Taliban winning in Afghanistan
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 23:18
VIEWED: 20106
PAGE 12 of 23
Opinion: After spending trillions of dollars on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand
U.S. military and CIA interventions have been disasters, but the foreign-policy establishment and the media still can’t face the extent of American foolishness and failure
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/afghanistan-latest-debacl
e-of-us-foreign-policy-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08
https://web.archive.org/web/20210818060836/https://www.project-syndica
te.org/commentary/afghanistan-latest-debacle-of-us-foreign-policy-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08
Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the US invested roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the US few hearts and minds.
Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan. That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.”
In short, less than 2% of the US spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The US could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation. Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%.
The US could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like. Such humane investments – especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank – would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars.
Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt.
In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the US mass media is, predictably, blaming the US failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the US has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Propaganda multiplier deserves its own thread. Posted separately.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You would be wrong.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
GOP removes page praising Donald Trump’s ‘historic’ peace deal with Taliban.
I wonder why.
I don't wonder why. It's a great thing, so of course the Legacy Media is against it, and they're going to try spinning the blame for whatever fallout there is over there on Trump and the GOP.
The only thing that baffles me is why Biden* actually went through with it.
All of your shit-show Lefty trash online sites are not behind Uncle Joey's decision to do so.
No. I'm right.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan?
Even in 2009, he didn’t believe the military had a strategy for victory. (In 2021, the military clowns can't even run a airlift without accidentally killing Afghans on the runways)
To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory. “We have not thought through our strategic goals!” he shouted during the Obama administration’s first meeting on the war in Afghanistan.
All this was documented at the time in Bob Woodward’s deeply reported 2010 book Obama’s Wars. Biden did not actually support withdrawal at the time — he pushed for a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, accompanied by a smaller troop surge than the military wanted.
But his dark view of the long-term picture was clearly vindicated in the decade since. Now that Biden is president and has actually withdrawn from the war — leading to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — it’s worth revisiting that past debate, as outlined in Woodward’s book, to understand why his mind was so firmly made up.
More at https://www.vox.com/2021/8/18/22629135/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-re
asons
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I'm surprised he went through with it.
It's going to be the one thing he can hang his hat on after his failed presidency.
I'll shit talk Uncle Joey all day long on just about everything else under the sun, but the man actually did it.
And the fallout from that is watching the hypocrisy on both sides of the pro-war Legacy Media beating the shit out of him for it.
Wake up sheep. They lie to you every day about everything.
If more than just a handful of you could remember what happened more than two weeks ago you wouldn't need somebody to try to convince you of that.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:The sheep were told the truth, but sheep don't read:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wake up sheep. They lie to you every day about everything.
If more than just a handful of you could remember what happened more than two weeks ago you wouldn't need somebody to try to convince you of that.
For nearly a decade, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned in report after report that fraud, waste and abuse had wormed its way into the $145 billion U.S. taxpayers spent to rebuild Afghanistan. The squandering included $43 million on a useless gas station and $28 million on uniforms for Afghan soldiers with camouflage suited to a tiny fraction of the country.
"It was a little bit of hubris here that we thought it was easy to turn Afghanistan into, you know, Iowa," Sopko said. "Turn it into a sparkling city on a hill, like Boston. It was always going to be tough. But it could have turned out better." John Sopko is special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Pay attention, sheep. TL;DR
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/18/afghanistan-in
spector-general-john-sopko-reflects-waste-abuse/8180105002/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Are you behind Biden's* actions regarding this issue Second?
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Second,
pretending that people who disagree don't pay attention isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical trick. They paid attention, they just didn't obey.
That said, the disaster that is military spending got an excellent breakdown by Pirate News here a few years back. It's mostly lost in the corruption of the subcontracting
Also, I feel like, just on a personal level, we took the wrong approach in afghanistan. Our position was that the Taliban were evil. That didn't resonate. The locals don't really hate the Taliban. They don't really hate the Northern Alliance, they don't really hate Al Qaeda or the Mujahideen. These are their political parties in a way. These groups do not bomb their weddings, torture their children, and set up concentration camps. We do that. They probably hate us. And the Russians
It was a completely lost cause
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
How Russia-China Are Stage-Managing the Taliban
Pepe Escobar • August 18, 2021
The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.
The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.
Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.
Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.
These are the key takeaways.
No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insist, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”
The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.
Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.
A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.
Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”
The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.
For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.
On the key issue of opium/heroin: the Taliban will ban their production. So, for all practical purposes, the CIA heroin rat line is dead.
As eyebrow raising as these statements may be, the Taliban did not even get into detail on economic/infrastructure development deals – as they will need a lot of new industries, new jobs and improved Eurasian-wide trade relations. That will be announced later.
The go-to Russian guy
Sharp US observers are remarking, half in jest, that the Taliban in only one sitting answered more real questions from US media than POTUS since January.
What this first press conference reveals is how the Taliban are fast absorbing essential P.R. and media lessons from Moscow and Beijing, emphasizing ethnic harmony, the role of women, the role of diplomacy, and deftly defusing in a single move all the hysteria raging across NATOstan.
The next bombshell step in the P.R. wars will be to cut off the lethal, evidence-free Taliban-9/11 connection; afterwards the “terrorist organization” label will disappear, and the Taliban as a political movement will be fully legitimized.
Moscow and Beijing are meticulously stage-managing the Taliban reinsertion in regional and global geopolitics. This means that ultimately the SCO is stage-managing the whole process, applying a consensus reached after a series of ministerial and leaders meetings, lNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Discussion would not be complete without a conspiracy theory ...
Quote:I wonder if the contractors make up the bulk of Americans stuck in Afghanistan. The press has allowed us to imagine hapless American citizens ... do-gooders and tourists... caught out in the hinterlands, but I suspect that most Americans still in Afghanistan knew exactly what they signed up for when they went there.
The Afghanistan Exit Debacle: Incompetence, Distraction, Or Something More Sinister?
Thursday, Aug 19, 2021 - 11:40 PM
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
My first instinct has been to ignore the circus surrounding Biden’s apparent bungle of the troop exit from Afghanistan, primarily because I think it distracts from the much bigger danger of despotic covid mandates and vaccine passports that Biden and his handlers are trying to push forward right now on our home soil. That said, I have received numerous requests from readers to discuss the situation and I’ve found certain aspects of the pull-out rather suspicious.
The basic assumption here is that Biden is senile and his handling of the exit is tainted by his stupidity, but maybe there is more to this than meets the eye…
First, I think it’s important to dispel a propaganda narrative being circulated by the media that conservatives are somehow calling for troops to stay in Afghanistan by criticizing Biden’s exit strategy. This is typical leftist gaslighting. One can be in favor of a troop draw-down and still be critical of Biden’s handling of it....
The real shock has been the speed of Biden’s exit agenda after Trump had already removed the bulk of US troops. This rapid draw-down has included cutting almost all US troops and cutting private contractor numbers by at least 60%, and all of this has been undertaken in the span of a few months.
Quote:Another part of the conspiracy theory, not mentioned here, is the irrationality of abadoning Bagram AFB and all of its equipment and supplies in the middle of the night, without ever telling the Afghan govt. WHEN you are withdrawing, you hang on to your airfields until the last moment. The way Bagram was abandoned smells of panic, or treason, or coverup.
This has allowed the Taliban to overrun the last secure provinces surrounding the capital of Kabul and then overrun Kabul itself.
Quote:
... It has been the common practice of multiple US administrations to pay lip service to public concerns over the endless war in Afghanistan, telling people an exit is imminent, then shrugging their shoulders when they are caught lying. ...
Biden apologists would make the argument that the gibbering commander-in-chief has given us exactly what we wanted, so we should be applauding him. However, the chaotic manner in which Biden is executing the troop draw-down is increasingly suspect.
It feels more like a desperate retreat in the face of an overwhelming attack, rather than a controlled exit with a defensive plan in the face of a limited insurgency...
An exit strategy should have taken at least another year to complete, with a secure zone surrounding Kabul and the provinces bordering Pakistan...
And that brings us to current day, in which Afghans are piling onto the landing gear of planes leaving Air Force bases outside Kubul as the capital is overtaken by Taliban fighters in scenes reminiscent of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War..
I’m not buying the “Biden is incompetent” story because it is too simplistic and it doesn’t take the bigger picture into account. Biden is a muppet, a mascot, a front-man for the public to love or hate, and that’s all he is. Yes, he can barely read from a teleprompter, but it’s his puppeteers that make the big decisions, not Biden. They are evil people, but not incompetent.
So we have to ask some important questions:
Why now? And, who benefits? After decades of presidents lying to us about “mission accomplished” and impending troop exits, why is Biden suddenly committing to an exit strategy in the most hysterical way possible?
Why did the Biden ANOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME