Afghanistan Crisis

[LongTimeLurker]

There was an authentically homegrown Afghan movement that wanted to modernise Afghan society complete with equality for women back in the 1970s with even the Soviet Union telling them to keep the heid and slow doon a wee bit before stumbling into an intervention when that advice wasn't followed:

Might have been better in the long run if the West hadn't sent in Osama and various other Islamist crazies to obliterate them?

[Bairnardo]

Millions of women and girls freed from a theocratic totalitarian state for an entire generation.
I call that a pretty fucking massive mitigation.
That you don't says more about you than me.

I have stayed off this thread because honestly, I don't know what to think about it, and I knew how the discussion would go. Theres also a huge amount of people not offering much in the way of credible alternative to what has happened. Its clear the Talibam were primed as strongest of the Afghan groups to take power, if not now then sometime in the future with the only obstacle being permanent occupation by Western forces.

Which leads on to what you said.... How many regimes and countries suppress the rights of women and girls in the name of religion in the Middle East? How many are you on record as demanding military intervention in?

Im no fan of Western foreign policy whatsoever, but I really dont know what it is a lot of people want here other than to get up on their soapbox at a convenient time. That seems to me to be what you are doing.

[Ad Lib]

16 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

I have stayed off this thread because honestly, I don't know what to think about it, and I knew how the discussion would go. Theres also a huge amount of people not offering much in the way of credible alternative to what has happened. Its clear the Talibam were primed as strongest of the Afghan groups to take power, if not now then sometime in the future with the only obstacle being permanent occupation by Western forces.

Then we should have a permanent military presence there. That’s is my argument.

16 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Which leads on to what you said.... How many regimes and countries suppress the rights of women and girls in the name of religion in the Middle East? How many are you on record as demanding military intervention in?

We have a duty in Afghanistan because we were already there. The duty arises regardless of whether the initial intervention was a justified one.

I have explained at some length on here why Saudi Arabia and China are different from Afghanistan. But for your benefit again: I do not see a plausible military strategy by which we could take anything more than fleeting control of a territory in either of those countries, without a severe risk of directly inflaming conflicts elsewhere we can’t control, involving nuclear powers in such a way as to risk catastrophic eight or nine figure loss of life: something that is clearly, on balance, much worse for the oppressed in aggregate.

In every situation where it is viable to intervene against those criteria, I support military intervention.

That is why I supported much fuller intervention in Syria in 2013 before Obama shat the bed after Cameron’s Commons defeat leading to Putin propping up Assad and a drawn out conflict that took many more civilian lives, for example.

16 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Im no fan of Western foreign policy whatsoever, but I really dont know what it is a lot of people want here other than to get up on their soapbox at a convenient time. That seems to me to be what you are doing.

I really don’t care what you think I’m doing. I’m just explaining what I think and why.

[Left Back]

5 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

 

In every situation where it is viable to intervene against those criteria, I support military intervention.

You should stand for election on that platform.

Let us know how much support you get.

[Wee-Bey]

52 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Millions of women and girls freed from a theocratic totalitarian state for an entire generation.

I call that a pretty fucking massive mitigation.

So how much collateral damage is acceptable to maintain these potemkin villages then ? You've already admitted you think freeing women and girls in other theocratic totalitarian states is going to be too messy, so what's your limit in Afghanistan, just how many people do you expect to sacrifice their lives to make you feel better ?

Another 20 years and a quarter of a million lives ? Easy.

How about a million deaths ?

2 million ?

What about 1 drone strike on an Afghan wedding = 1 female police chief ?

1 Us Special forces unit collecting goatherders skulls = 1 all girls school built ?

52 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

That you don't says more about you than me.

This is what it all comes down to isn't it ?

You want to feel good about it. You want to show how much more you care than I do.

[welshbairn]

17 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

That is why I supported much fuller intervention in Syria in 2013 before Obama shat the bed after Cameron’s Commons defeat leading to Putin propping up Assad and a drawn out conflict that took many more civilian lives, for example.

What side would you have backed? Would you have gone more boots on the ground in Libya too?

[Ad Lib]

8 minutes ago, Left Back said:

You should stand for election on that platform.

Let us know how much support you get.

Yes because as we all know elections and the U.K. electorate have been a tremendous guide to what is good foreign policy in the last two decades.

It’s not like Blair won a landslide after the Iraq War, the electorate voted for Brexit, then for a Government with the worst possible Brexit deal or anything.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

11 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Then we should have a permanent military presence there. That’s is my argument.

We have a duty in Afghanistan because we were already there. The duty arises regardless of whether the initial intervention was a justified one.

I have explained at some length on here why Saudi Arabia and China are different from Afghanistan. But for your benefit again: I do not see a plausible military strategy by which we could take anything more than fleeting control of a territory in either of those countries, without a severe risk of directly inflaming conflicts elsewhere we can’t control, involving nuclear powers in such a way as to risk catastrophic eight or nine figure loss of life: something that is clearly, on balance, much worse for the oppressed in aggregate.

In every situation where it is viable to intervene against those criteria, I support military intervention.

That is why I supported much fuller intervention in Syria in 2013 before Obama shat the bed after Cameron’s Commons defeat leading to Putin propping up Assad and a drawn out conflict that took many more civilian lives, for example.

I really don’t care what you think I’m doing. I’m just explaining what I think and why.

Saudi Arabia is indeed different, as they happen to be 'our' b*****ds.  I may be mistaken, but I don't recall Tom Tugenhadt, Johnny Mercer or a tearful Ben Wallace making much noise on the bestial assassination of Jamal Khashoggi on the orders of Mohammed bin Salman.  Best not to upset a doughty ally, and after all a Saudi stoning is probably a more civilised version than a Taliban one.

As for supporting military intervention, that's helluva noble but don't you think that that the UK may actually now be better weaning itself off this hellish addiction to vainglorious militarism, complete with Ruritanian royal princes posing at The Cenotaph ?  And prising the UK's head from America's arse-cheeks would be a positive development too.

[Left Back]

8 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Yes because as we all know elections and the U.K. electorate have been a tremendous guide to what is good foreign policy in the last two decades.

It’s not like Blair won a landslide after the Iraq War, the electorate voted for Brexit, then for a Government with the worst possible Brexit deal or anything.

So are you now advocating for disenfranchisement of the UK population so that a few good and righteous people can enact a foreign policy you deem suitable for Afghanistan?

[Ad Lib]

1 minute ago, Proposition Joe said:

So how much collateral damage is acceptable to maintain these potemkin villages then ?

If doing so would cost a million civilian lives in Afghanistan over, say, a decade, for example, we could take seriously the claim that in aggregate the people there were worse off for it.

As it stands, the civilian deaths attributable to the war figure to April of this year, so over a two decade period, was estimated at about 71k, or about 4kpa. For the sake of drastically increasing the freedom and life prospects of (conservative estimate) more than 2 million women and girls in Kabul alone, that’s a decent return on investment. Excellent even, when you consider how many civilians were routinely executed under the Taliban before they lost control of parts of Afghanistan.

1 minute ago, Proposition Joe said:

You've already admitted you think freeing women and girls in other theocratic totalitarian states is going to be too messy, so what's your limit in Afghanistan, just how many people do you expect to sacrifice their lives to make you feel better ?

I didn’t say it would be “too messy”. I said it wasn’t feasible. As in we would not succeed in creating the bare minimum conditions necessary to advance the interests of the women and girls living there.

By contrast it was feasible in Kabul. We know this because it actually happened for 20 years.

1 minute ago, Proposition Joe said:

Another 20 years and a quarter of a million lives ? Easy.

How about a million deaths ?

2 million ?

What about 1 drone strike on an Afghan wedding = 1 female police chief ?

1 Us Special forces unit collecting goatherders skulls = 1 all girls school built ?

This is what it all comes down to isn't it ?

You want to feel good about it. You want to show how much more you care than I do.

Of course we take a utilitarian calculus to this. You don’t do things that are demonstrably self defeating to the objective that matters most to you.

The number of deaths over 20 years in Afghanistan is tiny compared to the suffering and oppression that would have arisen under 20 years of Taliban rule. And the withdrawal of NATO troops will not lead to zero future deaths and tortures and rapes and chattel-acquiring. It will cause those things to rocket.

And by our Pontius Pilate esque foreign policy we will have been complicit in it. Complicit by our failure to use the military resources we have to reduce that pain and suffering.

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Ad Lib said:

The number of deaths over 20 years in Afghanistan is tiny compared to the suffering and oppression that would have arisen under 20 years of Taliban rule.

We don't know that. The brief period of Taliban rule after they quashed the civil war that preceded it was probably a safer time for most than the preceding years. 

[Ad Lib]

16 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

What side would you have backed? Would you have gone more boots on the ground in Libya too?

 

The National Coalition, which we were already supporting at the time but with far more limited aerial support.
 

Libya was finely balanced but yes I think we probably should have got a lot more involved than we did. The failure to assert early control on the ground was a big part of why all hell broke loose there.

[Tight minge]

6 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

‘The West’ and ‘Western Values’ leave a lot to be desired at times, but anyone who thinks that these ‘values’ are inferior to what the Taliban will impose is a fucking crackpot.

And yes, if I had the power I’d impose these values on people until such times as a majority were able to run their own affairs in a way that wouldn’t mean them reverting to the brutality of the religious crackpots.  I could live with my conscience quite easily ‘imposing’ educational rights for girls and tolerance of LGBT people amongst other things.

This though is a big part of the problem. At least ‘imposing’ the values you expect/know.

This is more or less what was tried and failed and would always be doomed to failure.

Before going on, Sharia Law is abhorrent and should not be practiced in my opinion. 

Values, expectations and needs vary from place to place. The centre of the world isn’t America or western civilisation, in fact for your average Afghan outside of Kabul, the centre of the world isn’t even Kabul. It is more likely his family, his plot of land, his village elder or Imam and anything above that means nothing.  Whether beyond that it is a white faced western soldier or Taliban matters little. They will just want to keep out the way and survive. 

The smaller picture is more important than the bigger picture when you have little or nothing.

This is why the Taliban can melt away and return quickly, how free elections have little to no value. Who is your average Afghan going to vote for? Whomever his Imam tells him, whomever hands a little money or just whomever is in line of site.

All in all its helpless. 

For those that will be in ‘line of site’ of the Taliban will be terrified and desperate, but for those that aren’t, they will just be thankful they are not in line of site and do there best to stay out the road. That itself is probably human nature.

Western governments really fucked this.

 

[Ad Lib]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

We don't know that. The brief period of Taliban rule after they quashed the civil war that preceded it was probably a safer time for most than the preceding years. 

I said suffering and oppression, not merely “safety”.

As actual women on the ground right now are testifying, living under the Taliban as a woman is basically tantamount to being dead.

[Ad Lib]

16 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Saudi Arabia is indeed different, as they happen to be 'our' b*****ds.  I may be mistaken, but I don't recall Tom Tugenhadt, Johnny Mercer or a tearful Ben Wallace making much noise on the bestial assassination of Jamal Khashoggi on the orders of Mohammed bin Salman.  Best not to upset a doughty ally, and after all a Saudi stoning is probably a more civilised version than a Taliban one.

You are labouring under a heavy misapprehension that I support almost any of the policies advocated by any of the three politicians you’ve just named.

16 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

As for supporting military intervention, that's helluva noble but don't you think that that the UK may actually now be better weaning itself off this hellish addiction to vainglorious militarism, complete with Ruritanian royal princes posing at The Cenotaph ?  And prising the UK's head from America's arse-cheeks would be a positive development too.

The UK has a substantial military. For various historical reasons, it is deployed in certain places.

That being the case it should always be resourced and deployed in the places where it will do the most good for humanity as a whole, honouring our obligations to people who cannot protect themselves but whom we can protect.

One does not have to support all British foreign policy to advocate a continued presence instead of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Ad Lib said:

 

The National Coalition, which we were already supporting at the time but with far more limited aerial support.
 

Libya was finely balanced but yes I think we probably should have got a lot more involved than we did. The failure to assert early control on the ground was a big part of why all hell broke loose there.

The only way to have stopped the bloodshed in Syria would have been to stop support from the Gulf States, Saudis, Americans and ourselves for the Jihadis who rapidly took over from the saintly middle class student types. If they'd won, the Alawite, Shia and Christians would have been massacred. Life was thousands of times better under Assad in Syria than it has been since 2011, however brutal his dictatorship was. Good intentions sometimes cause far more suffering than leaving well alone.

[Ad Lib]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

The only way to have stopped the bloodshed in Syria would have been to stop support from the Gulf States, Saudis, Americans and ourselves for the Jihadis who rapidly took over from the saintly middle class student types. If they'd won, the Alawite, Shia and Christians would have been massacred. Life was thousands of times better under Assad in Syria than it has been since 2011, however brutal his dictatorship was. Good intentions sometimes cause far more suffering than leaving well alone.

But the choice wasn’t between “Syria in its pre Civil War state under Assad” versus intervention.

This is classic “well I wouldn’t start from here” patter.

The civil war was already happening. ISIS had already taken significant territory on a cross border basis. And Assad was already gassing schools in areas not held by ISIS: using ISIS as an excuse for horrendous war crimes against people who were fighting ISIS.

[welshbairn]

14 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

But the choice wasn’t between “Syria in its pre Civil War state under Assad” versus intervention.

This is classic “well I wouldn’t start from here” patter.

The civil war was already happening. ISIS had already taken significant territory on a cross border basis. And Assad was already gassing schools in areas not held by ISIS: using ISIS as an excuse for horrendous war crimes against people who were fighting ISIS.

So who would you have bombed? ISIS, the Syrian Army, Al Nusra, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Kurds, the Turks, Russians, Israelis? All of them?

Edited August 18, 2021 by welshbairn

[O'Kelly Isley III]

8 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

You are labouring under a heavy misapprehension that I support almost any of the policies advocated by any of the three politicians you’ve just named.

The UK has a substantial military. For various historical reasons, it is deployed in certain places.

That being the case it should always be resourced and deployed in the places where it will do the most good for humanity as a whole, honouring our obligations to people who cannot protect themselves but whom we can protect.

One does not have to support all British foreign policy to advocate a continued presence instead of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Sorry, but I'm not labouring under any misapprehensions and I was making no linkage between these MP's and your support or otherwise; the point I was making, and which I note you don't acknowledge, was the historical and rampant hypocrisy of UK and other Western nations' foreign policy.

As for UK militarism, your sentiments are noble but stoked by a right-wing media too much Government strategic thinking remains rooted in the 19th Century when Brittania ruled the waves.  The world has changed and Britain's place in it has diminished.  Far too much of our young human capital, very many from poor communities, continues to perish overseas on military assignments of dubious premise.  Time for the penny to drop.   

[Ad Lib]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

So who would you have bombed? ISIS, the Syrian Army, Al Nusra, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Kurds, the Turks? All of them?

Predominantly ISIS, but where necessary also the Syrian Army whenever it was engaged in attacks against groups other than ISIS and on civilians.

I’m not pretending that the civil war hasn’t precipitated some awkward alliances (not least leading to the Kurds, Turks and parts of Al Qaida all being against both ISIS and Assad). But the reason it became such a fragmented war was precisely because the international community was not robust enough in providing a counterweight to the Russian backed Assad regime in the military response to ISIS, which was after all operating across an international border in a country where NATO had a significant ongoing military presence at the invitation of its government.

We ended up in a ridiculous situation where NATO could bomb an ISIS convoy when it was in Iraq, but had to get Assad and the Russians to give the all clear to attack the same fucking convoy in Syria, meanwhile Assad was gassing children in attacks that had absolutely nothing to do with ISIS.

Our hardly-intervention didn’t get rid of ISIS, emboldened a war criminal President, and ceded influence in the region to Russia, a country that is hostile to Western values in Europe let alone in the Middle East.

Sometimes deeply suboptimal outcomes are the best we can hope for, and sometimes they involve more military involvement on our part and lots of deaths. Sadly the world we live in requires us to weigh up which outcome is the least terrible for the largest number of people.