Another war won..

[TheGreenGoblin]

"The Great Game"

Really excellent BBC documentary... thank you for posting.

[Undried Plum]

Afghanistan is none of our damn business.

The place poses no threat to either Britain or to the US, and never has.

We should get the flock out of there without delay.

Let the Taliban sort out the opium poppy drug trade and extirpate it. They've shown that they can do it. Our mob made the problem worse, not better.

We've got the airlift capacity to do it under a month. We should get on with that task and start training officers at Sandhurst and Cranwell, and at the Staff Colleges, the reasons why Imperial aggression against Afghanistan does not work and can never be made to work.

There have been four disastrous invasions of the wretched place by three different Empires and the outcome has been disastrous every time, without exception.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Afghanistan is none of our damn business.

The place poses no threat to either Britain or to the US, and never has.

We should get the flock out of there.

Let the Taliban sort out the opium poppy drug trade and extirpate it. They've shown that they can do it. Our mob made the problem worse, not better.

+1

[John Hill]

Afghanistan is none of our damn business.

The place poses no threat to either Britain or to the US, and never has.

We should get the flock out of there without delay.

Well yes, all very well but that would leave a vacuum and who do you want to fill it?

China has a border with Afghanistan and they probably have what would be necessary to step in.

Pakistan pulls a lot of the strings in Afghanistan so they might slowly merge.

Iran has a border.

Tk'stan, Uz'stan and Tj'stan have borders with A'stn and likely one of those could be a route for Russia to invade and they might even carry on through that skinny bit of Iran to establish a Russian port on the Arabian sea.

Even India (claims) a border with A'stan.

Don't forget the Unocol gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea to India and the Unocol oil pipeline to the Arabian Sea. Can they really be allowed to slip out of the hands of our Septic cuzzies?

[Undried Plum]

The meme of: we must go to war against these people or sumbdy will "fill a vacuum" is dangerous garbage.

It's none of our damn business who governs the poxy place. They are no threat to us and they never have been in the almost two centuries that we've been trying interfere in their domestic affairs.

The pathetic excuse in 2001 was 9/11, but so far as is publically known, not one single Afghan was involved in the funding or planning or execution of that atrocity.

The funding was Saudi. The planning was done in Germany. The terrorist "training camps" were American flying schools who were happy to take money for teaching ostensible future airline pilots who weren't interested in learning how to takeoff or land an airliner.

Buggerall to do with Afghanistan.

[John Hill]

The situation in Afghanistan would be very different if America had not 'abandoned' Afghanistan when the Soviets left.

America helped the Mujahedeen fight the Soviets but did not follow through. When the Soviets left there really was a vacuum and that was filled by various 'warlords', presumably the Americans would have been able to offer them something better but they did not and it fell to Mullah Omar to kick the warlords to one little corner of the country.

Omar and his Teleban were internationally ignored (i.e. starved) until Sept 2000 when they became a convenient scapegoat.

We were told the Teleban were such terrible people (which was true) but no one stopped to consider that their terrible laws were very much like the laws of Saudi. Saudis of course are 'good chaps'.

The Teleban were kicked out of Kabul by the Americans and allies (local and international) and a new government formed, mostly from the warlords.

Now Biden and others want to abandon Afghanistan again, the warlords are still there, the Teleban are still there.

So let's wind the clock back to 1995-96 and make the same mistakes all over again, but this time with rabid factions in the mix.

[TheGreenGoblin]

The situation in Afghanistan would be very different if America had not 'abandoned' Afghanistan when the Soviets left.

America helped the Mujahedeen fight the Soviets but did not follow through. When the Soviets left there really was a vacuum and that was filled by various 'warlords', presumably the Americans would have been able to offer them something better but they did not and it fell to Mullah Omar to kick the warlords to one little corner of the country.

Omar and his Teleban were internationally ignored (i.e. starved) until Sept 2000 when they became a convenient scapegoat.

We were told the Teleban were such terrible people (which was true) but no one stopped to consider that their terrible laws were very much like the laws of Saudi. Saudis of course are 'good chaps'.

The Teleban were kicked out of Kabul by the Americans and allies (local and international) and a new government formed, mostly from the warlords.

Now Biden and others want to abandon Afghanistan again, the warlords are still there, the Teleban are still there.

So let's wind the clock back to 1995-96 and make the same mistakes all over again, but this time with rabid factions in the mix.

It is a pretty depressing outlook for any reasonable human being methinks, Afghan or not. Afghans, however, not least the modernists, reformers and the hopeful often end up disappointed, in exile or, worse, very, very dead! One didn't and still don't even need to believe in democracy to fall into that trap.




Mohammed Zahir Shah

His father Mohammed Nadir Shah fell into the "dead" category!

[TheGreenGoblin]

Nadir Shah's assassin, and most of his family, received Afghani "justice!"

[AtomKraft]

There's a lot of bad things in the World, like life in Afghanistan.

It doesn't follow that it's up to us to fix it.

It really is none of our business, and it never has been.

If the locals can't be arsed trying to fix it, why should we?

[Undried Plum]

When the Soviets left there really was a vacuum and that was filled by various 'warlords'

The massive fallacy in that statement is that warlords were already there. They'd been there for hundreds of years, including during the four Imperial invasions and failed occupations.

Even during the highly successful era of secular liberalism which the evil Empire spent more than $5Bn of the CIA's budget to destroy with the help of then extant warlords, there were warlords aplenty.

As a Northern Irish warlord/politician once publically said of his boys: "They haven't gone away k'now."

[Pontius Navigator]

Omar and his Teleban were internationally ignored (i.e. starved) until Sept 2000 when they became a convenient scapegoat.

And caused how much trouble outside their borders?

Suppose, just for a moment, Billy C had pressed HMG to allow US Troops, under the auspices of the UN, to patrol the Peace Line in Northern Ireland, what would have happened?

[Boac]

The massive fallacy in that statement is that warlords were already there. They'd been there for hundreds of years, including during the four Imperial invasions and failed occupations.

We all know that. I don't think JH suggested anything else. He merely said "a vacuum that was filled... "

No 'fallacy'.

[Pontius Navigator]

The fallacy was 'vacuum', a bit like the hole upon removing your clenched fist from a bucket of water.

[John Hill]

Omar and his Teleban were internationally ignored (i.e. starved) until Sept 2000 when they became a convenient scapegoat.

And caused how much trouble outside their borders?

That is an interesting question to which I am struggling to find an answer but perhaps you can give us an example?

[John Hill]

There's a lot of bad things in the World, like life in Afghanistan.

It doesn't follow that it's up to us to fix it.

It really is none of our business, and it never has been.

If the locals can't be arsed trying to fix it, why should we?

"You break it you fix it."

[John Hill]

The massive fallacy in that statement is that warlords were already there. They'd been there for hundreds of years, including during the four Imperial invasions and failed occupations.

I did not say they were not there but I did say they are still there. They are in the current government and they are the natural enemies of the Teleban who are still there too.

There was a time when it was argued that a loose alliance of 'warlords' was the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

[John Hill]

The 'warlords' were not all bad although one might wonder about Hekmatyar.

[Pontius Navigator]

Omar and his Teleban were internationally ignored (i.e. starved) until Sept 2000 when they became a convenient scapegoat.

And caused how much trouble outside their borders?

That is an interesting question to which I am struggling to find an answer but perhaps you can give us an example?

No, and neither it seems can you.

[John Hill]

As far as I know the Teleban did not cause trouble outside their borders. Of course you did not know that when you asked the question you did.

[Pontius Navigator]

As far as I know the Teleban did not cause trouble outside their borders. Of course you did not know that when you asked the question you did.

My dear fellow, why are you so defensive? Why do you suppose that anyone quoting from your comments is automatically disagreeing with you?