Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Kamala squirming when asked a hard question.
The War in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Kamala squirming when asked a hard question.
Behold, the prime minister of US "ally" on whose permission of passage whole US war effort in Afghanistan was reliant on.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Send them to the socalled sanctuary cities. It's where foreigners get sheltered whenever they want to live in the US while skipping the process.
The facts are, the ANA was a paper tiger. For one thing, the 330,000 figure that has been bandied about is based on paper strength returns that may be suspect for a lot of reasons (corruption, a 20% desertion rate, etc.) It also includes 90,000 Afghan Police. I saw somewhere that a more realistic figure was somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000-171,000 for the ANA's numbers. Not to mention WaPo is reporting that in a lot of cases, the Taliban had been subverting unit commanders for upwards of a year. I suspect in a lot of cases, units woke up and found out "Shit, the damn Taliban's here, they have the armory and the motor pool, and the CO and his staff have made off with the unit's payroll and petty funds."
The trouble was and I think we based our estimations on how fast the ANA would fall on two factors. One was how long the Soviet-backed government took to collapse after the Soviets pulled out. The other, the South Vietnamese in 1975. Both took a lot longer than the ANA. The ANA collapsed in nine days. As for the Taliban getting angry, well, we may need to remind them that we have the firepower As for Biden's political future, yeah, there is no clean way out, but it seems to me that holding Bagram might have been a good plan. The media is going to follow this for a while (they love political blood in the water) unless something juicier shows up? And even if they don't, the GOP has so much fodder for the midterms that this won't be about the merits of the candidates anymore. It will be GOP candidate vs. Joseph R. Biden. And that's going to be devastating for a lot of Dem. candidates in red or purple states. A red tsunami is all but inevitable. Moreover, I'd say Biden's lame duck period began two weeks ago. The GOP has no incentive to give him a damn thing now.
Which is why I wonder why in the hell we didn't at least try to hold on till the winter? It seemed Biden wanted a golden opportunity to do a "I got us out of Afghanistan victory lap" in time for the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and damn the consequences. He forgot one of the cardinal rules of war: The enemy gets a vote.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
FLASHBACK: Biden Opposed Evacuating Vietnamese After Saigon's Fall
A young Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) opposed evacuating Vietnamese civilians placed during the 1975 fall of Saigon, just two years after he was first elected to the Senate.
www.mediaite.com
What a fucking bastard. You know what? I am happy he gets all he fucking deserves facing the woodworks for being president. Now he gets to feel what it's like it being in Ford's shoes.
The die is cast.
Tiamat
I've seen the future...
FLASHBACK: Biden Opposed Evacuating Vietnamese After Saigon's Fall
A young Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) opposed evacuating Vietnamese civilians placed during the 1975 fall of Saigon, just two years after he was first elected to the Senate.
What a fucking bastard. You know what? I am happy he gets all he fucking deserves facing the woodworks for being president. Now he gets to feel what it's like it being in Ford's shoes.
Oh, it’s worse.
Biden is notorious for not showing any sort of empathy at all. Please note this article detailing a diary entry in Holbrookes journal back in 2010 when asked what would happen to the Afghans if there was an immediate pullout.
'F**k that': Biden's response to US obligations in Afghanistan
In 2010, Biden reportedly told Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the US had to leave Afghanistan regardless of the cost for the Afghan people.
Biden’s reply?
'F*** that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.'
The irony of course were the claims during the election that Biden possessed far more empathy than Trump.
🙄
Last edited:
DarthOne
☦️
What article? It’s not in the one the other fellow posted.
Tiamat
I've seen the future...
Fixed it, harder for me to post crap from this phone sometimes.
DarthOne
☦️
Completely understandable and thank you friend.
Just FYI why I asked @Zachowon about how those refugees would be vetted: the Afghani public administration and passport system is just as much a corrupt tribal joke as the ANA is/was. The baseline of Afghani papers is something called a Tazkirah/Tazkereh. It's a letter-sized sheet of paper serving as a hybrid form of ID and birth certificate.
How accurate are those even under the best circumstances?
Well, not much. For one, since any sort of public record system in the country has been rudimentary at best even under coalition protection, it's usually not something issued at birth or shortly thereafter, but rather something you apply for when you think you absolutely need one. So, since dates aren't really kep that closely, the birth date on your tazkereh is guess work. Yes, you read that right. It's guesswork. Even worse, when you absolutely don't have a clue when you were born, the official tasked with handing out your tazkereh will guess your age. Not as in "Mohammad probably was born in month X of year Y" but actually "Mohammad looks likely to be X years old".
Now, how do you apply for a tazkereh? Easy, like any good muslim you need four witnesses. How do you do this, when in doubt? Well, grab four other dudes off the street or from the waiting room of the registry office, ask them nicely (*cough* bribe *cough*) to confirm who you are, and voila, you have your tazkereh!
But Culsu, you rambling bastard, you might say, what about passports? Aren't biometric passports like the gold standard of international ID papers? And yes, technically that is true. It's really hard to convincinly forge a modern biometric passport. But do you have to? Like, take a wild guess on what personal data an Afghani passport is based on? A hint. The answer starts with tazk and ends with ereh. 🤣
So trying to verify Afghani identities just based on ID is basically a circular excercise in futility since any moron with cash could forge himself a completely new identity.
How accurate are those even under the best circumstances?
Well, not much. For one, since any sort of public record system in the country has been rudimentary at best even under coalition protection, it's usually not something issued at birth or shortly thereafter, but rather something you apply for when you think you absolutely need one. So, since dates aren't really kep that closely, the birth date on your tazkereh is guess work. Yes, you read that right. It's guesswork. Even worse, when you absolutely don't have a clue when you were born, the official tasked with handing out your tazkereh will guess your age. Not as in "Mohammad probably was born in month X of year Y" but actually "Mohammad looks likely to be X years old".
Now, how do you apply for a tazkereh? Easy, like any good muslim you need four witnesses. How do you do this, when in doubt? Well, grab four other dudes off the street or from the waiting room of the registry office, ask them nicely (*cough* bribe *cough*) to confirm who you are, and voila, you have your tazkereh!
But Culsu, you rambling bastard, you might say, what about passports? Aren't biometric passports like the gold standard of international ID papers? And yes, technically that is true. It's really hard to convincinly forge a modern biometric passport. But do you have to? Like, take a wild guess on what personal data an Afghani passport is based on? A hint. The answer starts with tazk and ends with ereh. 🤣
So trying to verify Afghani identities just based on ID is basically a circular excercise in futility since any moron with cash could forge himself a completely new identity.
FLASHBACK: Biden Opposed Evacuating Vietnamese After Saigon's Fall
A young Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) opposed evacuating Vietnamese civilians placed during the 1975 fall of Saigon, just two years after he was first elected to the Senate.
What a fucking bastard. You know what? I am happy he gets all he fucking deserves facing the woodworks for being president. Now he gets to feel what it's like it being in Ford's shoes.
He's not wrong. We are under no moral or legal obligation to take these people in.
Not surprising. Also very foolish.
We've known for a few years now that the actual number for the ANA was around 180,000. 40% of their forces were just made up so commanders could collect on the paycheck. That leaves 90,000ish for the police and 90,000 for the military. Then add in the 20% desertion rate, which brings us down to about 72,000 troops. That would explain why they sometimes had to call their police in to support them.
No, Biden's team would have had strategic analysts who would have given him a few different estimates, based on what they knew. This scenario was probably presented as the worst case, but either Biden didn't want to believe it, didn't care, or they told him it was unlikely.
We've been bombing them for 20 years. I don't think it's going to change their minds. And the last thing Biden wants to do is send in lots of ground troops.
I don't think that's the case. The Progressives in the media are hammering him, as are a few veterans and partisan members of the Republican party...but 70% of the population supports him in withdrawing. Only about 25% of them approve of the way he did it, but I don't think they're going to continue to blame him when he can point to the joke that was the Afghan military. It is certainly tarnishing his reputation, but I don't think that's going to affect the midterms as much as one might hope.
Because Biden would have to send more troops in to hold out for another few months. And I don't think that was Biden's idea. That sounds more like an excuse a committee gives to their boss as a reason why they should wait a few more months. I think that was the plan, but the Taliban nixed it. They wanted to take Afghanistan this year, not next year. They too, probably guessed that it would take about 3-6 months, so if they started in August, they could have most or all of the country by October. Then worst case scenario, they wait until May to retake the rest. As it turned out, it took less than two weeks.
I think you were posting from your phone, could you clean that up a bit for me?
In all fairness, the agreement is the US doesn't leave the airport and they can keep evacuating people who get in.
Pentagon confirms latest mission to rescue Americans stranded in Kabul
The Defense Department’s top spokesperson also suggested a variety of other extraction efforts were taking place.
www.politico.com
The US has Biometric databases we are using, and people trained to be able to distinguish them, and put in I fo from other sources AND the passportJust FYI why I asked @Zachowon about how those refugees would be vetted: the Afghani public administration and passport system is just as much a corrupt tribal joke as the ANA is/was. The baseline of Afghani papers is something called a Tazkirah/Tazkereh. It's a letter-sized sheet of paper serving as a hybrid form of ID and birth certificate.
How accurate are those even under the best circumstances?
Well, not much. For one, since any sort of public record system in the country has been rudimentary at best even under coalition protection, it's usually not something issued at birth or shortly thereafter, but rather something you apply for when you think you absolutely need one. So, since dates aren't really kep that closely, the birth date on your tazkereh is guess work. Yes, you read that right. It's guesswork. Even worse, when you absolutely don't have a clue when you were born, the official tasked with handing out your tazkereh will guess your age. Not as in "Mohammad probably was born in month X of year Y" but actually "Mohammad looks likely to be X years old".
Now, how do you apply for a tazkereh? Easy, like any good muslim you need four witnesses. How do you do this, when in doubt? Well, grab four other dudes off the street or from the waiting room of the registry office, ask them nicely (*cough* bribe *cough*) to confirm who you are, and voila, you have your tazkereh!
But Culsu, you rambling bastard, you might say, what about passports? Aren't biometric passports like the gold standard of international ID papers? And yes, technically that is true. It's really hard to convincinly forge a modern biometric passport. But do you have to? Like, take a wild guess on what personal data an Afghani passport is based on? A hint. The answer starts with tazk and ends with ereh. 🤣
So trying to verify Afghani identities just based on ID is basically a circular excercise in futility since any moron with cash could forge himself a completely new identity.
The MI and IC community came out and said they had informed Biden the Taliban will take Kabul and A-stan quickly. It was on Twitter somewhere in this thread