Davkaus Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 I expect there'll be some token drone strikes on isil targets that'll achieve very little, but there aren't any great options really. It seems the Taliban are still cooperating 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 Has Biden worked out yet how he gets the last plane out whilst appearing to be laying down threats and conditions to the people that he needs to facilitate the last plane out? Massive bloody stain on Biden’s record. All the optics are that after 20 years, Biden lost Afghanistan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 (edited) They have shoulder launched SAMs Quote UK warns airlines to avoid flying below 25,000 feet over Afghanistan after attack LONDON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Britain has issued a notice to airlines to avoid flying below 25,000 feet (7,620 metres) over Afghanistan after an attack near Kabul airport on Thursday. "Following the shocking scenes in Afghanistan today, I have issued a NOTAM (Notice to Aviation) further advising airlines to avoid Afghan airspace under 25,000ft," said Grant Shapps, the transport minister. "We will continue to keep this under review." Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Alex Richardson As mentioned, those last few flights out of Kabul are going to be a bit spicy. Not retaking Bagram airbase a week ago is going to be a massive issue in the investigation of this debacle Edited August 27, 2021 by blandy Fixed quote box Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilko154 Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 This is pretty chilling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 2 hours ago, chrisp65 said: All the optics are that after 20 years, Biden lost Afghanistan. 'Optics' are stupid, and caring about 'optics' is even more stupid. Literally been occupying the country for decades because of 'optics'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrentVilla Posted August 26, 2021 Moderator Share Posted August 26, 2021 16 minutes ago, wilko154 said: This is pretty chilling I'm rarely lost for words but watching this my jaw hung open and I couldn't stop watching, the guys wing doesn't move an inch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 Mother. Of. God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 There's a hard choice here. You can get people out without restarting the war, but then you have to cooperate with the new government of the country; or you can prioritise not cooperating with the new government, and then you won't get any more people out; or you can try to get people out *and* not cooperate, which is going to mean shooting lots and restarting hostilities. It's definitely clear that the defence establishment would love option 3, but that doesn't mean it's the right option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugeley Villa Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 Unbelievable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desensitized43 Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 9 hours ago, Awol said: Mother. Of. God. We've done no better apparently. I heard a radio interview on LBC this morning where the defence secretary basically confirmed that when we packed up the British embassy in Kabul we left documents with lists of afghan informants, workers and job applicants, complete with their names and addresses just lying around. Rookie mistakes. This whole thing is a **** shambles from start to finish but the people who'll suffer the most are a bit on the brown side so you know Boris and his supporters for the most part don't give a ****. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 9 minutes ago, desensitized43 said: We've done no better apparently. I heard a radio interview on LBC this morning where the defence secretary basically confirmed that when we packed up the British embassy in Kabul we left documents with lists of afghan informants, workers and job applicants, complete with their names and addresses just lying around. Rookie mistakes. Times story embedded in the below. Hard to know which is worse. Not knowing it's a terrible idea to give the Taliban a list of potential targets, or knowing it's a terrible idea and not doing anything to stop them from getting them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Salad Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 Just a tragedy all around. My thoughts go out to all the Marines that died and their families. As for Biden...be a man and just **** resign. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted August 27, 2021 Moderator Share Posted August 27, 2021 12 hours ago, chrisp65 said: All the optics are that after 20 years, Biden lost Afghanistan. Agreed. Trump surrendered it February last year, but Biden's inherited the "deal" and it looks like it's all his doing. It isn't. The US has badly mishandled the exit, horribly so, but the Trump stuff is the root cause of the mess. 10 hours ago, HanoiVillan said: 'Optics' are stupid, and caring about 'optics' is even more stupid. Well, yes... except as Chris said the optics make it look like a Trump/Democrat foul up, and much more of the blame and responsibility lies with the Trump/Republican side. If the "optics" lead to Republicans getting back control, only to repeat or compound the errors then that's a worse outcome for the world. George Bush went in there under NATO article 5 requiring the rest of NATO to come to the US's aid as a member nation under attack. While that NATO operation ended a while back (couple of years or more, I think), there are, as we know, still UK and other NATO nation people working in Afghanistan, as well as the US post NATO involvement. So Biden's stiffed the US allies, with his approach which is likely to be counter-productive to Western security in the long run, and Trump has the larger responsibility for his surrender deal with the Talibans last year, and the utter mess of doing what was necessary to follow it through. In the end, it's all America, mind - or that's the "optics", anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 28 minutes ago, desensitized43 said: We've done no better apparently. I heard a radio interview on LBC this morning where the defence secretary basically confirmed that when we packed up the British embassy in Kabul we left documents with lists of afghan informants, workers and job applicants, complete with their names and addresses just lying around. Rookie mistakes. This whole thing is a **** shambles from start to finish but the people who'll suffer the most are a bit on the brown side so you know Boris and his supporters for the most part don't give a ****. As I understand it the FCO staff left the contact details of seven Afghans on the floor. That’s awful but can be plausibly explained in the chaos of an evacuation. The US biometric database of Afghan collaborators now in Taliban hands runs into the hundreds of thousands. That can’t be explained. One is a serious mistake, the other is a major disaster. Why you need to bring race into and accuse conservatives of not caring about Afghans b/c they’re brown I don’t know. It’s very Twitter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 12 minutes ago, blandy said: Well, yes... except as Chris said the optics make it look like a Trump/Democrat foul up, and much more of the blame and responsibility lies with the Trump/Republican side. If the "optics" lead to Republicans getting back control, only to repeat or compound the errors then that's a worse outcome for the world. If what 'we' (a broader 'we' than just commenters on a football forum, but no harm starting at home) believe is that Republicans have more 'blame and responsibility', then what we need to do is *say that*, rather than *saying how terrible the optics are*. Of course it doesn't really matter what we VT members say, but I am very tired of reading articles in eg The NYT saying how 'the optics are bad for Biden' without any sense of acknowledgement that their articles are creating the 'optics' they talk about. If something is bad, it should be called bad, but if something is not bad, or about as good as could be expected, then what value is provided by saying it *looks* bad? It's just yet another branch of horserace media coverage in which the only question that matters is 'who will win the midterms'. The reason this war has gone on for 20 years is that successive presidents have decided it would be too politically costly to end it, not because we have been making any actual progress, and in fact we have been in various levels of retreat for the last decade. But for as long as the military remained there, occupying the country, the media chose to ignore the story, so despite all the death and carnage there were barely any 'optics' at all. A great success for lovers of 'optics' perhaps, but not so much for Afghanistan. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 25 minutes ago, Awol said: As I understand it the FCO staff left the contact details of seven Afghans on the floor. That’s awful but can be plausibly explained in the chaos of an evacuation. Is it not more accurate to say that The Times journalist found the contact details of seven Afghans on the floor? That doesn't mean that there weren't details of plenty of others that people with less journalistic motives for the information may also have found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 14 minutes ago, ml1dch said: Is it not more accurate to say that The Times journalist found the contact details of seven Afghans on the floor? That doesn't mean that there weren't details of plenty of others that people with less journalistic motives for the information may also have found. Is it more accurate to speculate wildly? Maybe more fun, but not really more accurate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brumerican Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 We used to get bollockings for leaving empty round casings on the rifle range. The QM who just left $85 Bn worth of gear in the field is probably going to get Christmas guard duty. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 11 minutes ago, Awol said: Is it more accurate to speculate wildly? Maybe more fun, but not really more accurate. I'd argue that in the two similar statements "details of seven people were left" and "details of seven people were found", the second is more provably accurate and any speculation is happening in the first of them. Not that it's all that important. It's a pretty shambolic state of affairs either way. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 It's a pretty typical state of affairs to be honest. Civil servants leave sensitive documents on trains or in other inappropriate locations regularly, and it's no surprise that an occupying power in a country for two decades generated a lot of paperwork that couldn't all be gathered or shredded in a hurry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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