Deng ordered the massing of troops and armies along the border with Vietnam, because China was not pleased with what was going on in Indo-China.
Vietnam did not take it seriously, and thought the Chinese were bluffing.
Then the border war started.
Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Deng ordered the massing of troops and armies along the border with Vietnam, because China was not pleased with what was going on in Indo-China.
Vietnam did not take it seriously, and thought the Chinese were bluffing.
Then the border war started.
Afghanistan: The Great Western Escape
By ANDREW KORYBKO, 13 August 2021
The Taliban are taking over Afghanistan a lot quicker than most observers expected, which is prompting a Western exodus from the war-torn country. More than a dozen regional capitals have fallen to the group over the past week, including the second-largest city of Kandahar. Everyone is now bracing themselves for what seems to be the Taliban’s inevitable march on Kabul even though the international community is still desperately trying to clinch a last-minute peace deal to avert that dark scenario. Some countries are also threatening not to recognize the Taliban if it returns to power by force, but that might not deter it.
The “Great Western Escape” from Afghanistan is now underway. The US just deployed several thousand Marines to facilitate the evacuation of its citizens and is begging the Taliban not to attack its Embassy. Canada and the UK are also dispatching some forces to assist their compatriots in this respect too. India already evacuated some of its citizens and is reportedly preparing for the contingency scenario of how to complete its own full civilian and diplomatic withdrawal if the Taliban reaches the Afghan capital. All of these countries fully supported Kabul but now have nothing to show for it despite two decades’ worth of investments.
The palpable panic in the international community and especially among Western and Western-allied countries like India is due to their failure to pragmatically adapt to rapidly changing circumstances that their strategists should have seen coming long ago. The Afghan National Army (ANA) was always a paper tiger propped up by foreign air support. It never commanded any real power on the ground outside of a few cities. Once the US stopped bombing the Taliban as much as it used to, its fighters regrouped en masse and started taking over regional capital after regional capital, focusing first on the border regions and now moving towards the interior.
They wisely preempted the scenario of foreign forces supporting anti-Taliban proxies from neighboring countries and are now proverbially (or perhaps quite literally) going for the kill by potentially capturing Kabul. All the money that Kabul’s allies invested in Afghanistan was wasted on corruption and ulterior projects such as utilizing that country as a springboard for destabilizing neighboring ones through armed militants that targets such as Pakistan regard as terrorists. Nothing of substance was ever invested in actually improving the lives of regular Afghans and progressively winning the hearts and minds needed to sustain their government.
To its credit, India did indeed invest quite a lot in Afghan infrastructure projects and played a leading role in supporting anti-Taliban proxies, but the former were taken for granted by the locals as something that they rightly deserved and not as a reward of any sort for keeping the Taliban at bay while the latter were brutal, corrupt, and thus counterproductively improved the population’s perception of the Taliban by contrast. India could have entered into emergency talks with the Taliban upon its initial successes after the US announced its full withdrawal plans but refused to do so for whatever reason at the expense of its interests.
India is now fleeing Afghanistan together with its Western allies, all of whom are leaving in shame and knowing that this outcome wasn’t inevitable. Had they sincerely invested in Afghanistan’s people, none of this might have happened, but they all pursued ulterior strategic motives that never truly had anything to do with reconstructing this war-torn country. Each of them also spewed propaganda to the foreign audience that their own decision makers themselves ultimately ended up believing after some time which claimed that the Taliban weren’t genuinely popular and were thus doomed to be defeated.
The “Great Western Escape” from Afghanistan carries with it powerful imagery that speaks to the countless failures of the international coalition. The retreating forces’ soft power is destroyed by none other than their own hand after they showed the world that they couldn’t accomplish anything that they officially set out to do DESPITE TWO DECADES and literally TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in total invested towards that end. Nothing was ever as it seemed to be and none of them were honest about what was really happening there. The truth has finally been revealed though and it isn’t pretty, but it’ll hopefully be a lesson for everyone if they choose to learn from it.
By ANDREW KORYBKO, 13 August 2021
The Taliban are taking over Afghanistan a lot quicker than most observers expected, which is prompting a Western exodus from the war-torn country. More than a dozen regional capitals have fallen to the group over the past week, including the second-largest city of Kandahar. Everyone is now bracing themselves for what seems to be the Taliban’s inevitable march on Kabul even though the international community is still desperately trying to clinch a last-minute peace deal to avert that dark scenario. Some countries are also threatening not to recognize the Taliban if it returns to power by force, but that might not deter it.
The “Great Western Escape” from Afghanistan is now underway. The US just deployed several thousand Marines to facilitate the evacuation of its citizens and is begging the Taliban not to attack its Embassy. Canada and the UK are also dispatching some forces to assist their compatriots in this respect too. India already evacuated some of its citizens and is reportedly preparing for the contingency scenario of how to complete its own full civilian and diplomatic withdrawal if the Taliban reaches the Afghan capital. All of these countries fully supported Kabul but now have nothing to show for it despite two decades’ worth of investments.
The palpable panic in the international community and especially among Western and Western-allied countries like India is due to their failure to pragmatically adapt to rapidly changing circumstances that their strategists should have seen coming long ago. The Afghan National Army (ANA) was always a paper tiger propped up by foreign air support. It never commanded any real power on the ground outside of a few cities. Once the US stopped bombing the Taliban as much as it used to, its fighters regrouped en masse and started taking over regional capital after regional capital, focusing first on the border regions and now moving towards the interior.
They wisely preempted the scenario of foreign forces supporting anti-Taliban proxies from neighboring countries and are now proverbially (or perhaps quite literally) going for the kill by potentially capturing Kabul. All the money that Kabul’s allies invested in Afghanistan was wasted on corruption and ulterior projects such as utilizing that country as a springboard for destabilizing neighboring ones through armed militants that targets such as Pakistan regard as terrorists. Nothing of substance was ever invested in actually improving the lives of regular Afghans and progressively winning the hearts and minds needed to sustain their government.
To its credit, India did indeed invest quite a lot in Afghan infrastructure projects and played a leading role in supporting anti-Taliban proxies, but the former were taken for granted by the locals as something that they rightly deserved and not as a reward of any sort for keeping the Taliban at bay while the latter were brutal, corrupt, and thus counterproductively improved the population’s perception of the Taliban by contrast. India could have entered into emergency talks with the Taliban upon its initial successes after the US announced its full withdrawal plans but refused to do so for whatever reason at the expense of its interests.
India is now fleeing Afghanistan together with its Western allies, all of whom are leaving in shame and knowing that this outcome wasn’t inevitable. Had they sincerely invested in Afghanistan’s people, none of this might have happened, but they all pursued ulterior strategic motives that never truly had anything to do with reconstructing this war-torn country. Each of them also spewed propaganda to the foreign audience that their own decision makers themselves ultimately ended up believing after some time which claimed that the Taliban weren’t genuinely popular and were thus doomed to be defeated.
The “Great Western Escape” from Afghanistan carries with it powerful imagery that speaks to the countless failures of the international coalition. The retreating forces’ soft power is destroyed by none other than their own hand after they showed the world that they couldn’t accomplish anything that they officially set out to do DESPITE TWO DECADES and literally TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in total invested towards that end. Nothing was ever as it seemed to be and none of them were honest about what was really happening there. The truth has finally been revealed though and it isn’t pretty, but it’ll hopefully be a lesson for everyone if they choose to learn from it.
Its epic Afghan failure shows that America’s naive belief it can cure the world’s ills with democracy, dollars, and M16s is wrong
By TOM FOWDY | RT - 12 August 2021
The Taliban’s close to retaking control and the US occupation’s been a total failure. Yet the fundamental lesson’s being ignored: Washington needs to stop exporting its ideology as if it’s an answer to the problems countries face.
As the United States hastily withdraws from Afghanistan, warning its citizens there to flee immediately, and washes its hands of the Central Asian country, the Taliban are running riot. In the space of weeks, the militant group has seized dozens of districts and at least 10 cities.
US officials have warned that the country could collapse entirely to them in a minimum of 90 days, or at least all bar Kabul. It is hard to argue against the claim that Afghanistan's government and military are collapsing already, with hundreds of high-profile defections to the Taliban, assassinations of senior leaders, and the sacking of the country's commander of the armed forces.
It is staggering to think that after 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, and eye-watering costs in human lives on all sides, this is the end product. Two decades of propping up this country has returned absolutely nothing but a 360-degree turn back to square one. It is the biggest and most colossal waste of time in history. But why has Afghanistan been such an astronomical American failure? One which has arguably been the biggest humiliation and representation of Washington's hubris since the Vietnam War, and it's not going to be long before a Saigon-like evacuation of the US embassy follows...
The answer is that the Afghanistan failure reveals the dogmatic zealousness and utopian nature of the US policy of trying to export its ideology as an answer to the world's problems, as well as its insecurities, and repeatedly using violence to do so.
Afghanistan is not just a US strategic failure; it is a failure in America's uncompromising and zero-sum world view of the world, which has, not just on this occasion, brought disaster to the countries it has subjected it to. Washington believed that building and sustaining a democracy in Afghanistan was somehow a prerequisite to defeating international terrorism, and was woefully ignorant of the social, political, and economic conditions of the country it occupied stubbornly for two decades, and how this in turn contributes to extremism.
Yet it extends further back than that. The Afghan conflict was born out of two things, both of which happened to be vested in America’s enormous ideological complacency and oversight. Let us not forget that, long before the events of 9/11, Afghanistan came on America’s radar as part of a crusade to topple the Soviet Union and the communist-backed state in Kabul, a neoconservative policy known as the ‘REAGAN DOCTRINE’. This involved arming and training Islamist extremists who Reagan even hosted in the White House. It was the disastrous consequences of this policy which led to the rise of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and, as a subsequent ‘solution’, the War on Terror.
Along came the Bush Doctrine, as outlined in this Archived “National Security Strategy” of 2002, which militantly believed that the answer to defeating terrorism was to relentlessly push for freedom all around the world. It set the stage for another disaster of that period, IRAQ. Similar to then, the answer to the ‘problem’ was never as simple as going in there, culling a few terrorists, carpet bombing it, and propping up a new democracy and saving the day.
Besides Islamism, Afghanistan as a state has seldom found a way to function and secure a legitimate government that can bring all its ethnic groups together. The current conflict is an ethnic one as much as it is a theological and anti-imperialist one; the Taliban are in practice Pashtun nationalists, and it is this that has made them so resilient, combined with the country's broken and barren economy.
The US frequently believes that democracy is the path to prosperity and the solving of all of a society’s ills, but ask yourself: what good is the right to vote to a poor Afghan farmer who finds himself growing opium to supply the Taliban just to survive? Americans have never understood that democracy is a structural arrangement, not an incentive to live or thrive on, one more suited to developed middle classes – and it almost certainly cannot improve or change your life when your country lacks legitimacy and social stability.
The US-established Afghanistan was unsurprisingly a failed state which lived on the drip feed of its military power. The function of ‘democracy’ couldn't compensate for the fact its population had little confidence in it to begin with, and as soon as military support was taken away, all was revealed.
As a result, occupation did not change Afghanistan, and merely attempted to brush all of the country’s problems under the carpet for 20 years. Despite the US withdrawal from the country, there is arguably no inclination in Washington foreign policy circles to admit that this costly venture was truly a mistake, that the US “methods” failed miserably. Instead, there’s merely a shift in priorities and a refocusing of resources: Washington has decided that trying to export democracy to Muslim countries to build "security" is no longer the most important thing – but doing so to China and the Far East is. There has been no real renouncement of war, and you can see that in how Biden still uses punitive military action in Syria, Somalia, etc.
There has been woefully little soul searching or rendition that Washington’s evangelistic interpretation of America's role in the world or national security has not worked as intended, only that there are now more pressing things. Perhaps there have been questions over the tactics, but never a wavering in the commitment that an outpouring of democracy can solve all ills, even as it is used to sugar-coat a relentless pursuit of hegemonism.
The crisis in Kabul is not only the biggest American failure since the Vietnam War. It is the story of how the very militants the US believed they could vanquish in the name of democracy and liberty have managed to be on the brink of retaking power even before US forces actually leave. It exposes the shoddy, simplistic, trigger-happy, and ill-advised view of the world that Washington DC has – one that has been the hallmark of almost every issue that nation has ever faced.
By TOM FOWDY | RT - 12 August 2021
The Taliban’s close to retaking control and the US occupation’s been a total failure. Yet the fundamental lesson’s being ignored: Washington needs to stop exporting its ideology as if it’s an answer to the problems countries face.
As the United States hastily withdraws from Afghanistan, warning its citizens there to flee immediately, and washes its hands of the Central Asian country, the Taliban are running riot. In the space of weeks, the militant group has seized dozens of districts and at least 10 cities.
US officials have warned that the country could collapse entirely to them in a minimum of 90 days, or at least all bar Kabul. It is hard to argue against the claim that Afghanistan's government and military are collapsing already, with hundreds of high-profile defections to the Taliban, assassinations of senior leaders, and the sacking of the country's commander of the armed forces.
It is staggering to think that after 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, and eye-watering costs in human lives on all sides, this is the end product. Two decades of propping up this country has returned absolutely nothing but a 360-degree turn back to square one. It is the biggest and most colossal waste of time in history. But why has Afghanistan been such an astronomical American failure? One which has arguably been the biggest humiliation and representation of Washington's hubris since the Vietnam War, and it's not going to be long before a Saigon-like evacuation of the US embassy follows...
The answer is that the Afghanistan failure reveals the dogmatic zealousness and utopian nature of the US policy of trying to export its ideology as an answer to the world's problems, as well as its insecurities, and repeatedly using violence to do so.
Afghanistan is not just a US strategic failure; it is a failure in America's uncompromising and zero-sum world view of the world, which has, not just on this occasion, brought disaster to the countries it has subjected it to. Washington believed that building and sustaining a democracy in Afghanistan was somehow a prerequisite to defeating international terrorism, and was woefully ignorant of the social, political, and economic conditions of the country it occupied stubbornly for two decades, and how this in turn contributes to extremism.
Yet it extends further back than that. The Afghan conflict was born out of two things, both of which happened to be vested in America’s enormous ideological complacency and oversight. Let us not forget that, long before the events of 9/11, Afghanistan came on America’s radar as part of a crusade to topple the Soviet Union and the communist-backed state in Kabul, a neoconservative policy known as the ‘REAGAN DOCTRINE’. This involved arming and training Islamist extremists who Reagan even hosted in the White House. It was the disastrous consequences of this policy which led to the rise of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and, as a subsequent ‘solution’, the War on Terror.
Along came the Bush Doctrine, as outlined in this Archived “National Security Strategy” of 2002, which militantly believed that the answer to defeating terrorism was to relentlessly push for freedom all around the world. It set the stage for another disaster of that period, IRAQ. Similar to then, the answer to the ‘problem’ was never as simple as going in there, culling a few terrorists, carpet bombing it, and propping up a new democracy and saving the day.
Besides Islamism, Afghanistan as a state has seldom found a way to function and secure a legitimate government that can bring all its ethnic groups together. The current conflict is an ethnic one as much as it is a theological and anti-imperialist one; the Taliban are in practice Pashtun nationalists, and it is this that has made them so resilient, combined with the country's broken and barren economy.
The US frequently believes that democracy is the path to prosperity and the solving of all of a society’s ills, but ask yourself: what good is the right to vote to a poor Afghan farmer who finds himself growing opium to supply the Taliban just to survive? Americans have never understood that democracy is a structural arrangement, not an incentive to live or thrive on, one more suited to developed middle classes – and it almost certainly cannot improve or change your life when your country lacks legitimacy and social stability.
The US-established Afghanistan was unsurprisingly a failed state which lived on the drip feed of its military power. The function of ‘democracy’ couldn't compensate for the fact its population had little confidence in it to begin with, and as soon as military support was taken away, all was revealed.
As a result, occupation did not change Afghanistan, and merely attempted to brush all of the country’s problems under the carpet for 20 years. Despite the US withdrawal from the country, there is arguably no inclination in Washington foreign policy circles to admit that this costly venture was truly a mistake, that the US “methods” failed miserably. Instead, there’s merely a shift in priorities and a refocusing of resources: Washington has decided that trying to export democracy to Muslim countries to build "security" is no longer the most important thing – but doing so to China and the Far East is. There has been no real renouncement of war, and you can see that in how Biden still uses punitive military action in Syria, Somalia, etc.
There has been woefully little soul searching or rendition that Washington’s evangelistic interpretation of America's role in the world or national security has not worked as intended, only that there are now more pressing things. Perhaps there have been questions over the tactics, but never a wavering in the commitment that an outpouring of democracy can solve all ills, even as it is used to sugar-coat a relentless pursuit of hegemonism.
The crisis in Kabul is not only the biggest American failure since the Vietnam War. It is the story of how the very militants the US believed they could vanquish in the name of democracy and liberty have managed to be on the brink of retaking power even before US forces actually leave. It exposes the shoddy, simplistic, trigger-happy, and ill-advised view of the world that Washington DC has – one that has been the hallmark of almost every issue that nation has ever faced.
Captured "palace" of US allied tribal warlord in Afghanistan. The warlord fled the country.
Also, a feast inside the residence.
The warlord - Dostum
Also, a feast inside the residence.
The warlord - Dostum
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Agreed. I think Pakistan's judgement may be a little clouded in this.
It could easily be CIA, Russians. Last I heard China was going launch their own investigation.
Capturing intelligence agents in Afghanistan is a must priority for China. Pay the Taliban a bounty to capture them, then get them to defect.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Personally I don’t think that India is behind this. If they were Twitter would be flooded with posts by Indian officials boasting that they scored the big one against th Chinese.
This post is likely misleading or false. This helicopter wasn't captured by Taliban and is supposedly an old post.
Post not reliable or verified!
The saddest thing about this war in Afghanistan is how much money was literally wasted.
Almost 1 trillion spent... for what?
It really puts Jimmy Carter's alleged quote into some context. Like China isn't covering the country in HSR because of magic Uighur slave chain gangs. It's just what you can do when you don't flush money down the toilet.
I can even cut some slack, not everyone here would agree, but it would be hard for any country to accept an attack like 9/11 without responding in some way.
So let's assume out of 20 years, half of it was justified, so let's say the cost should be 400 billion. That's enough to build the California HSR and still have money to do the Boston Big Dig... and still have more money left over to make a national broadband network, and probably still have more and more money
Could've really improved the lives of people, didn't even improve the lives of Afghans...
Almost 1 trillion spent... for what?
It really puts Jimmy Carter's alleged quote into some context. Like China isn't covering the country in HSR because of magic Uighur slave chain gangs. It's just what you can do when you don't flush money down the toilet.
I can even cut some slack, not everyone here would agree, but it would be hard for any country to accept an attack like 9/11 without responding in some way.
So let's assume out of 20 years, half of it was justified, so let's say the cost should be 400 billion. That's enough to build the California HSR and still have money to do the Boston Big Dig... and still have more money left over to make a national broadband network, and probably still have more and more money
Could've really improved the lives of people, didn't even improve the lives of Afghans...
It's why I've said that the US only knows how to kill, rather than 'win', because winning requires a different skillset than just blowing up things and expecting positive outcomes from that.