Trump started withdrawing the US, he reduced it from 5k to 2.5k last year. He also said he wanted all his troops home before Christmas. So he would of also reduced more possibly if he stayed on.
The Taliban only started it's offensive after Biden said they were pulling everybody out, everything was holding up until then. And his bullshit lies about Afghanistan's capacity to defend itself to the media, was sad reflection of yet another ****ty American president in a long line of ****ty American presidents.
So you’re saying that even though Trump was pulling out his troops, the Taliban waited until Biden was in charge before they started to go on the offensive? Even though beginning of 2020 there was nearly 10k troops in Afghan. edited troops in 2020, to many zeros
Well don't you think that it's very strange that this onslaught only started to happen virtually the day after Biden announced his irreversible decision, don't you see a correlation? Why didn't the onslaught start when the amount of troops was as low as was in early 2020? perhaps they feared that the Americans could remobilise or perhaps they were just waiting for an irreversible decision? July 8th Biden said "The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is HIGHLY unlikely" well done Joe nice one. UK news is reporting that the Afghan president Ghani has fled the country. What a feckin' mess.
America has gotten away with major terrorist activity up until 9/11 to a large degree, just the nutters with guns causing mass murder before and since. I hope once terrorist activity starts up again (as it inevitably will) I can only hope they target the U S and not the UK and then we will see how popular Biden is then.
It does get much better. Only a month ago Biden told the media, the Afghan army is 300,000 strong and as well equipped as any army in the world, so no need to fear a Taliban takeover and they were only up against 75,000 Taliban fighters. Phew that's all good then Joe, nowt to worry about. I wonder who will be blamed next the American intelligence service for getting it wrong or Biden for not listening to them.
I agree that was nonsense, but it doesn’t change the fact that 1/ the draw down had already been started by Trump and 2/What’s the alternative? . As I said earlier the problem was all those years ago going on in the first place. Once they’d gone in it was inevitable this would happen at some point.
I agree it was folly to go in, but that is not the fault the fault of thousands being horrifically executed and the thousands of woman and young girls now being used as sex slaves, by these sub human barbarians, it is an absolute tragedy. Trump started the withdrawal but the Taliban were not advancing, but is it a coincidence the Taliban started their insurgence the day after Biden's irreversible decision to pull everybody out? The UK ambassador is still in Kabul along with staff and thousands of interpreters etc. waiting to get out, I expect Trump will get the blame for that as well.
Actually, the commitment to withdraw troops from Afghanistan started and was put in place by Obama, Trump and now Biden have largely kept to that timeline, albeit some surge of troops at times, but his day was always coming.
This is what I was trying to say. Biden seems to be getting blamed when it’s been reducing over the years and if Donald was still in power this day was coming. And wasn’t it Trump who spoke to them done a deal and said they’ve agreed that the Taliban are not to take back control? Like they were trustworthy
I have a friend who was formerly part of the Second Battalion Parachute Regiment. His view was when America withdrew the Taliban would take over in months, and this would occur prior to Winter. The seasons dictate the numbers the Taliban have as the Winter makes the Country too difficult to live in and thousands of Taliban fighers will cross borders to fight, or retreat depending on season . His view was also that as soon as a dominant military nation leaves Afghanistan the Country returns to type. The Taliban and others cross borders in thousands, new alliegances are formed between forces, tribes, their elders to fight not fight and the cylce is repeated.
100% correct! With this in mind, it was odd that Biden didn't keep to the Sept deadline that had been agreed, to try and stop this happening before the winter kicked in. Suddenly departing in Jul with no warning caught the Afghan government and Army off guard, and gave the initiative to the Taliban to take over before winter sets in. That was a poor choice from Biden!
Afghanistan is unworkable unless you spend millions and millons of pounds on having a constant deployment of British and American/allied troops there The Russians failed, and now we've failed thank in no small part to the USA. The Afghan troops supposedly trained by the Brits and Americans were never going to be able to defend their own country or government. It's a strategic country bordering Russia, Iran, and China, and has been a known hot bed of developing and harbouring terrorist groups, so the stakes are very high. Trump made the decision to lower the amount of US troops deployed there, and Biden could have halted the total withdraw and even reversed it, but instead he sped it up. Whether Biden is fit or even capable of being the US president needs some careful scrutiny as his first 200 days in office have seen disaster after disaster, and this is at last now getting some traction. And as for his Vice (very apt apparently) President, then God help us all if she's involved. She seems to spend her time as far away from any hotspots as possible like the southern border where it's estimated that 2m undocumented and presumably unvaccinated people have now entered the US this year. The way America is being run and is being laughed at by a lot of the world both at home and abroad, is evidence of the Democrats 'woke' policy across the whole of their society being nothing more than a sick joke and it will come at a very high cost to those left behind in Afghanistan.
Worse than a poor choice it was an absolutely shocking decision and one that had Trump made, the world would be slaughtering him. His press conference yesterday showed that not only was he blaming Trump, the Afghan army, his intelligence service and his military leaders and advisors, but his tone was of a man who didn't give a **** and it came across loud and clear.
I have absolutely no issue with some of the women and children being airlifted out of Afghanistan and being brought here or to other civilised countries for safety. What I do object to is the 800 plus illegal migrants who crossed the English Channel on Saturday, 90% plus of who are fit and healthy young men. People voted for Brexit so we could, and more importantly WOULD control our own borders without interference from Brussels, and turn away illegals, or those who could pose a risk to UK citizens if they were allowed to stay. Despite the tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers money being given to the French, they are still not doing their job and are laughing at us by making it our problem, while they fail to control their own exit border. And this Government is continuing to fail in their obligation to sort out this ridiculous situation every single day Priti Patel has a long history of promising the earth and delivering absolutely nothing. She needs to be sacked and we need to start turning these people away before a new army of ISIS, Al Quaeda or Jihadists can be formed here. National security is at stake !
And that's the irony. Since Brexit we now have less power to return illegals/asylum seekers to the continent than we had before. And we had lots of powers while in the EU that would have made it more difficult for people to move here, that we never used and never had the political appetite to use. It was all a lie, as of course some of us knew, and are seeing now. But aside from that, I saw a video from Rory Stewart yesterday saying about the number of troops that we station in South Korea (can't remember the exact number now). If we have the resource to do that, then why the heck did we not have the resource to station 2,000 or so for longer in Afghanistan? It required minimal resource (in the grand scheme of things) and until recently it was relatively low risk (no deaths in a good few years). And it would have kept relative peace and no immediate terrorism risk. I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist but Julian Assange always said the Afghan war is never a war that is meant to be won, it is a war that is meant to go on indefinitely, as a means to channel funds. It does almost feel as if we (i.e. our political establishment) almost wanted this crap to happen.
The last 2 major conflicts that we have been involved in (Iraq and Afghanistan) have been very similar, in that the Allies planned and exercised the military takeover very well and swept in quite efficiently. However, winning the initial war was the easy part. Winning the 'hearts and minds' has proved far more difficult - especially when you are dealing with a population with VERY strong tribal and religious cultural ties with morals that are so different from our own. We went into Afghanistan to find Bin Laden - who was eventually found in Pakistan. Surely, with all the technology we have in the west, we could have taken him (Bin Laden) out using a drone, or a small SAS raid, without the need for a full-scale invasion followed by a long, expensive occupation? But....as I'm neither a politician nor a military man what do I know?
Wasn't the UK SBS told to wait for the U S special forces (to as usual take all the credit) when they had a shot at Bin Laden in 2001 in the Tora Bora mountains?
Yes I remember this story. Should have just pretended that their radio wasn't working and they hadn't heard the order. Nelson did something similar with his telescope I seem to remember, back in the day, and it worked out quite well......
I won't get involved in the sadness of the situation because it is too bad for me to even come up with some kind of plan to rectify a tragedy. The simple facts are that you can never help a country ending in -stan because the religious dynamics doom you to abject failure and the people will generally offer no help due to fear and loathing of whatever system is in place. The biggest mistake is for any country to blindly follow the U.S. in to any conflict because they have the worst record for bullying and failure of any other country on the planet and here we are again in Saigon (oops sorry Kabul). The U.S. admittedly have had discussions with the Taliban which is rather liking inviting that nice Mr Hilter over for tea and scones to discuss his intentions to colonize Europe. Until such time as we stop the flow of arms and money coming from Iran, Russia and possibly North Korea that is supporting terrorism at frightening levels there is no hope of stopping the Taliban, Al Shabab, Boko Harum or any other religious hate based group that defile society. Try as hard as I possibly can I can't help but fear for our society when we allow other's hateful religions to dictate internal and foreign policies. Trying to help out in humanitarian situations is of course coming from the heart but more common sense is required when you are probably sending good money after bad to countries where your input is almost certainly being misused and ending up in the wrong hands. Difficult though it may be it's time to stop getting involved in countries who have a bleak history of human rights abuses and naked aggression towards anything western because all that is achieved is what we are currently seeing in Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia. Stop putting British and Canadian troops at risk trying to protect a country that is incapable of running a democracy due to moronic beliefs and the willingness to murder at will.
