Canadian Politics Today

Video came out of a low flying U.S. Blackhawk chopper….   It was the Taliban practising with their new toy….

Can anyone imagine there'll be a day when a US president is able to say America never should have gone to Afghanistan in the first place?

Doesn't sound like Biden can.

Well if they elected Mike Gravel he might have.

yabut, you know - fighting them over there instead of over here! Ya ya, hindsight. Of course it was fear that drove the United States - fear of another attack by al-Qaeda, which was then firmly entrenched in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Fear of other possible terrorist attacks. Certainly the U.S. public wanted retribution. Member eyeball, perhaps your hindsight can offer up what the U.S. should have alternatively done in response to the 9/11 attacks - yes? Along with the UN and NATO response sanctioning the ISAF - what should they have also alternatively done?

Did the USA need to go to war with Pakistan to go and fetch bin Laden from that country?   They came and went in a few hours.

Are you saying they couldn’t try and get bin Laden without getting into a 20year war in Afghanistan?

Taken the deal when the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden

what I read is that early bombing decimated the Taliban, but also pushed al-Qaeda into the myriad of mountainous cave systems... and, of course, at Tora Bora, it is recognized that untrustworthy Afghan 'warlords' helped bin Laden escape - notwithstanding the U.S. reluctance to put 'boots on the ground' to go into the cave systems, instead opting to rely entirely on a continued bombing campaign. It is said doubtful that the Taliban had the means to actually find & deliver bin Laden... even if the U.S. was inclined to negotiate - which it wasn't as it had supposed designs on eliminating "all" al-Qaeda leaders and the assorted terrorist networks.

Academic briefing us (45 mins) on the divisions in Afghanistan

A couple of things here...

Bin Laden may have been the primary target, but the initial targeting of Afghanistan involved more than just targeting Bin Laden... it was also about eliminating Al Quaeda's ability to use Afghanistan as a base of operations. If the U.S. had taken out bin Laden but left others to carry on his legacy, it would have been seen as a failure.

Secondly is True that Bin Laden was targeted in Pakistan without "going to war". But they were only able to do that after months/years of intelligence gathering was able to locate him. There is no guarantee that they would have been able to locate Bin Laden in Afghanistan using the same tactics.

Fair enough….  It was always going to be a large military response to take out the Al Qaeda.  20 years of war against the Taliban and they just step right back into power was quite something to behold though.

In my opinion, as soon as the USofA decided to attack Iraq, Canada should have pulled out of the war in Afghanistan.  We shouldn’t let our allies wage war without any consequences. 

And, in the end, we did exactly what the old conservative trope was for not leaving…. We cut and ran without succeeding in the mission.

Afghanistan was an abysmal failure almost any way you slice it, other than eliminating Al Qaeda.

Video came out of a low flying U.S. Blackhawk chopper….   It was the Taliban practising with their new toy….

I don't think it will be a major concern.

The U.S. disabled much of the equipment they left behind. Much of the other stuff (like the previously mentioned blackhawk helicopters) need both pilots (many of whom have fled the country) and regular maintenance (something that the taliban probably don't have the expertise to do themselves, and its doubtful other countries will help). So, they will have their toy helicopter for a few months, but will probably eventually it will end up grounded for lack of spare parts.

The U.S. did leave plenty of rifles and other small arms, but they use NATO-caliber ammunition, and when the supply of bullets runs out in Afghanistan, those guns will just be very expensive paperweights.

The Taliban may try to sell some of the equipment abroad (Hey, want a cheap humvee?) but the former Afghan army wasn't exactly given state-of-the-art equipment.

Wild story here of a U.S. Marine stealing a baby from Afghanistan.

This is a story about how one U.S. Marine became fiercely determined to bring home an Afghan war orphan, and praised it as an act of Christian faith to save her. Letters, emails and documents submitted in federal filings show that he used his status in the U.S. Armed Forces, appealed to high-ranking Trump administration officials and turned to small-town courts to adopt the baby, unbeknownst to the Afghan couple raising her 7,000 miles away.