Our defeat in Afghanistan is very close now

Preparations for the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Kabul are officially underway.

The embassy will be evacuated and a very small consular staff will work in Kabul, the memo noted.

The embassy staffers were instructed to destroy sensitive documents and desktop computers before they leave, according to the document.

Staff members who don't have consular experience are being asked to depart by the end of this month.

The U.S. has also called on the Taliban not to attack the embassy and departing U.S. diplomats. The embassy also employs many Afghan workers. Their future was not immediately clear.

taliban.PNG

Most of the NATO nations are evacuating their embassies.

Both Kandahar and Herat, the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in Afghanistan, have fallen to the Taliban.

20 years ago I sent this quote from a Kipling poem to my relatives who were crying for war.

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

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usefewersyllables's picture

is becoming something of an American tradition, isn't it? "Peace with Honor", Nixon called it. I remember this as if it were yesterday...[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHLKFSWzImk]

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

CB's picture

Afghanistan - This Is The End ...

This was fast. The Taliban have as of now 18 of 34 province capitals (province) under there control.

Only three of the bigger cities, Kabul, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif, are not yet in Taliban hands.
...
The U.S. is sending 3,000 soldiers to Kabul to secure the evacuation of its embassy. 650 soldiers are already there. A reserve of 5,000 is kept on bases near the Persian Gulf. Britain will send 600 soldiers. The U.S. will have to evacuate at least 4,000 'embassy' staff of which 1,400 are 'diplomats'.
...
It is good that this scam is now finally ending. The Afghan people will be mostly happy about it. Corruption will end. No more bribes will have to be paid.

The country will continue to be poor but much safer.

This will put a major crimp in the CIA's drug running business.

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QMS's picture

more like running out of the woods with tail between legs
extraction of hostilities is never pretty, excuses run amok
not admitting a mistake is the MO of the military class
won't believe it until I see it, bombing your way out of a
country that didn't invite youse to begin with, then leaving
a bunch of mercs to 'clean-up' ain't peace /w on her

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by the families of our military killed and injured by the Taliban draws attention to the private trucking companies, who are being sued, who have been paying the Taliban millions of dollars per week for safe passage on the roads of Afghanistan. This treasonous crime was exposed by Bradley Manning through Wikileaks and reported by mainstrean media a decade ago and has continued until now.

Anyone who claims that couldn't have been stopped, or that the Saudi support for the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda couldn't have been stopped is lying.

This war, like our others, is a Designer war, designed to last forever.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

Bear in mind how many people my age and younger have now died there...for nothing.
Even worse, literally an entire generation of Afghans have grown up knowing nothing but war...for nothing.
Anybody who ever wondered just why some of us loathe George W Bush more than life itself need look no further than this (though one could look FAR further, like the fact this all COULD'VE ended nearly the moment it began - but Bush's war machine didn't want victory, they wanted WAR: https://theintercept.com/2017/08/22/afghanistan-donald-trump-taliban-sur...).

Bereaved, brainwashed military families will demand answers; they won't want to hear the truth.

Those who knowingly treated them like just so many Kleenex (and countless others even worse) will be only too happy to seek - and inevitably find - scapegoats.

We need to be ready for this; if those who oversaw all this - mass-murder purely for private profit - DO NOT pay the rightful price, countless MORE innocents will.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: What the world needs now, more than anything else, is a "second coming" of the Nuremberg Trials that will make the original look like a shoddy dress-rehearsal. Don't say it can't be done; SOMEHOW, it must be done.

"If we cannot do this one way we will do it another. Do it, we will."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat

literally an entire generation of Afghans have grown up knowing nothing but war...for nothing.

Remember the fighting started in 1978. When the Carter Administration started sending weapons there to undermine a Soviet-friendly government.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@gjohnsit That's my youth catching up with me, I suppose; I mean, I know about the Soviet-Afghan War (including some of the more esoteric, but no less relevant, fallout, like the ruination of the Postwar Soviet pseudoscience of military strategy and tactics), but wasn't there at least a reprieve (oppressive as it was) between the late '80s-2001?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat
the Soviets left, the Saudis stood down, and the Taliban took over. (The Northern Alliance was a toehold for expats and western forces.)

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@The Liberal Moonbat
they left a puppet government in charge.
It lasted until 1992.
Almost immediately after the fall of the government began the warlord era.
That lasted until the Taliban won in 1996.
After that it was a low-intensity war until 2001

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CB's picture

@gjohnsit

Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of its client, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9j1H330Nmo]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0]

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@The Liberal Moonbat
young or old, opposed GWB's military invasion of Afghanistan, Remember that well as I was the only one that I encountered that opposed it. Had more company wrt the Iraq invasion, but we were still in the minority.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Marie At the time, I was already angry enough at Bush for stealing the election; had he done only that, dayenu.
Had he but stolen the election and committed all his despicable domestic policy, dayenu.
Had he but stolen the election, done horrible domestic policy, and withdrawn from the Kyoto Treaty (just as a fuck-you to Al Gore?), dayenu.
Election theft, shitty policy, Kyoto, passed the USAPATRIOT ACT and created the DHS/TSA, etc, etc, you get the idea.

Nevertheless, I guess I was too young to understand what the US was getting into by starting a war in Afghanistan; all I DID know beforehand was that the Taliban were awful, and the Clinton Administration had just finished up some bombing runs against Saddam, and more significantly, overseen a "police action" in the Balkans that, despite some SNAFUs (remember when we accidentally bombed China's embassy to Serbia? Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk! Those were the days...), seemed to have worked. I certainly opposed Gulf War II with every fiber of my being - I literally stood up to a roomful of hostile jingoists in my opposition, and still bear the trauma from how they treated me (first time ever being bullied by an adult, I was NOT prepared for that) - but AT THE TIME, given what I knew, a retaliatory strike against Afghanistan didn't seem unreasonable.

Understand, I was very blase about 9/11 - another day, another terrorist attack, right? We'd already seen enough of those in the '90s; the '90s were like the neighborhood Doug and Dinsdale Piranha grew up in: "cheerful AND violent". As fate would have it, I'd just been introduced to Zinn's People's History of the United States in the 2000-2001 school-year, so that morning seeing people's reactions at school I was like, 'oh geez, now jingoism's going to go through the roof and we'll NEVER get around to confronting our own problems as a country'...sometimes I worry I have some kind of "Monkey's Paw" powers.

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11 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat
in 2001. No maybe about the Bush gang Attempting to steal FL in 2000. As usual for Bush and Cheney they screwed that up and wouldn't have succeeded if not for the SCOTUS creeps that put their partisanship above the law.

And that leads to why I opposed the invasion. First the case for war -- to get OBL/AQ in retaliation for 9/11 -- was weak. Concrete facts to support that the mission was conceived and executed by OBL/AQ didn't exist then and twenty years on the facts are no better. The subsidiary case -- the Taliban is dreadful -- was true enough, but as with Noriega in Panama, it left out the fact that the US played a role in them coming to power. However, primarily for me was that Bush and Cheney are fuck-ups. They didn't get OBL did they?

I suppose I could have added the long and sorry history of empires choosing to wage war in Afghanistan. However, that didn't weigh much on my mind because Bush and Cheney weren't interested enough in Afghanistan to put more than minimal military assets there. Recall that in 2000 GWB was vocal about his desire to get Saddam. They did succeed at that at a cost of trillions of dollars (a cost/benefit analysis failure), but that's what happens from the basic case (for war) was fictitious.

I was young when opposition to the Vietnam War began to build. At that time almost all Americans were fully indoctrinated in the US as a force for good and militarily unbeatable. To make up my mind as to whether I should be pro or anti, I hit the library to research the longer history on how and why we were there. From that it was so clear that there was no rational pro-war case. I've used the same strategy in all subsequent cries for US military interventions.

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@Marie

I was furiously depressed that so many people seemed to just not care about the invasion of Afghanistan, or else they wanted to do it. Same with Iraq. So many hours spent arguing with people back then, hopefully at least some of them learned something after all these years.

These wars are a bipartisan crime in my view, though. Just like torture or homelessness etc., the Democrats could have stopped them if they'd wanted, but just like Republicans they're more interested in capitalizing on the suffering of others than anything like responsible or compassionate governance.

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lotlizard's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat  
BFF and “partner in crime” !!

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it didn’t come sooner.

gravel was right

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

WoodsDweller's picture

was held at bay by the flow of blood and treasure for 20 years. Nothing worse would have happened if we had withdrawn 18 years earlier.
Vietnam ruled by Vietnamese.
Iran ruled by Iranians.
Now Afghanistan ruled by Afghanis.
What is this world coming to?

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

lotlizard's picture

@WoodsDweller  
Conspiring to crush by brute force a Hawai‘i ruled by Hawaiians was, in many ways, the U.S. empire’s opening salvo and founding act.

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@lotlizard
Overthrow is an excellent and easy to comprehend review of US foreign adventures.

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CB's picture

would be like now if the US never meddled?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPME0mMice8]

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lotlizard's picture

@CB  
Nixon’s goons kidnapped the good Dr. Leary in Afghanistan and forced him onto a plane back to the U.S. so they could arrest him as soon as he set foot on U.S. soil.

Among other reasons, hippie backpackers went to Afghanistan because hashish was legal. Some balls of hash even bore an official royal seal.

People in the West don’t know this sort of thing anymore or, under the sway of establishment media, have forgotten.

One writer in Germany who does know and remember is Mathias Broeckers, one of the few Green-left-alternative German journalists left with any integrity. Broeckers, one of the founders of the taz.de daily newspaper, hasn’t sold out to the Council on Foreign Relations and Atlantic Council types, unlike most of his colleagues (nowadays the very race-and-gender-“woke” taz.de slant on Syria, Russia, China, Israel-Palestine, Hungary, etc. is pretty much indistinguishable from that of the U.S. elite as reflected in the NYT, WaPo, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, etc.). Yes, Broeckers questions the official 9/11 story too, so of course he is blackballed by German mainstream media and all who aspire to be such.

https://www.broeckers.com/

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@lotlizard "People in the West don’t know this sort of thing anymore or, under the sway of establishment media, have forgotten." Or worst, you remember and try to tell the history, and find it doesn't matter. Everything you say is heard as a fairy tale, of little consequence to the present time.

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CB's picture

@lotlizard

https://www.broeckers.com/english/

Even if the US-edition contains updates and some further extras, one supplement of the german edition is not included. It’s not of really massive importance, but kind of the fun-part of the book: a poster by Gerhard Seyfried – cartoonist, writer and friend of mine – called “The secret diagrams”. But you don’t have to miss it and may crawl through the web-version of this labyrinth – “explaining” every conspiracy on earth and beyond -

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@lotlizard I hope to dig in to it in more depth today.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

As the Taliban closes in and the troops rush to avert disaster, the US is offering its citizens LOANS to flee Afghanistan

The US exit from Afghanistan is beginning to look more and more like 1975’s humiliating fall of Saigon, but American citizens fleeing the country need not fret – Uncle Sam has offered them loans to buy plane tickets.

That’s right, those decapitation-phobics who don’t want to fall into Taliban hands can get a “repatriation” loan from the US State Department. The usual terms and conditions surely apply.

The US Embassy in Kabul dangled the offer last week, when it advised all American citizens in Afghanistan to leave immediately “using available commercial flight options.” It provided a State Department email address for those who needed to apply for airfare financing. The loans were mentioned again when the embassy sent out a similar security alert on Thursday, offering essentially the same advice.

On both occasions, it made it clear that Americans shouldn’t expect much more help: “Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the embassy’s ability to assist US citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited, even within Kabul.”

Among the dangers cited were “crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, armed conflict, and Covid-19.” Of course there’s Covid-19. Be sure to get your shots and mask up. You wouldn’t want to have a fever and shortness of breath when trying to outrun militants in a Toyota Hilux pickup with a mounted machine gun.

Im not sure if this is snark or not, but it’s funny. I’m also not sure how this fuster cluck could have been avoided, but it does seem like it’s one giant fuster cluck doesn’t it? Too bad that the warmongers didn’t plan for it 20 years ago, but that might have gotten in the way of the massive profits so effing many people made off it.

Meanwhile close to 70,000 people die from lack of health care, thousands more because they can’t afford their medications or insurance companies say that they won’t pay for them and 500,00 people go bankrupt here in the great USA.

Blehh

Bad

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

@snoopydawg undergone a sudden price hike.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

@snoopydawg
can start to recover their costs. S/

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSiDZNHo4cA]

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

I forgot about that movie. Wasn’t it more of a comedy than truth? This is a nice side effect of my head injury. I can watch movies, series and books more than once and it’s just like the first time I do.

Went to one with my aunt and called her the next day to ask how it ended. I do laugh cuz the alternative was worse.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

CB's picture

@snoopydawg
was more truth than comedy.

This is a nice side effect of my head injury.

Just think on the bright side - you can meet new people every day!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Wx230gYJw]

I had Broca's aphasia from an ischemic stroke 4 months ago and I am learning to speak a new language.

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

It sounds like both of us got a tad lucky and we appreciate that fact. I have since I understood how easily it could have been worse. Lots of pain afterwards but lucky to be here to experience it is my motto.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

CB's picture

@snoopydawg
It takes a bit to get my words out and my speech is slurred. I also have to be careful of drooling too much. I have a letter from my Doc explaining things so if I get stopped by the cops for any reason I won't get arrested for drug driving.

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

But American civilians need to make their way to the airport now – or when their State Department loan comes through. At least their fate isn’t as precarious as that of the Afghan people who played a part in the US war and occupation efforts. As state-run US news outlet NPR reported on Friday, the future of the many Afghan nationals who work at the US embassy “was not immediately clear.”

The Biden administration is scrambling to process visas for the interpreters who helped US and NATO troops – and who face death when the Taliban takes over – but many other people will be left behind and imperiled. Ronald Neumann, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, told NPR on Friday that America owes a “moral debt” to Afghans who “bought into our values . . . when we talk about democracy, and women’s rights, and justice.”

Biden added that “in terms of capability,” the Taliban isn’t “remotely comparable” to the North Vietnamese forces that stormed the US embassy in Saigon. And yet, the Taliban was apparently capable enough that it couldn’t be defeated in 20 years of fighting by the world’s most well-funded military. Could it be that a president who hasn’t figured out the Taliban’s fierceness after two decades of senseless casualties might also be underestimating or downplaying the dangers associated with the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
….
That’s not a happy thought for the Americans who still need to escape Afghanistan. Once their flights are safely out of reach of Taliban rocket-propelled grenades, they can think about getting back home – and making those loan payments.

Wanna bet, Joe? Imagine if George Bush had accepted the Taliban's offer to turn Bin Laden over to us once we showed them evidence that he did in fact do the deed, but that might have exposed the Saudis who were involved in sponsoring the ‘terrorists' that flew the planes into the buildings and maybe questioned why Cheney the dick had told the Air Force to stand down. The planes were allowed to fly close to restricted air space for how long?

And just what was Israel’s involvement? Enquiring minds want to know.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

to assist in the withdrawal.
When it is all over, I dread what will happen to cooperating civilians, government officials, and members of the Aghani military.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

Afghanistan - Taliban Make New Peace Offer And Other Bits
More from Afghanistan where history now happens at a speed seldom seen before.

The current situation:

At least three more province capitals are now under Taliban control. In total 21 out of 34 provinces are now in Taliban hands. Most of the others are contested.

August 14 - Sharana (Paktika)
August 14 - Asasabad (Kunar)
August 14 - Gardez (Paktia)

Taliban peace offer:

Yesterday the Taliban have opened a new path to real negotiations.

To understand its full meaning requires a bit of historic background.
...

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More like the Obamas are their partners in crime, and not just in their continuation of the illegal wars, but their highly suspect treatment of the banksters among other domestic crimes.

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