Watching the breaking news coverage of Kabul

[AngryOldDem]

My rage is growing by the minute. We can blame Trump, et. al., all we want, but the true responsibility for this lies with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the massive military-industrial complex that has benefitted from this charnel house for the past two decades.

I’m seeing yard signs all over — September 11 We Won’t Forget. And we shouldn’t. But while we wave our flags and beat our chests we must also remember those who have made the aftermath of that day just as horrific.

I stand by President Biden and his decision to end this sorry clusterfuck.

Just had to get that off my chest.

[JohnSJ]

1. Actually it was Ronald Reagan who planted the seeds. At least the intelligence was correct, and

Americans were warned to stay away in the last 24 hours, and hopefully they heeded that advice

I have no doubt our soldiers are working to evacuate the remaining Americans and allies

[OnlinePoker]

13. Actually, it was Jimmy Carter who started support for the Mujahideen.

The Taliban are an offshoot of the Mujahideen.

[JohnSJ]

16. Thanks, I forget about that, through the CIA

[usaf-vet]

2. +1000. Well said.

[gab13by13]

3. Listened to Stephanie Miller on Sirius

she had a Congressman on who was a platoon leader in Afghanistan, oh my god what an intelligent explanation of president Biden's gutsy decision to leave. He said our military can win every battle but there was no end game, no good situation because the Taliban can just wait us out.

He said we shouldn't ignore the good we have done for the country while we were there; Schooling, diminishing poverty, diminishing hunger and sickness and infant mortality. With that said, the Congressman stated that we have left Afghanistan a better place but he said we shall see 6 months from now if the Taliban wipes out all of the gains.

[COL Mustard]

6. As A Taliban Leader Said

About us Americans, you have all the clocks, but we have all the time.

The collapse of the Afghan government was predetermined, and was guaranteed to happen as soon as we left. I just don’t think anyone saw it happening in less than two weeks.

[Loge23]

4. Spot on.

The military-industrial complex has essentially co-opted our military into a human grist mill for the grifting of trillions of American taxpayer dollars. This includes the defense industry, the scumbag lobbyists, and the thieves in the Senate and Congress who took the bribes.
Damn them all.

[hibbing]

5. Don't leave out Condi and Colin

Glad I cut the cable and don't have to listen to those two spew their bullshit.

Peace

[IamHappy]

7. Agree.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. Doug Feith and his pals Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz

bear much of the real blame. They are the ones who penned the alternate fact Intel reports used to initiate and justify the invasion along with the later mission creep. These Neo-Cons created the fantasy of a "liberated" Afghanistan and Iraq becoming independent democracies as a bulwark against surrounding Islamist theocracies.

[AngryOldDem]

9. Keep adding to the list.

There’s more than enough blame to go around, and I hope people realize that. Biden just had the presidential courage to say no more. It’s a region that the West never could and never will understand, going back to the Balfour Agreement.

When would have been a good time to go? There never is!

[Ford_Prefect]

12. The three I mentioned wrote much of the policy that was implemented which created the current

situation. Depending upon who you read they may have had a hand in the circumstances which led to the need for such a mission.

We may have been justified in pursuing Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda as a limited goal. We were not ever going to make permanent changes in Afghanistan without overturning the entire culture in defiance of the history of the region and the country, not to mention international law. That assessment existed before W took office.

[TFRD]

11. Let us not forget

that none of the 9-11 terrorists were from Afghanistan. This war was for a purpose, but that purpose had nothing to do with 9-11.

[tetedur]

15. The purpose was to get Bin Laden and the Taliban allowed his group "Al-Qaida" to stay

in Afghanistan. Remember this little tidbit of the reason for our involvement?

Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book ''Bin Laden, la verité interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.

The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

According to the book, the government of Bush began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.

The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, the analysts maintain.

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5166

I guess we did carpet them with gold (2 trillion dollars worth) and we carpeted them with bombs too.

[TFRD]

17. Yes yes yes

Always interesting to see when one looks beyond the obvious.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread AngryOldDem.

[AngryOldDem]

18. Thank you.

This is all just so senseless. Our mission ended with the death of bin Laden. Would our staying for another 20 years end differently? We all know the answer to that.