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Meanwhile In Afghanistan


Panzermann

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21 minutes ago, NickM said:

 

And so what if it is? Is it any less biased or ill informed or clueless than say, The Guardian?

Have you watched it? I have. 

Hopelessly biased right wing media is not compensation for hopelessly biased left wing media. It's exactly the same problem.

Just because it tells you what you want to believe, doesn't make it right. 

 

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lol. Adding monetized social media to the "infrastructure of persuasion" is not going to end well. "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence..."

For better or worse, I don't think Monbiot/Moonbat has much of an American following (never heard of the guy).

 

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Feel free to delete this oh mighty MODERATOR if I'm breaking any rules but I posted this in the Trump thread but it seemed appropriate to post here as well since this type of question has been raised and I actually had some real information to share.

 

I had a chance to dig into it with some medical organizations.  I don't know about other organizations but here is what I have been told.

1) key point, there is no wifi in Afghanistan.  Many of those volunteer people have access at best to a Sat phone and many areas those only work if you climb a mountain.  So they are not working with current and updated information at all.  

2) Many of the medical personnel (probably others, my sample set is skewed towards them) are jaded, they have been told that the Allies are pulling out multiple times and it never happened.  Many of them at the beginning did pull out and watched the projects or patients that they were working on fall apart while they were gone.  One friend told me that she had done that when she was working with an 11 year old girl with a high risk pregnancy ( don't ask, the details are way worse than you are probably imagining).  They withdrew when Obama announced the withdrawal of combat troops in 2014.  She went back in and the girl had miscarried and was subsequently beaten to death.  Those people are not leaving unless they have no choice.

3) They have been officially told that the Afghan military was capable of resisting the Taliban and was trained and stable.  They believed it.  All those cheerful intelligence reports from our alphabet agencies and military?  That's what these people were being fed as well.  They believed them.  

4) worst of all, they had been repeatedly assured that when the Allies pulled out that they would not be at risk or left behind.  So even if it all went to shit they wouldn't be forgotten so it became a calculated risk.  I have a French former colleague and he is beside himself with rage at the US because we pulled the rug out from under our allies.  According to him and a friend in the UK I don't think the average USAsian has any clue how angry our allies are at Biden and us.  We f*cked them so hard and fast we should have put it up on PornHub and charged money for the video.  To our shame, the UK, French and Germans (and Japanese, though that's second hand maybe information so could be wrong) sent military and secret squirrel folks in throughout Afghanistan to get those folks out while the US has not.  Demonstrably has not as my French colleague has shared that French guys went in and pulled their citizens out of a region and their US colleagues (different village 30 miles away) have still not been heard from in the US but they had been talking via courier while they were still on the ground so they weren't dead when Kabul fell at least.  Their families have not heard from them. 

I'm really tired of this bullshit rape defense that they were asking for it because their metaphoric skirts were too short.  You had a bunch of people in a shitty part of the world trying to help people and our government and military left them to die so Biden could get a photo-op on 9/11.  

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Clearly that was stupid.  

Morality doesn't have anything to do with reality.  Reality doesn't care.  The good guys always win..because they won.  If you can't fucking understand that simple and yet profound statement, just stop.  S/F....Ken M

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10 hours ago, NickM said:

 

George Moonbat? Sounds like somebody to be avoided and ignored; what's his real name?

At this point, anyone that the left spends a LOT of time trying to marginalize and silence, I figure probably has something interesting to say. 

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On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, Ive no doubt the Afghans played factions off against each other. In actual fact Ive read a book by a Soviet Journalist, and he said Afghans were playing exactly the same games back in the 1980's.

Welcome to the history of North America, roughly 1650 - 1900. Whites were a powerful but 3rd team on the field, helping decide inter-tribal genocidal wars.

On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

So the argument about drones, they are tools. They probably do no worse a job than a guy sat in the cockpit does. The real problem is intelligence gathering. Some of that we are really good at, I think we have SIGINT capablities that other nations can only dream of. But what good is that if the enemy doesnt use phones? What we really need is HUMINT capablities, and after the fiasco that the end of this war turned into, I give zero chance of any sources on the ground to create that.

 

On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Lets face it, we blinded ourselves, and this isnt going to work.

 

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On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, Ive no doubt the Afghans played factions off against each other. In actual fact Ive read a book by a Soviet Journalist, and he said Afghans were playing exactly the same games back in the 1980's.

Welcome to the history of North America, roughly 1650 - 1900. Whites were a powerful but 3rd team on the field, helping decide inter-tribal genocidal wars.

Of course, a wag might note that America got coopted into sorting out tribal warfare in Yurrup, too.

On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

So the argument about drones, they are tools. They probably do no worse a job than a guy sat in the cockpit does. The real problem is intelligence gathering. Some of that we are really good at, I think we have SIGINT capablities that other nations can only dream of. But what good is that if the enemy doesnt use phones? What we really need is HUMINT capablities, and after the fiasco that the end of this war turned into, I give zero chance of any sources on the ground to create that.

SIGINT, photorecon, etc. are clean, safe, objective, and provides great imagery to include in Powerpoints.

HUMINT is dangerous, unclean, and provides only subjective verbal intel.

Yet HUMINT is critical.

On 9/12/2021 at 3:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Lets face it, we blinded ourselves, and this isnt going to work.

Nope. We have sowed the wind. And America has civilian defenders focused on internal enemies, and military defenders focused on pleasing their Chinese masters. Next two decades are gonna be exciting.

 

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10 hours ago, nitflegal said:

...

 To our shame, the UK, French and Germans (and Japanese, though that's second hand maybe information so could be wrong) sent military and secret squirrel folks in throughout Afghanistan to get those folks out while the US has not.  

...

Well that matter is done so maybe a chance to start fresh.

On that second hand info, yes, Japan sent some military aircraft but seemed to have had their pickyp destination not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and with only a handful of pickups. The Taliban said no JSDF allowed in and Japan generally complied but were able to get in Afganistan for a little, for better or worse. One C-2 arrived in Pakistan on August 24th. Went into Afghanistan on the 25th but no pickups arrived. It returned to Pakistan on the 26th. Two C-130s arrived at Pakistan on the 25th. They made four two-way trips between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the 26th and 27th. On the 26th they picked up 14 Afghans. On the 27th, they picked up one Japanese national. 

https://www.tanknet.org/index.php?/topic/41069-meanwhile-in-afghanistan/&do=findComment&comment=1545621

http://www.asahi.com/amp/articles/ASP933C92P92UTIL041.html

 

 

 

ROK sent a few military aircraft as well and picked up a few 100 Afghans, for better or worse.

https://www.tanknet.org/index.php?/topic/41069-meanwhile-in-afghanistan/&do=findComment&comment=1543217

Edited by JasonJ
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11 minutes ago, Simon Tan said:

COIN in CONUS is going to be epic.

I'm already buying tie-dyed T-shirts and love beads so I appear nonthreatening to the Federal Police and Civilian Covid Corps.

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3 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I'm already buying tie-dyed T-shirts and love beads so I appear nonthreatening to the Federal Police and Civilian Covid Corps.

Yes and it's no use saying that you don't know nothing
It's still gonna get you if you don't do something
Sitting on a fence that's a dangerous course
Ah, you could even catch a bullet from the peace-keeping force
Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest
Oh, yeah, once upon a time in the West

Dire Straits 1979

 

Incidentally, what ive been saying about drone targeting above. They actually featured the 'isis drone strike' on a CNN report. Seems it was actually a guy loading up his vehicle with water bottles to hand out, and other people killed were 7 children playing in the viscinity of the vehicle. The 'secondary explosion' that was ascribed to a suicide vest, seems to have been the vehicles fuel tank cooking off. So thats 9 more graves on Kabuls boot hill, just so Biden could look butch to the media.

As one Afghan in the report said, how can they tell whats down here from above? Exactly. And that is the single best argument in my opinion for having remained, no matter what the cost was.

Spot on about tribalism btw. I believe thats how we once kept the Scots under control.

 

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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19 minutes ago, Simon Tan said:

My guess is that they will use deputized PMCs, with a lot of TCNs.

Third-Country Nationals?

Lots of illegal immigrants to choose from!

First 1984 as a training manual, now Red Dawn will be a training film.

Edited by sunday
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PMCs get around posse comitatus but there will be heavy use of drones and intel apparatus, especially informal private monitoring. Everything they learned in the WoT and all the mistakes are baked in. IC and DOD will always fall back on Fallujah etc. 

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45 minutes ago, bojan said:

Aren't PMCs ultimate expression of free market economy? You dirty commie. :D

Yeah, Simon is a dirty commie. Agree with that! 😁

Now, jokes apart, PMCs could have been an expression of some free economy in Late Middle Ages and Reinassance Italy, but there could not be some kind of free market economy without peace and rule of law - and having PMC around means that the peace that could have been in place is quite fragile.

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https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2021/sep/16/friction-among-taliban-pragmatists-hard-liners-intensifies-amid-rumours-overbaradars-killing-2359503.html

KABUL: Friction between pragmatists and ideologues in the Taliban leadership has intensified since the group formed a hard-line Cabinet last week that is more in line with their harsh rule in the 1990s than their recent promises of inclusiveness, said two Afghans familiar with the power struggle.

The wrangling has taken place behind the scenes, but rumors quickly began circulating about a recent violent confrontation between the two camps at the presidential palace, including claims that the leader of the pragmatic faction, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was killed.

The rumors reached such intensity that an audio recording and handwritten statement, both purportedly by Baradar himself, denied he had been killed.

The Pashto-language letter had a stamp from the office of Baradar, who had served as the chief negotiator during talks between the Taliban and the United States.

Those negotiations had paved the way for the U.S.

troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed in late August, two weeks after the Taliban overran the capital of Kabul.

Shortly after the Kabul takeover, Baradar had been the first senior Taliban official to hold out the possibility of an inclusive government, but such hopes were disappointed with the formation of an all-male, all-Taliban lineup last week.

In a further sign that the hard-liners had prevailed, the white Taliban flag was raised over the presidential palace, replacing the Afghan national flag.

A Taliban official said the leadership still hasn't made a final decision on the flag, with many are leaning toward eventually flying both banners side by side.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss internal deliberations with the media.

The two Afghans familiar with the power struggle also spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the confidentiality of those who shared their discontent over the Cabinet lineup.

They said one Cabinet minister toyed with refusing his post, angered by the all-Taliban government that shunned the country's ethnic and religious minorities.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has denied rifts in the leadership.

On Tuesday, the Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Mutaqi, dismissed such reports as "propaganda."

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Dutch foreign minister resigns over Afghan evacuation

12h ago

Sigrid Kaag lost a vote of no confidence over her handling of the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan last month. Kaag tendered her immediate resignation following the parliamentary vote.

Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag resigned on Thursday following a vote of no confidence in parliament.

A parliamentary majority decided that she had  mishandled the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control.

Following the vote, Kaag immediately tendered her resignation.

"Your chamber has decided the Cabinet acted irresponsibly," Kaag said. "I can only accept the consequences of this judgment as the minister with ultimate responsibility,'' she added.

MPs backed the censure motion against Kaag with a majority of 78 votes in favor to 72 against.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Kaag's resignation came as a "great loss" to the Cabinet.

Dutch government was 'slow' to respond to developing crisis

In a parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Kaag conceded that the government response had been slow despite the rapidly deteriorating situation.

This meant that a number of Dutch citizens and locals who had worked as translators for Dutch forces were not evacuated in time. Others who did not make it onto evacuation flights included Afghans who had worked for media groups and non-governmental organizations.

The Dutch military managed to evacuate around 2,100 people from Afghanistan.

[...] 

https://m.dw.com/en/dutch-foreign-minister-resigns-over-afghan-evacuation/a-59206571

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Germany awards Order of Merit to Afghanistan airlift general

1h ago

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has recognized General Jens Arlt for his role in the evacuation process in Afghanistan. The German mission airlifted some 5,300 people from Kabul.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier bestowed one of Germany's most prestigious awards on Friday to the military commander who led the country's evacuation process from Afghanistan.

Steinmeier presented the Order of Merit to Brigadier General Jens Arlt at the presidential residence at Bellevue Palace in Berlin.

He heaped praise on Arlt's leadership after conducting an operation the head of state described as "unprecedented" in Germany's post-World War II history.

Steinmeier thanked Arlt for his "outstanding service" as part of the "successful mission" that managed to evacuate more than 5,300 citizens, representing 45 countries, from Kabul. It was part of a wider international effort to airlift 120,000 people in the wake of the Taliban takeover.

[...] 

Arlt, for his part, said the evacuation was a "team effort" and that he was receiving the honor in the name of all those he had led.

Somber note

Steinmeier, though, recognized that there were still many "painful questions" about the 20-year mission by Western powers.

He added that "we bear some of the responsibility for human tragedy" in Afghanistan.

https://m.dw.com/en/germany-awards-order-of-merit-to-afghanistan-airlift-general/a-59212371

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