Said Mullah Muhammad Hassan, the head of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, quoted in "If Joe Biden Doesn’t Change Course, This Will Be His Worst Failure" (NYT).
95% of the people "don't have enough to eat" and "nearly 9 million are at risk of starvation." That's because there's a drought, the Taliban aren't really trying to manage the economy, and:
The Afghan economy was built around our support. Roughly 45 percent of the G.D.P. and 75 percent of government spending was foreign aid. When we abruptly cut off that cash, we sent it into a tailspin. Then we went further. We froze more than $9 billion that belonged to the Afghan government — the vast majority of its foreign reserves.
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56 comments:
Good. Let them starve.
Foreign aid merely enables bad actors. We spent twenty years writing checks which only encouraged the Afghan people to focus on petty disputes, grift, and mismanagement of their country. They had twenty years to change course, and they didn't. As far as I'm concerned, what follows is God's judgment on them.
There are some really cool little stickers you can get on Amazon, packs of 100 for a few dollars, showing Biden grinning and pointing with the words "I did that!" They are showing up on gas pumps and empty food shelves, just to remind people how we got here.
Maybe somebody could make a really big one and stick it on Afghanistan.
Its almost as if unsustainable levels of government spending create a dangerous dependency that's destined to wreak havoc once the spending stops.
Who knew? Maybe we can fix this problem with another government program.
We froze more than $9 billion that belonged to the Afghan government — the vast majority of its foreign reserves.
It's fun to freeze stuff. Freeze it and forget it. Don't feel bad. We do it to our own citizens. Sometimes we skip right past freezing and right to forfeiting. Prove that you're entitled to your stuff!
Besides, You Didn't Build That.
Government is just the name for things that we choose to do together.
As soon as their opium crop comes in they’ll be flush again.
Never underestimate Joe's ability to F things up
This Will Be His Worst Failure
It's early yet.
That miserable place crashed the Soviet Union; it will crash anybody who dreams of making it into something it is not. Before the Soviet invasion, that is to say during pre-mullah times, Afghanistan was modernizing. But then the Soviet catastrophe was followed by the mullah catastrophe, then the US catastrophe, then back to the mullahs. It is a land without hope, and it is unlikely that any money sent by the USA would end up helping the population. It would probably fund some madrassas, the military, and a bit of terrorism, but little else.
Let's go Brandon.
About half the people in Afghanistan were decent people. We needed to decimate the other half.
The problem here is not the United States trying to help other countries.
The problem is we have a corrupt grifter regime that cycles between Republican and Democrat corruptocrats sabotaging the aid and stealing it for themselves and their cronies.
This isn't happening because the regime is incompetent. That is just the facade they are putting out there by hanging Joe and Kamala out to dry.
This is happening because the Regime and the people that support it are evil.
On a related topic, does anyone know how many US citizens are still in Afghanistan? Just thought I’d ask.
Mr Wibble said...
Good. Let them starve.
This is easy to say from afar.
But the kids and most of the women in that country don't deserve this.
People born in this country just say things and they don't understand the human price of their words.
The problem is we have a corrupt grifter regime that cycles between Republican and Democrat corruptocrats sabotaging the aid and stealing it for themselves and their cronies.
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much better explanation than OIL for perpetual USA Washington DC mucking about in the world calling it Foreign Aid
The fascist Sebastian Junger talked about this at length on Peter Attia's podcast last week.
Thanks a bunch Joe Biden!
Didn’t Stalin do something similar to Ukraine? I believe it was called the Holodomor.
“This will be his worst failure.” Really? Superseding what? His withdrawal from Afghanistan? His sponsorship of the foreign invasion of our southern border by people and drugs? His enabling energy dependence, inflation, the supply crisis etc.? How about the failure of his “plan” to solve Covid and the resultant AMERICAN deaths?
This is just a red herring giving rise to media optics to save the Democrats midterms. QuidProJoe and the Democrat Congress to the rescue. Spending our tax dollars on a modern Berlin Airlift to save the Afghanis who hosted Bin Laden and killed American servicemen. That’s not to say we shouldn’t provide relief. We do that. But the motivation of Klein, the NYT and QuidProJoe ought not to be lost in the rush to free Taliban funds and spend our own.
With the amoral Democrats and the leftmediaswine everything is optics and politics - always!
The US equivalent of Tass / Pravda, is setting the narrative on why the Biden Administration will help the Afghan Regime.
My guess this is related:
https://nypost.com/2022/02/12/afghans-fight-joe-biden-plan-to-give-assets-to-9-11-victims/
You'd think those Afghans were Canadian truckers or something.
But I was assured that the Taliban were good people akin to America's original revolutionaries. They're just fighting for their freedom!
Biden reminds me of Chauncey Gardener more and more each day.
So why aren't we sending food? We could occupy and bomb them for 17 years, but we can't help hungry people?
The US Government is even more evil then I thought.
"it is unlikely that any money sent by the USA would end up helping the population." That's a little bit different from sanctions and freezing all their assets.
But I don't honestly think that letting Afghanistan starve is a good look for the US. Look! - we're better for Afghanistan than the Taliban! I don't think anyone expected the Taliban to do a really great job.
You guys!!! He pulled us out of there, because it was the 20 anniverary of 9/11 and he had a SPEECH all ready to congratulate himself for being the second greatest president since Saint Obama. Why are you being so hard on him??? He was doing this to make himself look good!!!
This Will Be His Worst Failure
Joe Biden: "Hold my, aaaaahhh you know the THING. C'mon MAN!!
Remember in the 80s, when there were concerts like "Live Aid" and songs like "Do They Know It's Christmas?" And all that food was sent over to Ethiopia? Most of it rotted on the ports, IIRC. Perhaps some got through.
And then of course there was our help for Somalia in the 90s, feeding the hungry people there. After which came the "Black Hawk Down" events. American soldiers being dragged through the streets, that kind of thing.
And now, after 20 years of whatever it is that we were doing over there, we're expected to feed this country? Who will get the food? Who is in charge of distribution? And how many Americans or other charitable workers will be murdered, or kidnapped in the process?
I do feel sorry for some of those people, but it should not be our problem. Perhaps Pakistan can do something constructive for their neighbor. And China, who seemed quick to ally with the Taliban. We should have learned our lesson by now.
Can CNN send a TV crew to Kabul and show us how Joe fucked up?
So why aren't we sending food? We could occupy and bomb them for 17 years, but we can't help hungry people?
The US Government is even more evil then I thought.
We sent them food and money for twenty years. We spent twenty years trying to help them keep the Taliban from returning. The Afghans squandered all of it.
It's not evil to let an addict face the consequences of his bad choices.
Time for China to take over Afghanistan starting with food deliveries. I bet it would take less than a year before the Chinese food donors were running the whole place.
Foreign Aid should be rarely given.
But if it is, there should always be strings attached.
It should be used as a hammer to knock shithole countries into line.
I'm happy that it feeds hungry children.
But the adults need to kiss our ass in return.
We should seen food and economic aide. Otherwise the restive population might overthrow the Taliban and replace their regime with some radical government that is not amenable to Western ideals.
I'm afraid that under current conditions of inflation, countries that can't produce their own food are going to be in a lot of trouble. This includes China, and even Russia to a degree.
I feel for the Afghan people, but the whole point of leaving is that the place is no longer our responsibility. Even when we had troops on the ground, there was no real way to guarantee the aid we sent got to the people who needed it. Sending aid with the Taliban in charge is pretty much a guarantee it won't. There is also something obscene about spending money to support a regime Americans died to prevent.
Letting Afghanistan starve is a good look for the USA. Something Trump might have done.
"When I ask why they {Biden administration officials] continue to impose these policies at all, the administration says that the Taliban has American prisoners..."
- Ezra Klein in the Times.
Isn't, or shouldn't, that be the most important matter regarding our relationship with the Taliban?
We have frozen their own money. I'll condemn Biden on this.
How many square acres of land in Afghanistan are growing opium instead of food?
Well, Putin just now recognizing the "independence" of part of Ukraine has to rank up there, even though still developing, with Biden's greatest failures. Back to the U.S.S.R., with the Soviets having a stranglehold on Europe.
If your ultimate response is "Fuck em, not our problem" -- which was/is the attitude of most people commenting here -- then have the decency to not add this BS "I feel for the Afghan people."
Why are you being so hard on him???
Because they are hypocrites pointing fingers when they should be looking in the mirror.
The converse of "do unto others..." is "you deserve to happen to you what you let happen or will for others."
Don't any of you "U.S. out of Afghanistan" people bitch and complain about how Joe Biden is effing up the U.S. You didn't care if the lives of innocent Afghans turned to shit, so you justly deserve the same fate.
OR you could grow some decency and understand that we are a common humanity.
Who can forget, in addition to the pointless interventions mentioned already, the Kurds of Iraq, fed by US manna from heaven . . . and the great results of that?
The Taliban are honest: they didn't promise to feed everyone. We should be as honest: we haven't promised to do so either.
Even in the best of circumstances--words rarely applied to Afghanistan--most Western foreign aid amounts to working- and middle-class Western taxpayers funding selfish elites in poor countries. Rather like Western military interventions, generally profiting some small cliques in the client and the hegemon and nobody else.
The U.S. relationship with Afghanistan is a strong, long-term, and broad bilateral partnership. We have many shared interests, including the advancement of democracy, peace, security, and economic development in Afghanistan and in the region.
-- US Gov
OR the soon-to-come "Goodbye Taiwan" could be Biden's greatest failure.
The Afghans didn’t want our help enough to resist the Taliban. MANY Afghanis welcomed the Taliban. We do not owe them anything.
Even if you feel sympathy for their predicament remember the majority brought this on themselves. They need to deal with it themselves. You do not keep giving a loved one who is a drug addict or gambler money. We shouldn’t be enabling terrorism and authoritarian ideologies by propping them up with humanitarian aid. If they want the Taliban let them have the Taliban and all that entails 100%. Starvation. Mass rape. Child brides. Many young men never able to have a wife at all. Maybe they will some day come to their senses. Maybe not. Keep them locked in their own areas with the consequences of their own choices.
“We froze more than $9 billion that belonged to the Afghan government — the vast majority of its foreign reserves.”
Where did they get that money? Foreign aid? How much money have we poured into that country? I bet it’s way more than 9 billion. Hell let them have it AND NOT ONE PENNY MORE. Ever. And no immigrating from Afghanistan to the West.
Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, billions of dollars in state-of-the-art military housewarming gifts, democracy dies with Democrats, while demos-cracy is aborted in darkness for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
This is 50 shades of Obama, but will there be an administration to mitigate Biden's progress?
Maybe the Taliban could ask their buddies in Pakistan, like the ISI, for some help, or those Saudi benefactors.
[Shrug] Vietnam figured out how to turn defeating the US into prosperity. Let the Taliban figure out the same.
Afghanistan reminds me of the street beggar in The Life of Brian who hacked off his own foot in order to win sympathy.
So much for Gallant Little Afghanistan; stay tuned for some Gallant Little Ukraine rhetoric from the usual usual suspects, with a low male chorus humming Battle Hymn of the Republic in the background . . .
Please, can you spare $50 million to feed the Taliban? for only $140,000 a day you can make sure that no Jihadist goes hungry. The women and children not so much. Little Achmed needs a new AK, Little Mohamed needs 10 lb.C4 bricks.
"Roughly 45 percent of the G.D.P. and 75 percent of government spending was foreign aid"
Evil imperialists, those Americans.
I don't believe the story. It sounds like colonialism - oh, the poor Afghans, can't manage without us. It's behind the paywall so I can't see details but I can't really believe that Afghans never realized that the US payroll would disappear when the US was driven out. Stop denying their agency.
Acres are already square, unless you intend to cube the measurement.
"Can CNN send a TV crew to Kabul and show us how Joe fucked up?"
Biden is but the most recent POTUS who fucked up in Afghanistan, and his fuck up is less egregious than his predecessors, who put us into and kept us in Afghanistan for no legitimate reason. Biden pulled us out without a plan, while they initiated and carried on with the war with no plan, just pure hubris, the belief the US could easily prevail eventually.
“The converse of "do unto others..." is "you deserve to happen to you what you let happen or will for others."
By the contrapositive, do not let them do unto you that which you would not do unto others.
You can feel empathy for people and still understand the futility of trying to send that will get to them. The reality of the situation is that aid has to go through the Taliban who have already said they don't care much if Afghans starve. Outside of sending troops with the aid, there is no way to ensure it will reach the people who need it. Compassion is not the willingness to spend other people's money
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