U.S. envoy apologizes for suggesting Afghan women may need 'Black Girl Magic' - "The top U.S. diplomat to Afghanistan has apologized for suggesting that Afghan women might find inspiration for their struggle against Taliban oppression in the #BlackGirlMagic social media movement... “Are Afghans familiar with #BlackGirlMagic and the movement it inspired?” Decker wrote Wednesday in the now-deleted tweet, which was shared widely online by activists, academics and journalists. “Do Afghan girls need a similar movement? What about Afghan women? Teach me, ready to learn,” Decker continued, tagging the recording artists Beyoncé, Lizzo and the Oscar-winning actress Regina King... “Protip: Stop tweeting and process SIVs,” tweeted Simone Ledeen, a senior fellow at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, referring to special immigrant visas that allow Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the Afghanistan war to leave the country."
Meme - "Well, this aged unbelievably bad, and it's only been 15 hrs.
Update: now at least 12 soldiers killed and 15 injured
“Kabul Airport Explosion Kills Four U.S. Marines Amid Evacuations
Multiple casualties among Americans and Afghans were reported”"
The Other 98%: "So Biden gets out of a 20 year quagmire in Afghanistan... evacuates 70,000+ people... as of now no Americans died... and we're supposed to believe this is bad?"
Meme - "I do give NYT etc. credit for investigating this. But I don't for how this so quickly disappeared off scope, despite the gravity of the Biden administration possibly ordering the strike too hastily, to show something was being done after the bombing of the evac that killed 13 American troops and many civilians. If it had been Trump who ordered the strike that ended up killing kids like this, it would have been global news on repeat. (Using screenshot to get past Facebook's ability to control newsfeed circulation of news articles. Actual article in comments)"
"US drone strike mistakenly targeted Afghan aid worker, investigation finds Zemari Ahmadi, who died alongside nine others had no connection to terrorism, a"
Robert J. O'Neill on Twitter - "20 years after 9/11. The Taliban controls Afghanistan. The guy who killed bin Laden is on a no-fly list."
Melissa Chen - "Biden kept touting the “largest airlift” of 120,000 people from Afghanistan as an “extraordinary success.”
Very odd to pat oneself on the back for that when:
a) We left Americans and a majority of Afghan allies who applied for special visas behind, scrambling for their lives
b) In 1990, Air India airlifted 170,00 out of Kuwait"
Kavita Krishnan - "The Taliban killed a musician Fawad Andarabi - dragged him from his home in the village of Andarab, and killed him. What do the Taliban apologists have to say? The ones who think only US stooges have anything to fear from the Taliban in Afghanistan? As Tabish Khair says, opposing imperialism does not mean supporting or making excuses for political murders motivated by regressive idiocy."
Yanis Varoufakis on Twitter - "On the day liberal-neocon imperialism was defeated once and for all, DiEM25's thoughts are with the women of Afghanistan. Our solidarity probably means little to them but it is what we can offer - for the time being. Hang in there sisters!"
Liberal Democracy Is Worth a Fight - The Atlantic - "the phenomenon of liberal internationalism—or “neocon internationalism” if you don’t like it—exists: Because sometimes only guns can prevent violent extremists from taking power. Yet many people in the liberal democratic world, perhaps most people, don’t want to believe this. They have long found these tools either too distasteful or too expensive. Like Ban Ki-moon and his many imitators, they sometimes even pretend that these tools are not necessary at all, because conflicts can be resolved by “talks” and “dialogue” and “cultural exchange.” They pretend that there are always peaceful solutions that have somehow not been considered, that there is always a nonviolent answer that has somehow been ignored, and that “solidarity” with the women of Afghanistan, without a physical presence to back it up, is a meaningful idea. “Hang in there sisters!” wrote the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, in a tweet that celebrated the fall of “liberal neocon imperialism” and unwittingly illustrated just how delusional the anti-war left has become. Hang in there, sisters? The fall of Kabul makes a mockery of that kind of language and shows up those who use it as fools... The fall of Kabul should refocus Americans—in the administration, in Congress, in the leadership of both parties, but above all, ordinary Americans across the country—on the choices that are now coming thick and fast. Afghanistan provides a useful reminder that while we and our European allies might be tired of “forever wars,” the Taliban are not tired of wars at all. The Pakistanis who helped them are not tired of wars, either. Nor are the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regimes that hope to benefit from the change of power in Afghanistan; nor are al-Qaeda and the other groups who may make Afghanistan their home again in future. More to the point, even if we are not interested in any of these nations and their brutal politics, they are interested in us. They see the wealthy societies of America and Europe as obstacles to be cleared out of their way. To them, liberal democracy is not an abstraction; it is a potent, dangerous ideology that threatens their power and needs to be defeated wherever it exists, and they will deploy corruption, propaganda, and even violence to do so. They will do it in Syria and Ukraine, and they will do it within the borders of the U.S., the U.K., and the EU. We might not want any of this to be true. We might prefer a different world, one where we can stay out of their way and they will stay out of ours. But that’s not the world that we live in."
Afghanistan Taliban long have used Twitter, WhatsApp as propaganda, governance tools - The Washington Post - "the ability of the Taliban and its supporters to operate substantially within the rules of companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has left Silicon Valley vulnerable to intensifying political crosscurrents: U.S. conservatives have been demanding to know why former president Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter while various Taliban figures have not... “Based on the sheer volume of output, several of the accounts are run by individuals whose primary job may well be social media,” said Darren Linvill, lead researcher for the Clemson University Media Forensics Hub. “These accounts aren’t run by Taliban leaders or fighters, they are run by individuals with uninterrupted Internet access on both a desktop and handheld device, as well as decent English language skills.”... One message on the Taliban’s English-language website in April attacked feminism as “a colonial tool” and claimed that it “attacks the institution of family in a family-centric Muslim society.” Another the following month espoused the importance of freedom of the press, calling it “essential for every society and country.” The Taliban’s social media tactics in recent months can be seen as fitting a broader charm offensive... At a news conference Tuesday, spokesman Shaheen made a point of calling on a female journalist and foreign reporters."
Cultural Darwinsim of the Afghan War - "The Afghan Army seems to have binged on 80’s action flicks as part of their training. They dressed up and acted like Rambo. In combat, they wore belts of ammo like ones you would see in a cheesy Vietnam or Stallone movie. They fired full auto without aiming, and they had little care for where they were shooting, as long as they fired everything they had... For a few Afghan commandos, who are selected and trained specifically to assist American Special Forces, morale is high, and they are well trained... The commandos are typically pulled from Northern tribes (who have always seen the Taliban as an enemy). This is key, if I’m correct: Since the Taliban is a Pashtun organization, radical opposition gives the drive and cohesion needed to staunchly oppose them. It’s the same tactic that was used to bring down the Aztec empire — find who hates them and wants them gone, then train them to fight. Afghan commandos also receive better training... My limited understanding of Afghan and Islamic culture as a whole is that everything is as God wills. Western thought tends to reject this notion and takes action upon ourselves. To us, Afghans appear complacent and lazy and unwilling to do what is necessary to take back their nation. Reshaping this view would require Western-style education to see things in a less metaphysical and supernatural way. While Christians also hold that God has a plan, they also tend to believe they are active participants in their own fate. This may be an unrealistic goal because of accusations of colonialism or some or some sort of Crusade revivalism to convert Muslims."
Taliban under scrutiny as U.S. kills al Qaeda leader in Kabul | Toronto Sun - "The Taliban had promised in the 2020 Doha Agreement on the terms of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that they would not harbour al Qaeda members. Nearly a year after the U.S. military’s chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, al-Zawahri’s killing raises questions about the involvement of Taliban leaders in sheltering a mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and one of America’s most-wanted fugitives... The Taliban initially sought to describe the strike as America violating the Doha deal, which also includes a Taliban pledge not to shelter those seeking to attack the U.S. — something al-Zawahri had done for years in internet videos and online screeds... The timing of the strike also couldn’t come at a worse time politically for the Taliban. The militants face international condemnation for refusing to reopen schools for girls above the sixth grade, despite earlier promises. The United Nations mission to Afghanistan also criticized the Taliban for human rights abuses under their rule."
How America Failed Afghanistan - The Atlantic - "the American military’s effort to advise and mentor Iraqi and Afghan forces was treated like a pickup game—informal, ad hoc, and absent of strategy. We patched together small teams of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, taught them some basic survival skills, and gave them an hour-long lesson in the local language before placing them with foreign units. We described them variously as MiTTs, BiTTs, SPTTs, AfPak Hands, OMLT, PRTs, VSO, AAB, SFAB, IAG, MNSTC-I, SFAATs—each new term a chapter in a book without a plot... larger systemic problems were never truly addressed. We did not successfully build the Iraqi and Afghan forces as institutions. We failed to establish the necessary infrastructure that dealt effectively with military education, training, pay systems, career progression, personnel, accountability—all the things that make a professional security force. Rotating teams through tours of six months to a year, we could not resolve the vexing problems facing Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s armies and police: endemic corruption, plummeting morale, rampant drug use, abysmal maintenance, and inept logistics. We got really good at preparing platoons and companies to conduct raids and operate checkpoints, but little worked behind them. It is telling that today, the best forces in Afghanistan are the special-forces commandos, small teams that perform courageously and magnificently—but despite a supporting institution, not because of one. If those were things we did poorly or insufficiently, there were other things we should not have done at all—namely, train police... the United States does not have a national police force, so police training became a task that largely fell to the Army... The U.S. military could not overcome our national and institutional lack of experience. Looking back, we also failed to properly institutionalize advising large-scale conventional forces until far too late... We didn’t fight a 20-year war in Afghanistan; we fought 20 incoherent wars, one year at a time, without a sense of direction"
This Is Not the Taliban 2.0 - The Atlantic - "When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost. The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history... Outside Kabul—which is to say, away from the eyes of the world—there are reports of summary executions... Monday’s address by President Joe Biden suggested that even now—after America has been snookered by the Taliban in negotiation and defeated on the battlefield—he still takes them at their word. He said that the American goals in Afghanistan were to “get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,” and that those goals had been accomplished. “Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.” These comments suggest that Biden is gullible enough to be reassured by promises from a Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, who said the group will not let its territory be used against any other state. The Taliban still has thousands of foreign fighters, including Chinese, Chechens, Uzbeks, and others, all with interests in their home countries. The Taliban denies these fighters’ existence, so its promise to keep them well behaved and never to let them run off to trouble other parts of the world is roughly as credible as its promise to rule without rancor or without serving gonad sandwiches to captured enemies. Biden’s speech was noted for its lack of sentimentality about the thousands of Afghans left to the mercies of the Taliban. But its incoherence should be noted too. He claimed that the United States had no business trying to build a durable and democratic government; it sought only to keep the country terrorist-free. But Afghanistan’s availability as a sanctuary for terrorists is, to say the least, related to its status as a warlord-ridden wasteland. And the Taliban’s victory guarantees that Afghanistan will remain just such a country, whose best people are in every generation the first to be slaughtered or chased away. Turning Afghanistan into a healthy democracy proved beyond America’s ability, but turning it into a dystopia that seeks to drag other countries to its level is well within the Taliban’s power. That is what it does best. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan 20 years ago, it implemented a program of startling simplicity: in domestic policy, a law-and-order government according to an interpretation of Islamic law alien to modern conceptions of human rights; and in foreign policy, extension of hospitality to Sunni jihadists of all nationalities and persuasions"
Constantino Xavier on Twitter - "UK Chief of Defence Staff on the Taliban: “You have to be careful about using the word enemy… they are country boys… with a code of honour… want an Afghanistan that is inclusive… they have changed… we need to be patient, give them space…” Wow!"
Why Is Afghanistan the ‘Graveyard of Empires’? - "The closest most historical empires have come to controlling Afghanistan was by adopting a light-handed approach, as the Mughals did. They managed to loosely control the area by paying off various tribes, or granting them autonomy. Attempts at anything resembling centralized control, even by native Afghan governments, have largely failed. Afghanistan is particularly hard to conquer primarily due to the intersection of three factors. First, because Afghanistan is located on the main land route between Iran, Central Asia, and India, it has been invaded many times and settled by a plethora of tribes, many mutually hostile to each other and outsiders. Second, because of the frequency of invasion and the prevalence of tribalism in the area, its lawlessness lead to a situation where almost every village or house was built like a fortress, or qalat. Third, the physical terrain of Afghanistan makes conquest and rule extremely difficult, exacerbating its tribal tendencies... while it is possible to conquer territory in Afghanistan temporarily, and defeat Afghans militarily in open battle, it is virtually impossible to hold the region down for long, when it is filled with guerrillas, tribes, and castles that can constantly weigh down a foreign power. The people of Afghanistan have nowhere to go, and can fight their whole lives (foreigners, beware in particular of the Kandahar region), a luxury that outsiders do not have"
From 2017. Is it still racist to call Afghanistan a tribal society?
Republicans Call on Marine Corps to Release Lt. Col. Stu Scheller - "Republicans in the House and Senate are calling on the Marine Corps to release Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who was thrown in a military jail this week after he criticized military leadership for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal on social media and continued posting about his disposition."
Rep. Dan Bishop on Twitter - "It’s asinine that LTC Scheller is unjustly confined, while the “woke” generals won’t be held responsible for anything. If the Afghanistan withdrawal was botched under Trump and Scheller spoke up, he would be treated as a hero by Dems and the media. And everyone knows it."
Congressman Ben Cline on Twitter - "It’s outrageous that the only military official who has borne any consequence over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal is LtCol Scheller, who sought accountability from civilian and military leadership. My colleagues and I demanded he be removed from confinement immediately."
Facebook - "Biden's speech on Afghanistan in a nutshell: I did what I had to do, SORRY NOT SORRY. He reinforced the false binary of staying in Afghanistan and withdrawing without strategic planning, intentionally conflating a botched execution with a generally agreed upon objective and plan. "We had to do it" isn't an excuse for doing it "this" way. Biden and Blinken said a month ago this precise scenario wouldn't happen. And they were wrong. Beyond accepting ZERO responsibility, Biden also avoided addressing the optics of a retreating US abandoning its allies reverberating globally which will have geopolitical consequences."
Stunned allies criticize US over Afghanistan chaos: 'The biggest debacle that NATO has suffered'
Meme - Porkchop Express: "Sorry, not sorry, not going to care about Afghanistan because I grew up with an alcoholic, psychologically abusive father in constant state of distress, anxiety and worry about the future. Hearing the key in the door every evening was my own "Afghanistan" for almost 20 years."
Matt Walsh on Twitter - "The State Department calls on the Taliban to form an “inclusive and representative government.” This is not a Babylon Bee skit. It’s a real thing that just happened."
DEI doesn't work on the Taliban
Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. 💸 on Twitter - "Have we tried simply getting a group of celebrities to make a motivational video asking the Taliban to stop"
Meme - "WHAT "STORMING THE CAPITAL" ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE"
Nancy Pelosi on Twitter - "The U.S., the international community and the Afghan government must do everything we can to protect women and girls from inhumane treatment by the Taliban. As we strive to assist them, we must recognize that their voices are important and respect their culture"
Facebook - "Taliban say they will guarantee women's rights 'within the limits of Islam’ after takeover of Afghanistan"
"Yeah, sure. So basically, no rights. Oh the absolute vanity and narcissism of activists over the past five years making references to and LARPing The Handmaid's Tale, thinking that it was self-referential to the Western context. No. This reality is happening right now now, protected by criticism from the forces of postmodernism and cultural relativism."
Meme - Mustata 47: "Because of Trump, I'll hopefully watch the first concession speech in 33 years of my life."
Mustafa 47 @ @CombatJourno: "I'm hopelessly stuck in Kabul with my wife and child. Like myself, hundreds of other journalists are also stuck here. I have an 11-months old daughter. Please pray for her safety."
Facebook - ""you don't swallow a rat poison to see if this time around it doesn't kill you." I don't believe whatsoever that the Taliban will become "more moderate" now that they are in power. Why would they? They WON because they are not moderate. Extremists don't become less extreme when their whole brand is that they are extreme. I know this helps the narrative that the US withdrawal wasn't that bad but it's a big lie. And the people spreading this lie are not the ones who gonna face the consequences of being beheaded in the streets for not following the rules."
Opinion: The discourse around Afghanistan shows how little the West understands Islam - The Globe and Mail - "there is also the reality that the Taliban’s governing will be constrained and defined by other factors, such as a different population than when they were last in power, economic realities facing the country and relationships with other states. This kind of uncritical coverage also has consequences closer to home. There are already efforts in many of our own Western societies to dehumanize our own populations of the Islamic faith. Lord Pearson, a British member of the House of Lords, for example, last week declared: “So I submit that it is not phobic to fear Islam, which is responsible for by far the most violence on our planet today.” It was an appalling statement, though true to the record of the individual in question, who is infamous for expressing such anti-Muslim bigotry on a regular basis. But it will be no surprise if, after the Taliban takeover in Kabul, people like him find new, unnuanced ways to invigorate their audiences. This is the truth about anti-Muslim bigotry today: It is not only increasing, it is also leaving the fringes and heading toward the mainstream. That, in turn, has an effect on our public policy discussions. If those who shaped public opinion in the West viewed the people of Afghanistan as fully deserving of dignity, the history of Western involvement there would look very different. That’s true if you consider the initial decision to invade in 2001, the way in which Western forces engaged over the past 20 years, and the way in which they withdrew. It’s also why we see so many politicians, such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, raising the spectre of Afghan refugees swarming Europe. If there was simple, basic empathy for this population, that kind of attitude would be unthinkable. To put it bluntly: Imagine Afghanistan was a white, Christian, European state, and what our conversations would look like then."
Whitewashing the Taliban to score woke points. Excellent.
Weird how Hungary and Poland are white, Christian, European states which keep getting slammed for violating human rights
About the only job women can do for the Kabul government is clean female bathrooms, acting mayor says - "Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, and only women whose jobs cannot be done by men are allowed to come to work -- the latest restrictions imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan."
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Twitter - "The thinker most vindicated by #Afghanistan is Edmund Burke: change that's not progressive, slow, & pragmatic ends up blowing up (Reflections on the Revltion in France). Bureaucrato-utopistas IYI tried to jump from the middle ages to modernity, burkas to gender studies in 1 go."
Taliban Holds Up Glenn Beck Group's Planes; At Least 100 Americans Among Passengers - "Six private charter planes seeking to evacuate at least 1,000 people—including more than 100 Americans—out of Afghanistan have been grounded by the Taliban amid negotiations with the U.S. State Department"
Of course he's still evil
Taliban accounts mock USA with Pepe the Frog and other 'edgy' memes - "If people had any doubt that 2021 could get even crazier, then it is safe to say that Qasr Bakhaly of the Taliban has safely dispelled any such notions. After the end of the 20 year US occupation of Afghanistan, the Taliban is mocking the United States with memes of Pepe the Frog and other memes... It was not the only Taliban account mocking the USA and the West with what are considered ‘based memes’. Another account, with the username @MalangKhostay with over 25,000 followers on the platform, shared ‘Wojak’ memes to mock western culture."
Taliban Shows Propaganda Savvy by Recreating Iwo Jima Flag-Raising - "the Taliban likely "began to have a better appreciation for the power of propaganda" when it noticed that "exaggerating the impact of airstrikes on local communities and highlighting the death of innocent civilians contributed to, at times, a hesitancy on our side.""
Dr. Khalid PhD 😈☝️🏳️ on Twitter - "One day French NGOs went to Afghanistan claiming to want to solve hunger. Their real goal was to recruit Afghan women and make porn. The Taliban found out and executed them. France of course was furious over this human rights violation."
Taliban ban Covid jab in Paktia, claims report; Video shows them partying after fall of Jowzjan
Afghanistan: Parks become latest no-go areas for women in Kabul - "Women were also recently barred from swimming pools and gyms in the capital. It's expected the rules will be extended across the country... She recently took the university entrance exam and was disappointed to find that the subject she wanted to study - journalism - was no longer available for women, part of another set of restrictions the Taliban recently imposed... 12 people including three women were flogged in front of thousands of onlookers at a football stadium in Afghanistan. With each move, the Taliban's current rule increasingly resembles their regime from the 1990s... the office of the Taliban's morality police, its vice and virtue ministry, another place where Afghan women aren't allowed. "We have kept a box at the gate where women can drop their complaints. Our director goes to the gate to meet women out of respect for them," spokesman Mohammad Akif Muhajer says. He defends the decision to ban women from parks, saying Islamic Sharia law was not being followed... When asked why they were clamping down on those protesting for women's rights, Mohammad Akif Muhajer says: "In every country anyone raising a voice against government orders is arrested. In some countries, they have even been killed. "We have not done that. But naturally, if someone raises their voice against the national interest, they will be silenced.""
Of course, there're still liberals who claim with a straight face that Republicans are like the Taliban and talking about Y'All Qaeda.