Taliban say they now control 85% of Afghanistan's territory

Good for them. Whole debacle been a waste of lives and money.

When the Taliban does come riding into town, it's going to be hard on the ordinary folks, especially the women and girls.

Americans must be so proud of the bush 2nd until now president’s.

Trump and Biden, between them, have conspired to throw Afghanistan under a bus. The Taliban aren't that far off the Islamic State. Can you imagine what the future holds for girls there as their schools are closed, and for any educated women.

"The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely," Biden said. 

Just yesterday and already mostly wrong. Life comes at you fast, Joe.

like how his handlers made sure to add “everything” and “whole” to the notecard he read.

The Best is Yet to Come….”wait for it”.

The average Afghan will not notice any difference.

Afghanistan will once again become the center of Islamic terrorism. The Neanderthal Taliban will start exporting terrorists within a few months and we will be back to Terran pre 2001 levels.

This withdrawal is a mistake and just how costly a mistake, we will know soon.

When was Afghanistan ever the center of Islamic terrorism?

One more tomb in the Empire's cemetery.

Gee the Taliban get a bad rap. The Taliban has done good outcomes for the world. When the Taliban were in power in the 90,s there was a world wide drought of Heroin. The USA government was buying all of the Taliban annual crop of opium production each season but the Taliban insisted that the annual crop does not leave the country and stored in a mega warehouse outside Kabul. When the USA invaded Afghanistan and found the mega warehouse full with 20 billion dollar of opium and the flood gate open and heroin flooded the streets of the western world again and the heroin drought was over. So it looks like the Taliban are very good at stopping the world heroin trade and USA very bad at stopping the worlds heroin trade.

So it looks like the Taliban are very good at stopping the world heroin trade

The Taliban are opportunists. Now that they're not the government and they need money, they allow the farmers to grow heroin so the Taliban can make money off the trade

https://www.businessinsider.com/taliban-control-of-heroin-drug-production-trafficking-in-afghanistan-2017-10

Afghanistan has long been one of the world's biggest producers of opium, which is used to make heroin, and the Taliban has made a lucrative business from taxing and providing security to producers and smugglers in the region.

But the militant group has expanded its role in that drug trade considerably, boosting its profits at a time when it is making decisive gains against the Afghan government and its US backers.

Those forms are easier to smuggle, and they are much more valuable for the Taliban, which reportedly draws at least 60% of its income from the drug trade. With its increasing focus on trafficking drugs, the Taliban has taken on more of the functions a drug cartel.

[Taliban-controlled] Helmand, home to an estimated 80% of Afghanistan's opium poppies, is a "big drug factory,"

So the Taliban are not some sort of anti-drug angels. When they need money, they dip their hands in it

P. SmithToday  07:16 am JST

*Biden under growing pressure to this time marry the warning with actions — *though none were immediately announced.

Obviously. It would be stupid to announce the actions as it would alert the target.

https://japantoday.com/category/world/biden-tells-putin-russia-must-crack-down-on-cybercriminals

Too bad Biden didn't use the same approach in Afghanistan--the Taliban wouldn't have been able to adjust their attacks based on the US' timetable put out there for the whole world.

zichiToday  09:26 pm JST

The Taliban don't control 85% of the country.

Oh, in that case, I will plan my next trip to Afghanistan.

zichiToday  09:51 pm JST

Mapping Taliban Contested and Controlled Districts in Afghanistan

https://www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan

On second thought, I will cancel my trip to Afghanistan because according to your map, it appears more than 85% of the country is controlled by the Taliban. Thanks for the info!

Sadly, what this tells me is that the Afghanis’ commitment to democracy was never all that strong. At the end of the day, it’s like the South Vietnamese; you can give them all the money, guns, and training in the world, but the one thing you can’t give them is the will and determination to fight. War is cruel calculus and at some point, you have to step back and ask yourself “Is another folded flag or gold star going to make a difference?” To quote John Kerry, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Trump and Biden, between them, have conspired to throw Afghanistan under a bus.

I think it’s less “we threw them under the bus” and more “they’re standing in the path of a bus and refusing to move and we’re not willing to jump between them and it.”

Actually, the first President to throw Afghanistan 'under the bus' was Carter, when he allowed the CIA to (through the subordinate Pakistan Intelligence agencies) find, arm, pay, and protect a group of extremist Afghans to overthrow the Afghan government, with the intention of forcing the USSR to commit large numbers of troops to try and stabilize it for years.

Since then, every President has been faced with a choice between taking responsibility for cleaning up the toxic waste they dumped in Afghanistan, fencing it off, or throwing some topsoil over it and pretending that made it go away, and NONE of them was willing to take responsibility, including Biden. He just decided to abandon the site.

At the same time, the US had been giving aid to Afghanistan since the 1950s.

This result shows that America made a good decision in going into Afghanistan, running rampant on the country, and spending trillions of dollars over 2 decades. Having the Taliban run the country again was the goal, right?

Would be interesting to hear from the other countries involved in the decision in going into Afghanistan, like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, and Germany.

GBR48

Trump and Biden, between them, have conspired to throw Afghanistan under a bus.

Trump did not "conspire" with Biden about anything. Trump made the sensible decision to get out of the endless, pointless, and costly Afghanistan mess, and Biden (or more probably his handlers) messed this up with the idiotic decision to publish a withdrawal date several months in advance.

The globalist warmongers are now salivating that the US can actually get back into that disaster.

Didn't they leave years ago, realizing the folly of this US occupation?

I think they were on board with getting Osama Bin Ladin. But then the US decided they wanted to... um.... they wanted to...

Actually, what exactly is it that they failed at? They never made their goal clear.

Trump did not "conspire" with Biden about anything.

Yeah, this is a failure of repeated American presidents for 20 decades. Maybe if they had have actually "conspired" and had a plan, or some sort of competent idea about what they wanted to do with the country, maybe America wouldn't be such a failure of foreign policy.

The past two presidents have just carried on a tradition of nearly 100 years of American foreign policy failures. It's why so much of the world hates America.

StrangerlandToday  01:53 am JST

Actually, what exactly is it that they failed at? They never made their goal clear.

No Islamic terrorist attacks out of Afghanistan were planned and executed in the US in the time since the invasion.

No Islamic terrorist attacks out of Afghanistan were planned and executed in the US in the time since the invasion.

No Islamic terrorist attacks out of Qatar were planned and executed in the US since the time of invasion either.

Good thing you destroyed Afghanistan and spent trillions of dollars creating badwill against America in the middle east though, right!

StrangerlandToday  02:17 am JST

No Islamic terrorist attacks out of Qatar were planned and executed in the US since the time of invasion either.

And similar to Afghanistan, the US maintains military bases in Qatar, so that presence ensured no terrorist attacks against the US out of Qatar.

Good point.

StrangerlandToday  02:17 am JST

Good thing you destroyed Afghanistan and spent trillions of dollars creating badwill against America in the middle east though, right!

You, meaning the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Germany et al? Shame on them!

You, meaning the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Germany et al? Shame on them!

Why did you leave the primary aggressor out of the list hmm? I condemn all of those countries, but not nearly as much as the US. It's not like there is equal guilt to go around on this matter, one nation is CLEARLY much more at fault than all of those other countries combined, would you not agree? Or are you trying to play some sort of game of fake equivalence to try to absolve your team of some guilt for it's royal screwup, and eventual failure?

And to be fair, those other countries joined the US with good intentions, to support an allied nation in taking out an enemy who had attacked them. But they should have known not only that the US would screw it up royally, but also that the US would in the end turn it to American profit somehow. Most of them stayed way longer than they should have. Once it was clear that the US was too incompetent to even figure out what their purpose was in Afghanistan, they should have pack up and left right away.

And again, to be fair, some of those nations figured it out after Afghanistan. When American decided to unilaterally invade Iraq. even though Iraq had no WMDs and was complying with the UN sanctions and allowing unfettered access to the weapons inspectors, Canada did not join them, even though Canada had stood by America in every major American war for something like 100 years.

And boy was America choked! And let's not forget the "freedom fries" debacle, where french fries were renamed out of American outrage due to the French refusing to join America in their invasion of Iraq to remove all the WMDs that it turned out didn't exist because America lied about their existence in the first place.

Well done America.

But yes, let's try to pretend that "the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Germany et al" somehow have some sort of equal culpability to the supreme and ultimate failure of the US in regards to its Middle Eastern policy.

I mean, we already know the people on your team are stupid enough to drink that koolade. But anyone not a moron sees right through it.

StrangerlandToday  03:01 am JST

Why did you leave the primary aggressor out of the list hmm? I condemn all of those countries, but not nearly as much as the US.

I condemn the US. We never should have gone in there in the first place. Bit all those other countries that supported the war supported the US. They should have tried to talk America out of the invasion in the first place.

StrangerlandToday  03:01 am JST

And let's not forget the "freedom fries" debacle, where french fries were renamed out of American outrage due to the French refusing to join America in their invasion of Iraq to remove all the WMDs that it turned out didn't exist because America lied about their existence in the first place.

You're bothered by french fries?

I condemn the US. We never should have gone in there in the first place. Bit all those other countries that supported the war supported the US. They should have tried to talk America out of the invasion in the first place.

I condemn the US he says, following up with simply pointing out a mistake in policy, avoiding all acceptance of American responsibility for the murderders of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

Oh sorry, did you want me to not call you out on your American warmongering bloodlust? My bad, I didn't know we weren't supposed to talk about that elephant sitting beside you on the sofa.

Could you not have asked that question of biden and Obama 12 years ago

Did you?

Because it sounds like you somehow think we should care if some Americans did one thing another American did or didn't, as if it's not all the same to those of us on the outside.

America screwed up. But keep trying to pretend like your inner squabbles matter, I'm sure that will keep out the angry Afghanis and Iraqis.

Kudos to Trump for starting the process of getting out of the Afghanistan mess, and a wet napkin for the Biden crew for delaying it and even publishing date for withdrawal.

Could you not have asked that question of biden and Obama 12 years ago when they assumed the wars and ended up surging in more troops after they prematurely reduced US forces? So biden waited 12 years to ask the troops not to die for a mistake. The fact that this perpetually wrong politician is president is a huge mistake.

Uh. Yeah. Yeah I did. After the US killed Bin Laden, I said we should get out. Who was at the helm wasn’t relevant. Continuing to stay was a mistake under Obama and a mistake under Trump and if Biden had continued to keep US troops there, that’d be a mistake too.

I know you thought that statement was some kind of ‘gotcha’, but it doesn’t really work if your opponent is consistent.

Also, Biden didn’t ‘wait twelve years’. He’s been president for…checks notes…seven months. He was Vice President under Obama, a position with precisely TWO functions: breaking Senate ties and being President-on-deck in case Obama died. And what did you expect him to do during the four years Trump ran things? Biden won the election, got the power to actually end the war, and is ending it within his first year.

Biden didn’t ‘wait twelve years’. He’s been president for…checks notes…seven months. He was Vice President under Obama, a position with precisely TWO functions: breaking Senate ties and being President-on-deck in case Obama died.

The confusion might be coming from the fact that in the administration immediately previous to the Obama administration, they let the country be run by Chaney, because everyone knew Bush Jr. was basically an ex-cokehead frat boy nincompoop. And then under Trump, Pence ended up being the sane one underneath Trump, who actually did execute one of his sworn duties (unlike half or more of Trump's other lackeys). So it's unsurprising that they are confused about the idea of the vice-president not running the country, as they've needed to rely on the vice president for their last two administrations.

They just don't realize that the reason the vice president had to step in for the sake of the country in their past two presidencies was due to utter ineptitude on the part of their presidents, not because the vice-president is supposed to run the country.

He’s been president for…checks notes…seven months.

Let's get even more technical, he hasn't even been president for six full months. On August 20th he will complete his sixth month.