Alexander Mercouris
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
US Facing Debacle As Afghan Military Disintegrates, Taliban Advance
News Topic 206
Even the Taliban are surprised at how fast they’re advancing in Afghanistan
Taliban forces rapidly gaining ground in Afghanistan as U.S. leaves
Even the Taliban are taken aback at how fast their forces are moving, one commander said, and have slowed down in some cases to avoid offending the U.S.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Excellent points. No one could have said it better Mr. Mercouris.
I agree ! The Neocons will make fall the empire ! How stupid they are ! Its their hubris !
The US didn’t want to properly train the Afghan military because it would have then become a major threat to US troops. The US wanted control over everything. Helping others succeed is contrary to that position.
Dude, these are mostly primitive people, it’s best the West/the empire just leave em to it,wether it’s their poor treatment of girls/women,or the local fondness for boys, it’s a Alien culture,your Never gonna turn this backward country into Switzerland..
While the Russians occupied Afghanistan, girls/women were, or seemed to be, as well off as those in Switzerland (who were granted the right to vote just recently). Women were dressed like those in the West, and were educated. All this changed when the US created and allied itself with the Taliban as a proxy force to drive out the Russians. Then they had to deal with the monster they had created and empowered.
Many Americans also have a fondness for boys, does that mean their culture is also Alien ? Might explain why the U.S. stayed there for 20 yrs.
Brussels should appoint Rutte as the next Afghan Charge d’Affaires. He seems to have a natural affinity for beheading those who object to such practices.
I suspect it might have been in part to continue support for their Kosovo democratic viability program and insure they had a steady supply of heroin to alleviate Thaci’s growing trade deficit with Europe.
Sort of a practice run for their plans for Ukrainian sustainability.
Perspective is everything. From many thousand year old cultures like China and India, some might argue that westerners are equally primitive people.
President Trump was Not wrong,when inferred that to win against the Taliban,one would have to order some sort of genocide,for it seems the Taliban as they call themselves are a collection of ancient tribes,that have in other incarnations have seen off various invaders, including the British and Russian Soviet empires,infact the only successful invaders of the region were Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan,er,there aren’t too many military geniuses of that calibre in our era,so why don’t we call it a day,and let these ,what we might call more primitive cultures run their lives as they see fit, or is… Read more »
Sometimes Mr. Mercouris does come acrosy a little bit naive.
This was never about building a government. The cowboys went to Afghanistan to control the poppy trade. You can be sure tzey made some deal with the taliban before they left.
Is Oliver Stone still alive ? He could make a movie about it along the lines od ” made in america”, probably the best performance as an actor Tom Cruise ever did.
Cruise’s best performance as an actor was when he acted like Scientology wasn’t a cult of psychos.
When all the dust has settled, I’ll just bet that it’ll turn out that the central government after the Soviets left, will have endured longer than this one.
I’m just wondering if US embassy personnel will finally be abandoning their rooftop posts in US or RF helicopters.
Ah, if only the US and UK could have had a looking glass into the future they’d wrought by overthrowing the last multi-party, western-style democracy Iran had in 1953. Without a time machine, we’ll never know, will we?
Hey- The Modern World isn’t for everyone, it seems.
U.S Power is receding everywhere, the days of being in numerous countries at once is coming to an end.
The US is broke and cannot sustain it. The Russians and Chinese know this, it’s a waiting game, and the retreat in Afghanistan is just the start of it.
Sort of a reverse western policy toward the soviets, it seems.
When the Vietnam War finally ended in 1975, 100,000 or more Vietnamese, who cast their lot with US, were allowed to come to the US. More ‘boat people’ followed during the ensuing years. Like it or not, this needs to be done in the case of the Afghans with the lesson to be learned being that it is unwise to occupy a conquered land.
Afghanistan has NEVER been conquered, though many have tried.
As is the case today, the Vietnam war was financed by the printing press, hence why President Nixon went off the gold standard.
This was the cause of the high inflation of 1970s.
All these wars the U.S have undertaken in the last 40 years are coming to an end, they’re 30 trillion in debt, the deficits are enormous.
The U.S will be restrained once the dollar collapses, it’s only a matter of time. They will then have to behave differently to what the world has to endure since the end of WW11.
Once the dollar collapses the U.S. as a nation will collapse with it.
It’ll do its best to spark WWIII as a last ditch effort.
Leaving them behind to a gruesome fate is just one other added western disgrace.
They have to leave some behind to spy on their doings and alert the US when al Qaida returns from their American safe haven in Syria. If nine out of ten are executed, well so be it. America will still consider that a win.
Very well said. I couldn’t agree with your analysis more!
Why has there been a war in Afghanistan since the late 1970s? Simple it was all about energy. The Russians wanted to keep a friendly government in power while the US armed and trained the Mujahadin to fight that government. The US wanted control of Afghanistan to pipe oil and gas from the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan then Pakistan. Unfortunately, once the Russians left Afghanistan it fell to pieces so CIA seed money helped Pakistan establish the Taliban to control the country. Yes, it was US money that established the Taliban. George W. Bush entertained the Taliban leadership on his Texas ranch… Read more »
gte – I have a question: is it true that the Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan was the actual reason that ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union? Wouldn’t it be the height of irony if history revealed that the US Empire’s invasion of Afghanistan would be found to have led to the fall of the US Empire? The US Empire seems to have started its downward slide since then,
The reason why the Soviet Union fell apart was because it was driven to bankruptcy. Yes, Afghanistan certainly contributed to its financial problems, but these problems were accumulating over the years since the Soviet Union was spending to keep up with the US on armaments etc.
You ask a very good question, will the US Empire’s invasion of Afghanistan lead to its downfall? The answer is yes it will. Its expenditure is out of control and the dollar is being abandoned as a world reserve currency.
Ah, the old Brzezinsky ‘not mea culpa’ line after 9/11. It certainly helped but was clearly not the straw that broke the camel’s back. The USSR at that point was much like that building in Miami with an unsustainable infrastructure. Gorbachev simply came in a day late and a dollar short to sustain it. And don’t forget, all those malevolent western forces that we now see in action against today’s Russia were there doing their thing in overdrive back then and shortly thereafter had just come away in triumph after doing the same to Yugoslavia. It’s all in analyzing their… Read more »
Contrary to popular western belief, Milosevic in his own way, was something akin to Gorbachev, in promoting unity of a state’s peoples to a common beneficial cause as opposed to the US et. al.’s method of promoting disunity and secession by exploiting regional nationalism to accomplish their cause of destroying socialist states by brute force, rather than promoting a peaceful transition to a more European model of coexistence of socialist parties within a generally democratic state recognizing private ownership and rights. The US more often than not seeks to exploit weakness in whatever society it seeks to destabilize, sometimes to… Read more »
If each of the last US presidents were to be a single LED, you could assemble them all in a single array and still not be able to light the inside of a shoebox.