Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

nomadski wrote:Good news for Afghans I hope . Trade should be allowed for all regions of Afghanistan , up to and including trade routes to Central Asia and China . Iran should continue with food aid to all regions and protect all communities in Afghan Ostans , as it protect own Iranian Ostans . Especially those regions subject to occupation and ethnic cleansing .

https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2021/09/07/2567711/iran-resumes-steel-exports-to-neighboring-afghanistan

Why Biden won’t be held accountable for Afghanistan
History shows US presidents have a well-worn menu of political survival tactics following such fatal catastrophes
By DANIEL WILLIAMS
AUGUST 30, 2021
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US President Joe Biden pauses as he delivers remarks on the terror attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the US service members and Afghan victims killed and wounded, in the East Room of the White House, Washington, DC on August 26, 2021. Photo: AFP / Jim Watson
When US soldiers die during a botched military mission, calls for accountability usually ring out among politicians and the public.

In the wake of the deaths of 13 American soldiers in a terrorist bombing at Kabul airport, US President Joe Biden is facing such loud and intense criticism. Some political opponents even demand he either resign or be removed from office.

Neither will happen. He has perfunctorily defended himself by taking responsibility for “all that’s happened of late,” but focused blame on others, including the Afghans themselves and his predecessor, Donald Trump.


It is a risky defense. The Kabul carnage was exceptional – more than 130 Afghan would-be refugees were also blown up – but also followed upon an ill-planned and disorderly evacuation of diplomats, American citizens and Afghan civilians.

But Biden is undoubtedly familiar with a well-worn menu of political survival tactics following such catastrophes. In his long Washington career – it spans almost a half-century – he has witnessed several successful campaigns to fight off critiques of military debacles.

He need only to follow scripts laid out by three of his predecessors – Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

In the past half half-century, each oversaw spectacular mishaps. All the events had one thing in common: they occurred during missions originally designed to accomplish one thing, but then turned to some other, more ambitious undertaking.

The habit became known as “mission creep.”


In 1983, Reagan launched what he called a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, meant at first to escort the Palestine Liberation Organization out of the country after Israel’s 1982 invasion. He pulled the troops out in the fall of 1983, but returned 800 Marines quickly as the Lebanese civil war, already seven years old, reignited.



Smoke rises from the US marines headquarters near Beirut International Airport after it was destroyed by a suicide bomber driving a truck on October 23, 1983. Photo: AFP / DOD
Reagan’s mission creep
Reagan called the force peacekeepers and pledged that “the American force will not engage in combat.”

But peacekeeping works best when everyone in a conflict agrees to it. But all of Beirut’s civil war factions didn’t. Some considered the foreign troops as allies of Israel and their militias clashed with and sniped at US troops and other peacekeeping forces involved.

US military rules of engagement limited the US response. American soldiers were told to keep no bullets in the chamber of their rifles.

On October 23, a Shiite suicide bomber, probably trained by Iran, drove a truck filled with explosives into the Marine barracks. It was surrounded only by chain link fencing. None of the sentinels on guard got a shot off as the truck approached the building. The blast killed 241 servicemen.


US public and political outrage ran high. After promising to keep his forces in Beirut, Reagan withdrew them less than four months later. He then took personal responsibility. The maneuver had the effect of shielding subordinates, and especially field commanders, from having to resign or even face military courts-martial.

“If there is to be blame,” Reagan said, ”It properly rests here in this office and with this president. I accept responsibility for the bad as well as the good.”

He acknowledged that commanders had underestimated the danger, but said they ”have already suffered quite enough.”

Criticism faded.



Then US President Bill Clinton answers questions on October 4, 1993, about the situation in Somalia. Photo: AFP / Denis Porpoy
Clinton’s Somalia disaster
In 1993, Clinton deftly responded to a smaller scale but nonetheless damning disaster in Somalia. It also involved mission creep.


He had decided to supplement a United Nations famine relief operation into a project to sideline warlords fighting for power. He directed military commanders and diplomats to be “actively involved in nation-building, and in supporting the establishment of structures restoring essential public services based upon legitimately vested authorities.”

One powerful warlord, Muhammed Farah Aidid, understood that this would derail his armed drive to take over Somalia. His militia began to harass UN peacekeeping forces, killing dozens of soldiers.

In early October 1993, US troops went on a raid to capture him. One of Aidid’s militiamen shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter. The frantic US rescue effort left 19 Americans and hundreds of Somalis dead.

Clinton quickly moved to deflect criticism by first undoing his nation-building venture – without ever acknowledging he ordered it up. “It is not our job to rebuild Somalia’s society or even to create a political process that can allow Somalia’s clans to live and work in peace,” he said in a speech after the firefight.

He said food deliveries would continue, but that troops from other countries replace US forces. He scheduled the American withdrawal for March 31, 1994. “We must also leave on our terms,” he said.

“I am convinced we will have lived up to the responsibilities of American leadership in the world.”

Clinton’s Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, resigned and saved the president’s Somalia decisions from a possible spiral of repercussions. Aspin attributed his exit to personal issues, but it was common knowledge that he had turned down a request for tanks to help defend US troops.



Somalis look at the wreckage of a US helicopter in a Mogadishu street on October 3, 1993, after it was shot down. Photo: AFP / Stringer
No apologies from Bush
George W Bush, who launched the Iraq invasion and oversaw almost the entire US occupation, never apologized for either, much less admitted mistakes. It can’t be said mission creep arrived stealthily. It was always implicit in the eight-year US oversight in Iraq.

No single incident, as in Beirut or Somalia, sparked the end of American ground action in Iraq. Rather, the long build-up of American military casualties – 4,431 deaths – and the wasteful expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on physical reconstruction and training the Iraqi army led to occupation fatigue.

The frequent shift of enemies over time that prolonged combat contributed, too.

At first, the enemies were supporters of Saddam Hussein. Then Sunni Muslims who chafed under the discriminatory sectarian rule of the Shiite Muslim-dominated government. Then al-Qaeda, and then anti-American Shiite militias, some of which were under the command of US nemesis Iran.

Finally came Islamic State militants, who set up a caliphate in Central Iraq.

In 2011, Bush signed a withdrawal agreement of US forces with the Iraqi government. He declared victory – an eight-year habit of his – by asserting the country was on its way to a glorious future.

Iraq would become “a strong and capable democratic Iraq that will be a force of freedom and a force for peace in the heart of the Middle East,” he said.

Bush expressed regret over only one aspect of the war and occupation: that US troops never uncovered a nuclear weapon program whose existence he used to justify the invasion. He blamed others: his own intelligence services had failed.

Biden avoids responsibility for the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan by saying he was always against it. That’s not true. Only when, as vice president under Barack Obama, did he object when Obama wanted to add troops to fight the Taliban.

But he must defend his planning and execution of the evacuation as the Taliban rolled to victory this spring and summer.

His administration’s errors are numerous: the failure to notify allies of his withdrawal plans; setting a date for withdrawal of American troops no matter what the conditions; optimistic predictions of the Afghan army’s ability to maintain control of the country; withdrawal from the main US military headquarters at Bagram airbase; and the pullout of 2,500 soldiers only to have to dispatch 5,000 back to organize a civilian evacuation.



US President Joe Biden alongside First Lady Jill Biden as they attend the dignified transfer of the remains of 13 fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on August 29, 2021. Photo: AFP / EyePress News
Not the American way
Allied doubts about American leadership will linger.

Exceptionally difficult to defend is acknowledging that hundreds of Americans and many more Afghan allies will be left behind when US troops withdraw for good on Tuesday. Reminders of that failure will come in the form of appeals from Afghan partners and possibly even US citizens for rescue.

Private citizens embarking on makeshift rescue operations will highlight Biden’s reluctance to proactively save those left behind.

But most controversial, given the airport massacre, was the need to depend on enemy Taliban forces to secure access to the airport where US troops were trying to organize evacuations. A suicide bomber, apparently able to pass through the Taliban cordon without being searched, was able to arrive face to face with Marines at the airport gate and detonate.

For that, critics say Biden has blood on his hands.

It might be easier for Biden to at least acknowledge individual culpability and let a head or two roll. But that’s not the American presidential way.

Boris Johnson’s Global Britain is exposed as impotent and friendless by Afghanistan
Andrew Rawnsley
Andrew Rawnsley
We can no longer fool ourselves about a special relationship with the US and we have burnt our bridges in Europe
boris johnson speaks to joe biden by telephone on 23 january 2021
‘Number 10 bragged that the prime minister was at the top of the list on the new American president’s call sheet.’ Photograph: Andrew Parsons/No10 Downing Street
Sun 22 Aug 2021 09.30 BST

1,697
When a freshly elected Joe Biden had his first transatlantic phone conversation with Boris Johnson, Number 10 bragged that the prime minister was at the top of the list on the new American president’s call sheet. Downing Street flourished this as evidence that, whatever differences between the two men there might have been in the past, the “special relationship” was as warm and deep as ever.

Now we know differently. When it came to the calls that mattered over Afghanistan, Mr Johnson’s capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the president’s dog. The withdrawal of what remained of the Nato presence in Afghanistan was dictated by abrupt and unilateral decisions made in Washington. Ministers privately admit that not only did they fail to see a resurgent Taliban coming, they have been reduced to second-guessing what the United States will do next.

Dominic Raab
Too little, too late: why it was panic stations in Whitehall as Kabul fell
Read more
A callous and cynical Donald Trump struck a terrible cut-and-run deal with the Taliban. Mr Biden foolishly chose to carry on with it and in a fashion so calamitous that it has surrendered Afghanistan back to the murderous extremists that western forces went in to evict two decades ago. This wretched denouement has been seared into the world’s consciousness by images of frantic mothers throwing their babies over razor wire fences at Kabul airport and desperate souls clinging to the fuselage of departing US transport planes before losing grip and falling to their deaths. The UK and other Nato members had the power only to protest to the Americans after the tragic event.


There has been much deserved mockery of the prime minister for going off on holiday even as the Taliban advanced on the gates of Kabul. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is taking heavier flak for being by his sun-lounger. It was definitely a dereliction of duty to be on the beach at such a grave moment, but behind that lies a much more brutal truth, one that many Britons, and the Conservative party in particular, find difficult to digest. It would have made little essential difference to the big picture if the two men had been chained to their desks. Even were Mr Johnson a figure with sufficient credentials in statesmanship to bend the president’s ear about the disastrous course he chose, the UK had scant moral or practical authority to call on because virtually all of our combat troops were withdrawn seven years ago.

Britain’s powerlessness was the subtext to the hand-wringing speech that the prime minister gave to the emergency session of the Commons. He basically conceded that the ability to shape events in Afghanistan, or even to accurately forecast them, was beyond the UK government. Theresa May witheringly asked the man who supplanted her: “Where is Global Britain on the streets of Kabul?” There were moving words about the sacrifices made over the past 20 years and heated ones about betrayal, especially from MPs who served in Afghanistan as part of the Nato coalition assembled after the attacks on the Twin Towers. I have never heard so much fury so ferociously expressed by Conservative MPs about the behaviour of the US. Behind their hot anger was a cold fear: the foreboding sense of an impotent Britain friendless in a frightening world.

Since 1945, there have been two dominant strands of British opinion about the complicated relationship with America. Most of the foreign policy establishment and nearly all prime ministers have adopted the Atlanticist view. This holds that Britain maximises its influence over the US and its heft in the world by gluing itself to whoever occupies the Oval Office. There have been some exceptions, such as Harold Wilson’s shrewd choice to stay out of the Vietnam war, but “hug them close” has been the rule. It was that impulse that drove Tony Blair to declare that he would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and later promise George W Bush that he would be “with you to the end” in Iraq. Britain’s investment of a lot of its own blood, treasure and reputation in American-led interventions is why the west’s humiliation in Afghanistan is felt so especially keenly among so many MPs.

The other strand of opinion, which became particularly sharp after the Iraq debacle, is that the US is an unbearably dominant power that throws its weight around with reckless arrogance. This view has been especially vehement on the left. Almost none of those on the left who are bewailing what will befall Afghanistan under renewed Taliban rule were previously to be heard urging Washington to deploy more of its firepower there. While apparently opposed, the Atlanticist and the anti-American view have something fundamental in common: they assume US power and the will to wield it. A more introverted US will confound the foundational assumptions of both those who look to America for leadership of the free world and those who hold America responsible for all the planet’s ills.

Jihadists will take encouragement from the Taliban takeover and there’s a clear risk of Afghanistan becoming a breeding ground for terror as it was when it harboured al-Qaida. Mr Biden has sown doubt about the bankability of US security guarantees to other allies and undercut his hopes of co-ordinating the democracies to take a united stand against the autocracies. China and Russia will be emboldened in their conviction that the west does not have the stamina or the resolve to successfully defend liberal values or come to the aid of people in jeopardy. When Chinese generals are war-gaming an invasion of Taiwan, they will be that bit much more likely to take the gamble that the US will not intervene to stop them. The Kremlin will be inclined to think that it can play more of its deadly games on its borders. The resurgence in Afghanistan of one of the world’s most viciously reactionary cults will encourage dictators and wannabe ones the world over to behave more badly to their neighbours or their own people, or both.

Those who have wanted less America will discover that it can be alarming to get what you wished for. Those who have looked to America for global leadership will have to think hard about alternatives. Emmanuel Macron contends that Europe should recognise that it can no longer depend on the US to provide its security and protect its interests and must strive to achieve “strategic autonomy”. This idea stirred into life when Barack Obama pivoted towards Asia and gained more traction when the Trump presidency so undermined the presumption that America is a reliable ally. In theory, the European democracies are rich enough and populous enough to have the capacity to confront Russian adventurism and stand up to Chinese aggression. In practice, European leaders have failed to summon the will, make the tough choices or mobilise the resources.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, says he tried to assemble a coalition of Nato states willing to carry on in Afghanistan. The French and the Germans weren’t interested and I’m highly sceptical that the British government was truly serious. Mr Johnson suggested they weren’t when he told MPs that it was an “illusion” to think that the mission could carry on without the Americans and expressed doubt that either voters or parliament would support dispatching large numbers of UK troops back to Afghanistan.

If we are entering an era of American disengagement, the questions are acute for a Britain that chose to estrange itself from the liberal democracies in its neighbourhood at the same time as the US was becoming a less dependable partner. Some plausibly conjecture that the future is a new world disorder in which the great powers jostle for predominance and norms of international conduct are trampled underfoot. This will be a rough place for a country in the north-east Atlantic with lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself and no one it can count on as an all-weather friend. Cuts to defence spending have left Britain with its smallest armed forces since before the First World War. Our nation’s previous reputation as a superpower of “soft power” has been weakened by Brexit and the fading of its influence in Washington and further sapped by savage cuts to the aid budget. Britain hasn’t the clout to act by itself, but has diminished its ability to persuade others to act with it.

“Very well, alone” did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940. British impotence in Afghanistan demonstrates that it is an utterly hopeless strategy for survival in the 21st century.

Why Biden won’t be held accountable for Afghanistan

A callous and cynical Donald Trump struck a terrible cut-and-run deal with the Taliban

GarryB wrote:Just watched an interview with Oliver Stone on that Going Underground programme on RT and I found his opinions to be rather interesting and quite frankly unique amongst American commentators/experts.

Hole wrote:Poor mens artillery. Second most successful weapon after the AK-47.