Monday, August 23, 2021

Pointing the Finger.

 Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani is vowing to return to Afghanistan. 

Ghani was elected president in 2014. He quietly began to fill his cabinet with Taliban figures, to include the Butcher of Kabul, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who vowed to stop fighting and to work with the new government. He said to Ghani,  "Let's end the war, live together as brothers, and then ask foreigners to leave our country." 

For his part, Ghani said that to unify his country, the Taliban had to be included in the new government.

Now the Taliban is in the presidential palace and Ghani has fled the country. 

Interestingly, Ghani's brother has pledged to support the Taliban government. 

I say this: If Ashraf Ghani returns to Afghanistan and is not killed immediately by the Taliban, the one thing that we can know for sure is that he was part of it from the beginning.

Who's to blame for this debacle? The bipartisan finger pointing has begun. Here are the facts.

There's enough blame to go around, but I think we would be wise to stop fighting with each other and pay close attention. Before it is all said and done, I believe that the finger will be pointing at the shadowy Afghan government as well.

I have a feeling that we've been scammed. 

6 comments:

  1. All I can say Debby is that I am glad I live the other side of the world.

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  2. It's a mess with much blame to go around.

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  3. I think laying blame on either Trump or Biden is essentially fighting over scraps. If it were me, I would start with the Carter Doctrine which began funneling money to Afghanistan simply to thumb our nose at Russia and which resulted in the creation of the mujahedeen and led to the subsequent civil war. I would then focus on Bush Jr. who went into Afghanistan with no clear plan and sprinkled "liberation" rhetoric into all the reasoning but never explaining what that meant. I would end with Obama who said he would end our involvement but never did and instead kicked the can down the road to preserve his legacy.

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  4. I will disagree with you on the reason Obama did not pull us out. The impassioned pleas of the general who insisted that they needed just a bit more time to whip the Afghan army in shape. My point remains the same: Afghanistan itself is partly responsible for this. I think it was the plan, actually. But when we armed the Taliban we headed into a shit show.

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  5. Plenty of blame to go around. Thanks for the link to the facts. Much appreciated. And thank you for the link you shared about helping the refugees. It still hurts my heart thinking about all of this. Take care and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

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  6. Oh, I think many, many Afghans are complicit in this turn of events. Not just Ghani but figures in the military and elsewhere in the power structure.

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