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NBC News: Taliban greets Pentagon's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan with cries of victory

KSweeley

KSweeley

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Oct 25, 2017
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The Taliban is celebrating after the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon to create plans for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, one Taliban leader gave this message to the U.S., that they: "should think about what they achieved by invading Afghanistan and by causing so many losses to the citizens of Afghanistan and wasting their own resources on this long war": https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...awal-troops-afghanistan-cries-victory-n950811

News that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan provoked widespread criticism that the move would kneecap efforts to broker a peace deal to end America's longest war.

But there was one group on Friday celebrating the reports — the Taliban.

Senior members told NBC News the news was a clear indication they were on the verge of victory.

“The 17-year-long struggle and sacrifices of thousands of our people finally yielded fruit," said a senior Taliban commander from Afghanistan’s Helmand province. "We proved it to the entire world that we defeated the self-proclaimed world’s lone super power."

“We are close to our destination," added the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the group's leadership had prohibited members from talking to the media about current events. He added that all field commanders had also been told to intensify training efforts to capture four strategic provinces in the run up to the next round of talks between the U.S. and Taliban, which are expected in January.

A Taliban leader in eastern Kunar province, Maulvi Sher Mohammad, said news of withdrawals should serve as a lesson to Americans.

“The U.S. people and particularly its rulers should think about what they achieved by invading Afghanistan and by causing so many losses to the citizens of Afghanistan and wasting their own resources on this long war,” he said.

So far, the U.S.'s military campaign, along with billions in aid, have not succeeded in driving out the Taliban and other militants or making the country safe.
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_Karooo

_Karooo

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Oct 25, 2017
4,029
The US wasn’t really effective for 14 years. They had a flawed strategy in Afghanistan. You can never destroy the Taliban when most of them spawn from Pakistan.
 
less

less

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Oct 25, 2017
7,807
I'm already dreading the increased chaos and bloodshed that is likely going to result from a withdrawal. God forbid it being a complete one.
 
Post Reply

Post Reply

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Aug 1, 2018
3,021
*eagerly waits for someone to unearth the Trump tweet saying terrorists praised President Obama for something that he did*

You know it exists
 
AcademicSaucer

AcademicSaucer

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Oct 25, 2017
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less said:
A US withdrawal is going to be harmful and bloody for the Afghan government. This is a situation where there really is no good option unless you are willing to not give a fuck about anything besides the US.
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US withdrawal is going to be harmful and bloody for the South Vietnamese government. This is a situation where there really is no good option unless you are willing to not give a fuck about anything besides the US.
 

VectorPrime

Banned
Apr 4, 2018
11,781
AcademicSaucer said:
US withdrawal is going to be harmful and bloody for the South Vietnamese government. This is a situation where there really is no good option unless you are willing to not give a fuck about anything besides the US.
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The troop withdrawal from South Vietnam could and should have been handled better and basically every historian worth a damn agrees. But let’s just repeat our mistakes!
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

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Oct 25, 2017
30,745
AcademicSaucer said:
US withdrawal is going to be harmful and bloody for the South Vietnamese government. This is a situation where there really is no good option unless you are willing to not give a fuck about anything besides the US.
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North Vietnam was not the Taliban.

This is closer to a South Korea situation than South Vietnam.
 
Rad Bandolar

Rad Bandolar

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Oct 25, 2017
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It's been a stalemate for the last dozen years, and it's been clear for quite some time that the only thing keeping the Afghan government going is our presence there, and that's not going to change for the foreseeable future. There's no way of "winning" it at this point, and there hasn't been a coherent plan for our purpose and involvement since we admitted that the Taliban would not be military defeated and we officially ended combat operations in 2014.

Our strategy has essentially been hoping that if we stayed long enough and trained enough government troops, then at some distant date in the future we could finally leave. I think there's actually something to that and the smart play would be to demand an actual plan from military and political leaders, complete with short, medium, and long term milestones, for how and when we transition and leave. And if we didn't leave, then a compelling geopolitical reason for why we would stay (supporting a strategic ally, a presence close to China & Russia, etc.).

The amazing thing is that we've been there so long that there would be kids joining the military next year whose parents were part of OEF, that could be deployed to Afghanistan themselves.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

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Oct 25, 2017
30,745
Oheao said:
They should withdraw their troops from South Korea too.
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a) I meant during the Korean war, as in "Letting North Korea win would have been a deastating nightmare for South Korea that would doom future generations, and the blood that was shed to keep them free of the Kim Dynasty pales in comparison to the destruction that would have been wrought had they been allowed to take over the entire peninsula."

b) No. Maybe when Japan gets an actual Military in place. But the Pottery Barn rule still applies there.
 

Deleted member 23212

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Kirblar said:
a) I meant during the Korean war, as in "Letting North Korea win would have been a deastating nightmare for South Korea that would doom future generations, and the blood that was shed to keep them free of the Kim Dynasty pales in comparison to the destruction that would have been wrought had they been allowed to take over the entire peninsula."

b) No. Maybe when Japan gets an actual Military in place. But the Pottery Barn rule still applies there.
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North Korea was actually better off than South Korea economically at the time. The regimes weren't much different either, South Korea didn't even transition to democracy until the 1980s. The US doesn't send troops abroad for humanitarian reasons, they go to serve their own interests.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

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Oct 25, 2017
30,745
Oheao said:
North Korea was actually better off than South Korea economically at the time. The regimes weren't much different either, South Korea didn't even transition to democracy until the 1980s. The US doesn't send troops abroad for humanitarian reasons, they go to serve their own interests.
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That NK was better off economically and now struggles to simply feed its own people while you can go walk into an internet Cafe in Seoul and play Overwatch while ordering takeout delivery kind of says it all.
 

Deleted member 23212

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Kirblar said:
That NK was better off economically and now struggles to simply feed its own people while you can go walk into an internet Cafe in Seoul and play Overwatch while ordering takeout delivery kind of says it all.
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And that's as a result of the US presence in South Korea? Afghanistan and Iraq show that's not the cause.
 
ezrarh

ezrarh

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Oct 27, 2017
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Every Afghani who worked with the US government is screwed. At least with South Vietnam, they tried to evacuate a lot of the Vietnamese - I don't think anything like that will happen with Afghanistan.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

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Oct 25, 2017
30,745
Oheao said:
And that's as a result of the US presence in South Korea? Afghanistan and Iraq show that's not the cause.
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It's the result of not letting NK overrun them.

The point of the analogy was that letting Afghanistan be overrun by the Taliban is a much closer analogy than the North Vietnamese, who were far, far less problematic (and pretty quickly abandoned a command economy in the early 80s, which is why Vietnam is doing relatively well today.) And Afghanistan was run by the Taliban before our intervention due to their harboring of Bin Laden.
 
Protein

Protein

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Oct 27, 2017
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I doubt the US is going to take in the inevitable Afghan refugees that flee the Taliban takeover, because "MUSLUM!"
 
shem

shem

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Oct 25, 2017
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I mean we lost, so yes they're cheering.

It's hard to criticize a pullout of troops at this point as there are actually no details but that in itself is worth criticizing. This should be thought out and planned to minimize damage on the way out. Part of this is trumps fault for making such an impromptu decision and the other would be the foreign policy establishments insistence on forever war. Weird situation.
 
SaintBowWow

SaintBowWow

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Oct 25, 2017
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That's not really surprising. The withdrawal of a major occupying force intended to suppress the Taliban is going to be celebrated by the Taliban.
 
Davilmar

Davilmar

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Oct 27, 2017
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While not defending a broken and likely fatal military strategy in Afghanistan, there goes again our credibility and reliability as a trusted partner.
 
MechaX

MechaX

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Oct 27, 2017
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Oheao said:
Are we now going to be criticizing the withdrawal of troops?
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Sometimes it's the manner in which you do things that matters

In this case, suddenly doing massive withdrawals that will 100% leave power vacuums that will bite us in the ass later, or leaving allies in those territories high and dry, is definitely worthy of criticism.
 
Steeped in a Sea of Games

Steeped in a Sea of Games

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
6,778
Look at these armchair strategists in here acting like they know shit when we literally have piles of evidence backed research showing that a hard exit strategy is ultimately the most harmful tactic we could take.

Exiting the middle east is mostly good. Doing it like this is absolutely a gigantic mistake that will cost countless lives.
 
Chaos2Frozen

Chaos2Frozen

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Nov 3, 2017
18,298
TheFireman said:
Let's not be all pro-war just cause Trump withdrew troops
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It’s not about being pro-war, as brought up in the other thread of this news the Afghan government is not equipped to fight off the Taliban without aid from the US military.

The moment US forces pull out of the country the Taliban is going to sweep back in and I don’t think they’ll take too kindly to anyone that was helping the Americans.
 
BringBackSonics

BringBackSonics

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Oheao said:
North Korea was actually better off than South Korea economically at the time. The regimes weren't much different either, South Korea didn't even transition to democracy until the 1980s. The US doesn't send troops abroad for humanitarian reasons, they go to serve their own interests.
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Yeah Most South Koreans are okay with how that played out
 
leder

leder

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Oct 25, 2017
6,378
Oheao said:
North Korea was actually better off than South Korea economically at the time. The regimes weren't much different either, South Korea didn't even transition to democracy until the 1980s. The US doesn't send troops abroad for humanitarian reasons, they go to serve their own interests.
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It’s almost like once the Soviet Union started to collapse and stopped propping up the brutal incompetent dictatorship in North Korea, things went south quickly.
 
Sei

Sei

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Oct 28, 2017
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If we really wanted to win in Afghanistan we should have gone to the source and invaded Pakistan too.

War in Afghanistan is a failure, we're just taking our sweet time accepting it, while funneling billions into the pockets of the already rich, and causing irreparable psychological damage to a generation.
 
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