wish their protection is well guaranteed. — javi2541997
My real kvetch with StreetlightX is that he'll take preliminary shots at my nearest allies, the aforementioned "bleeding heart liberal" pacifists, before engaging within any debate — thewonder
The reason why left wing politics is failing in a nutshell. — Isaac
Maybe they're different now. — frank
They are just acting beacuse they are intelligent enough to understand all the pressure from social media and news Afghanistan is having. — javi2541997
Remember Scargill and Solidarity? — Isaac
Anyone who expects America to 'learn a lesson' has not learnt the lesson that Americans don't learn lessons. — StreetlightX
It disappears when the money making potential dries up, and boy has the money making potential not dried up.
Or put differently: the lessons to be learnt from Afganistan are not moral. They are political and economic. — StreetlightX
Indeed. I'm generally against war, but can't we at least start with an honest and frank cost-benefit analysis--beyond how much military suppliers will make? Congress should be a much more tight-fisted grantor of largesse to the military. — Bitter Crank
But you agree, I think, that there are differences between the American invasion of South Vietnam and Gulf/Iraq Wars in terms of popular resistance. There was none whatsoever in the 50s — Xtrix
I'd argue this is the moral component, and has indeed changed -- it's less successful than it was a few generations ago. — Xtrix
In the 50s perhaps, but the anti-war sentiment that grew during Vietnam was legendary and historical. Perhaps the filter though which I understand the scale of those movements is through rose colored-glasses, but if there's a difference in popular resistance it strikes me as exactly the opposite today. — StreetlightX
What dribs and drabs of any anti-war movement in the US today remains cloistered in it's own little issue-hole, and while everyone is now crawling out of the woodwork when the stakes have evaporated, Afghanistan was more or less a matter of resignation among the population than any sort of resistance, as far as I can tell. — StreetlightX
And this translates to the fact that the the Afghanistan post-mortem that everyone is conducting has barely been made to bear on America's other existing forever-war in Iraq. — StreetlightX
It's cynicism all around. Again, the overwhelming affect seems resignation and impotence, not resistance. And especially not compared to the anti-war movement against Vietnam. So I'm really not convinced by this point that popular resistance is more charged. If anything, it seems far less so. — StreetlightX
Has the end of the Afghanistan adventure prompted the kinds of questions Geuss asks above? Still no. Americans don't learn. They won't. — StreetlightX
Just as it would be obvious when asking the question "What do the people of the United States want?", you are not going to get one thing shared by all if the question is something political.What do the people of Afghanistan want? Why doesn't this get discussed? I don't hear much about it. — Xtrix
I think Americans realize now just how little say they have in anything their state does — StreetlightX
I'd like to see the population get to the point where almost nothing the US military does is supported. — Xtrix
Yeah, controlling Afghanistan is difficult. But being in the role of an insurgent is surely easy.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that armed resistance to the Taliban is forming in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, led by deposed vice-president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of anti-Taliban fighter. "The Taliban doesn't control the whole territory of Afghanistan," Lavrov told reporters at a press conference in Moscow following a meeting with his Libyan counterpart.
"There are reports of the situation in the Panjshir Valley where the resistance of Afghanistan's vice president Mr Saleh and Ahmad Massoud is concentrated," he said.
Lavrov also reiterated his call for an inclusive dialogue involving all political players in Afghanistan for the formation of a "representative government".
The Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul is Afghanistan's last remaining holdout, known for its natural defences. According to images shared on social media, Saleh and Massoud, the son of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, are pulling together a guerrilla movement to take on the Taliban.
I'd like to see the population get to the point where almost nothing the US military does is supported. — Xtrix
So what else might you have been able to do with 5.6 trillion dollars...? — Banno
Or not.. Hell, with that kind of money, we might even have commercial fusion reactors by now. — Marchesk
Until the very structure of American political existence is altered - the structure of material incentives and compulsions - is changed, appealing to 'values' and 'morals' is a lost cause. — StreetlightX
1. The U.S. government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve.
2. The U.S. government consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan and created unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritized spending quickly. These choices increased corruption and reduced the effectiveness of programs.
3. Many of the institutions and infrastructure projects the United States built were not sustainable.
4. Counterproductive civilian and military personnel policies and practices thwarted the effort.
5. Persistent insecurity severely undermined reconstruction efforts.
6. The U.S. government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly.
7. U.S. government agencies rarely conducted sufficient monitoring and evaluation to understand the impact of their efforts.
Reconstruction programs are not like humanitarian aid; they are not meant to provide temporary relief. Instead, they serve as a foundation for building the necessary institutions of government, civil society, and commerce to sustain the country indefinitely. Every mile of road the United States built and every government employee it trained was thought to serve as a springboard for even more improvements and to enable the reconstruction effort to eventually end. However, the U.S. government often failed to ensure its projects were sustainable over the long term. Billions of reconstruction dollars were wasted as projects went unused or fell into disrepair. Demands to make fast progress incentivized U.S. officials to identify and implement short-term projects with little consideration for host government capacity and long-term sustainability. U.S. agencies were seldom judged by their projects’ continued utility, but by the number of projects completed and dollars spent.
The long-running Brereton inquiry found “credible information” to implicate 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel in the alleged unlawful killing of 39 individuals and the cruel treatment of two others in Afghanistan.
Brereton said that the circumstances of each, were they to be eventually accepted by a jury, would constitute the war crime of murder.
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