The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[Genie]

5 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

5,000 refugees to be admitted to the UK from Afghanistan in the first 12 months of the new bespoke ‘system’.

Or to put it another way, every town and city in the UK is to take 4 Afghan refugees.

If the plan is seen through to completion this will eventually rise to a total of 16.

I was chatting to the hairdresser a few weeks back. She is Romanian and I asked about Brexit impact etc and she said quite a lot of the community in Tamworth had gone back for a variety of reasons including Brexit.

She said there was a Facebook group for Romanian people living in Tamworth with about 4,000 people in it. I was surprised given the total population is about 80,000. About 5% of the population.
I can still see people getting all bent out of shape about 4 forriners with dark skin being homed in their town. 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Genie

[blandy]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm just not able to agree either that the deal was 'mad' or that the UK has been 'shafted'.

To carry on the convo, I moved this post here.

Have you seen what Trump negotiated and how he did it (ignoring the Afghan gov't or their role)? 

The UK has been shafted because the exit was just dropped on them - no or minimal prior warning or anything, hence the urgent flights to send out Paras and the RAF to evacuate people in a rush. Allies consult and inform and plan. The US didn't. They just upped and left.

[Xela]

6 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Good to see Jezza lead the way calling for us to pay reparations to Afghanistan. I'm sure the Taliban will spend it wisely.

Typical Clarkson! 

[regular_john]

[ml1dch]

 

Conservatives 51 (+6)

[Awol]

We’ve still got lots of UK nationals stuck in other parts of Afghan with no prospect at all of reaching Kabul, let alone the airport. It’s the same story for the US and likely for other countries too. Their options are bad, but trying to walk out is now probably the only viable one that doesn’t involve becoming dead or a hostage. 

There’s also some concern the Taliban might be using this pause for evacuation to mass fighters in Kabul, then hit the airport in a final f*** you. Taliban control the four roads in and out of Kabul so if the troops have to try and break out they’ll need massive air support on tap. 

Wouldn't be surprised to wake up tomorrow and find the 82nd Airborne has dropped on Bagram to secure a defensible airhead. 

There’s no way Washington or London can abandon 100’s of their own citizens to the Taliban, it would bring down governments. 
 

 

[chrisp65]

9 hours ago, ml1dch said:

 

Conservatives 51 (+6)

 

There was a conversation a page or two back about not needing Raaaab ‘at his desk’.

 

[bickster]

The Daily Heil has been sticking the boot in quite a bit recently

Anyone seen Michael Gove?

[StefanAVFC]

8 hours ago, Awol said:

it would bring down governments. 
 

 

In a normal world. This government (UK) are bulletproof.

[StefanAVFC]

35 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

There was a conversation a page or two back about not needing Raaaab ‘at his desk’.

 

Slightly off topic, but the same dickheads who say that we can't effectively work from home back Raab being able to manage a global crisis from the beach.

It's madness.

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, StefanAVFC said:

Slightly off topic, but the same dickheads who say that we can't effectively work from home back Raab being able to manage a global crisis from the beach.

It's madness.

Bit different global crisis versus a teams call at 10 to discuss Terry's online birthday card. 

[Panto_Villan]

I think I'm going to wait a few more days for the dust to settle before take too strong a stance on this but while it's horrifying seeing the country fall to the Taliban almost overnight, I'm not sure there's many good options.

Obviously I think any pullout that leaves such a vacuum that the government collapses overnight is a disaster, but from what I was hearing (admittedly secondhand) there wasn't much push from the Afghan government side to negotiate with the Taliban because they thought they were too weak to pose a threat.

So the choice was either to continue spending vast amounts of money and risking Western lives in the hope the corrupt and incompetent Afghan government could build a stable state capable of protecting itself - something it had utterly failed to do in the last 20 years, and was unlikely to any time soon - or pull out and potentially let the country fall into anarchy.

It doesn't seem like Afghanistan was on the cusp of becoming a peaceful place and they had the rug pulled from under them, anyway. So I don't really know what the correct course of action should have been.

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

I'm not sure there's many good options.

That's right, IMO. And it's why it's really important that competent, thoughtful, dedicated, intelligent people are involved whenever there's a situation with few, if any, good options.

Unfortunately, it looks like this wasn't the case this time, nor will it be for the foreseeable future.

Over the past few years, Afghanistan has been, while still something of a mess, at least a stabler, safer, more "normal" place. But of course it was kept that way in large part by the presence of the Western forces. The USA in particular, when Trump was in charge, wanted to bring their forces home. Which is fair enough as a desire. But Trump did a deal with the Taliban directly. He didn't involve the government of Afghanistan in it, he basically just agreed with the Taliban "you stop doing all the bad stuff and we'll leave in 2021". The Taliban didn't keep their part of the bargain, nothing was done about that. Then Biden took over and decided "I want out" and the US ran away ahead of schedule, and without listening to either their own advisors, or their allies - the NATO nations who'd responded and supported the US after 9/11, when the US invoked the NATO treaty article 5 which requires the members to come to the aid of a fellow member under attack.

The USA has stuck 2 fingers up to its allies. Britain has much reduced influence or respect in the world, a situation brought about through both Brexit and  the particular untrustworthiness of Bunter Johnson. The West generally is of a mindset to be much more insular, much more nation focused, rather than any collective kind of outlook.

The result has been this shambles. The UK surprised and incapable, the Afghans (and all the other people in that Country) left completely in the lurch and to the whims of the unwanted, unelected, stone age, murderous knobheads. The consequences will last for decades, and not in a good way.

[Awol]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's right, IMO. And it's why it's really important that competent, thoughtful, dedicated, intelligent people are involved whenever there's a situation with few, if any, good options.

Unfortunately, it looks like this wasn't the case this time, nor will it be for the foreseeable future.

Over the past few years, Afghanistan has been, while still something of a mess, at least a stabler, safer, more "normal" place. But of course it was kept that way in large part by the presence of the Western forces. The USA in particular, when Trump was in charge, wanted to bring their forces home. Which is fair enough as a desire. But Trump did a deal with the Taliban directly. He didn't involve the government of Afghanistan in it, he basically just agreed with the Taliban "you stop doing all the bad stuff and we'll leave in 2021". The Taliban didn't keep their part of the bargain, nothing was done about that. Then Biden took over and decided "I want out" and the US ran away ahead of schedule, and without listening to either their own advisors, or their allies - the NATO nations who'd responded and supported the US after 9/11, when the US invoked the NATO treaty article 5 which requires the members to come to the aid of a fellow member under attack.

The USA has stuck 2 fingers up to its allies. Britain has much reduced influence or respect in the world, a situation brought about through both Brexit and  the particular untrustworthiness of Bunter Johnson. The West generally is of a mindset to be much more insular, much more nation focused, rather than any collective kind of outlook.

The result has been this shambles. The UK surprised and incapable, the Afghans (and all the other people in that Country) left completely in the lurch and to the whims of the unwanted, unelected, stone age, murderous knobheads. The consequences will last for decades, and not in a good way.

Aside from crowbarring Brexit into an irrelevant context I agree with all of that, particularly the future relationship with the US. 

For the UK we are confronted with the perennial post-war problem of our political class: they want to pursue a significant international security role without paying what it costs to do so.

The alternative is the delusion of doing so by proxy, levering US power for ends the Foreign Office judges to be good. 

When X occupant of the White House (brutally) exposes that delusion, they all flap around like startled pigeons and desperately try to conceal reality from themselves and from us. 

We are a spoke within the wheel of US grand strategy. London’s wishes only give the appearance of influencing Washington if they happen to correspond with what the US was going to do anyway. 

[blandy]

10 minutes ago, Awol said:

Aside from crowbarring Brexit into an irrelevant context I agree with all of that, particularly the future relationship with the US. 

Thanks. The reason I mentioned the B word, is because the situation with N.Ireland and what Bunter did with the EU deal clearly lost him respect from Biden, as well as the EU. It has diminished the UK, both in terms of reputationally, and in terms of being a bridge between the US and the Continent. The likes of Russia and China are delighted with it. And it's a piece in the current situation in Afghan, with the fracturing of the kind of coalition of the West.

[Awol]

16 minutes ago, blandy said:

Thanks. The reason I mentioned the B word, is because the situation with N.Ireland and what Bunter did with the EU deal clearly lost him respect from Biden, as well as the EU. It has diminished the UK, both in terms of reputationally, and in terms of being a bridge between the US and the Continent. The likes of Russia and China are delighted with it. And it's a piece in the current situation in Afghan, with the fracturing of the kind of coalition of the West.

Bunter never had respect from Biden or his team, they view him as Kim Jong Trump.

NI is a whole different conversation that’s not for this thread, but the bridge analogy is just another British political conceit, believing US intent can be massaged in transit across the Atlantic  into something Whitehall approves of. If the US wants to speak to France or Germany it doesn’t and never needed the UK. 

Whatever the parochial concerns of Inter-European squabbling over local politics, in global security terms the UK is very much engaged with European allies. Neither Brexit or Afghanistan has changed that, and if anything the latter looks likely to draw them closer together. 
 

 

[HanoiVillan]

Good points on the nonsense in Parliament yesterday:

The debate on Afghanistan exposed a delusional Parliament

'Our MPs spent yesterday debating the Afghanistan disaster as if Britain could have prevented it.

Keir Starmer got the ball rolling with a misjudged — and, at some points, unintelligible — speech, blaming it all on Boris Johnson. Accusing the Prime Minister of complacency, he reeled off a list of supposed policy failures, all of which had this in common: their complete irrelevance to the course of this week’s events.

But it wasn’t just Starmer. One MP after another held forth as if Britain could have stopped the advance of the Taliban — or, at least, changed Joe Biden’s mind about the American pullout.

But neither of these things are true. This may have been a NATO mission, but it’s one in which America made by far the greatest contribution. What America wanted, under both Trump and Biden, was to withdraw — and having already done the same ourselves we could hardly object. 

Several MPs, including Starmer, taunted the PM with his July prediction that “there is no military path to victory for the Taliban”. But the prediction was correct. The 300,000 strong Afghan army was not defeated on the battlefield, rather the country was handed over to the insurgents by its own political leadership. 

This is the single most important fact about the fall of Kabul, but our MPs ignored it. Instead, they queued up to condemn President Biden for his statement that the Afghan military had collapsed, “sometimes without trying to fight.” Biden could have chosen his words more carefully — placing the blame on the leaders not the soldiers — but he was basically right.

On this and every other issue, the preference of our MPs is to emote rather than confront harsh realities. 

The issue of refugees is a case in point. Clearly we owe a duty of care to those Afghans who helped us. But over-and-over again, MPs confused this specific moral obligation with a responsibility for the Afghan people as a whole. Starmer claimed that while the situation required an international response, Britain “must take the lead.” He never explained why.

Layla Moran, for the Lib Dems, called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened up to an international border — but failed to say how it might be secured or indeed which of Afghanistan’s neighbours should be at the other end.'

surprisingly, from the Cow Site: https://unherd.com/thepost/the-debate-on-afghanistan-exposed-a-delusional-parliament/

[Mic09]

47 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Good points on the nonsense in Parliament yesterday:

The debate on Afghanistan exposed a delusional Parliament

'Our MPs spent yesterday debating the Afghanistan disaster as if Britain could have prevented it.

Keir Starmer got the ball rolling with a misjudged — and, at some points, unintelligible — speech, blaming it all on Boris Johnson. Accusing the Prime Minister of complacency, he reeled off a list of supposed policy failures, all of which had this in common: their complete irrelevance to the course of this week’s events.

But it wasn’t just Starmer. One MP after another held forth as if Britain could have stopped the advance of the Taliban — or, at least, changed Joe Biden’s mind about the American pullout.

But neither of these things are true. This may have been a NATO mission, but it’s one in which America made by far the greatest contribution. What America wanted, under both Trump and Biden, was to withdraw — and having already done the same ourselves we could hardly object. 

Several MPs, including Starmer, taunted the PM with his July prediction that “there is no military path to victory for the Taliban”. But the prediction was correct. The 300,000 strong Afghan army was not defeated on the battlefield, rather the country was handed over to the insurgents by its own political leadership. 

This is the single most important fact about the fall of Kabul, but our MPs ignored it. Instead, they queued up to condemn President Biden for his statement that the Afghan military had collapsed, “sometimes without trying to fight.” Biden could have chosen his words more carefully — placing the blame on the leaders not the soldiers — but he was basically right.

On this and every other issue, the preference of our MPs is to emote rather than confront harsh realities. 

The issue of refugees is a case in point. Clearly we owe a duty of care to those Afghans who helped us. But over-and-over again, MPs confused this specific moral obligation with a responsibility for the Afghan people as a whole. Starmer claimed that while the situation required an international response, Britain “must take the lead.” He never explained why.

Layla Moran, for the Lib Dems, called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened up to an international border — but failed to say how it might be secured or indeed which of Afghanistan’s neighbours should be at the other end.'

surprisingly, from the Cow Site: https://unherd.com/thepost/the-debate-on-afghanistan-exposed-a-delusional-parliament/

It's not a discussion, it's point scoring and newspaper headlines. 

I am sickened by the state of our politics. 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Thanks. The reason I mentioned the B word, is because the situation with N.Ireland and what Bunter did with the EU deal clearly lost him respect from Biden, as well as the EU. It has diminished the UK, both in terms of reputationally, and in terms of being a bridge between the US and the Continent. The likes of Russia and China are delighted with it. And it's a piece in the current situation in Afghan, with the fracturing of the kind of coalition of the West.

For me, the way we have acted on Northern Ireland with regard to Brexit has been central to our being diminished in Biden’s eyes.

We have looked incompetent at best, possibly deceitful. Biden and his team would not have been of a mindset that they owed us any privileged access or leverage. Why would they currently trust anything this government committed to or promised? Their track record is a disgrace.

For a long time we’ve kidded ourselves that the tail might be able to sometimes wag the dog, and the dog has been good enough not to pull us up on this. But we’ve been such a bad partner of late, we were easily ignored. 

I’m not resting everything on Brexit, it’s not a story about Brexit. But you can’t pretend it was of zero influence in our ‘special relationship’.

 

 

[PussEKatt]

People hanging onto planes that are about to take off is sillyness of the highest digree ?!