We made peace with most Nazis after that bigger war. Just because Bonespur did it does not mean it was a bad move.
Clearly butt hurt and lashing out because your pagan god obama failed to extract us from Afghanistan, and Trump may be successful at it.
Taliban has been loose for most of the last 18 years the US has been in Afghanistan. They are bad guys but they have more popular support than the other butchers that the US wanted to support. Making a treaty with the Taliban is dealing with the reality on the ground. It is the only way to get out. It's either make a treaty with the Taliban or occupy Afghanistan for eternity or until the US nation state falls apart. The US military never really accomplished anything in Afghanistan. The military officials documented it internally but lied to the American people. It is one more huge lie the US government has sold to the public. We have the documents made public where the military admits it, and we more or less believe the lie. Get out and let them live in their Muslim dystopia. It is their desire to do so.
Yep. I'd like to close down prisons. They're eyesores and cost a lot of money. Then I remember that doing so means a bunch of murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and child molesters walk the streets, and the idea doesn't look so hot anymore.
But we didn't make peace with Hitler, Göring, Himmler, and Goebbels. We made sure the leadership was dead. Furthermore, we made peace on our terms. They weren't allowed to act like Nazis anymore, and we left thousands of guys there to (in part) make sure that they didn't. This feels a more like the "peace" we negotiated after WWI, and we'll probably get a more comparable result. Things will look ok for awhile, but they'll be unstable. Terrorism will return, and we'll probably be back there again within the next 10-15 years but will have to fight and lose men and money recovering what we're about to give away for promises from a bunch of people we have absolutely no reason to trust.
It isn't as though it's hard to withdraw. We can pull troops from anywhere at any time. What's hard is making sure you've finished the job before doing so. If you've decided that you trust the Taliban, that's fine. However, if you're willing to do that, then I think it's pretty hard to bust Obama's balls for trusting Iran when they say they aren't trying to get nuclear weapons.
Since we will can not do what is necessary to actually "win " of the remaining alternatives which is better for America? Continue as we have for 18 years Make some kind of agreement with the Taliban that gets our troops home? There is no good solution but why continue to let Anericans die?
Americans are going to die so long as we have problems with the Islamic world. Do you want them to be the occasional serviceman in Afghanistan fighting, or do be you want them to be thousands of American civilians in New York City living their lives?
Having read excerpts of the "agreement" I am not sure what it even actually means. So the Taliban is agreeing to honor their pledge to help prevent insurgent groups specifically Al Queda from trying to use the country to plan attacks against the U.S. and its allies. The Taliban also agreed to discuss a permanent cease-fire in talks with the current Afghan government set to begin on March 10th. Another condition of the agreement calls for the release of 5,000 Taliban members from Afghan-run jails, although it was not clear if the Afghan government will comply with that since the actual government was not part of the deal. Well it is a start and if we don't start we will never get out of there. Who was the Russian General who told us 18 years ago just to give them millions and not ever to send any troops?
I am as confident in the Taliban backing off as I was about the North Vietnamese when Kissinger and Nixon cut their honorable peace deal. But let Afghans be Afghans
Funny thing about the North Vietnamese. They never attacked America. Or anywhere else outside of their borders. They were really bad guys too. You know who that reminds me of? The Taliban. They never attacked America either. Deal with the actual terrorists who are planning to do harm to Americans. Kill them wherever they are in the world. But the US government is so stupid we give weapons to Al Qaeda, the group that actually killed Americans. In the attempt to give them weapons out of Libya they killed more Americans. But there "we" are in Syria and Northern Iraq allying with Al Qaeda. To make it even worse. The leader of Al Qaeda during 9/11 was a Saudi. Saudi Arabia is where wahabism was created and where the center of the movement still is. This is radical, terroristic Islam. We know where it comes from. Do we attack that place? No. We sell weapons to them so they can kill Shia in Yemen. US foreign policy is completely insane and his been for decades now. But let's all be afraid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The only threat Afghanistan has posed in history is if you are an empire trying to control them.
I think you do know what it means. We pull out based on their promises to do stuff and sometimes just to talk about stuff. And of course, we let a bunch of Taliban people out of prison. What could possibly go wrong? It feels very forced - more than the Iran deal was. Is this how we viewed Obama's withdrawal of troops from Iraq? Most on the Right were hostile, and of course, they ended up being right. Pulling troops from Iraq was more defensible than this, because Iraq had a more stable government (though still not stable enough) than Afghanistan does and because we had military forces very nearby. Despite that, it still ended up being a bad decision. I hope I'm wrong on this. I hope the Taliban really does renounce terrorism and violence and become decent stewards of Afghanistan. However, I see absolutely no reason to assume that.
We weren't in Vietnam because the North Vietnamese attacked the United States. We were in Vietnam, because we didn't like the idea of a global Soviet empire. It's easy to sit back and Monday-morning quarterback the move now that the Soviet Union is gone. The people who made the decision to resist the influence of the USSR didn't have the benefit of hindsight that you have. You view them as harmless today. They viewed them as dangerous and had very good reason to view them that way. They were bad hombres. And whether or not North Vietnam attacked outside of their borders is somewhat questionable. We'll start with South Vietnam. Obviously they attacked outside of their borders to do that, and of course, countless refugees fled during the "reunification" to the United States to avoid getting butchered. And of course, they caused quite a bit of trouble in Cambodia and Laos. The Communists in North Vietnam were bad dudes, and they weren't just bad dudes in their own country. Let's not be foolish. They were tools of the Soviet Union. It wasn't just about Vietnam. It was about promoting communist dictatorship all over the world. That's like saying, "just deal with the pilots who bombed Pear Harbor." Bin Laden was able to plot 9/11 because he had a place where he could have safe harbor. The Taliban gave him that place, and after we stupidly leave, they will very likely give safe harbor to somebody else out to harm the West. The Ron Paul Idiocy knows no nuance. It's not stupid. There are complications. Not every situation is the same. Not everybody is a good guy in every conflict, and not everybody is a bad guy or at least not the worst bad guy. We aided the Soviet Union at one point and then spent the next 45 years in a Cold War with them. Were we "stupid" to help them when we did? No. They were fighting Nazi Germany, who was the more immediate threat at the time, so it made sense to help the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, we aided the Afghan mujaheddin, which included elements that became Al Qaeda. We knew those guys weren't Boys Scouts. We helped them, because they were fighting the more immediate threat. That kind of thing happens, and again, with 25 years of hindsight and a destroyed Soviet Union, it's very easy to sit back and nitpick it. It's like losing a football game and then bitching that your team didn't go for it on 4th-and-10 in the first quarter when it might made a difference had things gone perfectly. We don't attack Saudi Arabia, because they largely keep the crazy people in line. Osama Bin Laden is an ethnic Saudi, but he was expelled from the country in the early '90s. He wasn't working for them. Furthermore, we don't want a major disruption of the global oil supply. It's weird. You're a big fan of free and open global trade, but you crap on what even puts it on the menu. It's on the menu in part, because a relatively decent regime in Saudi Arabia sells oil at a fair, market price to the global community. No, it's not a bunch of choir boys, but by Islamic standards, it's pretty decent. Another big reason is naval power with global reach. Ever notice how pirates aren't a big inhibitor to global trade anymore? They didn't just collectively find religion and decide to stop being pirates in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nations like Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and later, the United States built big navies with outposts and bases all over the world, which made piracy too dangerous. If we all didn't become "global toublemakers," you wouldn't have international trade.
This wouldn't work if Obama or Bush was POTUS, because the Taliban would know they could violate the agreement and face no consequences. They probably are not as confident that is the case with Trump.
I am well aware of everything you stated about the Vietnam War. The point is that we left a war in a sloppy way and it didn't lead to violence against the US. No doubt bad things happened in Vietnam and there will be bad things happen in Afghanistan when we leave. It is nothing like that. Japan had an army which represented their government. The government of Japan and their entire military was within scope. All of Al Qaeda was also within scope. The Taliban wasn't part of Al Qaeda and I have read that they were willing to give Al Qaeda up after 9/11. If the Taliban violently opposed the US going after Al Qaeda then they would be within scope. That's debatable. Several of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis. Expelling Bin Laden isn't really keeping him in line either. I am actually not advocating for attacking Saudi Arabia. So this paragraph misses the target quite a bit. I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. Everything you said about Saudi Arabia applies in some way to other Middle Eastern countries. I think we should sell less weapons to the Saudis because they use them to kill civillians in Yemen. That is the main change I would like to see. This is a different topic than what I was talking about though. Using the US Navy to police pirating has good outcomes like you state. But that doesn't mean this is the only way to protect global trade. It can be done several different ways without having the US the global policmen. So I have to disagree with your statement "If we all didn't become "global toublemakers," you wouldn't have international trade." That begs a whole series of questions.
