Posted on 12/05/2016 3:52:12 PM PST by jcon40
Many hotspots and geopolitical adversaries are constantly in the news and likely at the forefront of the foreign policy issues President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is focused on. Yet the issue that is most likely to be the first real foreign policy crisis of the Trump administration is the one that received no discussion at all during the presidential debates – Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan? The longest war in U.S. history? Where the United States, its allies in NATO, and several partner nations still have in excess of 13,000 troops on the ground? Where the United States last year spent approximately $3.6 billion on security force assistance alone? Where the United States has been dropping ever-larger numbers of bombs since President Obama gave U.S. forces more expansive authorities to achieve so-called “strategic effects?”
As was the case when Barack Obama took office in 2009, Afghanistan is again the “forgotten war,” taking the backseat to a war in Iraq. And just as President Obama inherited a war trending in the wrong direction, so too will President Trump. Today, Afghanistan’s economy is in decline, with its gross domestic product (GDP) having decreased each of the past three years. The country’s government is in a state of routine chaos, with the parliament having just dismissed seven government ministers and the first vice president having just publically beaten and kidnapped a political rival.
(Excerpt) Read more at warontherocks.com ...
Agree, had thought the same at one time for Iraq and now Syria
Afghanistan has been a disaster since 1870; ask the Brits.
Nuke it from orbit, just to make sure. Resettle with Jews, who would make the place bloom, or Chinese, who would turn it into a manufacturing and trade center. Once upon a time, I'd have said resettle it with Americans as well, but today the EPA would get there first and nothing could ever get done.
Ironically the Pashtuns (were also most Taliban recruit from) traditionally claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel and therefore of old Jewish stock. Older sources of neighboring peoples reported this also rather matter-of-factly.
Afghanistan was doing fairly ok under Zahir Shah from the 1940’s to early 70’s. The Leftist upheaval since the 70’s and Islamic backlash/revival pretty much killed the place. As always.
We should have let the Russians keep the dam place. What fools we are.
I am so glad America kicked out the British Empire over 200 years ago. They were ruthless SOBs. Below are the conditions in Ireland and Scotland that turned Benjamin Franklin from an anglophile loyalist to a revolutionary:
Hillsborough was a landlord and Franklin found that he treated his tenants with much less respect. On Hillsborough’s estate Franklin again witnessed the poverty caused by the landlord system in Ireland. He wrote, “… if my countrymen should ever wish for the honor of having among them a gentry enormously wealthy, let them sell their farms and pay racked rents; the scale of the landlords will rise as that of the tenants is depressed who will soon become poor, tattered, dirty, and abject in spirit.”
In Ireland Franklin realized that Ireland’s economy was affected by the same trade regulations and laws of England that governed America. If this “colonial exploitation” was the treatment that America could expect from England, Franklin wanted no part of it. He soon recognized that diplomacy alone was not going to solve the differences between England and the American colonies. American historian Thomas Fleming has written, “Ben Franklin says when he visited Ireland in 1771, he was so appalled by the poverty and humiliation the Irish endured, he decided then and there maybe America should consider independence.”
After leaving Ireland, Franklin also toured Scotland, where he witnessed similar conditions among the rural population. He finally left England on March 20, 1775, and arrived in Philadelphia on May 5. The very next day he was elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. On July 4, 1776, Franklin was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence declaring that separation from England was the only logical path for the American Colonies.
Gotta get the poppies blooming to restore afghan economy.
Yeah what a mess. .. From Wikipedia...Russian withdrawal
Under the Geneva Accords on 14 April 1988, Afghanistan and Pakistan signed three instruments-on principles of mutual relations, in particular non-interference and non-intervention, on the voluntary return of Afghan refugees, and on interrelationships for the settlement, which provided for phased withdrawal of foreign soldiers to begin on 15 May. .....
The United States and the Soviet Union also signed a declaration on international guarantees, stating they would both refrain from any form of interference and intervention
I like the last paragraph where we signed saying we wouldn’t go there.
“until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1970.”
Actually it was 1979, Carter weak ass administration.
Pakistan is the trouble-maker there. Split up this terrorist craphole and the problem there is solved for good.
Better outcome how? The reason for going into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, remember? Instead, Bush and company decided they wanted to remake this dump into a shiny, new democracy that would love us forever. It was an absurd mission from the start.
There is nothing that could happen in Afghanistan that will help US interests, especially since we are bringing the enemy into the US by allowing Muslims to come here and for Islam to take hold.
Get US troops out of Middle East and put them on US borders. Ban Islam, deport Muslims, and institute a “pet the pig” policy to board a plane or enter a western nation. Let the savages fight their Shia/Sunni war in perpetuity in their own rotten countries.
As long as we allow Islam in the US, we are vulnerable, and nothing we do in foreign countries can eliminate the threat here.
Trust me, I am right there wth you regarding Muslims in the US. It’s gotten to the point that we have to take the Spanish Recnquists solution which is to expel muslims If they do not renounce the death cult of Mad Mo.
There is a saying that I truly believe:Do not despise the wisdom of the ancients. “
This craphole has loads of rare minerals that aren’t found elsewhere.
The only reason anyone gives a damn about it,
Yes, 1979 - my mistake
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