If China gets involved in that shitfight, hurt feelings will become the least of their worries.
meme of smug Kermit sipping tea
They are armed to to teeth now with US military hardware, so the Chinese can do their mining operations on 1~3 trillion rare earth minerals and silk road initiatives with ample protection, I’m sure in all this Hunter didn’t forget to invest part of the billion he got from the CCP in a lithium mining company or one that benefits from lithium.
Wtf
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Hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa! Because you think the Chinese need those for protection?
In Afghanistan, of course, if they bring in their own army they will be treated the same as the Americans, the Russians the Brits and the rest of them. You may laugh, but your just being silly.
You’re a nice guy @Poundsand, I could see that when you balked at the idea there was pre meditation over how the pull out was handled. The people who run the show are not nice guys, they simply don’t care 20 million Afghan women need to deal with the Taliban.
When that gets though to you and you realize these people don’t care about you at all, you might hang up your partisan devotion and loyalty.
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Jesus H… can you imagine if this guy was in charge of your money? He looks like he just stepped out of a time machine. He probably thinks a Roth 401(k) is a type of machine gun.
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Yeah great equipment. That is one hell of a jackpot. Plus the helicopters.
I’m gettin’ there, really I am. 
But first, a little meta stuff.
I’ve used Google Docs voice typing sometimes to machine-transcribe some of this. It isn’t perfect, but it can be a real boon at times.
Later on, I found a machine transcript here:
But it’s got some accuracy issues, too. It sometimes it mis-transcribes Afghan names, and other words, too. But I may end up using it.
Another meta thing:
Gen. Bolduc kept saying something that repeatedly baffled me. It sounded like he was saying Seejuhsoda, or Seejuhsoduth, or something like it. I figured it was some kind of military abbreviation that he was pronouncing as if it were an ordinary word, but I couldn’t figure out what military abbreviation it was. Also, he would usually add a point of the compass to this word, e. g., “Seejuhsoduth South.”
Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went on a quest to find that 
word.
And I finally stumbled upon it. Here’s an example:
Anyway, once more unto the breach.
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Haha, I listen to a lot of former military guys recount their stories and if they are talking to a fellow vet, they use mil-speak abbreviations constantly. Takes a minute to realize they’re doing it and occasionally they’ll stop to explain to us civilians.
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The gay culture there is a mix of three things:
1) Actual gay men:
These are consenting adults, who know they are “gay”, and in many cases like/love each other, and must keep their relationship a secret from their wives and families and the public. These are more than just “physical” relationships. This is a dangerous situation to be in. Because the public sees this as “a couple" / " a homosexual" relationship, that is “gay” in their mind, which is unacceptable. When such men are caught, both can be punished, and the punishment can be quite severe. Just a few decades ago you could have your backside glued until you die, get impaled with a wooden stick and left to die, and getting your d#$K chopped off etc. That’s why some parents in those areas used to tell boys even as young as 10 years old, not to hold hands when they walked down the street.
2) Opportunists / Sexually Repressed Men & Women:
These people are either bisexual (sometimes) or just frustrated men/women that are desperate for physical intimacy. This happens because the law of the land completely restricts all access to the opposite sex, and you can’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend, or pre-marital sex. It’s technically possible, but rare and an extremely dangerous thing to do. So, many young people take the easy route. Lots of guys (and some women too) start gay sex because of the ease-of-access to the same gender. Women often stay indoors, share rooms, even beds. Same goes for the men. For most this is a temporary phase until a person gets married. This is somewhat “accepted”, but not everyone does this. By accepted I mean men talk about it, laugh about it and joke about it. In universities and colleges, sometimes this even happen in groups, especially in dormitories. Often in this situation, no one looks at the other as “gay”, due to the lack of a relationship. It’s only seen as a ‘simple’ physical need.
3) Child Molestation / Systematic Rape.
This is what happens very often under the guise of extreme religion (specifically in these areas). This usually involves groups like Taliban or another < insert extremist group >. They bring young boys (sometimes by force) for religious education or training. Lots of young boys get molested during the course of these teachings, which often happens for years, and involves travel, which allows them to take the boys with them from place to place, away from parents. There are even instances where an adult man will have his “own” boy, that other adults will not touch. They have designated “boys” that they molest and rape repeatedly over the years. These boys may even joke or laugh about it because they don’t know how bad it is “what’s being done to them”. It’s very systematic, and everyone looks the other way. I don’t characterize this as “gay” sex, but as “rape”. Even if the boys are teenagers, or young adults, they are still innocent. It’s not limited to just boys. There is a whole thing about little girls too, that’s another story. This is where these men will pick off the girls they want and marry them. Few will dare to say “no” when someone comes to your door asking for your daughter, with an AK47 on their shoulder and a Hilux in the background full of armed men. Girls as young as 9 years old.
So, to summarize, among these three types it’s no.1 type that looked upon as “gay sex” and unaccepted and punished, while other types are part of the culture (or the worst parts of it).
IMO, the biggest losers of this new Afghan war will be women and children, and other minorities. I can only hope somehow, they will find a way to fight this, but it’s highly unlikely. Even if you give them 50 years, the women there cannot win. Not without outside help. They will never get their rights now that the US and allies have left.
Men holding hands with each other is not uncommon in Afghanistan, so not sure why you think this is seen as an issue.
I bet if somebody took the terms and phrases and references–including events, place names and personal names–out of that video, and looked them up, and tried to investigate them in some depth, it would make quite a study. And I mean, just from that one video.
Edited to add:
Even Gen. Bolduc got flustered at one point with an abbreviation–I think CFLCC,* which he pronounced siffleck or sifflecks. His trouble wasn’t with the pronunciation, but with the name of the underlying entity:
I could be mistaken, but at this point it sounds like Mr. Willink is softly laughing; I’m guessing he’s laughing about the abbreviation difficulties. But I don’t think he’s making fun of Gen. Bolduc. I think he’s making fun of the alphabet soup.
*I looked it up, and I think it’s the Combined Forces Land Component Command, which I think was (is?) in Kuwait.
[I’ll put this next batch here, so that hopefully it won’t interfere with @Mick’s post below:]
It’s weird how war and bureaucracy and regular human stuff (the good and the bad) gets all mixed in together, at about 1:17:24:
I’m leaving out the next part, in which Gen. Bolduc describes the delicious bread that the men ate with such delight, and how their joy was somewhat diminished when they discovered that the dough was kneaded by foot.
Remember that secondary blast that took out 9 members of a family while they bombed some ISIS k militant in a car? Just as everyone suspected.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1436469094593835010
Also
Ten family members, including innocent CHILDREN were killed by Biden’s drone strike.
And the so-called “ISIS facilitator” that the US Military saw as an “imminent threat” was actually an aid worker returning to his family, according to the New York Times.
Biden killed an entire family just so he could look like he ‘fought back’ after a suicide bomber killed 13 US service members.
Then everyone lied about it.
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There’s a couple of ex-service members I listen to who have second-hand evidence that the “suicide bomber” that killed 15 Marines was being tracked. Somebody told the guys at the controls of a drone ready to take him out to step down. There’s a lot of fuckery going on.
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Just to be clear, I’m not 
ing what happened; I’m ing that you posted the information.
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I do that all the time, sometimes I might even disagree with what the poster says but it’s a way to say “thank you for sharing”. Hopefully people aren’t looking too deep into the meaning of likes.
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Yeah, I guess I’m being paranoid.
Here’s a brief video of Mr. Ahmadi apparently engaged in some kind of food processing work:
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Let me clarify, I am not talking about all of Afghanistan, nor about the last 20 years in particular when Taliban weren’t in control. But if you were in a ultra-conservative / religious area where an extremist group was in control , then holding hands was an issue (still might be). Standing around high-fiving each other, putting arms on the shoulder while having a chat is fine. Walking in silence, while holding hands (like a couple) is not. Because getting even accused of being homosexuals could get you punished. Just like getting accused of apostasy is an instant death sentence.
I supported a shit ton of overwatch / mir-cas missions in Helmand, Kandahar, and surrounding areas with strong Taliban activity; we watched a shit-ton of daily Taliban activity to determine normal patterns of life, and men holding hands was common. Afghan forces on base also held hands, but you seem likely to dismiss that. Still not sure, and wondering, why you think men holding hands in this culture is an issue.
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