PGC – It looks like the Taliban are set to take full control of Afghanistan and once again become a world player on a world stage with a whole nation-state behind them that will have nation-states like China and Russia coming in to try and get a little piece of the action. China, for sure, has, for now, the inside track, but that could turn after a couple of years of Chinese presence in the land where Empires die.
Donald J Trump was heading us down this path as well, but one does not know how much different, if at all, his withdrawal would have been. Our withdrawal appears to be sudden and unmerciful. We are knowingly leaving behind hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people with more than enough positive interactions with our soldiers to put their families under threat for death, slavery, or worst, sex slavery.
We knew full well what the Taliban was and its highly coercive assumptions regarding the nature of human governance. For the Taliban, their religious leaders are like little gods, or at least manifestations of the wisdom of Allah, that speak with infallibility, leaders willing to consign to death anyone who dares not believe in the particular Allah this group holds at its heart.
Life is not much among those not of the orthodox faith of the Taliban, and we Americans knew it, but we left, hardly with any plan to evacuate hardly anyone that put their lives, their families lives at risk to cooperate wtih the Americans, to even enter some of their programs, to dare dream one day something like America will happen in Afghanistan, and there will be no more bombs, no more Taliban, only open squares to argue about non-essential politics.
Even here in America, though, those days are fast ending, but still, compared to the people of Afghanistan, we are still a golden light of free thought and action, ideally, yes, but also physiologically still significantly true as well. America is hope and wonder compared to the conditions that Afghanis found themselves under while America was there. Now that America has left, well, for many, this is the end. Life itself will be over, and it will end violently for many of them. Many will be beaten, taunted, paraded around in cages. Some will be beheaded. Some will be burned alive. Some will be raped until they die.
The methods of death set aside for these American sympathizers, well, it’s pretty ghastly, and we knew it, and we left without any real effort to rescue those who once rescued us. This withdrawal has done more damage to America’s credibility, gravitas on the world stage than all of the little ways we have been letting down our allies through the second part of the 20th and early part of the 21st Centuries have combined. It might even be the culmination of this period in American geopolitical history, and it might mark the end of it, an age when America commanded the moral high ground, but now, after Afghanistan, can no longer be trusted as an ally in a risky situation.
Taliban could take Afghan capital in 90 days amid rapid Taliban gains: US intelligence
From www.channelnewsasia.com
2021-08-11 02:24:00
Excerpt:
Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan’s capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, a US defence official told Reuters on Wednesday (Aug 11) citing US intelligence, as the resurgent militants took control of an eighth provincial Afghan capital.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the new assessment of how long Kabul could stand was a result of the rapid gains the Taliban had been making around the country as US-led foreign forces leave.
“But this is not a foregone conclusion,” the official added, saying that the Afghan security forces could reverse the momentum by putting up more resistance.
The extremists now control 65 per centof Afghanistan and have taken or thre
