Aunty has a story about how Nato has formally ended its 13-year combat mission in Afghanistan. I got to watch it on TV, and noticed that the ceremony looked odd - like it was being held in a gym. And indeed the Beeb article sez Sunday's ceremony was low-key - held inside a gymnasium at the alliance headquarters away from the public. What that article doesn't quite bring itself to say - but the TV did - was that the ceremony was effectively held in secret, for fear of attack by the Taliban. That's the measure of how disastrous a failure its all been. They didn't add that last sentence, oddly.
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Complete waste, at best.
I'm sure I'll be reading this same comment over and over in our local press. Happy New Year William!
"And that’s how successful our “intervention” in Afghanistan was"
Emblematic of the West's fiddling about in that part of the world for >200 years.
Madness and folly, on and on.
There is a reason why "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" is the best-known classic blunder.
Things went better the last time round, when the Warsaw pact was taking the flack and the Talibs were on our side.
Still, a lot of tea was drunk in vain-- some few of our allies, like Engineer Hekmatyar , now have eight figure prices on their well turbaned heads.
Hey, the intervention wasn't a complete failure.
At least y'all gave us Kipling out of it.
Oh, wait, you meant the _second_ intervention, didn't you?
So, have you Kippled this time?
Afghanistan - the 'graveyard of empires' The crazy terrain, deep caves everywhere, even children know where weapons stashes are and how to use them. You'd have to heavily nuke the entire nation to "win". And hell, maybe some of them would survive that in some mountain caves!