Comments by "Stephen Jenkins" (@stephenjenkins7971) on "Afghanistan staring at the abyss" video.

@armija The Afghan government was many things, but a US puppet is a laughable concept. Many of these so-called US puppets often did crap the US hated, but knew they could get away with it because the US doesn't have the political capital or will to remove them. Especially if it becomes a question of stability. Also, South Vietnam existed before US intervention; though it was in the midst of collapsing prior to the US stepping in, that much is true. It's likely the US was hoping for a South Korea/West Germany situation where the "US puppets" as you call them would improve the livelihoods of the people enough to accept it. Kinda hard to do when you don't really control the whole country though.
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@joelau2383 China is more aggressive than the US in its own way. Not for over a century has the US engaged in anything remotely similar to taking another country's territory like China is endeavoring in the SCS. And the US hasn't engaged in cultural genocide in almost half a century, while China is engaging in it against specific ethnic groups in a extremely targeted racist manner. All while engaging in mass surveillance and aggressively pushing forth its claims by placing military and economic pressure on its neighbors. These are all extremely aggressive actions. It's true that China has not bombed another country in almost half a century, but that's pretty much the only positive it has over the US, and even taht is questionable because China did not have the power to act like the US or USSR until recently. So it's likely only going to become more aggressive as it grows stronger. So people are justifiably upset with China and seeking a way to contain it as it gets more aggressive. ...No matter how you look at it, China looks ridiculous. It's entire image of a peaceful country just trying to trade has been trashed in just 5 years.
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@joelau2383 Well, China can be stupid. It's already humiliated itself by being too aggressive too quickly in its foreign policy, so China butting into Afghanistan actually wouldn't be the craziest thing ever. That being said, the US really has no shortage of people wanting to help it -it's more out of self-interest, though. US power is ludicrous, so many people often seek US support in anything and everything, but yes it's stupid to depend on the US unless you have a treaty. But then again, that's pretty much everything; you can't trust anything without a contract. :D
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@Allen Burger "Peace loving" China in the last century killed more people than the US has in its entire history.
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@thomashogan9196 I said it USED to be. Not still is. That was my point; that support for the South Korean regime went great because it liberalized and democracized to become a worthy ally in East Asia. And seriously, I ain't gonna list atrocities. This is common knowledge. I wasn't even trying to argue with you.
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@cptbaguette Pakistan getting refugees may be a positive, actually; as it could be used to engender xenophobia in the population to increase the government's hold on the Pakistani population. And while it is naive to just blame all of the issues on Pakistan, it is 100% true that the resurgent Taliban hid in Pakistan and then came back even stronger -likely with Pakistani aid. Pakistan's government really doesn't want a stable Afghanistan at its border.
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Mr D J Hey man, if you wanna lick dictator boots feel free to do so. Australia joined in for the obvious benefit of getting a superpower in their corner when the going gets tough, and it seems to have worked out for it since China is aiming down Australia these days...as well as the rest of its neighbors.
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@cptbaguette The mistake you're making is conflating what Afghans people want and what it's rulers want. The ruling class in Afghanistan has actively sought radical Islamization to maintain power when the original image of Pakistan was to be a multicultural country where nobody would be persecuted; but the ruling elites sought instead the easier and far less stable rout of Islamic extremism and maintenance of conflicts with its neighbors. Mind you; some of it is hardly their fault seeing as India and Afghanistan were in their own ways hostile to Pakistan, but they still benefit from it intimately. This is the same ruling elite that pushed for the extermination of Benghal's educated upper class to force what was then Eastern Pakistan in the country, and the same ruling elite that invited radical clerics into the country. The PM being outspoken of identity politics in a country where the ruling elite actively pushes for fear of the foreigner doesn't go against my point. Identity politics doesn't even have any real influence in Pakistan, yet the PM felt the need to rail against it? It's obviously pandering, and this form of pandering for xenophobia leads to situations like those Chinese workers getting killed despite osetnsibly being from an allied country. They're still foreigners, so that hatred remains. Unfortunately, India may go the same way if their Hindu Nationalists get anymore power. But I'll wait and see on that.
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@cptbaguette What does Pakistan have to gain? How about stopping one of their provinces from seceding? Many in Balochistan feel more kinship with Afhganistan than Pakistan, and the seccessionist movement there is supported by Afhgan leaders since Pakistan's founding. But a Afgahnistan that is in turmoil is one which cannot push for military and economic support in such a seccessionist cause. Mind you, Afghan's government back in the day backed terrorists in Pakistan too -so again, hardly just Pakistan acting out. Fact is that many countries in these regions have used terrorist groups to harm each other without outright attacking each other.
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@JM-fo1te Even assuming that's true, the US obviously tried to create a new Afghanistan. You can multitask; one thing doesn't detract from the other.
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@ernestogastelum9123 Yeah, but that didn't stop the US before. South Korea wasn't that much better once. That alongside a determined guerilla group just makes maintaining a force there for generational transition impossible. If South Korea had a guerilla force costinf US lives all the time, it might have been abandoned too.
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@xaviercopeland2789 Weapons makers get the money anyway. This idea that the spooky MIC even had a part to play in that war is pretty stupid. Especially when the MIC is not even all that profitable compared to the big industries in the US who all really don't have that influence either.
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You realize that this isn't a contradiction at all, right? Because "sticking its nose on whatever China does" is not how these Western commenters see it at all. Chinese commentators unironically act like China bullying the Philippines is just an internal issue, when it's international. Besides, leaving Afghanistan doesn't mean no longer commentating and arguing about the direction it should go, or even condemning actions. That's standard.
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Very few Americans died in Afghanistan, so you're seriously exaggerating the man cost of the conflict.
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@johan8969 What a ignorant opinion. First of all, terrorist attacks were long on the rise prior to any "US fumbling" in the ME. Including in places that had nothing to do with the US' invasions in the early 2000's such as the Philippines and Indonesia. The only reason Europe was attacked was because of the ideology, not because of the US' actions -seriously, Germany and France both got terrorist attacks and they opposed the Iraq Invasion. Spain too, for that matter. The only similarity was that these places had a decent Muslim minority that could be tempted to extremism. The main instigator of the 9/11 attacks were not because of US support of Israel (which is rich considering the US tried to support the Arabs first but were rebuffed) but because the US stepped for in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War; something considered the worst since they're not Muslim. Don't act like they were a reasonable party that would be pleased if the US didn't support Israel. The immigrant waves? No one cares about immigrant waves, especially not Americans. But if you're talking about migrants, than that's all Europe's fault; there was no "wave" until Merkel invited them and it went viral on social media. But Europeans love to blame Americans for every ill instead of their own dirty closet, which is funny because every issue in the ME stems from European actions not even a century ago. Especially when the UK reneged on a unified Arab state while the US publicly backed the idea. That being said, publicly the Taliban can't un-ally with Al Qaeda, it would look terrible that they even bothered to listen to US demands when the US is leaving. But make no mistake; Al Qaeda is a broken mess and Taliban leaders don't want to die. They may boast about victory, but ruling a nation means coming out of the shadows and being easily killable by the US -very different from leading a guerilla war from the safety of an unknown location. There is now a very clear consequence of Taliban actions against the US, and they won't do crap. Oh, but they may support random terrorist groups in the region that could hurt US troops to be sure, much like Iran. Then again, they may have their hands full with those very neighbors now. It all depends.
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@tatarchan5212 Eh, I disagree. It seems more, at least to me, that less Americans are starting to care about the consequences of what occurs outside their borders rather than anything else. Which, to be honest, is how 99% of people are in reality across the planet. But people expected the Americans to care since they have that kind of power for change, good or ill. That being said, backing religious extremist groups is more the issue at hand. China backed Communist guerillas in India, but that didn't bite them back -mostly because their ideology while twisted was also consistent. Religious extremism is far less so, and CIA backing of other less reputable groups were mostly just reactionaries rather than religious extremists like the mujahideen. So no, Americans really have nothing to fear on that account. Especially after going on a campaign of blowing up every Islamist they could find in the Middle East for decades on end. If nothing else, they really did decimate the ideology's attractiveness with so many adherents getting blown up.
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@troooooper100 That's Iraq. Afghanistan was entirely justified since the Taliban supported Al Qaeda; making 9/11 entirely legal in the framework of a defensive war. Which was why NATO was called in at all. And no, the US never funded or created "both sides" in Afghanistan. What the heck does that even mean? And what's with this proud ignorance here? To put it frankly though, the US had no obligation to help Afghans. The fact it even bothered is more to their credit, even if it failed miserably lol
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@troooooper100 Uh, the Taliban was the direct ruling authority of Afghanistan and 100% supported Al Qaeda. No one disputes this at all. If the US shot missiles at Iraq without warning, then yes Iraq would have the right to war with the US. I never said that the US was thinking about helping Afghans, but I do believe the US intended to help themselves by making a new Afghanistan which they could work with to crush Islamic extremism. If that happened to help Afghans, then I'm sure that would have been a nice thing, but I doubt that was their focus. You're being ridiculous. The US is not God, it can't be everywhere and create everything. The mujahideen was there long before the US was involved, and the Taliban was created when the US wasn't even in Afghanistan. There was a general trend of rising Islamic extremism after Arab Nationalism fell apart; and Afgahnistan was just the latest. Idk about Afgahnistan, but Iraq by 2011 was superior to Saddam Hussein's Iraq in terms of human rights, economic development, and growth; it was worse with violence though. It was after 2011 when ISIS came along that things got worse again. Dude, you're obviously a conspiracy nutcase. I'm not gonna argue with you about 9/11, it's been done to death. And your beliefs in Zionists controlling the US points to you being a form of right-wing extremist that I want nothing further to deal with. Only a smooth-brain tool unironically still believes in the zIoNiSTs and naively believing that so many world events are caused by one single all-powerful group. Grow up.
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@troooooper100 This is my last comment to you. You're too ignorant and proud of it to continue responding to. Next time; acutally look up the crap you're spewing before you do so. You'd learn quickly that you're echoing conspiracies or just flat-out lies instead of documented facts. This is a copy-and-paste from the wiki entry on the Mujahideen in Afghanistan: "Arguably the best-known mujahideen outside the Islamic world are the various, loosely aligned Afghan opposition groups who initially rebelled against the government of the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) during the late 1970s. At the DRA's request, the Soviet Union brought forces into the country to aid the government in 1979. The mujahideen fought against Soviet and DRA troops during the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). Afghanistan's resistance movement originated in chaos and, at first, regional warlords waged virtually all of its fighting locally. As warfare became more sophisticated, outside support and regional coordination grew. The basic units of mujahideen organization and action continued to reflect the highly decentralized nature of Afghan society and strong loci of competing mujahideen and Pashtun tribal groups, particularly in isolated areas among the mountains.[16] Eventually, the seven main mujahideen parties allied as the political bloc called Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen. However the parties were not under a single command and had ideological differences. Many Muslims from other countries assisted the various mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. Some groups of these veterans became significant players in later conflicts in and around the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, was a prominent organizer and financier of an all-Arab Islamist group of foreign volunteers; his Maktab al-Khadamat funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters from around the Muslim world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and support of the Saudi and Pakistani governments.[17] These foreign fighters became known as "Afghan Arabs" and their efforts were coordinated by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Although the mujahideen were aided by the Pakistani, American, Chinese and Saudi governments, the mujahideen's primary source of funding was private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf. Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states.""
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@RecepBaltasiSevenInsan That was the USSR, which illegally invaded bruh. The US came in via a defensive war due to their support of 9/11.
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@Rishi123456789 You people are so damn blind. Instead of looking at these complicated issues with various groups, moving parts, national interests and loyalties; you just dumb it down to war profiteering. Something which is dumb in hte first place because the US could have far more easily achieved far more money by simply opening its doors to selling weapons and equipment to all countries instead of limiting it as it does. More to the point, groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc had ultimately VERY little US-made weaponry. Most of their equipment came from Russia and China. I can cite proof if you want, but the point is that your "theory" not only makes little logical sense, it also ignores the many other factors for a neat little narrative. It's ignorant.
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@xaviercopeland2789 If the US failed to maintain the new government, then it was defeated. Wars function as objectives. But yes, the US was not militarily defeated at all; but politically.
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@TobeornottooB What idiot coined that term? Is it some hack crying about "forever wars"?
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@TobeornottooB If a single soldier is doing anything outside the US, someone will claim the US is still at war. This war in Afghanistan had long since ceased to be a war and had shifted into a police occupation. The actual wars ended long ago, but people act like the US has been embroiled in a world war for decades. It's hyperbole.
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@troooooper100 US didn't create anything. Mujaihdeen was backed, but it was already there. And the Taliban was created later, while the US was not even in the region.
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@jeremygibbs7342 A surrender is to have no recourse and be at the complete mercy of the enemy. The US is not at all at their complete mercy by any stretch of the imagination, but vice-versa. That being said, US support has dwindled to the point that accepting a "white peace" is tantamount to letting the Afghan government fall. But yeah, there was no surrender.
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@thomashogan9196 South Korea was even more dictatorial than South Vietnam, engaging in a massacre of civilians who may or may not have been Communists. So to be blunt, the US has made some grim choices which sometimes panned out, sometimes didn't.
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@colinsanders9397 A country's military exists to act in their national interest. The fact that so few overall suffered casualties is good, it sucks for those that didn't and they deserve care; but don't act like this was some terrible thing that they endured. If you wanna argue this, go at it from a different venue. Your logic is not convincing. Crippling the Taliban and killing so many while destroying Islamist groups across the Middle East was definitely not "nothing". Or have you not noticed the complete lack of Islamist terrorist attacks not just in the US, but in the West overall? In many ways, they were successful in drawing attention away from civilian centers in the West ane forcing them to fight in the Middle East. Now the vast majority are dead and buried, and the ideology humiliated. The Taliban won't be supporting anothet Al Qaeda lest they wish to get decimated again, and another Al Qaeda will be focused on internal rather than taking the fight to the infidel.
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@arcxena_ In what world did the world police suck anything from Afghanistan? If anything, the country sucked that world police dry with no end in sight LeL
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@KbB-kz9qp China did worst in Vietnam than the US did. And they were neighbors. In what world would China do better in Afghanistan?
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