Taliban telling Biden staying past Aug 31 is a red line. Also says people clinging to and falling off departing air craft weren't scared but wanted to live in the west

https://news.sky.com/story/afghanist...roops-12388436

Sure, I quibble too. 1933-1973 sounds good though. Before and after they were attacked or occupied. Even by Cengiz Khan.

I'm reading about the Shah now pretty crazy:

'In 1973, while Zahir Shah was vacationing in Italy, his regime was overthrown in a coup d'etat by his cousin and former prime minister, Mohammed Daoud Khan, who established a single-party republic, ending more than 225 years of continuous monarchical government.[6] He remained in exile near Rome until 2002, returning to Afghanistan after the end of the Taliban government. He was given the title Father of the Nation, which he held until his death in 2007.[1]'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zahir_Shah

I remember my Afghan employee had to fly home to Afghanistan because some neighbour 'took' her house while she was living in Europe. That reminded me of that Shah coup.

Qatar is apparently a mediator between the West and the Afghans. They are flying (playing air taxi) taliban leaders in their military jets now. https://news.in-24.com/world/amp/140357


'Qatar helped members of girls Afghan robotics team flee Afghanistan amid Taliban takeover"

https://usatoday.com/amp/8212423002


- Why is there a Taliban office in Doha?

http://Www.france24.com/en/live-news...lks-host-qatar

The Taliban is in Qatar (now or always has been?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_in_Qatar

So now they are negotiating in Doha Qatar:

Following the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, on 17 August 2021, leader of the Taliban-affiliated Hezb-e-Islami party Gulbuddin Hekmatyar met with both Hamid Karzai, former President of Afghanistan, and Abdullah Abdullah, Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation and former Chief Executive, in Doha seeking to form a government.[4][5] President Ashraf Ghani, having fled the country to either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, emerged in the UAE and said that he supported such negotiations and was in talks to return to Afghanistan

The fact that Afghanistan and it’s history and America’s involvement there exists is not Biden’s fault.

The unmitigated disaster at the airport and the fact that tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us will not get out is Biden’s fault. The Americans who get trapped behind will be Biden’s fault. He’s known he would pull out of Afghanistan as president for a decade. He’s been the commander in chief for 8 months.

What probably happened is Biden gave the full withdrawal order by 9/11 then was involved in 0 decisions from there. It’s true that Americans didn’t care about Afghanistan last month. It’s true that no American is comfortable watching our military getting embarrassed by a band of terrorists.

This will not hurt Biden politically because Americans will find we care deeply about Afghan society. It will hurt Biden politically because it reinforces the existing attack against him that he is an old man in control of nothing.

I’m open to hearing arguments against ^ that

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/w...e=articleShare

Firefight this morning at the airport

Agree with 95% of what you say except hurting him politically if he sought reelection. The country is so divided that no one is flipping to the Republicans over this.
For sure there were people who voted for Trump the 1st time around and switched sides to Biden but most likely those voters were going to return to any non Trump Republican.

What a disaster that he couldn't get a lot of Afghans out that had helped us over the years.
Never liked the guy but this is Trump level incompetence I didn't expect. Come on man!

You’re probably right that people won’t vote on it. But its ****ed up if no one loses their job and in a few months we forget about this. The right-wing attack machine is just so well oiled that if they find traction on an Afghanistan attack in polling we will not stop hearing about this.

The ones that consider themselves Independent will flip on this. Take the Southern Border and Afghanistan and if its not Trump in 2024 you may see some movement

When Biden says what could we have done different lots of folks yell at the TV "get the people and equipment out first you idiot" As well when they see the Brits and French sending Troops in to get folks......

I have no idea what this means. It would be long term political suicide for the Taliban to attack. The problem is the haqqani network may be making decisions for the Taliban. I hope not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...-live-updates/

I would be careful about romanticizing that period of Afghani history. In 1970, Afghan life expectancy at birth was 37 years old. (For comparison, life expectancy at birth today is 65.) And literacy rates were far less than half of what they are now.

They could start bombing access points and just disavow responsibility if American reaction gets too strong. Or they could just blockade the airport and force Americans to expand zone of control. There is a lot of ways for them to “react” that doesn’t involve an attack on American troops.

The argument from a Haqqani would be the West is never going to recognize a Taliban government, we’ll have no access to institutions no matter what we do, but its also the case well have access to loans from China and weapons from Russia.

These people come here kill all our friends and families for 20 years, steal our country, now we sit here and let our professional class flee? The people we need to run this place. So they steal our country for 20 years, we finally take it back and now we let them steal our people?

Also we’ve got 100,000 mortars to rain on that airport with 30 minutes notice.

That’s the argument for the Taliban to stop the airlift and they have the weapons of a well equipped modern military minus air power (we think).

Check out the timeline, these are just the time nobody was messing with them.

'Life expectancy

total population: 63.2 years (2019)[2][3][28]
country comparison to the world: 214
male: 63.3 years (2019)[2]
female: 63.2 years (2019)[2]
Period Life expectancy in
Years Period Life expectancy in
Years
1950–1955 28.6 1985–1990 47.7
1955–1960 31.1 1990–1995 51.7
1960–1965 33.4 1995–2000 54.2
1965–1970 35.6 2000–2005 56.9
1970–1975 37.8 2005–2010 60.0
1975–1980 40.4 2010–2015 62.3
1980–1985 43.6 2015-2020 63.2 '

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ife_expectancy

A Historical Timeline of Afghanistan
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politic...ne-afghanistan

Something tells me that the US Military has technology at least as advanced as a $90 smart phone when it comes to it falling into the wrong hands.

I'm sure there's a switch that can be flipped somewhere to remotely disable all of the electronics on those aircraft.

Virtual tour of Afghanistan with a pretty good ambassador . Check it out:

US military isn't exactly known for being forward thinking. Old article but I doubt anything has changed:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...tary-weaponry/

maybe an eject seat like james bond?

Saudi Arabia is backing them, qatar, uae, and probaby the russians.
I think they can get anyone incuding tech wizzards from pakistan and india. I tgiggity is right, they are not foresighted enough.

Check out these pommegranates. They make the best in the world in Kandahar, did anyone know this? Thats not the only thing that is growing there perfectly, just about anything. The kids eat 10-20 pommegranades a day. lol from in 3 first video.

I don't understand your point. These statistics are consistent with what I said. Life expectancy at birth was 35.6 years in 1965-1970 and 37.8 years in 1970-1975--lowest in the region by a wide margin.

You cited 1933-1973 as the "good" period. That's why I cited life expectancy stats from 1970, the end of the period.

These statistics of course do not prove that Soviet or American military involvement in Afghanistan was a good idea. My point was that you should not romanticize the Afghanistan of the 1960s and 1970s. Most people in Afghanistan during that period were undereducated, had poor access to health care, and very much were were living on the margins. That's why life expectancy was so low.

by the time the 2024 prez election rolls around this will be a 'blip on the screen' for a few reasons:

1) it was going to be an ugly process regardless

2) the Trump administration first elevated the Taliban then capitulated to the terrorist group in the Feb., 2020 Doha Agreement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Agreement_(2020)

i.e. the images you're seeing now are a direct result of having a clown show adminstration (including SoS Pompeo) in power for 4 years. Moments like this are a direct result of the citizenry being hoodwinked into voting in a reality TV star to the nation's highest office. Trump and Pompeo's dreadful deal left the U.S. no leverage:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...nline_manual_5

3) more crucially, as long as the NFL and Nascar are on TV and McDonald's and Cracker Barrels are open, the dreadful obese lot that make up the majority of the checked out American citizenry will mindlessly vote for their "team" regardless of real world events on the ground (or how actual policies directly affect them and their families).

i must say it is cute though seeing a Canadian think that the events of this month will move the needle either way in a few years time (assuming the U.S. is a 'democracy' at that time).

yeah my bad, thats pretty interesting. You would think food shortage is not possible, and they have best conditions for growing.

Easy but also factual.

Yeah. Election predictions about 2024 based on Afghanistan right now are about as valuable as going back and reading op-eds from Aug 2001 about Bush's chances in 2004.