US Forces Being “Rushed” to Kabul Airport as Embassy Evacuation Underway

Not sure why this person is being downvoted, but it's well known that any informant that works with an occupying force is on the chopping block once that force is no longer there. This is especially true in the middle east as many cultures there have a history of generational feuds. In other words, they don't easily forget "traitors".

Many of them will be killed by the Taliban. There will be video. Like this from last month.[1]

The embassy in Kabul is still hiring.[2] They want a Public Engagement Assistant, a Cultural Affairs Assistant, a truck driver, and a plumber. Really.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/07/13/taliban-executes-afghan-specia...

[2] https://erajobs.state.gov/dos-era/vacancysearch/searchVacanc...

Yes. The only thing more dangerous than being the USA's enemy is being its friend :(

So I am also an American and mainly read American news. However, you must realize that American and Western news sources are extremely biased and insular. It's difficult to find English non-western sources, but there's one that stands out -- Inidan news, since it's mostly in English, and decidedly not western. But you'll have to be willing to read journals that might not have the same kind of 'standards' the American ones have. When you read Indian news, you'll come across a culture that is much more prescriptive, much more accepting of an absolute morality, and much more willing to engage in stereotypes -- things that are very foreign to most Western people. Russian news is also good. Al Jazeera is good but you must understand not to take them seriously.

For example -- and please, I am not trying to be inciting, just describing reality -- the muslims are hated in India and all the non-muslim neighboring countries. Americans find this shocking, but it's a strong cultural bias in all the countries around the middle east. Why is that? Why are people there so open about it and find nothing wrong with that?

The typical American reaction is to chastise the Indian or the Chinese or the Russian, but we must instead seek to understand. What do they know about these people that we do not? Could it be that they are biased against them because centuries and centuries of contact with them have shown that Muslim culture is highly dogmatic and persistent? If so, what does that tell us about how we need to act in those places?

Again, this is not about whether we should hate muslims or not (we shouldn't). It's about understanding that behavior influences people's stereotypes, and their stereotypes might tell us something. This is absolutely foreign to American understandings of how to approach other cultures, but it's something that exists in the majority of the world. Only in the west are we taught that stereotypes should be dismissed out of hand as the result of unfair bias.

I'd look at The Economist, though that's still very much old school Washington Consensus (but not as US centric as most US news). I consider it quite reliable.

For alternate view points, and to see how other societies frame things, you could look at Spiegel (Germany), Al Jazeera (Qatar), RT (Russia), Global Times (China). With the last two, you definitely enter the territory of propaganda.

- Spiegel: https://www.spiegel.de/international/ (Note: English articles only published every few days)

> one of continental Europe's most influential magazines. […] The magazine plays the role of opinion leader in the German press. […] The Atlantic claimed that "Der Spiegel has long peddled crude and sensational anti-Americanism."

Sample: "It’s Time to Cut Funding for Orbán. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and other like-minded populists are trampling on the EU’s values with growing disregard. Europe has an effective option for taking action and it is time to use it: We need to cut Hungary’s EU funds."

- Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com

> The network is sometimes perceived to have mainly Islamist perspectives, promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, and having a pro-Sunni and an anti-Shia bias in its reporting of regional issues. […] According to The Atlantic magazine, Al Jazeera presents a far more moderate, Westernized face than Islamic jihadism or rigid Sunni orthodoxy. […] The channel is considered by some to be a propaganda channel of the Qatari government.

Sample: "The US is leaving Afghanistan, but what is it leaving behind? After 20 years of direct intervention, Washington decides that the future of Afghanistan is for its people to decide."

- RT: https://www.rt.com

> RT has been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters […] have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Sample: "Stop obsessing about Moscow & fix human rights violations in your own backyard, Russian embassy in Washington tells US State Dept" or "Critical race theory is bringing back segregation to America, and turning the clock back to the 1960s"

- Global Times: https://www.globaltimes.cn/index.html

> has been labelled as "China's Fox News" by some scholars and writers for its propagandistic slant and the monetization of nationalism. It is part of a broader set of Chinese state media outlets that constitute the Chinese government's propaganda apparatus

Sample: "US, Taiwan crossing the red line will create historic opportunity for PLA fighter jets to fly over island. If US and Taiwan's tricks continue, a major crisis in the Taiwan Straits will doomed to take place." or "Largest HK opposition group likely to disband; city no longer secessionism hotbed"

And the US policy towards Germany and Japan was one of utter indifference until the Japanese and Germans explicitly declared war on our country.

Moreover, unlike Afghanistan, the Germans and Japanese (especially the Japanese) displayed an actual ability to attack American interests not just isolated incidents.

The truth is that with 9/11, there was no government entity to be defeated. The best we could have hoped for was to beef up our own security, and then ignore the countries in question. Maybe go after Bin Laden like we did -- stealthily and in the night.

Kosovo/Bosnia was more about taking attention away from the impeachment of President Clinton.

Yugoslavia is in Europe and not Asia. The Gulf War was in-and-out within a year and actually achieved a concrete mission set out ahead of time.

>They could have done reasonable things while having a democratically elected government

I am skeptical this was the "right" path, broadly defined. Democracy was completely foreign to them, conflicted with their deeply hierarchical tribal structure, and was extremely difficult to administer in a country as geographically and culturally diverse as Afghanistan is. If Kharzi had appointed himself King of Afghanistan we probably would've had more luck.

Source: was an 11A there in 2012

The Taliban is an organized militia. They would've rolled over the pockets of resistance just like they are now.

The Romans lasted 100s of years. Us Brits made over 100. The US is flagging barely 30 years after outlasting communism...

It’s essentially an entire continent unto itself that stays completely geographically insulated as long as a single power doesn’t coopt all of Eurasia.

The territorial ambitions are slightly different to a colonial maritime power within spitting distance of no fewer than 3 other maritime powers, or one in control of the Mediterranean with a very large front door open to the North European Plain.

The US was not in Afghanistan to nation build. It went there to dismantle Al Qaeda and kill bin Laden, which it did. Preventing the Taliban from retaking the nation would have been a bonus certainly.

The US didn't leave after two weeks because it took a lot longer than that to find and kill bin Laden and wipe out Al Qaeda in the country. The US didn't leave after killing bin Laden because Afghanistan was a relatively inexpensive sandbox for the military industrial complex to play in, train its soldiers in, and deploy/test weapons in. US & allied troop deaths in Afghanistan have been fairly low since 2013. So Afghanistan got to act as a war training ground with low risk of losing a lot of soldiers, an exceptionally rare commodity as far as the Pentagon is concerned. Now they have to find another country to occupy.

20 years and trillions of dollars later, and they did a hell of a job.

Given the amount of money that has flown into cancer research already, probably not a lot closer. Cancer research is actually historically one of the largest wastes of money with some of the worst outcomes in terms of life expectancy increase.

And I'm not just being quip, the actual point here is that these generic takes about "military spending bad, xy good" are kind of shallow.

or infrastructure

Where does your trillions comes from?

It comes from dominating the world and specially oil. If the US does not dominate the world militarily then the US becomes poorer overnight.

Would you believe that the US world be able to continue printing $USDs ab infinitum if the world countries didn't need $ to buy energy?

If energy countries were free to make deals in euros, yens, renminbis or reals without being invaded by the US the next day, then the US would be much less wealthy. That is the reason the US does not let countries do that.

Americans can print as many dollars they want because the rest of the world is forced to buy them. Without that, the $USD would be valued probably half or a quarter of what it is today.

OBL left Afghanistan in 2001.

It might not have taken an invasion and a decade, though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1539468.stm

It may not be a huge success story, but it hasn't been a failed state either.

Nice websites, but try actually visiting Vietnam, as I have. You’ll encounter a people who are fairly prosperous by regional standards, and downright rich compared to the colonial era. Government involvement in their day to day lives is minimal. I chose my words carefully.