Afghanistan

 Yeah, that's going swimmingly, innit? 

As anyone who wasn’t playing partisan politics predicted, the Taliban is retaking Afghanistan in an appalling fashion. The rapidly deteriorating situation is a humanitarian and national security tragedy.

On Thursday, the Pentagon decided to send troops to help evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and also assist at the Kabul airport. Kabul is expected to fall within a month.

The Taliban has captured nearly two-thirds of the country, including 10 provincial capitals in the last week, and now Ghazni, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, strategically situated on the main road between Kabul and Kandahar.

Here's my question to those who want to stay in some form or fashion:  Just exactly how long do you plan on staying there, and what's the objective?

We've been in Afghanistan for TWO DECADES.  That's one full generation plus part of another, and the country is still a shithole of corruption and incompetence, filled with people who cannot keep the systems of a civilized nation running even after having it handed to them, shown how to operate it, and given craploads of dollars to keep it maintained.

How much more money are we going to throw at people who don't want to be western?  Here's a thought - the Taliban could not have taken all these cities and towns unless there was a substantial portion of the people in those cities and towns who WANTED THEM THERE.  These people had two decades to decide what kind of a country they wanted to live in, and they chose the Taliban.  Hell, that's about the only thing they've agreed on in thousands of years, given that the country of Afghanistan is really just a geographic region, filled with nine different tribes of backwards, uncivilized pedophiles and rapists who all hate each other, and fight each other when they're not fighting whatever benighted western country has decided to wobble in to the Graveyard of Empires.

There were only two real courses of action in Afghanistan - go in and destroy anyone and everyone associated with the Taliban before you rebuild the country, or kill bin Laden and then get the hell out.  What we've been doing over the past two decades hasn't worked.  It won't work, because we're expecting people to act in a Western fashion when those people have refused to do so for as long as the people there have known about the West.

So let's go back to those two questions:  Just how long are you planning on staying there, and what's the objective?  Almost nobody clamoring for us to stay in Afghanistan can answer the first question, and damn sure nobody in the government can answer the second.  "B-b-b-b-but HUMANITARIAN CRISIS!"  Yeah.  That's going to happen when the people who live in an area prefer fucking little boys and keeping women in burkas.  That's sort of a thing when a population demands to live in the 7th century.  And unless you're willing to go in with bloody sword, followed by the Bible for those left after the Taliban is purged, then YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL.  I don't care how long you stay.  I don't care how much you wail about the people there suffering.  Reality is a bitch, and the reality of the situation is that we've done nothing to encourage Afghanistan to be anything more than an Islamic shithole filled with people who CHOOSE to be barbarians.

Yes, people are going to die.  Yes, the Taliban is going to take over.  The next time they act out, we just need to drop a fucking missile on the ragheads and turn their world into one giant smoking crater.  Don't send one fucking troop there.  Don't spend one dollar more than is required for the ordnance, and the fuel to get it there.  Unless you're going there to change their entire culture, which would require the extinction of Islam and the establishment of Christianity, then don't waste a single American life on them.

We all know the USA doesn't have the political will to do what has to be done.  So let's stop pretending they do, and cut our losses.

Now, with that being said, I'm happy that Drooling Joe's puppet masters are the ones fucking this up, because that'll just be another thing people remember about him.  Serves them right.  Fuck them all.

Yeah, I'm cheerful today.