A Taliban delegation at peace talks in Moscow, Russia, May 2019 Evgenia Novozhenina / Reuters
Carter Malkasian, Foreign Affairs: What a Withdrawal From Afghanistan Would Look Like
Learning to Live With Taliban Rule.
Over the past two years, a bipartisan consensus has emerged that the United States should leave Afghanistan. This summer, President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that he wanted out. So did the Democratic presidential candidates. During a September debate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren promised to bring troops home without any deal with the Taliban, and former Vice President Joe Biden was just as strident, declaring, “We don’t need those troops there. I would bring them home.” But advocates of the mission argue that a full withdrawal courts disaster, paving the way for terrorist groups to reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan.
That distaste for remaining in Afghanistan is widespread is unsurprising after 17 years of war. And U.S. involvement in active military operations in Afghanistan has greatly decreased since 2010 and 2011, when nearly 100,000 U.S. troops were deployed. The remaining 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan support local security forces with airstrikes, surveillance, and advising. Afghan soldiers and police do the frontline work of defending cities against the Taliban, while U.S. special operations devote significant effort to battling al Qaeda and the Islamic State (or ISIS). The United States has fought a relentless campaign against these groups, and many opponents of the effort can endure it no longer.
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WNU Editor: What the Taliban are hoping for is a repeat on what happened when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989. A departure of foreign forces. An escalation in the war. Storming and seizing Kabul. Control of much of the country after that. But I do not think this will happen this time. I can see the Taliban controlling the Pashtun regions of the country, but the other regions will resist. Foreign countries will also get involved, and they will not be friendly to the Taliban.
3 comments:
What WNU described is inevitable as soon as the US pulls out of AFG. At this point the sooner the better.
A residual force of quick-react SOCOM units and drone operators will likely remain indefinitely.
Why should we care?
1.) No one cared before 911. Sure a few people groused about the treatment of women, but no one did anything except mouth a couple of words. They are not too serious. Can you see Code Stink members enlisting to defend Afghani women?
2.) Liberals have said Afghanistan is a bad war. When Iraq War was still going, lib motherfuckers told us that Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan was the good war. As Obama was fecklessly and disingenuously negotiating a new SOFA, people predicted that once the Iraq Wart ended that the Afghanistan War would be considered a bad war. And they were right. That is exactly was dirty libs did.
3.) While the Wars are going Lib motherfuckers concern troll about the cost and service member deaths. Urnalists, so called reporters and libticians have a body count for no other reason than to beat the Hell out of their political opposition.
4.) People in Washington DC are not interested in winning the Afghan War. If they were they would start turning the screws on Pakistan. If we stopped giving Pakistanis businessmen, tourists and students visas, we could see if that would make them more tractable to allowing the Afghans to have a Taliban free Democracy. But it has not been tried. In Afghanistan we are not only fight the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, but also Pakistan.
1) right no one cared or for that matter knew anything about Afghanistan and there was never a valid reason to invade, let alone remain.
2) BS both Iraq and Afghanistan like Vietnam and many other were bad wars, criminal in fact.
3) body count does point the finger at people who want dirty wars.
4) People, in fact all the people in the government in Washington have no interest in winning wars as that is counter productive to their benefactors, the WIC. If all the wars were won that would be the end of the WIC. It is a sort of planned obsolescence built in factor common in all of industry. There are of course the up and coming who are deeply committed to ending wars and bad government. They are that until they learn how financially beneficial supporting the WIC is, or for very few, remain like lost in the desert of ambition, holding onto their beliefs but accomplishing nothing, while still getting paid mind you.
5) Liberals and conservatives (yes "cons") all work for the wealthy. The liberals get to form the government every so often because even the wealthy know that their existence is dependent on "the people" getting a little bit of the gravy every so often. When the time comes and the little people in America are no longer needed by the wealthy, you know to grow stuff and fight wars, they will be toast. That means about 95% of Americans will become redundant and that includes all the little people who thought supporting conservatives was in their best interest.
6) suck it up Anon.
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