"... in which the insurgents guarantee to prevent Afghan territory from being used by terrorists, and that could lead to a full pullout of American troops in return for a cease-fire and Taliban talks with the Afghan government, the chief United States negotiator said Monday..... After nine years of halting efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban, the draft framework, though preliminary, is the biggest tangible step toward ending a two-decade war that has cost tens of thousands of lives and profoundly changed American foreign policy.... A senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations that were still continuing, said that the Taliban delegation had asked for time to confer with their leadership about the American insistence that the insurgents talk with the Afghan government and agree to a cease-fire as part of any finalized deal. The official said they had made it clear to the Taliban that all the issues discussed were 'interconnected' as part of a 'package deal' that he likened to a Russian nesting doll...."
That's the report, just now, in the NYT.
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106 comments:
This won't end well.
The Nobel committee will never give Trump the Peace Prize, but if Obama has class, he could send his over.
So, time to ramp it up on women's rights in the Islamic world?
Get out now. Whatever happens after we leave should be of no importance to us.
"women's rights"
Sorry, it looks like the Times started on that yesterday.
But what ever will the Military Industrial Complex find to do now? Maybe they will decide to protect the oil fields and mineral deposits of Venezuela. Netherlands are in NATO so they can be made to give us Aruba for our military base, complete with a built in R&R beach for the combat troops.
I am afraid Richard is right though I hope he's wrong.
This does seem to be more progress than anyone else has gotten in 40 years.
Might even be more winning.
Hooray for pdjt if it is
John Henry
Is this one of those things we blame on Trump? Should I be outraged at the racist misogyny or something equally offensive? Has Nathan Phillips opined on this yet?
Getting the US out is good, and as AllenS says, there is nothing bad that will happen to us from our leaving.
If true, someone on our side deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Why didn’t Hillary or Heinz get this done? They were flying all over.
How can Trump be impeached when he is so effective?
You either have to make a deal with them or kill them all, at some point.
Richard Belaire said...
This won't end well
Did not begin well either when USA entered Afghanistan.
Has been downwards since then
How can Trump be impeached when he is so effective?
For making Obama look bad?
Did not begin well either when USA entered Afghanistan.
In hindsight, we should never have relented in our bombing of Tora Bora, and left the country when they were all dead there. But you can’t let a country attack you and kill thousands of citizens in a major city. Of course it would have also been better if Bill Clinton hadn’t bombed them first, creating a de-facto state of war between our countries.
Hmm, I thought the US was angling towards a new and improved Thirty Years War. And Trump wants to stop it? This will really send George Will and Wild Bill Kristol into orbit.
Afghanistan has the stategic value of ZERO. It always did. Unless the Media helps the Bush Family create a 9/11 counter-attack story, that just so happens to re-open the Bush Family's Heroin Import businesses the Taliban guys had horribly shut down. It's for World Trade cash flows that need US Military protection for the strategic American owned Drug Cartel.
Yes, 9-11 was almost certainly done by the Bush family because they were cheesed off at the Taliban because of the loss of their heroin business.
Thanks for cleaning up last night's mess, Althouse.
Maybe we can convince the Chinese to invade Afghanistan, as a place to send their Uighar's.
Richard Belaire is right; this won't end well.
Possibly the Taliban will cause the neighboring states enough trouble that they will move in and settle the Talibans' hash in self defense, but prayer is not policy.
When you think about it, if Afghanistan had any strategic value for the United States, that would certainly call into question the purity of our motives for going in there. People would be claiming we went in there to gain some strategic advantage and that 9-11 was a pretext. This is why these arguments are such nonsense. To argue that there was no strategic value is to implicitly buy into the whole right to go to war to protect the empire way of thinking. “If we had done it for that reason, I could see it!” The nice thing about them is that stupid people can make them and feel like they won. I am going to assume that TradGuy was doing satire.
The Iraq war was about strategic advantage and was cooked up by the deep state playing at “The Great Game” which fracking has kind of taken the fun out of. I am sure that when Afghanistan actually made an attack like that, the risk of an attack by Iraq rose from theoretical to something we had to deal with, in a lot of people’s perception. But still, it’s clear from the words of the Clinton administration that the deep state wanted a war there.
PPPT is going to weigh in now that the Bad Orange Man is ending these wars, but in his heart, he wishes he were ordering the killing of many many more brown people around the world. Because that’s what racists do.
This is exactly what Hitler would have done...
All Afghanistan is not worth the life of one American grenadier. Just stop giving them or Pakistan any money.
"... in which the insurgents guarantee to prevent Afghan territory from being used by terrorists..."
That is all we ever needed and all we should have been trying to do. Occupying Afghanistan, of all places, implementing regime change and nation building never made sense. We should have mounted a "Punitive Expedition" like we did in Mexico in 1916 to convince them we could inflict more pain than al Qaeda could..
Now, whether we can trust them is the big question...
"Mr. Khalilzad said that the Taliban were firm about agreeing to keep Afghan territory from being used as a staging ground for terrorism by groups like Al Qaeda and other international terrorists, and had agreed to provide guarantees and an enforcement mechanism for that promise."
I wonder what the enforcement mechanism would consist of?
"Russian nesting doll?"
So Putin must be pulling Trump's strings on this too? Heh
I suppose we'll commit to a big annual financial aid package Taliban leaders can plunder and that could potentially be cut off.
We probably won't insist on holding some of their children hostage.
Seventeen years and the non-Taliban Afganis haven't picked up the task to stay non-Taliban? Too bad, time to go. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things, not act as some corrupt politician's police force. Good riddance.
From the Komments
The Taliban... the entire country of Afghanistan for that matter, is as corrupt as the trump administration. I don't for a minute believe this peace accord will work.
Think back at how the Taliban cruelly ruled the country before and how much Trump admires despots. Lives meant nothing to the Taliban then and mean nothing to them now.
To be honest, most of the comments are positive.
I wonder what the enforcement mechanism would consist of?
Well, I assume that if they get off another attack like 9-11, they will get the living shit bombed out of them for a while, enough to make it not seem worth it. Which is what the “enforcement mechanism” should have been before.
Martin said...
Occupying Afghanistan, of all places, implementing regime change and nation building never made sense. We should have mounted a "Punitive Expedition" like we did in Mexico in 1916 to convince them we could inflict more pain than al Qaeda could..
If there was ever a mission for the United States Air Force, it was Afghanistan; GOD went to the time and trouble of making Diego Garcia, just so the United States Air Force would have a base for striking Afghanistan. The only troops we ever needed were Laser Designators
Don't know why we're wasting our time. This is what they do. When we're gone they will do as they want. We should be careful to leave safely.
"Well, I assume that if they get off another attack like 9-11, they will get the living shit bombed out of them"
Yeah, but that's not something the Taliban has to agree to.
Thanks to two really terrible war Presidents - Bush and Obama - we have suffered a huge military defeat. This article attempts to put lipstick on a pig and pretend that there will be some sort of dignified, honorable extraction from Afghanistan. Typical Ruling Class shiny object crap. We all know that Afghanistan will become a Narco-terrorist hellhole. And at some point they will do something that will require a response. Maybe we can make it 4 wars in a row that our lousy politicians have lost.
Blogger Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...
This is exactly what Hitler would have done...
True, if you mean the Taliban.
Hitler broke every promise he ever made, and the fascinating thing is he told them ahead of time that that was what he was going to do.
And still they "negotiated" with him.
"Peace in our time" indeed!
Yeah, but that's not something the Taliban has to agree to.
Exactly.
At Wharton, they teach you the folly of making decisions based on sunk costs.
The Taliban are fundamentalist religious fanatics for a proselytizing all-encompassing religion; not patriotic nationalists.
I can't think of any reason for us to stay in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was a Muslim hell hole before we went in and it will be a Muslim hell hole after we leave. So long as it is dominated by Muslims it will be a hell hole no matter how long our military remains. Unless they are willing to change their culture and their religion there is nothing we can do for them.
@ tim
You're preaching to the choir on that, but the article is about negotiating an enforcement mechanism.
When I said I wondered what the enforcement mechanism would be, I didn't mean to imply I wasn't completely skeptical about whatever they come up with. Just the opposite in fact. I guess I didn't make that clear.
Obviously the “enforcement mechanism” is a fig leaf. I don’t think it matters.
Tom Brokaw joins Dan Rather at the Ted Baxter club. Just like frogs going across a cattle guard.
Peace with Honor.
Agree to a ceasefire as prelude to American pullout? Sounds like how we left Vietnam. At least we'll have lost fewer people to this ridiculous bit of nation building.
The negotiations, like the Iraqi surge, are probably designed to provide the US with some sort of face saving method of withdrawing from the conflict. I'm fine with that, since I never supported the occupation from day one.
@tim in vermont:
But you can’t let a country attack you and kill thousands of citizens in a major city. Of course it would have also been better if Bill Clinton hadn’t bombed them first, creating a de-facto state of war between our countries.
Afghanistan did not attack us, though. We were attacked by a non-state group that was being harbored by Afghanistan. And most of 9/11 was planned in places like Germany and Malaysia and executed within the United States. And Clinton's bombing of Afghanistan in 1998 were in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
@gilbar:
If there was ever a mission for the United States Air Force, it was Afghanistan;
To initiate punitive strikes against the Afghan government, perhaps. Which would have been an appropriate response to harboring the 9/11 perpetrators. However, the US in my opinion has been over reliant and overconfident in air power for decades. Yes, it can be very effective at incapacitating another state's war-making power, but it is not especially useful in urban guerilla war or counterinsurgency.
“Afghanistan was a Muslim hell hole before we went in and it will be a Muslim hell hole after we leave. So long as it is dominated by Muslims it will be a hell hole no matter how long our military remains. Unless they are willing to change their culture and their religion there is nothing we can do for them.”
Yes, and only other Muslims with no ROE but “kill them all and let Allah sort them out” would be able to pacify the place. This “peace deal” sounds exactly like the bit of playacting that gave cover to our flight from Vietnam. But that’s OK, the sooner we leave the better. As to women’s rights, I’m sure the Left’s respect for multiculturalism will ensure that it remains no more than a passing concern.
Afghanistan did not attack us, though. We were attacked by a non-state group that was being harbored by Afghanistan.
Kind of a “letter of marque” kind of deal, a distinction without a difference. Mullah Omar knew of the attacks and permitted them.
And Clinton's bombing of Afghanistan in 1998 were in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
The cruise missile attack was utterly ineffective, which we knew at the time. We had to warn Pakistan, which promptly warned bin Laden, but still we had made an attack on a sovereign country with which we were not at war.
"Obviously the “enforcement mechanism” is a fig leaf. I don’t think it matters."
We won't have much leverage after a pullout, but maybe a little.
Bombing is the stick. What they'll negotiate is how many carrots we'll promise to send them every year.
The Taliban as a whole are religious zealots, but that doesn't mean the individual leaders aren't greedy and corrupt. I guess that's what we'll be relying on.
In addition to being a fig leaf, which is a good way to put it, I also think the negotiations are a way on our part to delay pulling out.
Afghanistan is not an industrialized nation. There is very little there to bomb.
@tim in vermont:
Mullah Omar knew of the attacks and permitted them.
What is the evidence for this? The Taliban certainly provided refuge for bin Laden in the 1990s but most evidence points to their concern over his using Afghan soil for his political operations. It would also contradict most of what we know about bin Laden and Omar's relationship.
The cruise missile attack was utterly ineffective, which we knew at the time. We had to warn Pakistan, which promptly warned bin Laden, but still we had made an attack on a sovereign country with which we were not at war.
I agree that they were ineffective, but they were based on the same premise that led us into the Afghan War in 2001.
"Peace deal" or no peace deal. If it gives us an exit from the quagmire, I'm for it.
Afghanistan will never be a peaceful place; it'll never be a democracy. I just want to get out of there and let then fight it out amongst themselves, just as they've been doing for a thousand years.
The role of Saudi Arabia in facilitating this process is one reason (among many) Trump didn't overreact to the Khashoggi murder.
@EDH:
The role of Saudi Arabia in facilitating this process is one reason (among many) Trump didn't overreact to the Khashoggi murder.
The Khashoggi murder was instructive only for revealing what a farce the supposedly "new" Saudi Arabia was. And was a symptom of why the US should distance itself from MBS, not a causal agent. MBS' tenure has been marked by impetuousness and incompetence. It is ironic that for as much as Trump has tried to define his policies as the anti-Obama, in regards to Saudi Arabia, he has merely doubled down on two of the worst Obama-era policies: arms sales to Saudi Arabia and support for the Saudi War on Yemen.
sad news for girls who want to go to school.
steve uhr
PRO TIP:
When the party you support has anti-Semitic elected officials who favor cliterectomies for young girls, you kind of lose your influence when worrying about the girls.
Hagar said... Afghanistan is not an industrialized nation. There is very little there to bomb.
there's huts, shacks, and madrases; Plenty to bomb.
Plus there are Huge poppy fields, just Begging for defoliation
j farmer said... but it is not especially useful in urban guerilla war or counterinsurgency.
It's PARTICULARLY effect in urban guerilla war! Ask Tokyo
Birkel -- a) I am an independent. I don't "support" any party b) I think it is outrageous that anyone would favor cliterectomies or oppose laws outlawing same.
Who are the elected leaders who favor cliterectomies?
PRO TIP -- Don't always play identity politics. Just because someone disagrees with you on one issue doesn't mean they disagree with you on all issues.
Almost 20-years of nation building is enough. Afghanistan isn’t Germany or Japan.
@gilbar:
It's PARTICULARLY effect in urban guerilla war! Ask Tokyo
I'm sorry, what guerilla's were we targeting in Tokyo? The firebombing of Tokyo in fact had nothing to do with and is not an example of urban guerilla warfare. It was an effort to reduce Japan's warmaking ability and to compel a surrender. The efforts in guerilla war are to remove irregular forces operating from within a civilian population.
did we have problems with guerillas in toyko? no QED
@gilbar:
did we have problems with guerillas in toyko? no QED
Then why "Ask Tokyo" about its "effect in urban guerilla war?"
steve uhr: "sad news for girls who want to go to school."
The ideology that supports Islamic Supremacism and covers up their crimes in nations all over the earth checks in.
Take a gander at Rotherham lefty, followed by the lefty judge ruling in the US that cliterectomies are A-OK, followed by the lefty judges in Europe who have ruled any criticism of Islam is now criminally punishable...
....then, after you've read all that, do what you usually do: pretend none of it exists and you occupy some self-appointed moral highground.
Or better yet, pick up a rifle and stand a watch. Either way, no one gives a damn what talking points you think you're entitled to.
steve uhr: "Birkel -- a) I am an independent. I don't "support" any party b) I think it is outrageous that anyone would favor cliterectomies or oppose laws outlawing same.
LOL
Not "anyone" numbskull: lefty democrats.
Steve uhr can always be counted on to go all "generic" on us when the dems/lefties/LLR's are up to their usual shenanigans.
Motherfucker! What's the military-industrial-government defense expert industry to do? Ahhh....Venezuela.
steve uhr:
Lying is a bad look.
Your partisanship is well established.
Why must every Leftist Collectivist lie about supporting Jill Stein.
I am taken to believe Jill Stein won the popular vote, if we could believe a single one of you liars.
The effect of such a bombing as Tokyo is to destroy the urban environment and kill its inhabitants. A more modern technology used for making a desert and calling it peace, in other words. In the case of Japan, this was part of the negotiation that is war, the contest of pain. Nuclear weapons were just an escalation of this.
The only reason guerilla warfare works is because the state forces have a limit on their response, they are unable to use historical methods to deal with opposition. Recall Tamerlanes towers of skulls, or when Hulagu razed Baghdad and massacred its population.
Guerrilla warfare in general persists as long as the response is half-measures, due to a lack of resources or an unwillingness to go further into a total solution. Total solutions do work; even not-quite total solutions do, though they are expensive. Depopulating the countryside and isolating the population away from the guerrillas has defeated insurgencies. The US has done this several times.
The problem, one of them, with Afghanistan is that the Taliban are run from across the border in Pakistan, with the open support of the true ("deep") Pakistani state. They are a proxy force belonging to the Pakistani military. It has been the Afghan problem from the beginning. Pakistan is simply too large and populous to pressure, and more so as significant pressure is likely to alienate other Muslims.
@buwaya:
The US has done this several times.
Not with air power, the original point. Insurgencies can be defeated, but it is often very difficult without resorting to the methods you describe (i.e. genocide). The two most prominent examples I can think of is the US experience in the Philippines in first decade of the 20th century, of which you likely know much more than I, and the British victory in Malaysia. I think the latter is due primarily to the fact the insurgency was primarily ethnic Chinese, who are widely loathed within Malaysia. Lack of popular support or legitimacy seems to be the linchpin. Similarly, the Iraqi insurgency began losing steam once it lost local support in Anbar.
The reason there was no guerilla war in Japan (one was planned), was because the Japanese state surrendered de facto conditionally; it was a tacit agreement to retain the Japanese government and its society essentially intact, with just a token sacrifice of a few designated victims for prosecution as war criminals.
Japan was a highly disciplined society that could prevent factions from starting their own wars, so a deal made at a high level could stick.
The Afghan deal was always going to be to let it become, again, what it was in 2001, in large part a Pakistani proxy state.
The biggest US victory in guerilla war was actually the defeat of the Viet Cong. They were eliminated as the rural population was rounded up and isolated in strategic hamlets. Ultimately most of the South Vietnam military was in this role, and by 1975 the VC, once so formidable, were just a minor issue. The war then became an entirely conventional contest of resources.
steve uhr: "sad news for girls who want to go to school."
Anything stopping you from heading over and getting in the fight yourself? Or do you just want to send others to go kill and die for your gender politics.
from https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/us-mexico-border-human-smuggling-crossing-methods/605530001/
"In August 2010, the Mexican military uncovered a mass grave containing the blindfolded and handcuffed bodies of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, about 90 miles south of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
The Zetas drug cartel had executed the men and women, mostly Central American migrants on their way to the U.S., because they refused to work for them."
@buwaya:
The biggest US victory in guerilla war was actually the defeat of the Viet Cong.
CORDS and counterinsurgency in South Vietnam is certainly a complicated subject. Honestly, it is not one I have yet come to any firm conclusions about. So I will defer.
There is reporting that Omar was trying to ramp down the terrorism out of Afghanistan but that bin Laden told him that if he forbid the one operation, 9-11, that bin Laden’s men would be dispirited. Here is some evidence:
Documents found in Bin Laden's house, some dating weeks before the Navy Seals' raid, reveal that a three-way conversation was taking place between Omar, Bin Laden and his ideological mentor Ayman al-Zawahiri.. -The Grauniad.
It’s hard with the chaff and fog of Google to find specific stuff, but I will keep looking for the story where I got the above.
If we reserve the right to bomb the Taliban if they get too close to Kabul it will work out.
Otherwise, we are selling out the government of Afghanistan and are fine with the Taliban running the southern 2/3 of the country again.
Maybe that's fine with us, but let's not lie to ourselves about what is happening.
Buwaya is the only one to mention Pakistan.
Until Pakistan stops supporting / controlling the Taliban, it’s all kabuki.
Taliban and al queda are joined at the hip.
We should leave but we should be clear on the consequences. The Taliban will win and Afghanistan will become a radical Islamic state again. It will be trumped up as an American defeat by much of the world.
But the reality will be that leaving will be a win, as every month we have been there is a loss and this has been so from the beginning.
We were intended to go into Afghanistan. This was the strategic purpose of 9/11. This is where are enemies wanted us to fight.
It's a mysterious thing but there has never been a war less opposed by the 'anti-War' left than the war in Afghanistan. This is I suppose conspiracy thinking on my part as I just don't understand how in detail it works, but I don't think it's coincidence. It's an expression of the overlap between the so-called 'anti-War' left and those who believe in Marxism and those who hate America.
There is a lesson here, yet again, about the far-left. Don't believe them. Very few of the principles that they claim are real. They are always about envy. They are always about racism (they embody it). And there are other consistent themes. But everything else is just a fashion.
I feel badly for all the good people that were sucked into this and who fought for Afghanistan and the people in it, but this was never our battle, and we were never in a position where it was ever possible for us to win it.
And thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Taliban are only negotiating now, because the roe were made saber, and the Taliban are hurting.
Lying to unbelievers is honored in the Koran, Shia term is taqiyya.
More information on the practice:
https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/taqiyya.aspx
Saber should saner. Funny typo...
US government, state and military, also lie about the amount of al queda fighting in Afghanistan. They keep on lowballing the numbers.
This way they can keep the narrative that the Taliban is separate from Al Queda.
Longwarjournal.org has more.
Mullah Omar benefitted from the 9-11 attacks:
Al Qaeda viewed both the assassination of Massoud and the offensive launched the following day as necessary components of the 9/11 plot. At first, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders were said to be wary of any spectacular attack against the United States, as it would likely draw fierce retaliation from the world’s lone superpower. (The 9/11 Commission did find “some scant indications” that Omar “may have been reconciled to the 9/11 attacks by the time they occurred.”)
@tim in vermont:
There is reporting that Omar was trying to ramp down the terrorism out of Afghanistan but that bin Laden told him that if he forbid the one operation, 9-11, that bin Laden’s men would be dispirited. Here is some evidence:
I don't really consider that quote to be evidence of anything. That bin Laden and Omar communicated is undeniable. But nonetheless I find it highly unlikely that Omar knew about the attacks much less permitted them. Omar had been rattled by the US cruise missile attacks and had been negotiating with Saudi Arabia to turn bin Laden over. Evidence suggests that Omar truly found himself in a difficult position with bin Laden, finding him to be a source of trouble for Afghanistan who was damaging Afghanistan's relations with other nations while also feeling compelled not to give him up to international forces. Hosting bin Laden in the first place had been controversial within Afghanistan's Taliban ranks. Many within the Taliban at the time protested that hosting bin Laden would cause problems with the US, who had hitherto been considered friendly to the Taliban.
I have friends who are permanently disabled from fighting in Afghanistan. I have heard nothing good about our Afghan allies or ordinary Afghans. The behavior of Afghan men toward women and children is beyond awful. There's nothing our soldiers are allowed to do about it, so the idea we are civilizing the Afghans is bunk.
Everyone I know who has been there mentioned this.
The bin Laden papers showed that the Taliban were still closely allied with bin Laden at the time of his death.
1. Rob said...
The Nobel committee will never give Trump the Peace Prize, but if Obama has class, he could send his over.
Queue Obama making an argument that it was his policies that set the stage for peace and that he deserves another prize
2. All of this assumes that A-Stan is a country. I refuse to utter the name. It is not. It is a collection of tribes. No common language, no common culture beyond banditry.
3. I have said in this forum multiple times that we should get out and apply the policy that the Brits did in the era of Kipling.
"Butcher and Bolt"
If the Taliban misbehave, make them hurt, then leave at 500 mph.
4. A-stan can't be governed. Divide it up and give the land/tribes to its neighbors.
"If we reserve the right to bomb the Taliban if they get too close to Kabul it will work out."
Kabul has a vibrant charm to it in addition to being where any and all Westernized, forward-thinking Afghans live and work. Other than there and a couple of other cities (Herat, Mazar) connected on the ring road, there isn't much to the "nation" of Afghanistan other than a bunch of Pashtun villages in the South and East whose people are more loyal to their -ozai than the -stan. Up North it's mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks.
Who exactly is representing "THE" Taliban when they're as patchwork as the country itself and whose main concern always seemed to be controlling the drug trade?
Agree with Buwaya and Ray that Pakistan is the key to the ongoing regional strife. They're a worthless, nasty, duplicitous, foul-tempered excuse for a nation if there ever were one.
John Lynch -
I found the Kabul Afghans to be some of the most decent and generous people I've ever met. Well-spoken, polite to a fault, and very supportive of the American presence, most fear the loss of our support. But I agree, the training wheels have to come off at some point.
The Afghan National Police (ANP) are incompetent drug addicts that use their uniform to bully the people their supposed to serve and thereby create and even greater divide of trust between the Afghan people and the official Afghan state.
An aide to the former Taleban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, has revealed that he was sent to warn American diplomats and the United Nations that Osama bin Laden was due to launch a huge attack on American soil.
Neither organisation heeded the warning, which was given just weeks before the 11 September attacks.
The aide said he had urged the Americans to launch a military campaign against al-Qaeda but was told that this was politically impossible.
Mr Muttawakil, who was known to be deeply unhappy with the Arab and other foreign militants in Afghanistan, learned of Osama bin Laden's plan in July. - BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2242594.stm
I am sure that you will say that the man is a liar, but it comes down to your judgement vs the word of a man in a position to know.
@tim in vermont:
I am sure that you will say that the man is a liar, but it comes down to your judgement vs the word of a man in a position to know.
I have no idea if he is a liar, but from the article you linked to: "The information had come not from other members of the Taleban but from the leader of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, Tohir Yuldash, who had found refuge in Afghanistan and had good links with al-Qaeda."
Other successful counterinsurgency campaigns-
- Cuba, 1868-78
- Cuba, 1895-98
It is not usually recognized that Valeriano Weyler came up with a winning strategy in Cuba, that of "reconcentration", isolating the people from the rebels, to be later used by both the British and the US at various times. Most extensively in Vietnam btw.
This succeeded. The Cuban rebels were in a bad way by the time the US intervened, lacking food as the agricultural regions of the country were unavailable. They had plenty of weapons as these could be supplied from US sources, paid for mainly by US funds, but food and especially fodder were too bulky to ship in via blockade runners. The US rescued the Cuban revolution from certain defeat.
My ancestress was a lady-in-waiting to then Governor-General Weyler, and her brother was his aide-de-camp.
Partitioning India was a bad idea. It may have been one of the biggest mistakes in history. If the nukes ever come out it will be.
Dividing India was supposed to lessen conflict. It's done the opposite. Pakistan is a ticking time bomb no one can defuse.
Following the August 20 U.S. air attacks, Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed told U.S. Department of State officials "If Kandahar could have retaliated with similar strikes against Washington, it would have." Such an attack, although unfeasible at the time, was at least in part actualized by al-Qaeda on 9/11.. - https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB253/index.htm
"The information had come not from other members of the Taleban but from the leader of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, Tohir Yuldash, who had found refuge in Afghanistan and had good links with al-Qaeda."
You will note that the information was available to the Taliban prior to the attacks.
In any event, Omar had been repeatedly warned that he would be held responsible for anything that bin Laden did under his protection, so once again we are talking about a distinction without a difference.
1998 Missile Strikes on Bin Laden May Have Backfired
Extensive 1999 Report on Al-Qaeda Threat Released by U.S. Dept of Energy
Taliban Told U.S. They Wanted to Bomb Washington. - National Security Archives
Which was kind of my point.
@tim in vermont:
You will note that the information was available to the Taliban prior to the attacks.
The people the information was told to did not trust it, and it is not unreasonable that others would not trust it, especially considering Yoʻldosh's motives.
In any event, Omar had been repeatedly warned that he would be held responsible for anything that bin Laden did under his protection, so once again we are talking about a distinction without a difference
The US could have easily launched punitive measures against Afghanistan and pursued Al Qaeda without overthrowing the entire government and thus making it responsible for putting something new in its place. Everything the US has done for the last decade has been to try to keep that "something new" going.
One of Obama's first acts as President in 2009 should have been the ending of the Afghanistan operation, but I pointed out then that he would never end the war there for a one simple reason- he campaigned on the idea that the war in Afghanistan was good while the one in Iraq was not. We can quibble about the campaign language- I believed both were foolhardy decisions by Bush. I had hoped Trump would pull out of Afghanistan the first year of his term, so I was disappointed.
Look, any agreement with the Taliban will likely not be adhered to by them, but the alternative is to never leave. I want us out- if I were in Trump's place, I wouldn't bother with the pretense of an agreement, but that is just me.
Kandahar Airfield had a Tim Horton's and a KFC, so Obama's finger lickin' good war at least came with good coffee.
Anyone who has worked with Arabs knows
and agreement with Arabs by infidels means nothing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiya
Taqiyya is an Islamic juridical term whose shifting meaning relates to when a Muslim is allowed, under Sharia law, to lie
The US could have easily launched punitive measures against Afghanistan and pursued Al Qaeda without overthrowing the entire government and thus making it responsible for putting something new in its place.
100% agree. It might be racist to say it, but Afghanistan is not Germany, Afghanistan is not Japan.
Just need to remind people, Islam is not the issue in Afghanistan. It may be a reinforcing agent, but Afghanistan was unconquerable a millenia before Islam appeared there. Just ask Alexander.
We defeated insurgencies from the Sioux and Apaches too. It can be done, but who really has the stomach for it? Not me. It’s their country.
Wait, this implies our plans to institute bourgeois democracy in Afghanistan may have foundered.
"""American and Taliban officials have agreed in principle to the framework of a peace deal..."
What's old is new again: it's 1973, and North Vietnam has just agreed in principle to the framework of a peace deal. Peace is at hand! Just remove your troops from the disputed territory and all will be ... peaceful.
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