LeviF

So we're changing the topic now? Reality is Afghanistan has now been bungled by four administrations. What a mess.

https://www.wral.com/taliban-seek-to-project-calm-as-us-speeds-chaotic-evacuation/19828137/ For those of you unlearned, those are called terms of surrender.

lol with the way marriage and divorce works in the US there is no woman who doesn't have the option to just take the kids, half his income, and the house. She made the choice whether you (or her husband) think she did or not.

"Bu-bu-but the last guy made a plan to get out of a two decade war so it's his fault and not the guy who's been in charge for seven months and screwed it up so badly that children are falling off planes!"

lmao some really hot takes about stay-at-home moms here. I retired my wife. If she wants to sell ***** on Etsy or go get a cute little part time job when my kid(s) are older she can feel free. She wants to be a mom and by good fortune and hard work I have the ability to make that a reality for her. It's criminal that most families in this country can't pay a mortgage and put food on the table on one income. But to send her back to the salon six weeks after giving birth so we can take $1500 a month out of her take-home to pay for full time daycare is the epitome of stupid. Not to mention the dozens of reports about daycares I had to handle in my time at CPS. I guess that's the price I pay for marrying a stupid, lazy slut, huh guys? I'm sure my dad will love to hear about the ways he failed me from you titans of virility.

In a normal society this would result in a *****load of resignations. I have my doubts, to say the least.

Well the government we propped up was incredibly unpopular. Eliminate that option and you’re left with either the taliban or the gangland chaos that pre-existed them. Before the taliban takeover you could barely call Afghanistan a country. Getting through a major city involved going through maybe a dozen checkpoints which required payment to a thug of whichever gang or warlord happened to hold that checkpoint. And if some gang or warlord kidnapped, raped, and killed your daughter because you couldn’t post protection that month, you had no recourse. At least under the taliban you might have some recourse. Assuming, of course, that the taliban weren’t the ones who, ahem, conscripted your daughter. So you can have Mad Max-ian anarchy or the taliban government. I can see why some choose the latter, though the taliban may offend whatever it is that constitutes my soul.

Not support, since obviously we didn’t want the taliban raking in 9 figures a year on it, but control. You’re very rah-rah about the US military and their capabilities so let’s look at it this way: if the objective was to eliminate the heroin trade in Afghanistan and cripple the taliban monetarily we could have vaporized every poppy field in the country in a matter of hours. Instead we have pictures of soldiers walking through pretty flowers and videos of the USAF vaporizing mud huts with no production capabilities 500 feet from said fields. Why?

The taliban didn’t do 9/11. and where the hell do you think the taliban gets their money from? Literally just Google some of the states objectives in Afghanistan and opium/poppy/heroin will pop up.

If you think the poppies have nothing to do with this you’re even more incredibly blind than previously thought. And quoting a boomer fantasy movie to make your point lmao please give us a year by year on our actions in Afghanistan and how they promoted our national defense.

Who said anything about negotiating? Let them run their country and bargain for the heroin later. That’s all we want.

It’s time to ignore oldmanfan’s takes on foreign policy. Neoliberal chicken hawks had their day and failed spectacularly. The time for his strategy was in the 1950s and we passed. Sad as that is there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube now.

No, I’m America first. And sending your grandchildren to get sniped and blown up by goat*****ing mountain men ain’t it. Twenty years, old man. Soon the airport in Kabul will fall and NATO will be scrambling to come up with little known synonyms for surrender. And somewhere along the way you forgot the lessons you should have learned fifty years ago during the fall of another third world shithole city.

I didn’t read past the second sentence. Our purpose in Afghanistan was never to spread justice or whatever. It was to spread neoliberal government and protect the heroin supply. Go ahead, find an Afghanistan vet and ask him if he knew anyone who guarded poppies.

And you seem to think America is only 80 years old. And that the world started around the same time.

I didn’t make any claims about what they may want to do. And again, no amount of hand wringing can get me to care about a country half a world away when the hand wingers actively attempt to turn this country into a third world hellhole. If you want to go feel free.

The third reich was an existential threat to the balance of world power, and even then we were late. Your comparison is poor and unconvincing.

lol the fourth estate can’t make me care about some shithole country when they’ve actively tried to burn this one. Not happening. Sorry you have to carry that burden.

Since the political world is an environment of unrelenting progressive triumph, why is the media environment shrill and hysterical?

Serious question: do you think "publicly funded" and "tax funded" are the same thing?

I didn't get a 10th year invite. Not even sure we've ever had one tbh. Our class president died three months before graduating and as far as I can tell it usually falls on them to get things kicked off for a reunion. I'm still friends with exactly one person from high school and he didn't hear anything either. We were kind of a lost class. The smallest that went through my high school in decades. In order to fill up the dais more at commencement they stuck the GED kids up there with us 😂 I was ranked third and wouldn't have made top 25 if I graduated a year earlier.

Fight for the US Military: get cuckolded by your wife while on deployment and watch as the USG gives her your pay, pension, and home. Fight for the Taliban: assigned a wife.

At this point I think it's safe to say that every statement that came from the White House over the last 20 years about how we're building up Afghanistan and its people was a blatant falsehood. What was it she said yesterday, the Taliban have to decide what role they want to play in the international community? Psaki you dumb B word you can't just summon them to HR they're a ***** terrorist army.

Back in the day we had a football thread in PPP during the season for us exiles to poast about our beloved Bills. Honestly since it was during the drought I think it made the mood here worse.