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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

The Taliban regime is going to be hostile to women. It'll be a return to violence, executions, and feudalism. Yet I see a lot of liberals that have no problem with a Taliban takeover and would rather see a US withdrawal.

I'm a liberal person, but I think Taliban takeover is a horrific outcome. What's the argument / angle here?

Furthermore, it seems to open the geopolitical sphere for China to step into the vacuum. It gives them more people to sell to, and a broader Belt and Road. It's strategic for their exports, too. That seems to not be in the interest of the United States.

Also, US troops in Afghanistan are positioned close to the Chinese border, which seems like a thing the US would want in order to apply pressure.

What's going on? I don't understand the withdrawal at all.

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The US has given significantly more military aid to Afghanistan than most other countries in the region spend and had many thousands of soldiers there for years.

Undoubtedly the general Afghan populace does not look forward to Taliban rule, but a big part of the problem is the Afghan government receiving all of this aid seems both corrupt & incompetent, unable to make the best use of the enormous resources put at their disposal.

In my eyes the withdrawal is an admission that 20 years of US occupation have not been able to resolve these issues, and trying to fight a war on behalf of a country whose government takes little interest in the welfare of its own people is close to impossible.

I think that about the best we can hope for is that going it alone with the prospect of losing the fruits of their corruption to the Taliban will encourage Afghan leadership to act. At least those leaders that won't be able to flee the country with their wealth intact.

I think they should just do a South Korea type plan with airstrikes, which has basically been the last 5 years. There are 30,000 soldiers in SK. Is posting 10,000 in Afghanistan for logistical, medical, training, and airstrike purposes really that crazy?

You can keep letting the Afghan soldiers do the fighting as that is what is politically necessary, but give them a pile of support on the rear end.

Huh? South Korean airstrikes in the last 5 years? Where? Or did I misunderstand you?

The key word was 'plan,' although I can see how it can sound like it meant airstrikes were happening there.

We give me money to regimes that are oppressive to hostile to women.

America got crushed by a handful of 70 IQ inbred religious nutters after spending over $2 trillion. The alternative to withdrawal is permanent occupation, but the US might be the most incompetent colonial master of all time, so it doesn't really make any sense.

>The Taliban regime is going to be hostile to women. It'll be a return to violence, executions, and feudalism. Yet I see a lot of liberals that have no problem with a Taliban takeover and would rather see a US withdrawal.

There are hundreds of countries where women are treated like shit, of which Afghanistan is but one.

Perhaps the people who want to see a withdrawal realize that America-as-World-Police isn't sustainable, and serves only to kill scores of American service members, to say nothing of countless Afghan civilians, while lining the pockets of executives at Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and General Dynamics.

Perhaps a better solution would be curbing domestic racism and xenophobia in the United States and inviting these women to immigrate.

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