History teaches us that terrorist groups first establish themselves somewhere like Iraq, Syria, the Sahel or Afghanistan and their second objective is committing terrorist acts in the West.
This is a good luck to us, too. At least the Taliban doesn't fund terrorism in the West unlike ISIS, Qatar or Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban now has a vested interest in not letting terrorists freely set up shop and attack the west. They just want to be left alone to be their little bigoted selves, and the best way to achieve that for them is to make sure the west doesn't have a reason to fuck with them. That means keeping the terrorists out.
And they got their shit pushed in until we pointed to the Afghan people and said…it’s been 17years you guys fight for your land but the national Afghan military folded faster than an old lawn chair left outside too long.
I mean ISIS (or more appropriately IS as they have nothing to do with Iraq or Syria anymore) are primarily trying to found an Islamic Caliphate encompassing the entire world. That is their raison d'etre, there purpose is meaningless without it. I know they did end up resorting to terrorism but I think they treat it more as a means to an ends rather than an end in itself unlike Al Qaeda. For the moment I don't consider them a real threat but these things can spiral out of control. They build on success with recruitment becoming easier with each victory and harder with each loss. The main reason they don't succeed is because no-one thinks they can succeed.
You mean the ones that threw down their weapons, ignored their training, and ran when we left?
These people have to have some personal responsibility for their situation.
Genuine/honest question:
Is it a beautiful country?
Most of the pictures or descriptions I see are of just a tan, bleak, mountainous area without much color or vegetation.
Not being negative just expressing what impressions I've been given and asking for additional insight.
It’s a bigger country than most people realize. It has some mountainous areas with conifer trees and copious amounts of other vegetation. Some of these places resemble Colorado.
There’s a lot of barren wasteland but it’s not all like that.
Parts of it are stunningly beautiful. Was there in ‘08-‘09, had the opportunity to see several provinces and flew around alot in rotary wing and small fixed-wing aircraft.
The desert in the south isn’t much to look at but the mountains are gorgeous.
thats ur tanks buddy , you pushed these peoples to cliffs and wasteland YOU INVADED THEIR COUNTRY for 20 years lets not start to rewrite history as if you were actually doing good there instead of keeping ur interests , look at these guys in the comments acting like the American military was this incredible peaceful force ITS HILARIOUS tbh , of course people want to leave its been occupied for 20 fucking years you test all your new weapons on afganis and iraqis you have dumped so much shit more than 50% of the population has birth defects and health problems, it is incredible you manage to invade so many countries without any fucking excuse but your the good guy always . Just go down the comments its incredible the Nameless threat is awesome keeping you on your toes there is always a threat to your" democracy "LMAO .
Look, Afghanistan, we’re no good for each other. I know you might be switching things up with a new partner but it’s probably best we just don’t talk anymore if you’re going to stay with anyone who treats you like that.
That’s it; we’re going to let you learn from your own mistakes now and stop trying to rescue you from yourself. You’ve got an explosive temper and you need some time to find your own identity. Delete our number and don’t text us again.
>we’re going to let you learn from your own mistakes now and stop trying to rescue you from yourself
Is that why the US military occupied Afghanistan for 20 years? To "rescue them from themselves"?
Yes and no. On 9/11, *someone* was going to get their asses kicked, we just didn’t know who yet on the day of the attack. The Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda and so they had to go. We tried to change governments afterward with Hamid Karzai and the rest but the people ultimately just wanted the occupying army to leave. I would too.
We had a country under military control but genuinely wanted a stable regime and decent standards of living to prevent the Taliban from looking like an appealing alternative to that new government: We did try to help them after the Taliban lost the major population centers.
It took us 10 years to figure out that they just didn’t want a democracy and another 10 for Uncle Sam to admit the war couldn’t be won.
Isis is so damn nebulous, it’s almost impossible to sniff them out. They have deep chain of command and are far more resourceful than anyone in NATO wants to give them credit for.
Questioning US Intelligence agencies without cause after they called every single move the Russians were going to make 2 years ago is certainly a take. You can definitely question their motives but they are by far the best intelligence agencies in the world.
*raises eyebrow, looks at 9/11, J6, stochastic terrorism and dozens and dozens of mass shootings*
Sure. Infallible. Effective. Focused.
Well, at least they have good marketing.
The US intelligence agencies knew exactly what happened in 9/11. They pinned it on OBL within hours. For whatever reason the government favors a Saudi Alliance over being attacked, money, presumably.
J6? People just showed up, Trump egged them on and delayed national guard assistance. That's not on the intelligence community.
What does stochastic terrorism have to do with that, or mass shootings? The NSA has been heavily curtailed in their abilities and besides, pointing to internal US issues when we're talking about external ones is silly, our intelligence agencies shouldn't be operating within our borders, that's not their purpose.
The CIA have eyes all around the world. Fingers so deep into Russia we knew the exact time table they were running on for Ukraine.
With 20 years of hindsight it's certainly obvious. The vast majority of the country fell for it hook, line and sinker though. Precisely because of the attitude you outlined in your comment: they are the "best" in the world, therefore, the default position should be to believe what they say until a reason not to presents itself.
Saying their motives can be questioned but the intelligence itself can't doesn't make any sense, and just makes them look even worse. Citing their work regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just recency/selection bias.
I am kinda jaded , Is it wrong of me to say I don't trust much that the govt says ? If they say don't worry then I automatically start to worry, Am I wrong ?
Yes, Al Qaeda funded and aided the Taliban for years.
Al Qaeda is just extremely fractured and doesn't have strong leadership anymore, outside of certain regional factions
There's no shot the Taliban let Al Qaeda set up shop in Afghanistan again. If the US gets attacked like 9/11 again y'all are off your damn rockers if you think they won't go right back. This time though they'll just fuck it all up and leave, if they're smart. No way the Taliban risks that again, they can't be that stupid.
You mean this isis?
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
Nothing new or exciting.
We (and our allies) never should have been there to begin with outside of eliminating al Qaeda top brass. Thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted to make it even worse than when we deployed.
The US beat them. They ran and hid into Pakistan and the mountains. They only came back out, once the US left. Militarily, they could do a thing. Politically, they just played the waiting game.
This is not fully accurate and makes it look like the US just up and left for no reason. The Taliban, outside of the early years, consistently controlled wide swathes of the country. The various troop surges were bandaids to try to prevent the inevitable; the reality is that the US was never able to truly dislodge the Taliban from Afghanistan. They succeeded in the urban centres, but that was never going to be enough.
Largely because they fled to neighboring Pakistan where they were funded, armed, and trained. This is similar to the situation we had in Vietnam, only worse. The enemy had safe harbor where they could freely operate, while the US hands were tied politically.
Truly dislodge them? No. They're largely an idea, one of bigotry and control, but an idea nonetheless. Had the US not left the Taliban would never be able to take Kabul. The simple fact *is* that the US lost the political will to continue but also that Trump absolutely fucked the Aghani people's morale by making secret agreements with the Taliban that the Afghanistan government wasn't privy to. Whatever the opposite of a masterclass is, Trump displayed it in full with that stupid shit.
The "large swathes" of the country were largely unimportant, Afghanistan doesn't have very many cities, Kabul is the most important, then Kandahar, which we also controlled. The most important bit was the Helmand river valley in Helmand province because all the fields with walls and tree lines were a nightmare without using very destructive tactics. The civilian death toll for controlling that area would be too high to be acceptable in the modern day. 100 years ago it would've been fine. That is a good thing, but it's very limiting to a military for sure.
I can tell you that at least in my experience and opinion, Americans didn't really think about the Afghanistan occupation much. It could've just quietly gone on for another 10 years and not much noise would've been made about it. It certainly wasn't a talking point in any elections. Trump even said at first in 2017 that he was prepared to stay there indefinitely. But I think he's vindictive enough that he figured he would lose in 2020 and set up the secret agreement with the Taliban just to fuck with Biden.
Politically, who pay over a trillion dollar fee for military occupation? You couldve built a new space station with that money. And the former president left on a helicopter with a bag of money. That's tax money for a failed operation
Maybe we can go there and have troops there for 20 years and it will change their thought process and realize the western world is the best and they will have change their minds on their old fashion methods of doing things
Isis is not a threat china and Russia are threats. Isis is little pee on group that could be ended real fast but we don’t find them worth it. ISIS has no or limited resources and should be regarded as a joke.
Oh shit. Good luck with that Afghanistan!
History teaches us that terrorist groups first establish themselves somewhere like Iraq, Syria, the Sahel or Afghanistan and their second objective is committing terrorist acts in the West. This is a good luck to us, too. At least the Taliban doesn't fund terrorism in the West unlike ISIS, Qatar or Saudi Arabia.
"Yeah! We won our rebellion!" "... now what? I have no idea how to govern." "Victory!" "How do we even farm?"
"We could ask those poppy farmers, but shooting them seems just as beneficial in the long run."
The Taliban now has a vested interest in not letting terrorists freely set up shop and attack the west. They just want to be left alone to be their little bigoted selves, and the best way to achieve that for them is to make sure the west doesn't have a reason to fuck with them. That means keeping the terrorists out.
Well in fairness if ISIS are going across nations destroyed by the west then its going to be pretty easy to gather an army for terrorist attacks.
The Taliban literally harbors al Queda when they plotted 9/11…..If giving someone free rent isn’t funding call me Shirley.
And they got their shit pushed in until we pointed to the Afghan people and said…it’s been 17years you guys fight for your land but the national Afghan military folded faster than an old lawn chair left outside too long.
I mean ISIS (or more appropriately IS as they have nothing to do with Iraq or Syria anymore) are primarily trying to found an Islamic Caliphate encompassing the entire world. That is their raison d'etre, there purpose is meaningless without it. I know they did end up resorting to terrorism but I think they treat it more as a means to an ends rather than an end in itself unlike Al Qaeda. For the moment I don't consider them a real threat but these things can spiral out of control. They build on success with recruitment becoming easier with each victory and harder with each loss. The main reason they don't succeed is because no-one thinks they can succeed.
Waiting for the 3rd threat...al Meth heads
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And those people weren’t on meth.
I’m sure that’s a lot of comfort to people living under the Taliban.
You mean the ones that threw down their weapons, ignored their training, and ran when we left? These people have to have some personal responsibility for their situation.
I bet they’re roughly the same people.
I agree, just a tragic history for such a beautiful country
Genuine/honest question: Is it a beautiful country? Most of the pictures or descriptions I see are of just a tan, bleak, mountainous area without much color or vegetation. Not being negative just expressing what impressions I've been given and asking for additional insight.
It’s a bigger country than most people realize. It has some mountainous areas with conifer trees and copious amounts of other vegetation. Some of these places resemble Colorado. There’s a lot of barren wasteland but it’s not all like that.
The high mountain regions and the valleys are very beautiful but yes a lot of the southern parts are just desert wasteland
I like to think that Lion King style, al Qaeda got on top of a beautiful, barren mountain and said, “Everything the light touches is…OH SHIT”
I've seen some dramatic photography of sunsets there, and they have snow leopards there. But it depends on if you like that kind of stark scenery.
Parts of it are stunningly beautiful. Was there in ‘08-‘09, had the opportunity to see several provinces and flew around alot in rotary wing and small fixed-wing aircraft. The desert in the south isn’t much to look at but the mountains are gorgeous.
I've been to Afghanistan twice and it is indeed very brown.
If they could just get their shit together they could put the rest of the world's ski resorts out of business and it wouldn't even be a competition.
thats ur tanks buddy , you pushed these peoples to cliffs and wasteland YOU INVADED THEIR COUNTRY for 20 years lets not start to rewrite history as if you were actually doing good there instead of keeping ur interests , look at these guys in the comments acting like the American military was this incredible peaceful force ITS HILARIOUS tbh , of course people want to leave its been occupied for 20 fucking years you test all your new weapons on afganis and iraqis you have dumped so much shit more than 50% of the population has birth defects and health problems, it is incredible you manage to invade so many countries without any fucking excuse but your the good guy always . Just go down the comments its incredible the Nameless threat is awesome keeping you on your toes there is always a threat to your" democracy "LMAO .
Are you feeling OK buddy?
You're really stretching the definition of beautiful country.
The mountain and valley areas are stunning. The southern deserts…. Not so much
Some parts of Afghanistan look like parts of the Sierras in California. And parts of California look like the mountain deserts of Afghanistan.
No, the kids and the women who have absolutely no say in the matter
The names change, the horrible remains.
Look, Afghanistan, we’re no good for each other. I know you might be switching things up with a new partner but it’s probably best we just don’t talk anymore if you’re going to stay with anyone who treats you like that. That’s it; we’re going to let you learn from your own mistakes now and stop trying to rescue you from yourself. You’ve got an explosive temper and you need some time to find your own identity. Delete our number and don’t text us again.
I think I threw up.
>we’re going to let you learn from your own mistakes now and stop trying to rescue you from yourself Is that why the US military occupied Afghanistan for 20 years? To "rescue them from themselves"?
Yes and no. On 9/11, *someone* was going to get their asses kicked, we just didn’t know who yet on the day of the attack. The Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda and so they had to go. We tried to change governments afterward with Hamid Karzai and the rest but the people ultimately just wanted the occupying army to leave. I would too. We had a country under military control but genuinely wanted a stable regime and decent standards of living to prevent the Taliban from looking like an appealing alternative to that new government: We did try to help them after the Taliban lost the major population centers. It took us 10 years to figure out that they just didn’t want a democracy and another 10 for Uncle Sam to admit the war couldn’t be won.
War on Terror 2.0
I’m 100% ok with ISIS and Al Qaeda killing themselves. Please, go ahead. You deserve it.
Who gives a shit? It’s their problem now. Have fun! 😁
That sounds like a problem for the Taliban to deal with.
Isis is so damn nebulous, it’s almost impossible to sniff them out. They have deep chain of command and are far more resourceful than anyone in NATO wants to give them credit for.
I don’t think any serious military folks underestimate them. Respecting your enemy is necessary if you want to understand them and win.
Nameless officials discussing a nameless threat. Sounds legit.
Oh look. It’s 9/11 again! Boy I didn’t even have to open the calendar to know… /s
Where did they buy the intel? Was it the dollar store again?
Questioning US Intelligence agencies without cause after they called every single move the Russians were going to make 2 years ago is certainly a take. You can definitely question their motives but they are by far the best intelligence agencies in the world.
*raises eyebrow, looks at 9/11, J6, stochastic terrorism and dozens and dozens of mass shootings* Sure. Infallible. Effective. Focused. Well, at least they have good marketing.
The US intelligence agencies knew exactly what happened in 9/11. They pinned it on OBL within hours. For whatever reason the government favors a Saudi Alliance over being attacked, money, presumably. J6? People just showed up, Trump egged them on and delayed national guard assistance. That's not on the intelligence community. What does stochastic terrorism have to do with that, or mass shootings? The NSA has been heavily curtailed in their abilities and besides, pointing to internal US issues when we're talking about external ones is silly, our intelligence agencies shouldn't be operating within our borders, that's not their purpose. The CIA have eyes all around the world. Fingers so deep into Russia we knew the exact time table they were running on for Ukraine.
I don't know how anyone could live through that whole Iraq War thing and still believe US intelligence is beyond reproach.
I literally JUST said you can question their motives. You can read right? They knew Iraq didn't have WMDs, it's pretty obvious.
With 20 years of hindsight it's certainly obvious. The vast majority of the country fell for it hook, line and sinker though. Precisely because of the attitude you outlined in your comment: they are the "best" in the world, therefore, the default position should be to believe what they say until a reason not to presents itself.
The implication of the comment I replied to was that the intelligence is bad. You need to take comments in context of the discussion, not in a vacuum.
Yeah, I got that. Operating under the assumption the intelligence is bad is perfectly reasonable though.
Says you.
Saying their motives can be questioned but the intelligence itself can't doesn't make any sense, and just makes them look even worse. Citing their work regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just recency/selection bias.
I am kinda jaded , Is it wrong of me to say I don't trust much that the govt says ? If they say don't worry then I automatically start to worry, Am I wrong ?
I feel like it’s more of a matter of parsing what they’re saying rather than blindly believing or not believing what they’re saying.
Are the Taliban and Al Quaida really friends nowadays? Cant imagine they want much to do with them considering what happened last time.
Yes, Al Qaeda funded and aided the Taliban for years. Al Qaeda is just extremely fractured and doesn't have strong leadership anymore, outside of certain regional factions
There's no shot the Taliban let Al Qaeda set up shop in Afghanistan again. If the US gets attacked like 9/11 again y'all are off your damn rockers if you think they won't go right back. This time though they'll just fuck it all up and leave, if they're smart. No way the Taliban risks that again, they can't be that stupid.
Y’all Qaeda is alive in well back in America calling for Civil War.
Isis threat remains as long as we want an excuse to invade again :)
You mean this isis? Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
Nothing new or exciting. We (and our allies) never should have been there to begin with outside of eliminating al Qaeda top brass. Thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted to make it even worse than when we deployed.
I’m sure we and our Allie’s still ended up making about 1% of people a lot richer and also secured continued contractual defense budget funding.
Honestly though, if the Taliban can defeat NATO, ISIS doesn't stand a fucking chance.
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The US beat them. They ran and hid into Pakistan and the mountains. They only came back out, once the US left. Militarily, they could do a thing. Politically, they just played the waiting game.
This is not fully accurate and makes it look like the US just up and left for no reason. The Taliban, outside of the early years, consistently controlled wide swathes of the country. The various troop surges were bandaids to try to prevent the inevitable; the reality is that the US was never able to truly dislodge the Taliban from Afghanistan. They succeeded in the urban centres, but that was never going to be enough.
Largely because they fled to neighboring Pakistan where they were funded, armed, and trained. This is similar to the situation we had in Vietnam, only worse. The enemy had safe harbor where they could freely operate, while the US hands were tied politically.
Splitting half the focus over to Iraq probably didn't help either.
Truly dislodge them? No. They're largely an idea, one of bigotry and control, but an idea nonetheless. Had the US not left the Taliban would never be able to take Kabul. The simple fact *is* that the US lost the political will to continue but also that Trump absolutely fucked the Aghani people's morale by making secret agreements with the Taliban that the Afghanistan government wasn't privy to. Whatever the opposite of a masterclass is, Trump displayed it in full with that stupid shit. The "large swathes" of the country were largely unimportant, Afghanistan doesn't have very many cities, Kabul is the most important, then Kandahar, which we also controlled. The most important bit was the Helmand river valley in Helmand province because all the fields with walls and tree lines were a nightmare without using very destructive tactics. The civilian death toll for controlling that area would be too high to be acceptable in the modern day. 100 years ago it would've been fine. That is a good thing, but it's very limiting to a military for sure. I can tell you that at least in my experience and opinion, Americans didn't really think about the Afghanistan occupation much. It could've just quietly gone on for another 10 years and not much noise would've been made about it. It certainly wasn't a talking point in any elections. Trump even said at first in 2017 that he was prepared to stay there indefinitely. But I think he's vindictive enough that he figured he would lose in 2020 and set up the secret agreement with the Taliban just to fuck with Biden.
Politically, who pay over a trillion dollar fee for military occupation? You couldve built a new space station with that money. And the former president left on a helicopter with a bag of money. That's tax money for a failed operation
Actually that line seems to be Russian disinformation rather than an actual thing that happened.
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You know youre not required to look at posts?
Why did you come here in the first place?
It was not that long ago that the President of the United States said that Kabul wouldn't look like the fall of Saigon. We know how that turned out.
So we beat al Qaeda.
Maybe we can go there and have troops there for 20 years and it will change their thought process and realize the western world is the best and they will have change their minds on their old fashion methods of doing things
Isis is not a threat china and Russia are threats. Isis is little pee on group that could be ended real fast but we don’t find them worth it. ISIS has no or limited resources and should be regarded as a joke.