The US is set to be out of Afghanistan by the end of the month, but a flurry of major Taliban gains has the Biden Administration ordering airstrikes and calling in B-52s, pointing to deeper involvement.
While most of the territory changing hands is in northern Afghanistan, the big US airstrikes were against Helmand’s capital of Lashkar Gah. There, the US attacked a health clinic and a school, killing at least 20 civilians, including women and children.
Security officials said that the US strikes hit areas where the Taliban were hidden. This left Shaheed Anwar Khan High School and the government run clinic totally destroyed. Locals described street-to-street fighting in neighborhoods, which was also endangering civilians.
Airstrikes have done substantial harm to Afghan civilians for decades, and the latest US strikes show that hasn’t changed. At the same time, there is no indication that these strikes are changing the situation on the ground, and the Afghan government seems fine being an apologist for the strikes, claiming that the Taliban were there.
So far, US intervention is centered on air support, but the Pentagon has promised that the US will support the Ghani government, and if losses continue, it may be that the administration may start trying to reverse the trend with ground troops as well.
Shades of Israel. Substitute “Hamas was hiding there” with “Taliban was hiding there”. No discernible proof needed: just another justification for murdering civilians and destroying infrastructure with the intent of terrorizing the local population.
Israel and Amerikkka are the top terrorists in existence and practice the same modus operandi.
Even with proof, it’s still wrong. Just like torture. Always wrong. And if it was done to us, or our partner in terror Israel, we/they would be screaming bloody murder.
Not to mention over-the-top retaliation!
When enemy soldiers are hiding in public buildings they must first be given the command to all come out without their weapons before surrendering before such buildings can be bombed. If that was not done in this case then this action was almost certainly a war crime.
And so it goes………………….
A serious question:
Why is it that the United States is unable to find proxies who share its values and are actually willing to fight for them?
Instead, it gets cranks and opportunists who only want to use American power to settle private beefs, and thugs and mercenaries who are fighting for plunder or pay and who cut and run as soon as the going gets tough.
Why? It should be obvious why. The US just cant invade a country, overthrow the government, set up a McDonald’s and a Starbucks and expect the people to be Ford driving flag waivers.
Culture in the US (and the west in general) has had an evolution of literally 1,000+ years that greatly differs from the places that we invade. Afghanistan never had the American Revolution, or the Magna Carta, or Charlemagne, or any of the other events that have shaped the way we look at the world. Their entire worldview is completely alien to ours. We will never find folks over there who share our values, because culturally, they have had different values literally, since the Persian Empire.
When the Afghanis (and others in the East) react the way they do, Im not the least bit surprised.
It ain’t just Afghanistan.
Im not saying it is. What I am saying is that there is a very serious pattern. We always go into this stuff thinking that these people will be just like us, or see our values. It doesnt work lile that. Change of that scale has to be organic and come from their own culture.
It would be no different if Japan invaded the US and installed a government and expected us to be like the Japanese. It wont happen.
The British seemed better at it, probably because they mostly expected to rule and exploit, using local as much as possible, as they didn’t have the spare manpower to do much else. This is why, for instance, the British Raj generally discouraged Christian missionary work. It didn’t help enough with the “rule and exploit” part to be something worth torking off locals.
Paradoxically, perhaps because the British Empire was freer to run itself this way, precisely because it was less responsive to the concerns of Britons than is the contemporary United States. If we take it as given that the Kabul regime is but a puppet of the United States, or at least that it must make its policies with American support in mind, then any policy will be subject to scrutiny from a spectrum of western interest groups.
They have to keep the military and the defense contractors happy. They have to keep the feminists happy. They have to keep the environmentalists happy. They have to keep the good government types and the democracy activists happy. They have to keep their private financing sources happy.
None of them live in Afghanistan, and all of them have their congressmen on speed dial.
The Raj just had to keep the colonial office happy (as it an arm of Parliament) and not do a repeat of 1857.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/us/politics/taliban-afghanistan-united-states.html?smid=tw-share
The Taliban will attend a Wednesday meeting with Russian, Chinese, and American officials.
They have little to gain with indulging American demands. The American bombing campaign is taking out infrastructure and civilians.
For Christ’s sake, the US-trained Afghan army refuses to defend President Ghani. For the average Afghan soldier, accepting a US salary was about making ends meet as opposed to defending a US proxy state.
“For Christ’s sake, the US-trained Afghan army refuses to defend President Ghani.”
Got a source for that? Because if that is not an admission that the Kabul regime is trapped and cornered, then I do not know what is.
The U.S. is determined to leave Afghanistan with no dignity left. Stop the bombing. You’ve surrendered.