I think Ireland is the only country in Europe apart from Cyprus and Malta without a single heavy lift military aircraft. We are begging for space on other country's aircraft for the umpteenth time in recent years. Why we don't just buy a couple like normal countries I don't know.
Has there been any reports on the status of the Afghan air force and their pilots, have they fled into hiding? And are the US likely to bomb the hangars the jets are in?
Shona Murray of Euronews stressing the point that Biden took the decision to withdraw without even consulting anyone in the EU or in NATO first : almost Trump-like in the way he went about things.
Notice during the coverage on one of the news channels they had a civilian taking a selfie with a Taliban fighter just like on the show.
Yes, it surprises me sometimes that what began all of it is often glossed over and Afghanistan is lumped together with Iraq war. I thought at the time if anything the US should have sent a larger force in to depose the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda themselves.
That was probably the original aim, ostensibly at least. But Bush and Co. dusted off an old plan to attack Iraq instead. Control of Middle Eastern oil proved to be more important to them than either Bin Laden or the Taliban.
Taliban would pick off the militias one by one. The Taliban this time around and last time have benefitted from the fact Afghanistan is a massively diverse country with different ethnic groups. All it takes is one fairly competent large militia to take over the country.
Away from the glare of the international media in places like Kabul, it sounds like Taliban 2.0 are exactly the same as Taliban 1.0 in the other cities and provinces.
They are stopping women from working, even widows with no other income.
Afghanistan is a culture that has been fighting for over 40 years.
season 8 ep 2 when carrie was speaking with the afghan vice president details exactly what happened this weekend in kabul...even mentioned saigon! homeland always had its finger on the pulse. they even pre-empted the paris attacks but that season was set in berlin instead
If they allow wi fi that’s progress from the taliban
My own opinion is that the warlords took to the dollar, seized the opportunity to milk USA for dosh, built up a little nest egg for themselves and parachuted out.
Wow all 42 million are running away. That must be some big airport I keep seeing on the news
It does seem odd…
80-100k Taliban soldiers. 42m people in Afghanistan. If they organised into militias they'd route the Taliban. Running away leaving the women and children to their fate. Cowardly.
Not my clowns and not my circus. The Irish have stood up before. The Afghans are cowards.
Can you clarify on whether your talking about the insurrection after Biden was elected in America or Afghanistan?!
I get the feeling a lot of them don't care which side they fight on. The Yanks roll in and its obvious they are going to win so many Taliban suddenly become rebels. 20 years on and it's clear the Taliban are going to win and suddenly the Afghan army are secretly Taliban.
I would imagine a lot of soldiers are like this and don't really care who is on top
Showing my age here, but after 9/11 there was an Internet meme floating round of "Afghanistan TV listings". The only one I can remember is 'Tallytubbies"
Yes you are right about the bombing, but that can only do so much ( unless you bomb a city into extinction...Hiroshima / Nagasaki ) After the bombing comes the hard fighting, street to street, building to building, and the Americans let the Afghan do the most of that. And they quickly cleaned out the Taliban, who were not quite as prepared for martyrdom as they were supposed to be. There was no fanatical resistance. The point is, when faced with unarmed men women and children, they are very brave...not so much when faced with a determined well trained and armed enemy though.
I'd say there will be some interesting conversations going on in the US administration about the quality of their intelligence gathering. I'd imagine they wouldn't have ended up in this chaotic situation if their information had told them the Afghan army would collapse in a few days. It's strange they didn't plan for that as a worst case scenario though.
Yep to the last bit this has been 20 years of disaster spreading over 4 presidents.
I can't understand though why they tried to pull out so fast with so many still on the ground though. Why not keep the all important air support until you and your allies have their people out
of course the present administration is responsible. Even if the withdrawal agreement was the last administration, and even if the last four years saw a drawdown of troops there (as it did under Obama), the withdrawal has been chaotic. I have no doubt that had the same scenes happened under Trump, even if the withdrawal had been agreed by Obama, sentiment would be different
rather than blame any administration then maybe blame the entire US army, state departments, military contractors and so on. They can’t nation build.
Mm, even if the Taliban could be persuaded to tolerate some music, I'd say the theme of that one would get it canceled pretty sharpish. Unless it could be retooled as "Seven Nights Inflamed With Passionate Devotion To Allah" or somesuch
Yes, let them enjoy while they can...All I can see is two bumpers with Taliban in them ( maybe there's more ) first time in their Lives probably, and same with the Gym,,,,another first, What did surprise me was a Talib taking pic's......thats a new one!!! There was nothing like this last time,,,basically any form of enjoyment was forbidden, and there was certainly no spare electricity for Bumpers.Taliban economics quickly ground everything down to zero.....no maintenance, machinery broke down.Electrical infrastructure, Water pumping stations etc all failed for the same reason,
Never mind the Wolfe Tones that looks like something from an episode of Imam Ted
I believe about 50% of the Afghan population has been living in territories either controlled by, or contested by the Taliban for a good while now, unfortunately for a lot of them this day was coming. The speed with which the Afghan military collapsed is astounding, but something that should have been factored in to the scenario analysis.
Anyone who thinks that way can pop on down to the many towns in Ireland that rehoused Northern Catholics in the 60s and tell that to their face and see what happens
They're on the one road
I hope for their sake then they never hear 7 drunken nights all the way to Sunday
What the Afghans needed was someone like your namesake from The Boys! I think maybe the American army is just very bad at training foreign soldiers as they were in south Vietnam and Iraq or maybe they suspected some of the recruits were actually Taliban so were actually trained a lot of their enemy. I don't think the Afghan army could fight the Taliban in the same way the US could, it would just be too expensive for a small poor country, even if they had an airforce, bombs cost a lot of money.
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