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Biden to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by 9/11/21

August of 87

I was trying to make a very subtle (?) joke about how you must have been born after the truly greatest president ever left office in January 2021.

Anyway, I am super glad the war on terror is finally ending.
 
Hopefully this means more military supplies and former military members for the police force!
 
am I reading this right this right that the withdrawal is for ~2,500 military members but does not apply to the ~18,500 defense contractors?
 
Well I mean they all reached an agreement on the pipeline so no need for the phony war on terror rhetoric any more
 
Osama Bin Laden, 2004:

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I Met a Taliban Leader and Lost Hope for My Country


...The Taliban have come close to achieving their goals through the use of force and military supremacy. After the United States concluded it couldn’t win the war in Afghanistan, even after two decades of fighting the Taliban, it entered into negotiations with them last year. That decision offered the Taliban greater legitimacy than they had ever enjoyed.

The rights and status of Afghan women, their access to education and employment, and the creation of a relatively free media have become symbols of what is possible in Afghanistan. With the United States and its allies changing the goal posts, those freedoms are now imperiled.

I believe an important factor in changing American calculations regarding Afghanistan was the failure of governance and the widespread corruption in the Afghan government, its institutions and the broader Kabul elite. Afghans need to be introspective about our own failures. We need to talk about how to avoid yet more violence and to protect the rights and dignity of all Afghan citizens, men and women.

I am now in the United States. I am safe but longing for my home, wondering about the future of my country and my family. I can’t shake off the despair and the sense that Afghanistan has been abandoned by the world. We might lose most of what we have gained in the past two decades if the Taliban return to power. The future looks bleak, but Afghanistan can’t afford to stop trying to find a better way to move forward.
 
It will be terrible for women and girls in Afghanistan if the Taliban return to power.
It's also terrible right now for millions of women and girls in a lot of parts of the world.
My basic takeaway from the whole sorry story of Afghanistan is that military force is a really terrible way to settle questions about how societies will function. Especially when it's a foreign military force being imposed on the society in question.
 
Terrible? Sure.

Sometimes the necessary and right thing...sadly, yes.


Sometimes the wrong thing...yes.
 
It will be terrible for women and girls in Afghanistan if the Taliban return to power.
It's also terrible right now for millions of women and girls in a lot of parts of the world.
My basic takeaway from the whole sorry story of Afghanistan is that military force is a really terrible way to settle questions about how societies will function. Especially when it's a foreign military force being imposed on the society in question.

Well put
 
Agreed. But fighting unwinnable wars is a good way to accumulate wealth and power.
 
I think we're at a different place in 2021 about understanding media too, but I've been reading some of the Thomas Friedman whitewashing efforts over the last 20 years in the Times as he cheerled, covered for, and excused the awful history of Iraq and Afghanistan for the NYT. The consent manufacturing, even from "left" media in America is pretty atrocious when it comes to matters of empire.

This is such a weird fucking read: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/opinion/joe-biden-afghanistan-2002.html

The diary entries show clearly a very dark depiction of Afghanistan at the start of the war, and not the cautiously optimistic view he suggests at the start of the piece, I just don't get the point he's driving at here. Of course, the point is to sell more books, but the closing diary entry he quotes just feels to me like more providing cover for whatever outcome we get:

“Getting out of Afghanistan turned out to be harder than getting in (which I hope will not be a metaphor for U.S. operations there generally)...."

Anyway this Biden presidency is just going to be a Greatest Hits of "Trying Desperately to Make Up For Shit I Did 20-40 Years Ago," and if he can pull it off, he'll still be the best president of my lifetime.
 
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