. Reactionary religion is nothing but trouble. Some would include all religion as troublesome, and that may be the case. — Bitter Crank

In the words of Winston Churchill, or was it Chico Marx, "What could possibly go wrong."

they were partaking within a half-hearted nation-building project — thewonder

How long does it take for an invading power (like the British Empire, say) to accomplish a major cultural change in a colony? A lot longer than 20 years. A rule of thumb is that it takes 40 to 50 years for a completely new technology to be introduced, be accepted, and mature. A lot had to happen over 40 or 50 years to develop a good telephone system after the first telephone call.

It takes a lot longer to alter cultural patterns. Some people say that the problem with some of Britains former colonies is that they weren't colonies long enough. India was, however, a colony for a long time and did absorb a lot of western culture. Bad thing? Good thing? People will have different opinions, but one thing for sure is that one can not "build" or "remodel" a nation in 20 years. More like 100 years, minimum.

In the words of Winston Churchill, or was it Chico Marx, "What could possibly go wrong." — T Clark

Well, I don't have a "How To' book on curing religious fundamentalists. "Fundamentalist leanings" along with a number of other social diseases, seem to be established very early in life--maybe at conception. It isn't that I know of a gene for fundamentalism. What there probably is a gene that codes for "seeking security in rigid doctrine". The doctrinally rigid can be believers, atheists, pro-science, anti-science, leftists, rightists, vegans, or carnivore. What's common to them is the rigidity, not the doctrine.

Some people have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity than others. Could be genetic.

Like as not, the Taliban, Wahhabists, Southern Baptists, paleo-Roman Catholics, et al attract people with a certain disposition, and then exaggerate it. There is predisposition on the one hand, and imposition on the other. The Taliban didn't have to defend themselves against hordes of eager islamic fundamentalist children. They IMPOSED their views. Ditto for Southern (and worse varieties of) Baptists, paleo-Catholics, far-out Hindus, etc.

Fortunately, 8 billion people are not afflicted with RDD (Rigid Doctrine Disease); it might be as low as 1 billion; maybe 798,000,000. It's hard to know precisely, because when you do scientific surveys of belief and you ask people if they have fallen hook, line, and sinker for some stupid crazy religion, they tend to get defensive.

"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." — Bitter Crank

What does that quote mean?

I'm not quite so sure that I agree. I think that, had we really believed that we were building a liberal democratic Afghanistan so as to offer the people there a better quality of life and that we were justified in doing so, we could have easily won the war.

It is that this Western exceptionalist savior mentality can only be considered as either a façade or a delusion, as can only be revealed when faced with the brute reality of occupation, that dooms such neocolonial ventures to failure. In the closing scene to Werner Herzog's masterpiece, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, itself based off of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lope de Aguirre is left on a raft with his dying expedition reciting to himself entirely delusional plans for further conquest before closing with the repeated mantra, "I am the wrath of God." This is a metaphor for the culminate end of any colonial project.

We come to understand the impotence of authority when we watch our president deliver empty threats of "swift" and "devastating force" and witness our entire political apparatus engage within clear attempts at deferring responsibility through vicious slander while our news media streams videos of Afghan refugees being chased off of the runway by helicopters and our press issues declarations demanding the safe withdraw of their journalists from the now fallen Republic of Afghanistan. Satire does no justice to the behavior of an occupying nation in defeat.

I'm not quite so sure that I agree. I think that, had we really believed that we were building a liberal democratic Afghanistan so as to offer the people there a better quality of life and that we were justified in doing so, we could have easily won the war. — thewonder

I'm not quite sure that I agree, either.

One always has to remember that "The State" part of the United States, like "the State" part of any country, always has in focus what it thinks its own interests are. Afghan people "matter" the same way other people matter: Either you are 'a potential' or 'a problem'. If you have something we want, fine. Otherwise, what earthly good are you?.

The calculating ego and mind of The State isn't warm and fuzzy. What goes for The State of the US goes for every other State too. Some states camouflage their nature better than others do. The most powerful states (Russia, USA, China, India) don't usually worry about camouflage too much.

a liberal democratic — thewonder

In some ways the US is a liberal democracy, in other ways we are not. We have elements of a plutocracy, the military/industrial combine does not tend to be overly liberal, we have a practically permanent underclass. Our electoral system is rigged to always reelect the capitalist-supporting parties in power, which invalidates the idea of 'democracy'. etc., etc., etc.

So when we march off to bestow the blessings of democracy on people ruled by frank authoritarians and worse, don't get your hopes up.

What does that quote mean? — The Opposite

It means whoever is in charge of a war that has been won can expect a ticker tape parade with several marching bands. (ticker tape is kind of a rarity these days, I guess they'd use confetti or shredded documents.). Whoever is in charge of a war that has been lost can expect to arrive home with only his wife, dog, and a small circle of friends to greet him.

Nobody wants to politically associate with the war-loser. Recriminations follow on his heels.

Afghan people "matter" the same way other people matter: Either you are 'a potential' or 'a problem'. If you have something we want, fine. Otherwise, what earthly good are you?. — Bitter Crank

That's a good point, but I'm not entirely sure that you read the latter half of my post.

What I'm suggesting is that, were it possible to believe in the motivations for nation-building within an occupied territory, then, an occupying nation could actually win a war within a relatively short period of time. It is because of the impossibility of ignoring the realities of an occupation that an occupying nation will necessarily become demoralized. Biden was right to suggest that without the will to wage a war, a war can not be won. He could not, however, in good faith, have believed that the reason for the Taliban victory was a lack of determination on the part of the Afghan military. The Afghan military had no will to fight; that much is obvious. Their lack of resolve is a symptom of that our presence there can only have been carried out cynically. Though certain aspects of the Taliban are certainly autopoietic, much of the blame for the past forty odd years of political fallout in Afghanistan rests solely on the shoulders of the network of influence that comprises political power in the United States and the response to that power and its effect on the world on the part of American citizens.

In some ways the US is a liberal democracy, in other ways we are not. We have elements of a plutocracy, the military/industrial combine does not tend to be overly liberal, we have a practically permanent underclass. Our electoral system is rigged to always reelect the capitalist-supporting parties in power, which invalidates the idea of 'democracy'. — Bitter Crank

Again, if you read the post, you will find that I am speaking of "liberal democracy" in an idealized sense. I'm not suggesting that the Republic of Afghanistan lived up to all of the lofty ideals of Liberalism or even that the United States does, which, as we are considered as a flawed democracy by the United Nations, I don't think that too many people could any longer argue. In context, I was referring to what people would like to invoke by "democracy", without any consideration of the facts on the ground.

Their lack of resolve is a symptom of that our presence there can only have been carried out cynically. — thewonder

hmmm, not sure I agree.

the blame for the past forty odd years of political fallout in Afghanistan rests solely on the shoulders of the network of influence that comprises political power in the United States and the response to that power and its effect on the world on the part of American citizens. — thewonder

The Soviet Union was there until 1989. Was the US responsible for the USSR being there for 10 years?

I said forty-odd to harken back to the creation of the mujahideen, but, yeah, of course, the Soviet presence also had an extraordinary effect.

hmmm, not sure I agree. — Bitter Crank

Why not?

Was the US responsible for the USSR being there for 10 years? — Bitter Crank

Quite literally yes.

(I can't figure out how to quote Tweet the Afghanistan stuff alone without the Somalia stuff, but consider the Somalia stuff bonus content for how shit the US is):

Or for those less Tweet inclined:

Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers. ... National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2008/12/02/afghanistan-another-untold-story

The best thing America can do for Afghanistan right now is to continue to stay fucked right off and continue staying fucked right off forever until the US sinks into the sea.

So what else might you have been able to do with 5.6 trillion dollars...? — Banno

I'll bite, kinda. The problem with this is that you assume that that money didn't go exactly where it was supposed to go. Straight into the hands of military contractors and pharmaceutical execs for whom the war has been a financial bonanza, paid for by tax dollars. People keep talking about this money as though it was a waste, or misallocated. It wasn't. It went precisely where it was designed to go. People asking 'where else could it have gone?' miss the point. Why anyone would even think it could have gone anywhere else, is the mystery.

I'm not sure that your above posts are to the point.

All of the stuff about the mujahedeen is fine, but the Common Dreams article includes the Afghan conspiracy theory that Hafizullah Amin was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency.

There's also that, following the Saur Revolution, Nur Muhammad Taraki was assassinated in a coup d'etat led by Hafizullah Amin, who, because of that the Soviet Union feared that he would become a Western ally, was, in turn, assassinated in another coup d'etat orchestrated by the Soviet Union, installing Babrak Kamal as a pretext for their invasion of Afghanistan, which is how they did incite the war. After the Saur Revolution, the United States began aiding the mujahedeen, but I don't think that they had done so before then under Mohammed Daoud Khan in the "years before" that the tweet mentions.

The Soviet War in Afghanistan resulted in an estimated million civilian casualties, and, so, the Central Intelligence Agency and Reagan administration did end up with the humanitarian catastrophe that they had always hoped for.

I also just simply don't quite know if it was the actual Carter administration, as Jimmy Carter had changed much of our Cold War policy as well as to have been active within intelligence reform, or our intelligence service who had initiated our involvement with the mujahedeen. That could have been an administrative decision on the part of Carter, himself, or something that the CIA just kind of did without any real oversight whatsoever.

I guess that Carter did approve Operation Cyclone, and, so, it's wholly incorrect for the above articles to invoke the "Carter administration".

He had promised to reform our intelligence service during his campaign, anyways, though.

I also just simply don't quite know if it was the actual Carter administration, as Jimmy Carter had changed much of our Cold War policy as well as to have established the Church Committee, or our intelligence service who had initiated our involvement with the mujahedeen. That could have been an administrative decision on the part of Carter, himself, or something that the CIA just kind of did without any real oversight whatsoever. — thewonder

I don't particularly think the distinction is of any import. Weather the CIA or Carter himself, if not one than the other, as has always been the murderous nature of US foreign policy. Petty bureaucratic squabbling about the internal mechanics of empire make no difference to those dead and immiserated as a result of it. No one particularly gives a shit about assigning more or less blame to the SS or the Wehrmacht.

I edited that post, as the Church Committee was effectuated under Gerald Ford. Reforming our intelligence community was just a campaign promise of Carter's.

It would be relevant had the internal mechanics of our legal system actually have effectively been designed to facilitate limiting of operations of our intelligence service, as, as they never have nor will have any regard for international law, they would be the only means by which that could be effectuated.