US Unconditional Surrender to Taliban

danmanjones's picture

Breaking: Washington, Taliban sign peace agreement in Qatar

US has agreed to withdraw all 13,000 troops from Afghanistan within 14 months & 5,000 within 135 days from now.

 

A record setting war...

In 14 months the Afghanistan war will have lasted 19 years, 6 months & 24 days.

The 2nd longest war involving the US was in Vietnam & lasted 19 years, 5 months & 29 days.

 

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The Evil Bat's picture

Spiffy.

But danmanjones title aside. Who came to the table first? This little story is nice, but bugger all in the way of actual information.

Just a little press the flesh and table sit for the public media.

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danmanjones's picture

Negotiations began in 2018.

US insisted on their Afghan puppet govt being at the table. Taliban refused.

Taliban insisted on US withdrawal. They got it.

^ These were the 2 key demands of the Taliban & they were met by a US side looking for a way out.

 

There is a prisoner swap & a vague commitment from Taliban for 'reduced violence' (not ceasefire) & a promise to allow more civil rights. There's a bit of a write-up here if you want the nitty gritty: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/world/asia/us-taliban-deal.html

 

What that write-up doesn't mention is that the Taliban was courting a Russia-brokered deal along the way. The Russia talks were a lot more meaningful because they had all significant parties at the table - namely Iran & Pakistan. This US deal is nothing like that, its a lame American-style surrender.

 

If you're just now tuning into this you'll not have a clear picture of how it went down. The US has been losing for 10+ years but lying about it to keep the gravy train flowing.

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The Evil Bat's picture

Oh yeah man? When the money spent on covering up stuff starts nibbling into your profit margins, you should think about bringing peace to the table.

 

This has been a sandy less STD riddled version of Vietnam. Except the Vietcong never had drones. And I think the Vietcong gave less shits about their own fighters. Don't know much about taliban mentality, but I've seen enough doco's to know that the VC back in the day would consider losing 3x the number of troops but winning the field a great victory.

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danmanjones's picture

Troop losses are meaningless. The point of war is a battle for political influence.

 

I agree it's reminiscent of Vietnam. This one has a twist though that the fundamentalist islamists who morphed into the Taliban were originally created by the US to fight against the USSR...to give them "their Vietnam".

 

The fight of the future will be to kick out the lingering CIA & shutdown the opium networks. If the US moves to sanction Afghanistan I'll see that as a tell they want to keep their economy in the dirt-tier to force the opium crops to keep coming. The larger picture is for the US to keep the region unstable to get in the way of China & Russia being Central Asia's big brother. This 'peace deal' is a major blow to US' grand strategy, if you could even call it that.

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The Evil Bat's picture

Ya, don forget ze Isis.

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danmanjones's picture

You mean those "rebels" NATO supports in Syria?

- Check the armband @ 3:35

 

Look familiar?

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