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Ongoing wars and conflict resolution, international agreements or lack thereof. Nationhood, secessionist movements, national 'home' government versus internationalist trends and globalisation.

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#14481149
13 years and nothing to show for them

£40 billion and who knows how many USDs

2,200 US, and 453 UK personnel killed and who knows how many maimed.

The Taliban waiting in the wings to wrest power from a government which at best is incompetent and at worst corrupt.

In the annals of modern history ‘Lions led by donkeys’ has never been more apposite.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 19826.html
#14481150
SNAFU, mate.



Politicians want to have their cake and eat it, too. They ask our erstwhile colleagues to sort out their shit for them and then recoil when they realise the realities of warfare and the resource requirements to acheive what they want.

That said, we should never have ventured back into the 'Stan in the first place. Sad to say, we probably need to leave Medieval shit-holes like that to fester in their own faeces because no amount of support is going to drag them into the twenty-first Century.

#14481157
Image

Bush's war on terrorism was generally a failure because there was no rationale to invade Afghanistan in the first place just because the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and without receiving broader international support, only Britain and Australia made substantial contributions to America's war efforts. To defeat the Taliban and cut poppy growing were two initial goals of US-led military operations in Afghanistan but the presence of Western troops only hardened the Taliban's resistance. Afghanistan alone has cost the US more than $100 billion and these tremendous costs of fighting the war on terror have undermined Western economies. There is no need to overthrow illiberal regimes to spread Western-style democracy in the Third World but the fall of the Soviet Union gave the US a free hand to remake the world order, which was why US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era was dangerously interventionist.
#14486633
And lets not forget, the Taliban were on the way to eradicating the poppy fields, supported by US tax dollars, prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The Taliban offered to give Bin Laden to the US in exchange for recognition as the legit government but Bush turned them down flat. Now, it is entirely possible that they may not have been able to deliver on the promise, but we will never know. In any case we will end up with at least partial Taliban control of Afghanistan and thousands of lives and billions of dollars wasted.
#14486784
zhivago6 wrote:And lets not forget, the Taliban were on the way to eradicating the poppy fields, supported by US tax dollars, prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The Taliban offered to give Bin Laden to the US in exchange for recognition as the legit government but Bush turned them down flat. Now, it is entirely possible that they may not have been able to deliver on the promise, but we will never know. In any case we will end up with at least partial Taliban control of Afghanistan and thousands of lives and billions of dollars wasted.


And proof if proof were needed:

"Afghan Opium Cultivation Rises to Record Levels"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/world ... .html?_r=0

What an unmitigated fiasco! It would be hilarious were it not so tragic.
#14486786
Similar to what I pointed out in the American elections thread:
Rei Murasame, Thu 06 Nov 2014, 0342UTC wrote:
      • Afghanistan is still a fucking carnival of Taliban insurgency. US Army General John Campbell is having to re-assess whether American forces should stay in Afghanistan until after 2016, which is to say, after the 2016 deadline for total withdrawal that was set by Barack Obama. NATO withdrew from Helmand after closing Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion at the end of October. Attacks by the insurgency have since then skyrocketed back to the level it was at in 2011. The Afghan army is being absolutely slaughtered, while opium poppy crop yields have gone up to double the amount that it was in 1999. At the same time, in the midst of this chaos, Afghanistan is suffering a budget shortfall and the effects of the delays that were caused by Hamid Karzai's ridiculous behaviour near to the end of his term in office. SIGAR has reported all of this to the US Congress in its quarterly report, so they are well aware of what is happening out there.

All the regional stakeholders are going to have to go back in there at some point, because securing Afghanistan is actually really important.
By Rich
#14486822
ThirdTerm wrote:Bush's war on terrorism was generally a failure because there was no rationale to invade Afghanistan in the first place just because the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden
Rather ironic as France and Britain went to war, with the US as a non belligerent ally, to defend terrorists a hundred years ago this year.

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