The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[chrisp65]

Just now, blandy said:

I hadn't quite realised the significance of e mailed information

You’re nothing if you don’t have a few HM Government yahoo email addresses on burner phones buried in your back garden.

 

Raab is clearly holidaying somewhere with very poor WiFi. He’s going to be amazed at what’s changed when he rocks up to work.

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Raab is clearly holidaying somewhere with very poor WiFi. He’s going to be amazed at what’s changed when he rocks up to work.

He’s probably missed some WhatsApp messages from his boss calling him a useless prick too.

Tbf to Raab though, we’ve all gone on holiday with an annoying problem lurking and then prayed when you get back it’s somehow been sorted in your absence.

Not quite on this scale though. More like that purchase order snag you didn’t get chance to chase up before putting the OoO on.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Genie

[Genie]

The things people do for likes on social media

Quote

Student, 21, 'stuck in Afghanistan' after trip to visit 'worst places in world'

A student is 'stuck in Afghanistan' after travelling there for a holiday shortly before the Taliban takeover.

Miles Routledge said he likes 'risk' and to explore what he describes as the 'worst places in the world'.

But the 21-year-old, who is now holed up in a United Nations safe house, said he had 'bitten off more than he can chew' and regretted travelling over to Afghanistan.

He spoke to The Times from his hideaway, as Taliban grabbed power in the capital of Kabul.

He said he was forced to don a burqa disguise to flee to Kabul International Airport in search of help as the situation in the capital worsened.

The Loughborough University physics student from Birmingham had earlier posted enthusiastically about his travels - but soon said he had regrets.

Link

[StefanAVFC]

25 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

We can talk about more than one thing at a time. I'm more than happy to talk about our own government's inhumane actions on this issue, and the hypocrisy of Tory MPs grandstanding about the 'immorality' of leaving the country while they have no intention of doing the one thing that would actually help some real Afghan people.

But I'm also going to talk about the actions of other western countries too. Not going to apologise for that.

My point is that the original post was made completely as a result of whataboutism. Not the best way to start any meaningful discussion.

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, StefanAVFC said:

My point is that the original post was made completely as a result of whataboutism. Not the best way to start any meaningful discussion.

And in turn, my point is, rather than trying to divine @colhint's motives, why not join his conversation if you want to, or not if you don't, and start a conversation about the UK of your own if you want to, or not if you don't?

[HanoiVillan]

What do people think would be going differently if Raab wasn't on holiday? People seem to attach a great importance to politicians being 'at their desk' in a way that seems to ignore developments in videoconferencing, and common sense about the limited extent of what the UK Foreign Secretary can do in situations like this.

At the absurd end, you get criticisms like this:

How can we all forget the crucial contribution that [checks notes] Jim Murphy made to solving [checks notes] the war between Russian and Georgia, that he could only have made from his desk.

[regular_john]

This whole region seems intent on being stuck in the 8th century. It won't be brought into modernity by military action or Western 'support', regardless of how much money is thrown at it.

 

There will be unending conflict and misery until the population decides it wants to come out of the dark ages and undergo it's own enlightenment.

[Wainy316]

39 minutes ago, Genie said:

The things people do for likes on social media

Link

He got his bank card printed with 'Lord' rather than 'Mr' as he thought it might offer him more bargaining power if captured.

[ml1dch]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

You're of course right that this isn't an EU-level competence.

But we should look at what actual EU countries are doing, because we need to puncture any ideas that they may be behaving any more 'virtuously' than we are on this topic.

Eg:

Also worth noting that 7 EU countries - including Germany - were demanding the EU pressure the Afghan government to allow them to restart forced returns to Afghanistan *seven days ago*:

Indeed. I can't imagine there will be many, if any western countries (or supranational bodies, come to that) that will come out of this horrendous episode with much credit. 

I just object to somebody's dopey, culture war obsessions to be bludgeoned into places where they are really not relevant. You see it from nobbers on the other side as well. 

[chrisp65]

30 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What do people think would be going differently if Raab wasn't on holiday? People seem to attach a great importance to politicians being 'at their desk' in a way that seems to ignore developments in videoconferencing, and common sense about the limited extent of what the UK Foreign Secretary can do in situations like this.

Personally, I don’t need him sat at any specific desk.

I think what I’d like is either the sense that he might be involved in some way, or, even better, an honest appraisal of our level of influence in all of this.

If the honest answer is that between the U.S. and the Taliban we are a very minor player responding to events as they happen, we need on the ground logistics and planning of a sort that is more Defence, and Raab couldn’t really contribute, that’s ok by me. If the honest answer is we need to lead, then we need leaders.

He’s Foreign Secretary, he’s had more to say about Covid than the collapse of and retreat from Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

[Genie]

Wow, have you ever seen anything like this before?

 

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Personally, I don’t need him sat at any specific desk.

I think what I’d like is either the sense that he might be involved in some way, or, even better, an honest appraisal of our level of influence in all of this.

If the honest answer is that between the U.S. and the Taliban we are a very minor player responding to events as they happen, we need on the ground logistics and planning of a sort that is more Defence, and Raab couldn’t really contribute, that’s ok by me. If the honest answer is we need to lead, then we need leaders.

He’s Foreign Secretary, he’s had more to say about Covid than the collapse of and retreat from Afghanistan.

The bolded is pretty much the situation. The main *diplomatic* concern (which is what the Foreign Secretary is responsible for) is the fate of embassy staff (an immediate concern, though depending on the plan it may be more of a military matter of getting people onto planes) and the future diplomatic relationship (or otherwise) with the new government, which isn't going to be decided immediately or by Raab on his own.

I agree he could have had more to say, though I suppose the 'dynamic' situation might mean that any announcements look pretty foolish in short order anyway.

[a m ole]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Wow, have you ever seen anything like this before?

 

in the replies - if you’re of nervous disposition don’t watch:

 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

The things people do for likes on social media

Link

@tonyh29stop pretending to be 21 again

[Davkaus]

I am genuinely stunned that the planes took off with people clinging to them. 

Imagine that feeling of desperation and despair that the almost guaranteed certainty of dying by clinging to a jet about to take off is better than the alternative. 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Davkaus

[NurembergVillan]

Yet vast sections of our media, and probably politicians too, will still refer to those people as 'migrants'.

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

@tonyh29stop pretending to be 21 again

I’m not convinced Kabul is worse than Blackpool though tbh.

[Davkaus]

I'm not feeling great about our country right now.

No idea what the answer is...stay there forever? It was an impossible problem, but not content with wading in and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, only to abandon people to the Taliban when they were finally living better lives...It feels like this blood is on our hands, again. 

[Davkaus]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/we-cant-abandon-afghans-who-helped-us/618416/

I think this whole article is a good one, well worth a read, but this is sickening.

Quote

Biden has inherited a set of nearly impossible choices in Afghanistan. He has a complex history there. In 2004, he told me the story of his first trip to the country, soon after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He toured a new school in Kabul—bitter cold, plastic sheeting over the windows, one light bulb hanging from the ceiling—where a girl stood up at her desk and said, “You cannot leave. They will not deny me learning to read. I will read, and I will be a doctor like my mother. America must stay.” As Biden explained it, the girl was saying, in effect: “Don’t **** with me, Jack. You got me in here. You said you were going to help me. You’d better not leave me now.” He described meeting the girl as “a catalytic event for me.” For a while he was a leading proponent of nation building in Afghanistan.

By the time Biden became vice president in 2009, the disastrous war in Iraq, the endemic corruption of the Afghan government, and the return of the Taliban had made him a deep skeptic of the American commitment. He became the Obama administration’s strongest voice for getting out of Afghanistan. In 2010, he told Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences for women or anyone else. According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: “**** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

 

[desensitized43]

21 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I am genuinely stunned that the planes took off with people clinging to them. 

Imagine that feeling of desperation and despair that the almost guaranteed certainty of dying by clinging to a jet about to take off is better than the alternative. 

Likewise imagine you're the pilots of that plane and you know there's people clinging to the plane and likely under the wheels too and when you hit that throttle it's a death sentence to them but being ordered to anyway.