Afghanistan - greatest foreign policy disaster of a generation?

[Sheepy]

Who is to say? If it isn't USA it will someone else who sees the suffering or panics at the numbers crossing borders and tries again. Didn't we have an idea that we owed the US for the financial debt after WW2. What started us with the 'special relationship'? We and US are not the only one who have tried over the years. My worry is if the Taliban know that their territory stops at the borders. There are enough countries seeking world domination.

You might of course have a point, nobody was that bothered about leaving them to get on with it, until the Chinese stepped in to pick up the pieces, maybe lets see how they get on with bringing the Taliban to heel. What they can achieve within their own borders doesn't mean they can do it everywhere. Just my thoughts on it really, I doubt they make a blind bit of difference.

[papasmurf]

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 and go to your gawd like a soldier.

Rudyard Kipling

[T00ts]

As a matter of interest toots, when is it time, we all stop suffering for the sake of Uncle Sam and his gung ho madness? it always ends up the same way.

Who is to say? If it isn't USA it will someone else who sees the suffering or panics at the numbers crossing borders and tries again. Didn't we have an idea that we owed the US for the financial debt after WW2. What started us with the 'special relationship'? We and US are not the only one who have tried over the years. My worry is if the Taliban know that their territory stops at the borders. There are enough countries seeking world domination.

[Sheepy]

It seems there has never been an answer to the problems in Afghanistan. How many times have foreign powers gone in with best intentions of bringing Western civilisation to them only to watch them succumb once again to tribal warfare. My heart is breaking for the innocents, the women and children particularly young girls taken as 'brides' or rather sex slaves as the spoils of war. I cannot imagine just how horrifying that must be and the terror of what faces them.

Would it help to go back in all guns blazing? I hate to say it but I think not. What more can we do other than to try and make a safe haven for those fleeing.

As a matter of interest toots, when is it time, we all stop suffering for the sake of Uncle Sam and his gung ho madness? it always ends up the same way.

[T00ts]

It seems there has never been an answer to the problems in Afghanistan. How many times have foreign powers gone in with best intentions of bringing Western civilisation to them only to watch them succumb once again to tribal warfare. My heart is breaking for the innocents, the women and children particularly young girls taken as 'brides' or rather sex slaves as the spoils of war. I cannot imagine just how horrifying that must be and the terror of what faces them.

Would it help to go back in all guns blazing? I hate to say it but I think not. What more can we do other than to try and make a safe haven for those fleeing.

[cromwell]

Well the taliban can be defeated quite easily but it would require the obliteration of the whole of the place using nukes thereby killing innocents too,not acceptable of course.

Despite Samps comments the soviets got their arses well kicked as did the british empire.....twice,lessons not learned without the ultimate sanction outlined above you ain't going to win.

[johnofgwent]

Of a generation ?


It's been a clusterfuck far longer than that.


When Conan Doyle was searching for a way to pair up a detective with his head in the clouds with a memoir writer with feet firmly planted in the ground, he chose an army surgeon himself wounded by a 'jezail' bullet in the 2nd ? Afghan War


When the BBC revived the tales with Cummerbatch Freeman and Stubbs they had no need whatsoever to adjust the reason for the good doctors availability in the UK. Afghanistan continued then as it does to this day to provide competitors for the Paralympics .....

[Barry]

It seems that the USA invaded and made a war in the wrong country.
All the 9-11 perpetrators were Saudis.
This is a huge mess and will be just as bad as Iraq. At least Iraq had oil.

I hope our politicians can let it rest. It's not our job to regime change foreign countries. Get our citizens out quick.

[Sampanviking]

So, after twenty years of military occupation of the West and billions pumped into building Afghan Security Services and Civil Society. After twenty years of war against a coalition of tribal fighters, unleashing against them, some of the most sophisticated conventional weapons ever devised, all is unraveling in little more than few weeks.

When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the 80's, the Soviet backed Government they left behind survived for three years and only collapsed as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. This Western backed government however, is unlikely to last three months from the announcement of Western Forces leaving and may collapse before the withdrawal is complete, setting the stage for scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon.

This is not the first time that Western trained armies have totally failed against lightly armed insurgents. The same happened in Iraq, where the fully equipped Iraqi Army, abandoned Heavy Armour in the face of ISIS attack, prompting some to call them little more than a delivery service!
So, why cannot the West train a decent foreign army?

As if disaster was not bad enough, we now have British MP's and Ministers proving they are totally delusional on top, making demands that Britain should send in an Expeditionary Force on its own!!??

I suspect that main reason for the pull out is that the routes into the country from outside are slowly being closed to the Western Military. Accessibility is always discounted in the media, but the west has spent most of the last twenty years royally pee ing off, the countries that actually neighbor Afghanistan, and through which forces need to transit. Iran, Pakistan, China Takistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Most of the Central Asian States routes also require Russian overflight as well.

As to what is really happening inside the areas taken by the Taliban? I have no idea, but I say to those that get their news from the MSM, that neither will you.