Beijing is said to have made a deal with al-Qaida to acquire the missiles despite the fact that it was facing a growing threat from Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang region. In 1999, China accused Bin Laden’s organisation of training members of the independence movement in guerrilla warfare.
**> **
> "In particular, businessmen have come from China. He works a great deal with China. He’s got good relations with them.”
^ probably the most significant quote of the past 3 decades
given the alternative of just bombing the shit out of the country, i’d say they tried.
for example, i taught afghani graduate students who were on scholarships from the west. that’s an example of putting money where mouth is when trying to develop a country. a good friend of mine did demining work there. another friend of mine worked on tourism development. another friend taught. lots of blood and treasure was spent in trying, this is not an opinion.
you might not agree with how various agencies tried to affect change, but you can’t reasonably say they didn’t try to do more than bombs alone would accomplish.
Great breakdown and good points. I’m on the fence.
Afghanistan has zero capability to make war against the United States, as they lack a blue water navy and has zero ability to occupy the country. The United States could just tighten border security which would just work just as well to stop further terrorist attacks and not require deploying an army to a foreign country.
War against those countries are not necessary as both countries lack the ability to occupy neighboring countries. The United States would be justified to war against Iraq if it tried to occupy Kuwait but there was zero indication that it would, and the whole protracted war was based on faulty intel.
?
That’s not why they went in most recently, most recently it was WMD (but yes, faulty intel). Before that, well, yes Iraq did invade Kuwait.
i’m of the opinion there that neither side can be trusted. the enemy of my enemy is my friend except when he is my enemy. i don’t believe the chinese liked or respected OBL/alqaeda/taliban but were happy to take advantages where they could. and vice versa.
chi-ghanistan is such an interesting and complex topic, it deserves its own thread!
Trying would be a large coalition of countries completely taking it over for 100 years and then slowly releasing control once there was a modern infrastructure and universally coalesced way of life.
some might call that colonization and cultural genocide
Those people can go wear white face.
911 was a criminal and terrorist act. Afghanistan will never ever able to send aircraft carriers and troop transport to occupy any American cities. All they can do is terrorist attacks, which can be mitigated with robust Intel network and border security. The military strength between the two countries is so grossly outmatched. It can’t even occupy a single American frigate and all they have to do is stay the hell away and they are safe.
So war in Afghanistan is not justified at all and was a huge waste of resources. Those resources are better spent taking care of Americans, keeping trade routes open, universal healthcare.
Like George Orwell says, war is a matter of internal control.
It’s probably a convoluted situation like in the movie The Departed. :spoiler alert: Jack Nicholson’s character is a bad guy. He sets a meeting up to sell microprocessors to the Chinese Mafia/CCP , he also commits other crimes, etc. no doubt he’s a very bad guy. But the twist in the end was that he was also an Informant for the “good guys” all along! It’s a mess, and I think that’s what’s happened - you got China using Proxies which are really bad guys, and the US is probably trying to get those same Proxies to double agent for them too, as informants, but at the end of the day it’s a gamble because those are bad guys and they’ll just go to whoever pays the most and tweak the situation to where they are even getting money from both sides. “It’s a mess!” :BernieSandersHandGestures:
What an absolute waste of blood and treasure…
Should have left them alone the first time. It’s the Taliban’s country.
The arrogance of thinking you can rebuild Afghanistan in your own image is amazing and shows a complete ignorance of history.
Well, I think it could be done in about 100 years or so, but that’s colonialism and cultural genocide I guess.
here is my paraphrase of your position: “all we have to do is completely control them for a century and change the way the live and look at the world”
we could debate the extent to which such colonialism and cultural genocide is worth what it would cost (more than has been spent anyways, to be sure), and whether these are fundamentally unworthy endeavours
i still think they gave it the old college try, and certainly could have done more but i’m not sure they could have done enough, and that getting out sooner than later is the best of bad options.
Doesn’t look like the ‘pandemic’ has affected them much there…
I think where they messed up was assuming they can centralize power in a tribal society so easily. The army is fractured, corrupt and incoherent. They should have instead gave more autonomy to local powers, allowing them to have their arms instead of forcing them to hand them to the central government. Then build the nation from the bottom up. It still wouldn’t be a stable democracy by now but at least they could function on a local level instead of the complete and utter mess we have right now.
Maybe they don’t get old enough to worry.