Comments by "wily wascal" (@wilywascal2024) on "Taliban fighters accost CNN reporter and crew" video.

  1. "Peace is not a very big thing to ask for, is it?" ~ Fatima Gailani, Afghan activist and negotiator, pleading for continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan It is when asking the Taliban, who do not seek peace or to bargain in good faith, but total domination once again. U.S. has spent 20 years and $2 trillion trying to achieve peace in Afghanistan, losing over 4000 American lives (military and civilian contractors), with tens of thousands of Americans wounded there. "The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials … have given Afghans little reason to support their government," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. forces in the country, wrote in a 2009 memorandum. "This crisis of confidence, coupled with a distinct lack of economic and educational opportunity, has created fertile ground for the insurgency." That was 11 years ago, and little has changed since. Thought the invasion of Afghanistan by Bush was a mistake that would lead to a quagmire, and have been proven correct. Still, initially supported efforts to bring peace and stability there, along with basic human and civil-rights, because after invading felt we had an obligation to rebuild. However, while U.S. blunders there have contributed to a failure, Afghans are their own worst enemy, and no one can help them until enough of them are willing to help themselves.
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  2. Welcome to war. This is what war is. It's terrible, it's tragic, it stinks, it's unfair, it's sad, it's wasteful, it's hell, innocents die, and things always go wrong. You think we'd have learned that by now, but no, it's a lesson that has to be repeatedly learned, evidently. The consensus is that nobody foresaw the Afghan government and its armed forces completely capitulating so quickly as they did. Some say there should have been a contingency plan for this, but even though hindsight is 20/20, have yet to hear any rational plan that could have dealt with this situation. Shit happens, and Biden got handed a turd with Afghanistan. Instead of allowing the crap to continue, Biden made the hard, responsible decision to pull the U.S. out of another country's civil war. Fallout was inevitable, and people need to deal with that.
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  3. It's back to the Dark Ages for Afghanistan, and back to the Taliban reign of terror for the Afghani people. But Biden bears little responsibility for what is happening now in Afghanistan; he was stuck in a Catch-22 situation with no good choices left to be made. What needs to be studied and rectified is how it came to that point, rather than just trying to scapegoat onto the current U.S. President the inevitable results of two decades of bad policies, which is counterproductive and unlikely to accomplish anything.
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  4. The NBC reporter who was Kabul Bureau Chief, Atia Abawi, contradicted herself. She faulted how America got out of Afghanistan, but then she says that "a female politician she knows had no idea this was going to happen." If the Afghanistan politician didn't know what was going to happen in her own country, how was the U.S. supposed to know more than her? If she didn't know enough to get to safety when Trump announced 18 months ago the U.S. would be withdrawing all military forces by May 1st, why is that suddenly now the fault of the U.S.?
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  5. While the Talibanization of Afghanistan is of concern, of far greater concern is the Talibanization of America by Reich-wing plutocrats, Reich-wing media, Reich-wing demagogues, Reich-wing politicians and Christian nationalists.
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