Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East--And Now, The Withdrawal From Afghanistan (M.E.T.)

[China]

Taliban members escorted Americans to gates at Kabul airport in secret arrangement with US

 

The US military negotiated a secret arrangement with the Taliban that resulted in members of the militant group escorting clusters of Americans to the gates of the Kabul airport as they sought to escape Afghanistan, two defense officials told CNN.

 

One of the officials also revealed that US special operations forces set up a "secret gate" at the airport and established "call centers" to guide Americans through the evacuation process.

The officials said Americans were notified to gather at pre-set "muster points" close to the airport where the Taliban would check their credentials and take them a short distance to a gate manned by American forces who were standing by to let them inside amid huge crowds of Afghans seeking to flee.

The US troops were able to see the Americans approach with their Taliban escorts as they progressed through the crowds, presumably ready to intervene in case anything happened.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[NoCalMike]

I also don't appreciate the revisionist history when it comes to Afghanistan and acting like a lot of the criticism of going there in the first place, very much related to how Vietnam ultimately ended.  It is tiresome to put it in terms of winning or losing the war, because there are so many objectives that mold and change that differ from what is said publicly.  These kinds of long term operations are setup to be on-going because it is pretty much known that any kind of wide scale exit will be met with what we saw and politicians usually don't have the stomach, guts, or political capital to push forward with it anyway.  Considering how in modern times most of our involvement in foreign countries goes unreported or severely under-reported as far as what we are doing there and why and what the actual objectives are, it seems like any time we actually get a true peek behind the curtain, it is so horrendous that the natural instinct is to jump all over the current commander in chief as if they are the sole person to blame when in reality a lot of these things have been on-going for years and in some cases decades. 

 

Secondly, The Taliban is not ISIS.  They are plenty evil in their own way but it is getting tiresome interacting with people who have no idea who the Taliban are or our actual history with that group.  I'm in no way defending them or anything about what they do, but there are so many layers to what goes on in the middle east that it is hard to even talk to people about it that you can tell haven't taken even 10 minutes to read about these places and instead will just parrot everything in black & terms the way it's been laid out for them by cable news.

[tshile]

Yeah we’re definitely have a childish version of the conversation. It’s frustrating. 
 

the obvious political gamesmanship is… I don’t even know the right word. 

[Jabbyrwock]

19 minutes ago, tshile said:

the obvious political gamesmanship is… I don’t even know the right word. 

 

Sadly, the correct word is "effective".  The gamesmanship is achieving the ends with the audience it is aimed at.

[TheDoyler23]

10 hours ago, NoCalMike said:

 

Secondly, The Taliban is not ISIS.  They are plenty evil in their own way but it is getting tiresome interacting with people who have no idea who the Taliban are or our actual history with that group.  

 

I’m with you. So many people can’t differentiate ISIS, The Taliban and Al Qaeda. They don’t understand the civil conflict or different factions within the country and how many were never going to be cool with the US installed Govt. They don’t understand who was responsible for 9/11. It’s infuriating. 

[tshile]

A sizable portion of people think Muslim = terrorist

 

Even if many of them won’t vocalize it. It’s clear, if you listen to them, that’s how they think. 
 

distinguishing between isis and taliban? Hah. 
 

these are the same group of people that a few years ago were perpetuating this theory that Iran and al qaeda had teamed up to conduct some huge military-terrorist operation against us. It was under the Trump admin. It was part of when they were pushing the Iran fear mongering (which in any normal time would have been a top story for months but the endless trump scandals and ****upery made it a think easy to forget)

 

the idea that there’s a fundamental problem with believing that a Shia-based government would team up with a Sunni-based organization to work together to conduct a massive attack was completely lost on these people. 
 

expecting them to understand 7th century changes, the great schism within Islam, etc is just asking for too much. 
 

I bet most of them aren’t sure what year range “7th century” is without looking it up….

 

 

[TheDoyler23]

44 minutes ago, tshile said:

A sizable portion of people think Muslim = terrorist

 

Or ask them why Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11.

 

"They hate America" is always the answer. Never a second thought beyond that. 

[Ball Security]

3 minutes ago, TheDoyler23 said:

 

Or ask them why Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11.

 

"They hate America" is always the answer. Never a second thought beyond that. 

”They’re just jealous of us” - my roommate 2001.

[tshile]

Or - why did we invade Afghanistan the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia!

 

they think wahabist is a person that makes wasabi paste for your sushi

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by tshile

[NoCalMike]

I didn't want my last reply to make it sound like I was claiming to be any kind of scholar or authority on geo-political policy/history in the middle east or anything. I just consider myself someone who has been genuinely curious enough to read a little bit beyond what cable news networks decide to argue back & forth about all the time.

[Riggo-toni]

Peter Bergen's book Holy War Inc provides Bin Laden's rationale for the attack - he wanted the west to suffer in the same manner he believed they had inflicted suffering in the Middle East.

Bin Laden went from US/Saudi family ally to enemy when the royal family refused to let him take the mujihaddeen into Iraq to fight Saddam and liberate Kuwait, choosing to use American forces instead, and yet people got suckered into believing Iraq was involved in 911.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Riggo-toni
Typo

[tshile]

14 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

I didn't want my last reply to make it sound like I was claiming to be any kind of scholar or authority on geo-political policy/history in the middle east or anything. I just consider myself someone who has been genuinely curious enough to read a little bit beyond what cable news networks decide to argue back & forth about all the time.

Yeah I mean I’m the same. 
 

but I feel like understanding the basics of the Shia Sunni divide, that Afghanistan is technically in SW Asia, that Iran is Shia, al qaeda is Sunni, that wahhabists exist, etc is all kind of a super basic prerequisite for forming opinions on the Middle East issue. 
 

While I’ve read a lot I struggle to retain a list of it in any useable form because I have a very hard time keeping track of names. The names themselves are difficult for me to pronounce which makes it hard to create long term memories of what I read. I also lack the understanding of how their names are formed - many are after a geographical area, or whatever, that their family comes from. 
 

for example - read a lot about the haqqani’s. But if you made me match which haqqani was responsible for what part of the evolution of the haqqani network… well I wouldn’t even try. I can’t keep the father and the sons names straight. 
 

Which is a little frustrating cause it makes 70% of what you read difficult to retain. 
 

I read the 9/11 commission report. I can recall that one guy recruited another, that one guy was responsible for this or that. Ask me to match names to specific parts… no chance.

I mean what percentage of people do you think know that the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan is actually Pashtun?

 

do they even know what Pashtun is?

 

 

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 hour ago, TheDoyler23 said:

 

Or ask them why Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11.

 

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!!!

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Llevron]

That's honestly surprising. I know that's the attitude in my circle, but I strongly suspected we were showing our Dem bias and just leaning in that direction because we weren't sure how to feel. This stuff is complicated and beyond most people understanding (so I thought) 

 

But seeing independents and a surprisingly large minority of republicans agree with me is pretty shocking. I thought for sure we would agree on nothing at this point. 

 

Whats even more confusing now though is the medias take on all this. 

[Renegade7]

 

[NickyJ]

I haven't met a single person that thinks we should have sent more troops in long term. Only people that think our pulling out should have started while we were still keeping the Taliban out.

 

Would that have been realistic, to pull all American backers out of the country and leave it a husk by the time our troops finally left? I don't know, but I don't fault anyone for thinking we could have done better than to depend on the Taliban's charity to let American collaborators through to the airport.

[China]

Afghanistan: Taliban to rely on Chinese funds, spokesperson says

 

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has told an Italian newspaper that the group will rely primarily on financing from China following the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and its takeover of the country.

 

In his interview published by La Repubblica on Thursday, Mujahid said the Taliban will fight for an economic comeback with the help of China.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

Whoa, belt and road it is then...

[tshile]

1 hour ago, China said:

Afghanistan: Taliban to rely on Chinese funds, spokesperson says

 

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has told an Italian newspaper that the group will rely primarily on financing from China following the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and its takeover of the country.

 

In his interview published by La Repubblica on Thursday, Mujahid said the Taliban will fight for an economic comeback with the help of China.

 

Click on the link for the full article

this translates to:

taliban will allow China to strip mine the country, probably robbing Afghanistan of its actual natural resources like emeralds

 

but hey they’ll get some cheap roads and buildings for it. 

4 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

Will people shut up about the Blackhawk fleet now 

[RansomthePasserby]

9 hours ago, Llevron said:

Whats even more confusing now though is the medias take on all this. 

Is it confusing though? The media makes everything look extreme and catastrophic, and every story has to have some kind of conflict. The news isn’t news anymore, it’s entertainment. “There were some tactical mistakes, but strategically Biden made the right move” isn’t a sexy enough take to make it to the presses. 

[Llevron]

17 minutes ago, RansomthePasserby said:

Is it confusing though? The media makes everything look extreme and catastrophic, and every story has to have some kind of conflict. The news isn’t news anymore, it’s entertainment. “There were some tactical mistakes, but strategically Biden made the right move” isn’t a sexy enough take to make it to the presses. 

 

I guess what im confused on is the weird lack of bias. Mostly I can guess where organizations and the anchors themselves are on an issue before they give their opinion based on their personal politics. They all have a lean. And usually that lean is where they feel their viewers are.....at least thats what I thought. In this case it looks like they missed their mark, and they had to know that. But they just keep going with it. 

 

I guess you are right though. The dollars are where the clicks are and tragedy is click bait in 2021 (and 2020, and 2019, and, and, and) 

[Renegade7]

Gotta care less what the media thinks in regards to our foreign policy decisions on generational wars.  And not suprised so many of us wanted out, Biden saw right through this not being a party line issue but a populist issue same way Trump did.  At least Biden finished the job.

[Renegade7]

Figures