Re <<Pakistan invasion>>
‘They’ want to blame somebody, anybody, except looking in the mirror.
Here below is Bloomberg, saying his piece of something, that which he could have said during any of the 20 years.
I remember how enthusiastic the suspect MSM were for invading Afghanistan and setting up a puppet regime, and now all looking away at the turd they dropped, and baying for another war
Both DNC and GOP owns the Afghanistan war, and the like-minded are all deep in the mess.
bloomberg.com
The U.S. Can’t Walk Away From Afghanistan
After this tragedy, can America’s word ever be trusted?
Michael R. Bloomberg
August 15, 2021, 6:00 PM GMT+8
The disintegration of the Afghan state over a few short weeks has been shocking to watch. It shouldn’t have been surprising.
Since President Joe Biden announced plans to pull U.S. troops out of the country in April, a sweeping Taliban offensive has led to the capture of nearly every major city. The national armed forces have all but collapsed. Foreign countries are evacuating their citizens and embassy staff. Afghans are attempting to flee. As the insurgents now bear down on Kabul, a defeat looks imminent.
Even at this late date, the U.S. should stand with what remains of the national government and the heroic holdouts in the Afghan armed forces. Targeted U.S. air strikes and a rushed deployment of 5,000 American troops may yet stave off a collapse of the capital and buy precious time for evacuations. But no one should doubt the end game: In all likelihood, the Taliban will soon be in complete command.
It bears emphasizing that even the best-case scenario qualifies as a disaster. Afghanistan’s democracy will be eviscerated. Its economic gains will be reversed. More jobs and homes and lives will be lost. Ethnic minorities will be imperiled and extremist groups emboldened. Drug networks will expand and refugee flows will surge. Much of the human progress the U.S. has bought with the roughly $2 trillion it has spent in Afghanistan over two decades could be obliterated in weeks. For women and girls, the threat is especially menacing.
The strategic consequences will be no less fraught — at home and abroad. The terrorist safe haven that gave rise to the Sept. 11 attacks 20 years ago could be given space to come to life again. America will likely cede influence in the region to its adversaries, particularly China, which has already begun forging ties with the Taliban to gain longer-term access to Afghanistan’s natural resources. U.S. partners elsewhere will surely notice how summarily the administration has abandoned its Afghan counterparts. America’s word — and its commitments — will come under doubt worldwide.
It would be easy to blame Biden for this chaos. But the fault isn’t his alone. Over four administrations, American policy in Afghanistan has veered from incoherent to counterproductive. After largely routing al-Qaeda, the U.S. had little focus and few plausible objectives in the country. Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, its mission was marred by mismanagement, cultural naivete and recurring strategic missteps. The misguided deal that Donald Trump struck with the Taliban last year, in which he ignored the Afghan government while effectively surrendering America’s leverage, was only the nail in the coffin.
Not long ago, a kind of tense stability had seemed to prevail. U.S. fatalities had dwindled, a peace deal had been signed and a much-reduced American military presence seemed to be keeping chaos at bay. It’s doubtful that the situation would have remained calm indefinitely: With the U.S. vowing to leave under the terms of Trump’s deal, and effectively abandoning its commitment to the Afghan people, the Taliban simply were biding their time.
In the face of such tragedy, can the U.S. still manage to leave with some measure of honor?
As a start, the administration must offer more help to the Afghan people. It should continue funding the government and military as long as they remain viable, while also offering aid to civil society. It should accelerate efforts to evacuate the roughly 17,000 Afghans who worked for the U.S. — as cooks, translators, drivers, security guards and engineers — and have now become targets, along with their families. It should make every possible effort to enable imperiled Afghans in the broader population to flee, including establishing air corridors. And it should work with its allies to establish a viable resettlement plan for refugees, while pressuring Pakistan and Iran to accept their share.
Biden also needs to show leadership in constraining the Taliban. If extremist groups re-emerge in Afghanistan, airstrikes and special-operations raids should follow. Cajoling neighboring countries for intelligence support and basing rights for U.S. planes will be essential. Even if the Taliban retakes power, the U.S. has a moral and strategic responsibility to remain engaged in Afghanistan’s future. Any sanctions relief for a Taliban-run government — let alone international aid or investment — should be premised on respecting basic human rights, controlling the drug trade and reviving the peace process.
Compared to the horrors now unfolding, these steps will no doubt seem meager. And there’s no shortage of blame to go around for the misshapen conclusion to the war. But both the U.S. and the international community need to accept a new reality — and do their best to shape it toward better ends.
Words are easy. Solutions are hard. Equally hard, though, are the inescapable memories — as distant as fascist Europe, as close as Syria — of what has happened when America has not done enough.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net
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