re: Afghan pilots assassinated by Taliban as U.S. withdraws

quote:

---

Iraq was his mistake.

---

Iraq was Saddam Hussein's mistake. Bush's Iraq mistake was once again, nation building. We should have made a crater out of a few of their most favorite places, and asked them if they wanted some more. No occupation. No nation building. Just blowing up your shite and killing people, until you stop doing shite we find unacceptable. Done.

quote:

---

The Taliban HAD to be confronted. They were the ones who were allowing terrorist training camps to propagate in their country. Our occupation of Afghanistan and defeat of the Taliban is why there has not been another 9/11. Also, when we went into Afghanistan, it shocked Iran, Syria and Saudi. They got a clear message that we aren’t screwing around and weren’t going to sit back and do nothing while they attacked us through their terrorist dogs.

---

Man, is it 2002 already? Wait, which way does time go?

Welcome to Joe Biden's world.

quote:

---

Zero fricks given. We never should have occupied the place for two decades.

I don’t give a shite what happens there. Their society and culture don’t want to move past the Middle Ages

---

This.

It's called the graveyard of empires for a reason. We're only just acknowledging that reality now, 15-18 years too late.

Afghanistan is a shithole and will always be a shithole until the sun swallows this planet up.

quote:

---

Not if he had a well developed withdrawal plan, so no.

---

And what would that consist of exactly, converting them all to Christianity and have them take a civics class? You have clearly never been involved with these people. They are about one step ahead of a goat on the evolutionary chart. The fact that we inhabit the same planet is almost beyond comprehension.

quote:

---

They are about one step ahead of a goat on the evolutionary chart

---

Most of them prefer to be behind the goat.

quote:

---

China isn’t opposed to genocide. Will be interesting to see how the yellow man does out there.

---

They won’t do any better.

We only ever had two national interests in Afghanistan:

1) Eliminate the country as a base for Islamic terrorism, and
2) Curb the opium trade.

Nation building there was never an option, and we should have recognized that. Those people may have human DNA but the commonality with us and the rest of the civilized world ends there. They’re essentially an Islamic version of 1500s feudal Europe, except everyone has an AK-47. Their only education comes from village mullahs, and consists of rote memorization of the Koran…and that’s men only, women get zero education. Their thought processes and values are so different from ours that they might as well be from Mars. We cannot achieve any common ground.

To achieve goal #1 we just need to maintain the ability to take out terrorist camps when they pop up, and enough intell to know when they form.

To achieve the less important #2 goal, we burn the fields, using a surrogate force.

There are no other reasons to be there. Afghan society will likely never will be compatible with democracy. It’s a fool’s errand to try it.