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Craig would love to be writing about the western troops pulling out of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan the killer of empires. The Persians, the Macedonians, the British, the Russians and now NATO. All pull out, in the end.
Afghanistan is filled with fabulous minerals, Lapis Lazuli, coal, iron, uranium, gold, methane, oil and of course rare earth minerals.
Soon the Chinese and Iranians will tear it apart. One Belt one road will be going through Afghanistan. Oil pipelines from Iran to China, plastic crap coming overland from China to the West.
One thing that will not be happening will be peace and good will to women.M.P.s had not been due to return to Westminster until September 6, however because of the Afghanistan crisis, they are to be recalled on Wednesday 18/08/2021.
M.P.s will meet in the Commons at 0930. The prime minister will open the debate which should last around five hours. No vote is expected.Bit late, it will all be over by Wednesday.
Afghanistan also has considerable resources of Lithium.
No one saw this coming, Raab says of Taliban’s rapid Afghan takeover.
Really? No one but every commentator with any knowledge of Afghanistan. Is there not someone in the foreign office staff who might say you will look really stupid if you say that? I’ve been reading for months on various sites that this was what was going to happen. I can’t believe they didn’t know this also so why would Raab say such a thing?Joe Biden is getting roasted in America and Europe. Donald Trump is saying Joe Biden has fucked up so bad, he should resign.
Which is disingenuous as it was Trump who initiated US troops leaving. I am beginning to conclude it was by design not accident.
I believe it is called Doha agreement signed in February 2020
Here is a question.
Twenty years ago the Americans went to war in Afghanistan, driving the Taliban out. For the last twenty years the Taliban have been preparing to resume power. Who has been providing them with money and weapons?From reading around it seems primarily three sources. This article from Guardian is more about how they will face a financial burden now they must govern but gives some clues.
“While the hardline Islamist group has moved in recent years to become more independent of outside financial supporters including Iran, Pakistan and wealthy donors in the Gulf, its financial flows – amounting to $1.6bn (£1.2bn) last year – “
“With the Taliban long subject to international sanctions, they have relied heavily in the past five years on hugely increasing their trade in opium including,”
I have read somewhere else that the WHO estimated 75% of opium production came from Afghanistan in 2020, mostly Taliban controlled areas.
Also, it seems that a lot of the cash spent by USA in Afghanistan for mundane things like food supply ended up in Taliban hands.
So, Wealthy donor individuals and countries, opium trade and USA inadvertently.
Now the have acquired billions in new weapons seized from Afghan former forces and left behind by USA and allies. The incompetence of it all is astounding.Osama bin Laden banned al Qaeda from assassinating Joe Biden because the Democrat would make an incompetent president and lead the U.S.A. into a crisis. Bin Laden made the remark in a 2010 letter that was found in a trove of documents at the Pakistan compound where he was killed by U.S.A. special forces in 2011. The document was first made public in 2012 but has been brought back to light and given new significance amid the chaotic U.S.A. withdrawal from Afghanistan that has gifted the country back to the Taliban.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9911499/Osama-bin-Laden-predicted-Joe-Biden-lead-America-crisis.htmlWell, it certainly seems as if Osama was correct. Biden is an idiot. Joe thought his own son was serving in the Navy in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is in land. His interviews are being altered, so Joe does not seem so unlucid. How on Earth, did this bozo get elected president of the U.S.A.?
MN: “Joe Biden is getting roasted in America and Europe. Donald Trump is saying Joe Biden has fucked up so bad, he should resign.“
Well Trump would say that, wouldn’t he? Along with the rest of the far-right echo-chamber, which is apparently where you get most of your views.
FYI: Trump did the following:
- Negotiated directly with the Taliban, and excluded the Afghan government
- Got 5000 Taliban fighters released from prisons (in Pakistan and elsewhere)
- Wanted the Taliban at Camp David to celebrate the anniversary of 9/11
- Refused to brief the incoming administration on the Afghanistan situation
- Bragged that he didn’t need an exit strategy in Afghanistan, and made no plans for it
- Boasted that the troop withdrawal he had set in motion could not be stopped
Just for starters. Bet you won’t hear too much of that sort of thing from your far-right sources.
Oh, and quit echoing this BS about Biden being senile. He has a slight speech impediment. Trump never made a single coherent point in his entire term. A former campaign advisor, Hymie Bobolescu, rather accurately described Trump as “a nutcase on acid with a rocket up his ass”.
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If anyone should resign it ought to be Raab and not because I think the British forces could have made any significant difference once the USA pulled out but because he stated no one saw this coming whilst he was briefed that this was exactly what was coming.
Foreign Secretary Raab is about to take one for the team.
U.S.A. has pulled out of Afghanistan, but some of their people / contractors are still in Syria.
The U.S.A. troop occupation of sovereign Syrian soil in the northeast has been well-known since the Obama administration,
yet the new U.S.A. President Joe Biden claimed in a Wednesday night ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos that there is no U.S.A. military presence in Syria.
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/biden-falsely-asserts-the-u-s-doesnt-have-a-military-presence-in-syria/Unless Uncle Joe misspoke, he probably means the regular troops have been mostly removed but they still have CIA / contractors in four areas of Syria.
Jihadis of North West Syria / mostly Idleb province. Kurdish North West Syria / Rojava.
Down in the Golan / Daraa area
and at the triangle that covers Syria/Jordan/Iraq / al-Tanf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Tanf_(U.S._military_base)
Plus others on special missions.Not forgetting the NATO occupation of Northern Syria under Turkish rule.
U.S.A. has a massive airbase in South East Turkey, Incirlik,“During the 2019 Turkish offensive into northern Syria, tensions between Turkey and the U.S.A. moved the B61 nuclear bombs, stored by the US at the İncirlik airbase, back into focus. A removal was again debated, but Vipin Narang from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pointed out, that the process of moving them under these circumstances poses risks and the weapons “could be vulnerable to accidents, theft or attack”.
Also not forgetting that most of The Syrian Golan is under Israeli control
So will Uncle Joe live up to his rhetoric of no more forever wars, of getting out of conflicts, such as Syria?
MN: “So will Uncle Joe live up to his rhetoric of no more forever wars, of getting out of conflicts, such as Syria?“
It is impossible for Biden to commit to the actions of future Presidents, particularly when the last one – the lunatic Trump – reneged on Treaties that the USA had committed to, by International Law. In other words, he made the USA a liar on the international stage, and showed that the world could never trust them again.
Back to Afghanistan, though. How is someone supposed to “own” an abject defeat, when someone else (Dubya Bush) started this unwinnable war, and the madman Trump had already signed the surrender? How was Biden supposed to gracefully manage a pull-out, when the withdrawal date had already been announced, no plan whatsoever made for it, and Biden’s team deprived of all information pertaining to the oncoming disaster?
It was as predictable as night follows day that this would be messy. How many visa documents did Trump’s team process for Afghans who had aided them again? Ahh yes, that would be none whatsoever. But of course, it’s still all Biden’s fault – after all, Trump said so himself.
Biden has actually performed incredibly well. Trump would have bottled it under such heavy criticism from the MSM.
The MSM – please bear in mind – loves war. They love the copy it produces. The military industrial complex loves war. Right wingers love war. These war-loving bastards own the press, so it’s hardly surprising that they are giving Biden the thumbs down, in this cowardly fashion, while offering absolutely nothing by way of alternative, except keep this “forever war” going on and on.
Tell me, Michael – how did you get suckered into parroting this particular line of criticism against Biden?
In my view, the corrupt Biden is way out of his comfort zone and way out of his intellectual depth.
Although Trump is a moron he is not yet quite decrepit, Biden seems more than ready for the knackers yard.ISI Chief Lt Gen Faiz Hamid arrived Kabul this morning leading delegation of senior Pakistani officials. Gen Faiz is highest ranking foreign official to reach Kabul on invitation of Taliban Shura.
Some think that Pakistan have been helping to fund and support the Taliban for many years.
So that’s it, Michael? “In my view” and nothing to support it?
I gave you some good reasons for my conclusion. Is all you have “in my view”, and nothing else? If so, frankly, I don’t know why you bother coming to a forum like this. It’s certainly not worth my while discussing anything further. Make a case, if you have anything to say at all. Otherwise it looks rather like you’re repeating someone else’s view, but you don’t know how they came to that view either.
In short, stop supplying us with someone else’s right-wing “views” and start making a case – preferably one of your own.
Ms. Tennay told Fox News Business:
“It is hard to know what Uncle Joe Biden knows, I don’t know what he knows and I am very concerned about his mental capacity.
I am also concerned about his apparent callousness and arrogance.”
“He is a clear and present danger to America, and to our safety and security,” slammed the Republican lawmaker
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58416848
One thing is for sure, nobody is going to trust the twat again, certainly not Boris or Emmanuel. Uncle Joe is now stringing the Ukraine along, that is very dangerous, on present form he will not take on Russia, when Russia invades Ukraine to prevent any trouble from NATO.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58414184Mr Zelensky was asked two years ago by Donald Trump to do the then-US president “a favour” – to announce that his government was investigating Uncle Joe Biden, who had just launched his bid for the White House. In exchange, Mr Zelensky would get a trip to Washington and military aid.
Mr Biden noted the 30-year anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union, adding that the US “remains firmly committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression.”
Hello Michael –
Appreciate the effort. Although, we should note that Republican House representative Claudia Tenney is hardly likely to be sincere in her supposed concern about Biden. It’s also quite a stretch to imagine she’s affronted by Biden, given her own shockingly racist behaviour:
Fox is not exactly impartial either – being nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican party.
I do hope you realise your last item is what got Trump impeached the first time? This is when he tried to corrupt the Ukrainian government, by demanding they declared some sham inquiry into Biden was taking place, before America would assist them in their struggle against Russia.
Trump – realising that Biden was likely to be his opponent in the up-coming election – just wanted the announcement of an inquiry so that he and his minions could go screeching that something fishy must be afoot. Obviously, the more gullible would take that at face value and take this as evidence in itself of corruption, as you have done here.
Is this really your proof? The unsupported word of some Republican hack, and a clear breach of ethics by Trump?
Isn’t the real issue that USA politics is corrupted entirely by financial donations from groups of people wanting legislation to favour them? And they play both sides so neither Republicans nor Democrats are immune from it. European and UK politics is headed the same direction though perhaps not quite so far down that road as yet(though not far off it).
ET – Seconded!
Corporatism is a multi-headed monster. Politics merely gives us two seemingly different heads to vote for, but really they’re both just parts of the same beast.
In political circles, Trump is a maverick, an outsider, but the Beast doesn’t care about that. Politics keeps the voters divided, everyone blaming the “other side”, but whichever “side” “wins”, the policy of the US as a whole changes only slightly.
The “news” media are yet more heads to the same beast, owned by corporatism. The invasion of Afghanistan was initiated under a Republican administration, but the Democrats continued it throughout their entire tenure. Eventually a Republican, Trump, ordered withdrawal right at the end of his tenure, thus dropping all the actual implementation, and consequent blame, onto the incoming Democrat Biden. The various “news” media assume their predetermined positions, blaming either Trump or Biden according to their political bias, thus keeping the voters divided. US military violence continues, unimpeded by pesky voters.
The “liberal” media are currently making a huge fuss about “women’s rights” in Afghanistan, which they never mentioned until the occupation needed a “liberal” justification under Obama.
All war is a corporatist stealth tax. Only governments spend money on war, so war always transfers vast amounts taxpayers’ money to the private sector, via the arms trade and the “private military contractors” ie. mercenary companies.
The parallels with Iraq are… I was going to write “stunning”, but actually they’re utterly predictable. Remember the Iraqi translators, abandoned upon US withdrawal? Who cares about some brown-skinned foreigners? Remember all the US weapons that fell under the control of ISIS and al Qaeda, who then used them (with US assistance) against the Syrian government? Corporatism’s objectives are fulfilled, twice over. The US will now replace the weapons abandoned in Afghanistan, moving taxpayers’ money to the arms manufacturers. And soon those weapons will be used “against US interests”, and the US will be “forced” to fight. Again. Que bono?
I think traditionally the Democrats have been immersed in war or warlike attitudes.
Vietnam WarU.S.A. involvement, escalated under President John F. Kennedy through the MAAG program, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 in 1964.
I can’t understand how the Military Industries have let Joe Biden, get away from Afghanistan; their very incomes rely on forever wars.
– “I can’t understand how the Military Industries have let Joe Biden, get away from Afghanistan”
Well it was Trump that gave the order, and he’s right that the “deep state” aren’t very keen on him; they had to stop him from nuking Iran* right at the end. But whatever…
The military companies aren’t the only players in the game, and Afghanistan had become a liability, it was making NATO look impotent.
(* Sorry, I can’t prove this, it’s classified 😀 I can offer only circumstantial evidence. But I heard the Stratotankers fly over on their way to Gibraltar.)
