Furthermore, as I edited the above post to clarify, staging mass protests just raises awareness and, at least, in these regards, very slowly reforms the Democratic Party, which, in turn, leads us, again, to the only possibility of utilizing whatever legal regulatory mechanisms there are to have proceeded from the Church Committee.

As I'm sure you're quite interested in what I think about all of this, as to what we can do about our arms industry, I have absolutely no ideas whatsoever. Our military budget could be taken to by someone who was willing to go at it like the most notorious of all Thatcherites, but they'd have to somehow include within their campaign promises not to cut into soldier's salaries and actually do so in order to get anywhere whatsoever. They'll complain about their equipment, but, I'm sure that that is also somehow able to be dealt with.

I think that they should divert the funds into things like free healthcare and education, but, I do honestly not care if some Libertarian gets into office and just decides to pay off a portion of our debt to China.

If you think about the CIA and what can be done about it for long enough, that is the only conclusion to be drawn.

Consider the absurdity of a few alternatives. There's convincing all of the rest of the entire world to put the International Criminal Court to the effect of reforming the organization, but, in order to do so, you would need something like the support of around seventy-five percent of the voting age global populace or to be capable of collaborating with the international intelligence community, neither of which are really all that viable. There's protest, which is sure to be unanimously regarded as conspiratorial by our news media, aside from that having five people picket the pentagon or stand on some street corned does absolutely nothing whatsoever. You can print leaflets and table and make it about as far as any minor Trotskyist sect. There's revolution, which relies upon the sine qua non of that the United States Military decides not to fire upon a civilian populace and defect to them, thereby entrusting the transfer of power to an organization that is not at all likely to be taken by any form of so-called "radicalism" whatsoever. There's guerilla insurrection, which, given the scope of security apparatus is just completely suicidal. There's détournement, which could be utilized to bring awareness to their activities to the general populace, but, at that point, what the general populace even can do is to either stage mass protests, which, like those against the Iraq War, won't do anything other than raise awareness and very slowly reform the Democratic Party at all, or convince whomever there is in whatever position they have which grants them the potential to do so to put the aforementioned mechanisms to the effect of reforming our intelligence service.

What anyone thinks about anything else doesn't matter as that is all that can be done.

I edited that post, as the Church Committee was effectuated under Gerald Ford. Reforming our intelligence community was just a campaign promise of Carter's.

It would be relevant had the internal mechanics of our legal system actually have effectively been designed to facilitate limiting of operations of our intelligence service, as, as they never have nor will have any regard for international law, they would be the only means by which that could be effectuated.

I guess that Carter did approve Operation Cyclone, and, so, it's wholly incorrect for the above articles to invoke the "Carter administration".

He had promised to reform our intelligence service during his campaign, anyways, though.

I'm not sure that your above posts are to the point.

All of the stuff about the mujahedeen is fine, but the Common Dreams article includes the Afghan conspiracy theory that Hafizullah Amin was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency.

There's also that, following the Saur Revolution, Nur Muhammad Taraki was assassinated in a coup d'etat led by Hafizullah Amin, who, because of that the Soviet Union feared that he would become a Western ally, was, in turn, assassinated in another coup d'etat orchestrated by the Soviet Union, installing Babrak Kamal as a pretext for their invasion of Afghanistan, which is how they did incite the war. After the Saur Revolution, the United States began aiding the mujahedeen, but I don't think that they had done so before then under Mohammed Daoud Khan in the "years before" that the tweet mentions.

The Soviet War in Afghanistan resulted in an estimated million civilian casualties, and, so, the Central Intelligence Agency and Reagan administration did end up with the humanitarian catastrophe that they had always hoped for.

I also just simply don't quite know if it was the actual Carter administration, as Jimmy Carter had changed much of our Cold War policy as well as to have been active within intelligence reform, or our intelligence service who had initiated our involvement with the mujahedeen. That could have been an administrative decision on the part of Carter, himself, or something that the CIA just kind of did without any real oversight whatsoever.

I said forty-odd to harken back to the creation of the mujahideen, but, yeah, of course, the Soviet presence also had an extraordinary effect.

hmmm, not sure I agree. — Bitter Crank

Why not?

Afghan people "matter" the same way other people matter: Either you are 'a potential' or 'a problem'. If you have something we want, fine. Otherwise, what earthly good are you?. — Bitter Crank

That's a good point, but I'm not entirely sure that you read the latter half of my post.

What I'm suggesting is that, were it possible to believe in the motivations for nation-building within an occupied territory, then, an occupying nation could actually win a war within a relatively short period of time. It is because of the impossibility of ignoring the realities of an occupation that an occupying nation will necessarily become demoralized. Biden was right to suggest that without the will to wage a war, a war can not be won. He could not, however, in good faith, have believed that the reason for the Taliban victory was a lack of determination on the part of the Afghan military. The Afghan military had no will to fight; that much is obvious. Their lack of resolve is a symptom of that our presence there can only have been carried out cynically. Though certain aspects of the Taliban are certainly autopoietic, much of the blame for the past forty odd years of political fallout in Afghanistan rests solely on the shoulders of the network of influence that comprises political power in the United States and the response to that power and its effect on the world on the part of American citizens.

In some ways the US is a liberal democracy, in other ways we are not. We have elements of a plutocracy, the military/industrial combine does not tend to be overly liberal, we have a practically permanent underclass. Our electoral system is rigged to always reelect the capitalist-supporting parties in power, which invalidates the idea of 'democracy'. — Bitter Crank

Again, if you read the post, you will find that I am speaking of "liberal democracy" in an idealized sense. I'm not suggesting that the Republic of Afghanistan lived up to all of the lofty ideals of Liberalism or even that the United States does, which, as we are considered as a flawed democracy by the United Nations, I don't think that too many people could any longer argue. In context, I was referring to what people would like to invoke by "democracy", without any consideration of the facts on the ground.

I'm not quite so sure that I agree. I think that, had we really believed that we were building a liberal democratic Afghanistan so as to offer the people there a better quality of life and that we were justified in doing so, we could have easily won the war.

It is that this Western exceptionalist savior mentality can only be considered as either a façade or a delusion, as can only be revealed when faced with the brute reality of occupation, that dooms such neocolonial ventures to failure. In the closing scene to Werner Herzog's masterpiece, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, itself based off of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lope de Aguirre is left on a raft with his dying expedition reciting to himself entirely delusional plans for further conquest before closing with the repeated mantra, "I am the wrath of God." This is a metaphor for the culminate end of any colonial project.

We come to understand the impotence of authority when we watch our president deliver empty threats of "swift" and "devastating force" and witness our entire political apparatus engage within clear attempts at deferring responsibility through vicious slander while our news media streams videos of Afghan refugees being chased off of the runway by helicopters and our press issues declarations demanding the safe withdraw of their journalists from the now fallen Republic of Afghanistan. Satire does no justice to the behavior of an occupying nation in defeat.

It might be possible to fly 200,000 people out of Kabul, but that's not the end of the problem. The next thing is, "Where do they go?" Which nations will accept how many? 200,000 is a huge settlement project, and will take a lot longer than 2 weeks. In the mean time, the evacuees have to be kept someplace reasonably decent until they can move on to a settlement location. — Bitter Crank

Of, most definitely. I was just suggesting that the current airport situation doesn't have to be looked at as something that we will ultimately abandon. The question as to what to do about the Afghan refugees, I think, is something that the international community should have begun to prepare for more or less as soon as the Taliban entered the presidential palace, if not, as there have been consistent reports put forth by various human rights organizations and the United Nations, much earlier. People will need to be granted asylum within and outside of Afghanistan. It is my hope that people in the West will be willing to take them in with open arms.

Biden said, "there is never a good time to leave" which seems to me very true. I don't think it is terribly surprising that suddenly the Taliban was in a position to take over. Any complex organization can fall apart very rapidly if the people lose faith in the long-term stability of 'the situation'. And clearly the Taliban had been moving into position to take over. — Bitter Crank

I agree with the withdraw and Joe Biden's statements that it wouldn't have made a difference as to whether we left ten years ago or ten years later. I think that this conclusion was inevitable.

I didn't like that Biden shifted the blame onto the Afghan military like he did during his speech, however. They did lose the war because of that they lost their will to fight, which was because of that they knew that they were partaking within a half-hearted nation-building project and spurious counter-terrorism operation undertaken by an invading Western military, but he just kind of took the easy way out of slinging mud at our nearest ally so as to shirk what the larger questions of our motivations for being in the war and what the contrary insurmountable political will of the Taliban ought to have brought us to ask.

We need to find the cure for reactionary religion, whether it be Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or anybody else. Reactionary religion is nothing but trouble. Some would include all religion as troublesome, and that may be the case. — Bitter Crank

I am highly doubtful of that there is a catholicon to any form of ideology whatsoever. In my opinion, people ought to just simply create a world outside of the various cults that comprise it and hope that others are willing to join them. There's no talking anyone out of religious fanaticism or political ideology. They can only discover a world otherwise.

The Taliban involvement in the meth trade, though I am sure that it will some rather drastic socio-political consequences, may not turn out as poorly as you might expect. When the Neo-Fascist bikers who tend to run methamphetamines adopt a Trotskyite-inspired "critical, but unconditional support" for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ostensibly justified through some sort of primitivist appeal to "tribalism", many on the far-Right may become willing to tone down its anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric, thereby eliminating much of the justification for their projected "racial holy war", and finally dissolve unto the now largely entryist, a problem that we anarchists both can and will cope, which is to say score drugs off of without collaborating, with, national-anarchism. They'll basically just want to fire rounds with tracers into kerosene tanks in some desolated part of the Pacific Northwest like any self-respecting gun owning Libertarian.

From there, they'll be smoking hash and spinning the Dead Skeleton's "Dead Mantra" in no time.

Reports suggest that the airport has now reopened and that the West has two weeks to fully withdraw, and, so, the lucky few who make it on the planes in that amount of time will probably be the only ones to get out. If a cargo plane can hold a maximum of 640 people, though let's cut it down to 500, take off once an hour, two planes per hour, that's a thousand people an hour, and, if the airport stays running for 18 hours in a day, there's a maximal potential of evacuating around two-hundred thousand people. That's, of course, in a purely hypothetical and perfect world where the Kabul airport is run as efficiently as humanly possible.

Apparently, we are negotiating with them, and, so, we don't have put all of our faith in Karzai and Abdullah, though I do think that, they too, in some small way or another, may be able to ease the transition, despite whatever there is to say about whatever.

The people at the airport need to be made calm and to become organized enough to get on to the planes in an efficient manner. The only way that I can see this happening is for them to become convinced that they will, in point of fact, make it onto one of the planes. Somehow, some people out there are going to have make some sort of negotiations so as to resolve the crisis.

I see what you're saying, but think that you are mistaken.

Perhaps you, and maybe even I, ought to prefer Abdullah Abdullah?

As I estimate the parties involved, however, while Abdullah may be moreso inclined to petition for the demands of the international community, something of which there is much to say of and really ought to be done, Karzai is the only one of the two of them whom the Taliban are all that likely to listen to. This is all fairly speculative, but, the point that I am making is that he is the only person who can do anything about the current situation whom we even can trust.

Whether the United States stays at or leaves the airport in the immediate future, some sort of negotiations need to be made. Perhaps, there is a way to facilitate dialogue with the Taliban so as to do so that I haven't considered?

I am, in part, though I'm trying to be understanding, frustrated by the Afghan people at the airport presently. People need to get off of the runway and organized within an orderly enough fashion for the planes to be able to take off as quickly as they possibly can. I don't even know that they're even capable of evacuating people at this point in time.

The crisis at the airport is going to take a lot longer to resolve than either the Taliban or the United States are willing to admit. At the very least, Karzai and Abdullah can buy them both some much needed time.

I think that Karzai's appeal to the Taliban was quite sincere. I'm not saying that he's Mahatma Gandhi; what I am saying is that he has made a difficult decision to deal with the situation as he has, one that I do think was noble on his part, and just simply is who is negotiating with the Taliban right now. Regardless as what anyone thinks about anything, he is who is there whom we can even trust.

There are plenty things that can happen as the new nation develops. The facts on the ground now, however, are that there are thousands of people stranded at the airport. I don't think that this should happen, but it is quite possible that the United States could just simply abandon them on the runway surrounded by the Taliban. If, and I hope it does not, that happens, they are going to have to granted some form of amnesty. If they aren't granted amnesty, though the Taliban has thusly done nothing to lead us to suspect that something like this could happen, we may end up as witnesses to a massacre of thousands of people on the tarmac. This is a situation that requires some form of mediation.

I have no faith in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar either. Abdullah Abdullah, whom I previously just hadn't considered, and Hamid Karzai, who does seem to have initiated that the peaceful transition can be brought about as such, are the only people who are even capable of mediating the situation. It is only they whom we even can have faith in that they will do so. No amount of political analysis can change that.

It's a very real possibility that what could happen within the negotiations is that the people there will become a mere cynical vying for some form of formal administrative position within the new coalition government.

What I mean to, however, point out is that Karzai, regardless as to what anyone wants to say about his presidency, is the only person there, the only person within any position of any form of authority whatsoever, and the only person who may have any will to change the course of what the transition to Taliban rule could look like.

In a very practical consideration of the situation on the ground, there are thousands of people waiting for, and often in an unfortunate desperation, and interfering with flights taking off from the airport in Kabul. A situation that I think is avoidable, but that we can't rule out, is that, upon reaching a critical mass of foreign nationals and the occasional Afghan, the United States, and the rest of the world long with it, will just simply abandon everyone else there. What is going to happen to those people once they leave? Should the Taliban imprison or execute them, what kind of precedent will that set for their regime?

The glimmer of hope is that basically you have now had for many hours US and Taleban forces quite close to each other and no firefights have been broken between them. — ssu

I agree with that this is a very good sign. It would terrible to see an attack by the Taliban motivated by impatience and subsequent "swift" retaliation of "devastating force". Let's hope that it holds out for longer than anyone could possibly hope for.

In the beaten way of political analysis, I would suggest that both the opinions of Western spectators and long and troubled political history of what will soon become the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan no longer matter. The situation has already unfolded as it has. The only person with any capacity to any longer mediate the situation there, other than, of course, the leaders of the Taliban, is none other than the former first democratically elected president, Hamid Karzai. He also happens to be one of the only people either on the ground in Afghanistan or in some position, i.e. that of an elected official in the United States, to mediate a transition to a new government in Afghanistan, albeit an extraordinarily limited one, who, by his response to the success of the Taliban offensive, can any longer be considered to be worth his weight in salt. If the international community really cares about avoiding a projected "humanitarian catastrophe", then they can only now have faith in Hamid Karzai. He is as our last man left standing.

Afghanistan's Hekmatyar says heading for Doha with Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah to meet Taliban

The glimmer of hope that former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, can facilitate a safe withdraw and peaceful transition is more or less all that anyone any longer has.

I will say that I do appreciate his commitment to end the war. It was kind of a publicity spin, but, as has been said before, what can you expect?

I have previously stated on this form that I did not vote for Joe Biden due to a lack of confidence. I will vote in the next election, however. Not that what I do really matters, but I would like to put on the record that it will be a vote of no confidence should he not adequately deal with the refugee crisis there.

Joe Biden's pass of blame unto the Afghan military is just simply pathetic.

The former Maoist allies of the mujahideen are singing "Algeria, Algeria" and, for all that I play-act with my still beating and bleeding heart, so as to counteract near complete and total proliferation of false consciousness within a nation that, like fair Atlantis, lost what became the longest war in its history, I want to join them.

I think that we should have a toast to the decline of the American empire and offer an expression of solidarity to both the Afghans who want to flee and those who can't help but remain to participate within the new regime.

Salutations!
- to both the United States and the soon to be declared Islamic Emigrate of Afghanistan

Eh, whatever.

I once had a bandcamp where I listed my sole influence as "The Beatles", referring to the White Album, in jest.

My second-favorite song is Fairport Convention's cover of a song that Bob Dylan wrote for Nico Sterling, "I'll Keep It With Mine". I can't tell you my favorite song for reasons that I can't explain.

I don't have a list of favorites, but I really like the Lemon's Chair album, I Hate? I Hope?, Galaxie 500's On Fire, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, just about everything by Bob Dylan, The Complete Recordings of Black Tambourine, Bridget St. John, Otomo Yoshihide, The Strapping Fieldhands, Azusa Plane, etc. As the cliché goes, the "list goes on".

That's only within the distorted form of recuperation that is born in response to the American discourse on such issues. Most animal rights activists are amicable enough people with whom you could have a cup of tea with and engage in debate on the philosophy of Peter Singer.

It sounds somewhat incredulous at first, but I'm sure that there's an activist defense lawyer who, with considerable effort, will, and determination, could explain to you as to how what once, within the context of treating just simply being a so-called "radical" as a form of criminality, "espionage" later became "terrorism".

Well, the rather naive anti-imperialist narrative is that things like so-called "human rights" are just a "liberal" pretext for humanitarian intervention, i.e., as per their general indistinction, "imperialist" wars.

China, I am sure, wants to secure lithium for the manufacture of laptops, and to gain a certain extra-juridical stake in the opium trade, and, so, can only be considered as so sincere, but I do think that they, to some extent, mean to genuinely counter the narrative of the Taliban as a barbaric people, which, considered aptly, ought to be somehow done, and to facilitate dialogue with the emergent nation.

The Animal Liberation Front does engage in direct action, namely the freeing of animals from facilities that do animal testing, which you could consider as sabotage, and, so, there's an odd, and wholly unjustified, in my opinion, pretext for treating them as such, as per a legal positivist interpretation of espionage, wherein it can just simply refer to that a person either advocates or carries out an act more or less just simply in violation of any law whatsoever, which I think has somehow carried over from the days of the First and Second Red Scare to the developing environmental and animal rights activism that began in the early 1970s.

I do completely agree that most, if not all, animal rights activists are just simply not terrorists, though.

It can and very well might be that, but I think that you would then have to include that most nihilists have done so, which would be somewhat absurd.

I'm not sure that we can purely go off of the given definition of any particular philosophy or worldview. For instance, in this Wikipedia talk page, Pavane7 argues that the Order of Nine Angels are anarchistic and nihilistic, citing a text that they wrote that is no longer online, expressing a desire to go beyond anarchism and nihilism. If you take the Order of Nine Angels at their explicit word, then there only seems to be some justification for that they are a terroristic Neo-Fascist esoteric cult, which, though there are grains of truth to more or less any given perspective, is more or less just simply the case.

That's kind of an all too particular example, but the point I'm trying to make is that there is a difference between a definitional denotation of a particular philosophy and what said philosophy effectively turns out to be.

I'm not sure that there exists this pure abstract nihilism, devoid of the various weltanschauungs of the people who call themselves "nihilists".

All in good critique, but it's not as if Americans and completely lacking in empathy. I'm not sure what anyone else thinks that we can even do about our arms industry.


I have continued a conversation here so as not to derail the Biden thread.

Both Russia and, more particularly, China, have left personnel in their embassies in Afghanistan, which, I think, will ultimately, despite whatever, be beneficial for the facilitation of international discourse. The Taliban are about to become an actor as a nation on the world's stage and there do need to be people who are willing to engage them in dialogue. China's effective support for the regime may become problematic for the general discourse on human rights, but, at least, there is some party there now to mediate the general discourse.


To my understanding, the next generation of Taliban are considerably less intransigent and fanatical than the previous one, and, so, the fears of what the upcoming regime will be like are kind of overblown. It will ultimately be a religious and fairly authoritarian regime, however, and, so, there are certainly concerns to be had.

Thanks, in part, I guess.

They'll almost do that much. Clearly, they should've had the foresight to have had an exit strategy, but, given their lack of one now, we can only cope with the situation at hand. The airport is in chaos right now. I don't know what people are doing on the runway. The quicker the flights can leave, the quicker people can be evacuated. They're all so desperate to leave and I hope that we don't abandon them.

I did this, too, but I think that it's sort of telling that we begin to consider the next election results during a time of crisis such as this.

I was leafing through posts on Twitter on the situation there and found for a lot of them to either pass the blame, on the part of Biden supporters, or exploit the crisis by offering obvious criticism of Biden's response, on the part of right-wingers in the United States.

People in this country really have no sense of priorities. There's a crisis there and we should be thinking about how it is that we should respond and how we expect for our elected officials to.

For anyone who is curious, I supported the withdraw and still do. I think that this would have happened whether we withdrew in 2002, 2012, or 2034. It just isn't possible to have faith in what you're fighting for as an invading army, and one with only limited warrant at that. These claims that Donald Trump paved the way for Joe Biden's failed evacuation or inane and quite often conspiratorial insults levelled at Joe Biden, however, are really quite inapt. As soon as the American news media publishes videos of the Taliban announcing the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, thereby ending the fascination that the general populace has with the ground truth there, something which we should applaud the associated press for bringing to us in what ways it can, we're going to hear nothing but accusations and excuses and be made subject to an endless stream of spin control.

This isn't a publicity crisis. It's a real crisis with real people with real lives. We should cope with adequately.

Your post doesn't really bother me too much. This is just something that I've been thinking about as of late. The Taliban could begin a series of massacres by executing people on the tarmac en masse and the president and defense minister could finally flip the nuclear switch and you would still have politicians, on both sides of the isle, who were primarily concerned with the number of votes that they were going to get in the next election.

The world expects for the Taliban to create a fanatical chaotic authoritarian state that functions as center for terrorist activity. They assume that the early days of their reign will be marked by humanitarian catastrophe.

I am not so pessimistic. I hope that the Taliban will prove us wrong, and even think that they will to a certain extent.

We do still have to keep in mind who they are, however. There are grains of truth to fears of what the upcoming state will be like.

There has never been a state akin to the soon to be created Islamic Emirate, which leaves us without precedent. Both we and they will have to learn to engage and adapt to one another as their country develops.

As I see things, the Taliban will have to either have to gradually reform or internally dissolve should they want for their state to last for a long period of time. If I am correct, then, in ways, in the long run, there isn't really a reason for us to be too concerned with them at all.

The status of women there is certainly something that the international community ought to pay attention to. As to what it either can or can not do, that is anyone's guess.

The inclusion of some of the merited aspects of the former Republic of Afghanistan, the elevated status of women, the increase in civil liberties, etc., would also be beneficial to the Taliban, as it would make less people likely to want to leave and for them to be more approachable on the world's stage. Those sort of things, however, can only be approached within a rather uncertain future.

The point of my above post was to initiate, among whomever there is that is even capable of doing so, some sort of plan for the safe withdraw of foreign nationals and Afghans who would like to leave the country. That, which is kind of a lot in its own right, is all that I think that we can bargain for at this point in time.

Oh, most definitely.

Had I any real bargaining power, I'd push for women's rights, civil liberties, and whathaveyou. The only things that I think can be somehow guaranteed at this point, however, are safe passage and a certain degree of asylum. Everything else, the status of women in Afghan society in particular, will have to be met, as it very well should, as the new nation develops.

Hamid Karzai can probably suggest that, as per the peaceful transition, the Taliban should be understanding of the situation that women there are in, offer them some liberties, and show restraint in the use of force, but he can't very well demand that the Islamic Emirate be established as if it were the nation that the United States was going to ostensibly build there.

I have edited this post to read:

In shameless celebration of the decline of Western civilization with other Anarchists, I give you "Victoria" as covered by Sonic Youth.

In the hopes that Western journalists can make it out of Afghanistan safely, I give you "This Time Tomorrow" by The Kinks

In solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, I would like to play "Last Words To A Refugee" by Cut Worms.

None of these bands have sanctioned such a decision, but, as my doing this is via an odd kind of internet pirate radio, I don't care. Besides, I don't think that they'd really mind.

Furthermore, as I do feel strongly about this, the United States is one of, if not the, most powerful and wealthy nations in the world. Though they, perhaps, should for every refugee crisis, this particular one is one that the United Nations Refugee Agency, or whomever else, can find adequate funding with which to cope with. The United States doesn't have to hastily withdraw after some indeterminate critical mass of so-called "Westerners" are evacuated. Negotiations can be made with the Taliban for the safe withdraw of everyone, though I wouldn't promise to be capable of evacuating everyone, who wants to leave. I believe, though I may have miscounted, that seventy nations, along with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, have signed a declaration in favor of "the safe and orderly departure of foreign nationals and Afghans who wish to leave the country". People all around the world have watched the Taliban sweep over Afghanistan. They can now do something about the situation there, which is to hold both the nations to have signed the declaration, the most pertinent thing within their respective countries, and the Taliban, though of this, I will say, that I am not in favor of any form of military engagement, to it. A deal for the safe withdraw of foreign nationals and Afghans will offer the emerging Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to challenge common perceptions of the organization that led the insurrection from which it will soon be created and show mercy. It will also give nations around the world, particularly the United States, a chance to rectify the situation created out of what has always been a half-hearted promise, that of the hope for a liberal democratic Afghanistan. I wouldn't claim that things will go as I should like them to. I will only say that they can. If they can, it would be a grave mistake not facilitate a peaceful transition as such and minimize the potential harm to both the would be Afghan expatriate and the emergent Afghan nation. Should anyone either within or outside the Philosophy Forum read this and believe that they have some capacity to put it into effect, I would recommend that they do so in the immediate now.

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” - Emma Lazarus

It says that on the Statue of Liberty.

Oh you mean that the US would open it's borders to anybody wanting to come to the US from Afghanistan? Or those with visas? I think those that worked with the Westerners would be enough. Besides, if the Taleban sits idly by and lets the former enemy board planes and fly away, it would be a really positive thing that they truly want to end this conflict. — ssu

I mean everyone. We owe it to all of those Afghans.

You are most certainly correct that the Taliban letting everyone leave would be a very good sign. It would, ultimately, be beneficial to them, I think, as well.

It'd certainly be an odd situation for the Taliban to have to wait for everyone to leave the country, one that they can't quite avoid due to the American military presence at the airport, but it would work wonders for them diplomatically and ultimately soften them to a certain extent, I think. It is a deal that could be made.

The acoustic version of "The Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel

Some updates from CNN, The Guardian, and Axios:

All US Embassy personnel have evacuated, the State Department said

From CNN's Jennifer Hansler

All personnel have evacuated from the US Embassy in Kabul and are now at the Kabul airport, the State Department said Sunday night.

“We can confirm that the safe evacuation of all Embassy personnel is now complete. All Embassy personnel are located on the premises of Hamid Karzai International Airport, whose perimeter is secured by the US Military,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

US Ambassador still at Kabul airport, has not left country – AFP

On The Guardian's blog, Afghanistan live news: Taliban declare ‘war is over’ as they take control of Kabul

The state department has confirmed to AFP that US Ambassador Ross Wilson is still at Kabul airport.

Senior Taliban official: 'too early to say how we will take over governance'

On The Guardian's blog, Afghanistan live news: Taliban declare ‘war is over’ as they take control of Kabul

A Taliban leader said on Monday that it was too soon to say how the insurgent group will take over governance in Afghanistan, Reuters reports.

“We want all foreign forces to leave before we start restructuring governance,” the leader told Reuters by phone. He did not want to be named.

He also said that Taliban fighters in Kabul had been warned not to scare civilians and to allow them to resume normal activities.

The US embassy in Kabul is telling its citizens and Afghan nationals not to travel to the airport unless they are told to, that it is unsafe.

On The Guardian's blog is posted an image from The United States Embassy in Kabul's twitter which reads:

"We remind all American citizens and Afghan nationals that the security situation in Kabul remains unsafe. Please do not travel to the airport until notified."

U.S. joins 60 countries in urging safe exit of citizens from Afghanistan

The U.S. and over 60 countries issued a joint statement Sunday saying Afghans and international citizens who wish to leave the country should be allowed to do so, with airports and border crossings remaining open.

Driving the news: The statement was issued as the U.S. completed its evacuation of American Embassy staff and prepared to take over Kabul airport's air traffic control to fly personnel out of Afghanistan after the Taliban swept into the capital earlier in the day.

Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Qatar and Japan, along with the European Union and several of its member countries, were among the statement's signatories.
What they're saying: "Given the deteriorating security situation, we support, are working to secure, and call on all parties to respect and facilitate, the safe and orderly departure of foreign nationals and Afghans who wish to leave the country," the statement reads.

"Those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan bear responsibility — and accountability — for the protection of human life and property, and for the immediate restoration of security and civil order," it continues.
"The Afghan people deserve to live in safety, security and dignity. We in the international community stand ready to assist them."

Real depressing work of what I have, not without pretense, called "hypertext":

Some People Worry About the Weather by Iain Xavior

If you're not going to listen to the whole thing just listen to "Some People Worry About the Weather".