Yes, but the US and similar nations will at least attempt PR to appear to remain the 'good guys', the other ones I mentioned don't bother with such niceties.
US withdrawal from Afghanistan - your thoughts?
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Yes, but the US and similar nations will at least attempt PR to appear to remain the 'good guys', the other ones I mentioned don't bother with such niceties.
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Well yes Bones.....nearly 7 million fatalities are obviously bad. But compared to WW1 or WW2? And considering the huge increases in world population, the math is OBVIOUSLY better now than it used to be.
Human progress fighting disease, growing food and improving life also accelerated. But I am sure that, with your cynicism, you will discount all of that.
I wish we had a time machine for you. You could maybe go back to the glorious 17th century. Perhaps die of small pox while campaigning for your favorite King or Queen.
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I think we are wandering too far afield into politics. And borderline name calling.
Lets move on.
Lets move on.
"You can't buy willpower, and you can't buy leadership."
"[This report].......highlights a wide range of issues and actions for which the U.S. must take responsibility, but it also highlights the fact that many of the failures were caused by Afghans. It also focuses on a lesson that is all too clear from other successful insurgencies that range from the rise of communism in Russia and China to the collapse of Vietnam – and most other successful insurgencies since the end of World War II. No outside power can help a failed government that cannot help itself."
www.csis.org
"[This report].......highlights a wide range of issues and actions for which the U.S. must take responsibility, but it also highlights the fact that many of the failures were caused by Afghans. It also focuses on a lesson that is all too clear from other successful insurgencies that range from the rise of communism in Russia and China to the collapse of Vietnam – and most other successful insurgencies since the end of World War II. No outside power can help a failed government that cannot help itself."
The Reasons for the Collapse of Afghan Forces
The sudden catalytic collapse of the Afghan government and military forces can be attributed to Afghan and U.S. mistakes made long before the current U.S. withdrawal, writes CSIS’s Burke Chair in Strategy.
Smedley certainly knew how "to speak his onions" and he thoroughly understood counter-insurgency warfare.
Unfortunately, history has swept him aside and diminished his voice.
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Bartimeus
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Nobody can denied that we(in some country, and in overall) have better life then our ancestor in many regards. It's all due to technological progress, research and international commerce but I don't think it's due to a so called "long peace" in which we live thanks to some country. War and military conflicts have almost never been a break to progress,at least in modern time,the two world War included.
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Bartimeus
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My post was publish too fast and I can't change on from my mobile phone.
Back to Afghanistan, how are the first days of rule of the talibans so far? From what I heard the situation is calm in Kaboul and the International Red Cross even speak of "fluid situation"?
Is it possible that the talibans will be indeed more "open minded" as they say they will now that they are in charge?
Yes, I'm wondering the same. It's possible, depending on who is actually behind Taliban and what their goals and aims are. I could imagine many things have changed and many of the old leaders have died during the last 20 years, so it's possible there will be a change. I don't think they will be exactly like the Taliban of old, but not a completely different thing either. I think their first priority is to consolidate their power, in the coming months, and then we will see.
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Funny detail: The flag is upside down. Not just because somebody is holding it wrong - it's clearly been mounted on the stick upside down, and nobody has noticed it. They are not able to read the words on their own flag. The holy words they have been fighting and dying for.
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It is possible. Maybe. As @Bulletpoint says lots of the old leaders have passed the baton to a new generation.
Honestly I don't think it will happen. In an interview with a Taliban spokesman the interviewer asked if they would commit to stopping the practice of severing the hands of thieves. The spokesman said he could not commit to that since it would be up to a judge how they interpret Islamic law and they would decide on the punishment not the Taliban leadership. Sooooo no change then.
On a positive note apparently at a news conference in Kabul where the Taliban said they were issuing blanket amnesty to anyone who worked for a foreign power and that there would be no reprisals, Clarissa Ward reported that one Afghan reporter asked if they thought they would be forgiven by the Afghan people for all the civilians the Taliban murdered with their suicide bombs. I suspect that guy will be at the top of the list of people "not" to suffer reprisals.
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Sgt Joch
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I don't believe the Taliban have changed at all. They will say all the right words now, while U.S. troops are still in country and the whole world is watching, but the real litmus test will be what they do 6 months from now when the media has moved on to another crisis.
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From the associated press:
This week, the Taliban is encouraging women to return to work and girls to go back to school, where headscarves are being handed out, according to The Associated Press. But a damning photo shows a woman in district Taloqan, Takhar province, lying in a pool of blood as her parents and others crouch around her, a pitcher on the ground nearby. She was shot and killed for going out without a burqa.
This week, the Taliban is encouraging women to return to work and girls to go back to school, where headscarves are being handed out, according to The Associated Press. But a damning photo shows a woman in district Taloqan, Takhar province, lying in a pool of blood as her parents and others crouch around her, a pitcher on the ground nearby. She was shot and killed for going out without a burqa.
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Tyranny often seems to include the below. From Reuters:
Vowing that they will not "harm innocent civilians," the Taliban have started to collect guns and ammunition from Afghan civilians in Kabul, a report said.
Reuters, citing a Taliban official, reported that the group said people in the city will no longer need to hold onto their weapons because they no longer need personal protection.
"They can now feel safe," the official told the outlet.
Reuters spoke to one business owner who said Taliban fighters already visited his workplace to inquire about where his security team keeps its weapons.
Vowing that they will not "harm innocent civilians," the Taliban have started to collect guns and ammunition from Afghan civilians in Kabul, a report said.
Reuters, citing a Taliban official, reported that the group said people in the city will no longer need to hold onto their weapons because they no longer need personal protection.
"They can now feel safe," the official told the outlet.
Reuters spoke to one business owner who said Taliban fighters already visited his workplace to inquire about where his security team keeps its weapons.
I very much doubt the Taliban have changed, if anything it may even be for the worse. Why do I think this?
Firstly, they have nobody to keep them in check, they'll laugh at anything the UN has to say, the USA is packing up, and it's obvious nobody else on the planet wants to touch Afghanistan now.
Secondly, while the old Taliban were hard-line religious fundamentalists and apparently ruled along those lines, the new fighters may simply be more 'modern' minded, ie, not so bound by their Islamic rules - the old guard may have been brutal but if you stuck to their enforced Sharia law you were probably fairly safe, if the new guys are more sectarian minded then there's really nothing stopping them from doing whatever they want.
To put it in a nutshell, when a man with unlimited power becomes his own God, things can get very scary, very quickly.
Firstly, they have nobody to keep them in check, they'll laugh at anything the UN has to say, the USA is packing up, and it's obvious nobody else on the planet wants to touch Afghanistan now.
Secondly, while the old Taliban were hard-line religious fundamentalists and apparently ruled along those lines, the new fighters may simply be more 'modern' minded, ie, not so bound by their Islamic rules - the old guard may have been brutal but if you stuck to their enforced Sharia law you were probably fairly safe, if the new guys are more sectarian minded then there's really nothing stopping them from doing whatever they want.
To put it in a nutshell, when a man with unlimited power becomes his own God, things can get very scary, very quickly.
I'm very skeptical about the argument that political freedoms grow out the gun barrel.
If the Afghan Army, 300,000 strong, armed with modern weapons and trained by the US army for 20 years, couldn't keep Taliban from taking over, then what is some shopkeeper going to do, armed or not?
At the end of the day, I think the Taliban is more organised than, say, Islamic State, and the underlings will be held in check by the will of their masters. It all depends now on what the Taliban leaders want.
If they want a return to the oppressive old days, there's nothing stopping them. If they think there's an advantage in a more moderate line, they might choose that - and rein in the excesses of their goons.
Now that they are achieving statehood, there are many gains they could win by toning down their fundamentalism just a bit, and run their country more like Saudi Arabia - cruel and oppressive, but also modern, with representatives in the UN etc. Foreign aid, international NGOs doing much of the heavy lifting in healthcare, taxing real trade and capital flows instead of illicit drug smuggling, etc.
I also think the Taliban is not acting in a vacuum. They likely have connections with the intelligence agencies of neighbouring countries, all trying to spin this situation their way.
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You would need to ask the Taliban. They are the ones that feel the need to take the guns away.
Maybe something to do with the below report from Al Jazeera?
Anti-Taliban protests in the eastern city of Jalalabad over the removal of the Afghan flag have now spread elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Kabul, said there were reports of hundreds of protesters taking to the streets over the same issue in Khost province.
Anti-Taliban protests spread beyond Jalalabad over Afghan flag
At least three people are reported killed in Jalalabad during protests against Taliban banner replacing national flag.
"Hundreds" of (unarmed) protesters? Boy, now that's gotta scare the Taliban. 
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burning_phoneix
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This blog has been documenting all known losses
The Taliban and various warlords had MiG-21s in service by defecting Mig-21 pilots from the communist government who became highly sought after experts. Considering the amount of defections from the ANA as well as part of the ANA consisted of Taliban infiltrators, they have the expertise and and probably a small part of spare parts to last them a while.
Public polling of Afghans after the fall of the Taliban showed a 99% support for insituting Sharia Law in Afganistan and 85% support for stoning for adultery. Most Afghans are much closer politically to the Taliban than to a western-backed government, which probably factored in their decision not to fight to the death for it.
The Taliban didn't exist during the 1980s War against the Soviet Union. The main problem isn't Trillions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of troops. Many nations changed completely with less investment. It's simply that the foreign backed government had absolutely no grounding in the society on which it was to rule over. It was completely inorganic and foreign to them with no real grassroots support or influence.
Funny detail: The flag is upside down. Not just because somebody is holding it wrong - it's clearly been mounted on the stick upside down, and nobody has noticed it. They are not able to read the words on their own flag. The holy words they have been fighting and dying for.
That's quite simple really. Taliban are mostly Pashto or Dari speakers, not Arabic. They wouldn't be able to read Arabic flags.
Pashto and Dari are written with nearly the same alphabet though, so it would at least be clear it was upside down if they could read.