AlJazeera reports Taliban enter Kabul. We know Joe Biden behaves as if he is afflicted with some form of dementia but surely people like Blinken and the Joint Chiefs are running still sane offices. Now we are in a situation where some armed guys in utes who follow a medieaval islamic cult could take westerners hostage civil or mil plus or minus airliners around Kabul airport. Memories of the Iran hostage crisis 444 days 1979-1981.
Afghanistan is not the disaster.
Biden is the disaster.
Unfortunately most of his monumental stuff ups are going to take a little longer for the good folk of the USA to wake up to and return to being a respectable civilized country.
There is a very, very long history of failed invasions of Afghanistan, from prior to Alexander the Great to current-day Americans.
In 2008, I did a DD project along Pakistan’s western border adjoining Iran, examining various mining operations north towards Afghanistan. The number of delapidated British Raj garrisons (museums,actually) along the way through very poor villages prompted me to ask how these “poor, backward” village people could beat the then best trained, best equipped army in the world (British). The answer I was given is a short story in itself. Rudyard Kipling splendidly recorded this in dispatches, story and poem.
Yet, the Russians and now the Americans, seemed never to understand the point of this long history. Nor have I ever been given a credible answer to my question: “Why bother, anyway ?”.
I think the main difference between the present situation and 1980 is that this time they have the Black Hawk helicopters to crash or not in the desert on route to….
“Taliban fighters posing with military helicopters such as U.S.-made Black Hawks and Soviet-made Mi-17s.
After the group took over Mazar-i-Sharif airport this weekend, more photos followed, this time of Taliban members standing next to an A-29 attack plane and MD-530 utility helicopter.
www.defensenews.com/air/2021/08/17/the-taliban-has-access-to-us-military-aircraft-now-what-happens/
Great account by Sarah Chayes setting out examples of the corruption in Afghanistan over the last two decades. The Ides of August