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Was It Folly For The Us And Uk To Withdraw From Afghanistan?

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ichkeria | 17:55 Tue 03rd Aug 2021 | News
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The Afghan general quoted below plainly thinks so

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58068299
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Only just dropped on this thread, so not been following it, but am I right in thinking the Russians pulled out many years ago because they knew they couldn't win a war in this area. And again if so, was it to achieve the same goal?
There is a laughably skewed version of the afghan state and people demonstrated on this thread.

One hundred years ago after their third defeat of the British, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the country was finely free of outside interference and became a successful independent state with a Shah running the country as a monarchy.
All was well until the 1970s when the Russian engineered a coup, deposed the Shah, and it became a puppet Soviet country.
Washington didn’t want that, so started to fund, weaponise and train foreign Islamic fighters. Osama Bin Laden led a guerrilla army that destabilise the Government and led to the Russian invasion to support their puppet. The Russians were eventually beaten, and the Government collapsed and the place became an Islamic state run by the Taliban and various warlords. Bin Laden stayed, and switched his attention to fighting the US and founded al qaeda there. Twenty years ago after the 9/11 attack, the US invaded and they too installed a puppet Kharzai government. It was a disaster. Corruption, sectarianism, outside interference and general anarchy made the place ungovernable, and a failed state.
So to blame the Afghan people for what the country is today, is a gross insult.
Right oh!
gromit/Mozz - so what do you suggest the west does now?
Gromit has been a bit simplistic and of course put his anti West slant on it but the basics are correct.

We should never have got involved in this country, the terrain makes it virtually impossible to win.

In fact, IMHO, we should not get involved in any other countries problems. Toppling dictators never works just look at Iraq and Libya. Unless a country threatens us, either as a county or our shipping, then we should let them get on with it.
win/lose is not the point here, we were trying to create a viable country that will flourish on its own, we are not trying to invade and keep it. Of course the anti British master gromit loves to denigrate all our efforts into such base terms. The sad thing is Gromit/Mozz et al were probably wringing their hands and pebble dashing their screens with organic peace porridge at the very idea of going there in the first place. Now they seem to want to stay indefinitely and sacrifice our service personnel without limit. You can't win with the left.
We should never have got involved in this country, the terrain makes it virtually impossible to win

that was my opinion from the start, ymb.

And yet I was very nearly wrong. The invasion forces were actually doing okay in Afghanistan. And then the politicans decided to start another war at the same time, in Iraq. Of all the pea-brained thinking. So both wars were lost and now we have to cut and run.

Gromit's history seems good to me. All the same, we could have won; but we blew it.
We will never 'win' in those countries. The mind-set of the inhabitants prohibits it.
No will will turn around a country by invading it. You just manage to unite the place because everyone wants you to leave.
We started to interfere in Afghanistan, not to free the people, but to stop the Russians having it. In the process we created Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and al Qaeda. And look where that got us.
Of course I was against invading the country. We could have slowed or eradicated Bin Laden by smart bombs. Invading was a terrible mistake. But I done like to see us running away defeated and leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban will fill. That is probably just storing up even more trouble for ourselves in the future.
* No one will turn around a country by invading it *
Gromit, we didn’t create al Qaeda - nor the rest.
//In the process we created Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and al Qaeda.//

Really? I thought they were all in place before the invasion started. We may well have strengthened them, or gained them sympathy from some quarters, but not created.
Mozz, as Gromit spelt out above, they were created and supported by the west for the puprpose of obstructing the Russian invasion. Yes, that was before our invasion started.
// Gromit, we didn’t create al Qaeda - nor the rest. //

I’m afraid we did. The CIA paid the Mujahideen to fight the Russians. Bin Laden was trained by the Americans. When the Russians were beat, the Taliban took over, and Mujahideen morphed into al qaeda.
// Since the 1970s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has engaged in multiple operations in Afghanistan. The first major operation, code-named Operation Cyclone, began in 1979. It was a program to arm and finance the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan prior to and during the military intervention by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). //

// Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", because it originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians. //

// British professor Carole Hillenbrand concluded that the Taliban have arisen from those US-Saudi-Pakistan-supported mujahideen: "The West helped the Taliban to fight the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan". //
Sad nobody of the calibre of Charlie Wilson from Texas, USA, is longer around:

"During Charlie Wilson's visit to Afghanistan, he met Jalaluddin Haqqani. He wanted to fire a Stinger missile at one of the Soviet helicopters. Haqqani was happy to make Charlie Wilson's wartime fantasy come true. They dragged chains and tires on the road to create a dust cloud, which would attract Soviet helicopters. However, none of the Soviet helicopters showed up and Charlie Wilson was unable to fire any missiles"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_(Texas_politician)#Soviet-Afghan_war

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