Trudeau says Trump is serious about making Canada the 51st State. TRUMP says he is serious about it, too!!!!

@MrSmooTh ... then just dumping it, even giving the Taliban a date on which to start taking over. That poor nation is in a terrible condition, relying heavily on foreign aid, but I don't know how much of that is from the USA. Or was....

@MrSmooTh @ArishMell What a fiasco that was.

@4meAndyou It was, and so sadly for the Afghans. Especially the women whom the shadowy cleric who runs the Taliban must hate so bitterly.

@ArishMell Yeah because they used to have open borders and the taliban runs everything.

@ArishMell They want to live in a 2000 year old culture. For the women, that's torture.

@4meAndyou Indeed. Though no doubt a 2000yo culture with this year's advantages for the rulers! Even some Muslim clerics think the Taliban goes much too far.

@ArishMell I wish we could have helped them. Instead of the horrible chaotic fiasco Biden enacted at the end.

@4meAndyou It wasn't Biden's decision to pull out but by the time he became President it is hard to see what else he could have done.

I think if the USA had reversed that decision late in the process, the Taliban and possibly ISIS (though they are rivals) would have reacted with utter fury and they would not have cared who died in the process.

Yes, we should have helped them further but Trump had pretty well given the Taliban a definite date on which to march in and take over.

Subsequently Afghanistan was hit by a severe drought and has been receiving aid from other countries since; but even that was hampered by the Taliban wanting no women aid-workers. I'm not sure if that was resolved.

.....

China has been making overtures to Afghanistan, which hardly squares with its avowedly anti-religious ideology and its treatment of the Uyghurs' mainly-Muslim culture.

Further, something is happening in the very far West of Chiense territory, probably part of Tibet, where the Chinese are developing towns around the Western end of a large desert plain, probably a playa lake, directly below the mountains that carry their direct border with Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Why there?

Is the People's Republic of China planning to build roads, perhaps even railways into their neighbours?

That might not help Afghanistan very much, but it would certainly help China by creating physical links towards Iran and the sea; part of its "Belt Road Initiative". It already sends goods Westwards by the Trans-Siberian Railway.

There appears no obvious activity such as mining, on the Google Earth images, but there are industrial estates and enormous solar-array "farms" around the towns. There are also a lot of very odd artefacts as if the Chinese kept changing their minds.

The only water supply is snow-melt off the mountains, and they must use a considerable amount for irrigating the crops around what seem largely self-sufficient settlements served by remarkably good roads and even a railway, which I think is very new. The present images even show a train on it.

The only outsiders who might go there, if any are allowed there at all, are probably mountaineers going to classics such as K2, but I think they normally appoach from Pakistan.


All in all, the poor Afghans have a very uncertain future.

@ArishMell I do have to agree with Mr.Smooth. I know you hate Trump, but if HE had pulled us out of Afghanistan, we would still own the airport that was abandoned near the Chinese border, we would NOT have abandoned all our military equipment, and we would have left a skeleton force.

@4meAndyou We probably still would have left equipment, its actually cheaper than shipping it all home. (I was in logistics the last year I was in the Army) But we usually blow it all up so it's unusable. Knowing this adminstration we probably would have piled it all up out in the middle of nowhere and dropped a JDAM on it or something.

@MrSmooTh Merely insulting your Services commanders won't achieve anything, but consider that the decision to leave Afghanistan was political, not military. I don't know if it drew on military advice, but the decision was by the government; which is civilian.

To give the American armed services the power of such decisions, as you seem to suggest, would effectively hand control (even if not also administration) of the USA to its military.

@MrSmooTh Why does it cost more to ship stuff back or to closest US bases vs what it costs to purchase? That seems a bit incredulous.

@BrandNewMan It is incredible, especially strategically, but probably has a sort of twisted accounting logic based on the write-down value of the equipment and its freight costs. Not on military judgement.

Wasn't the idea that the Afghan army would own it? If so surely the Pentagon would have realised the Taliban would seize any they did not destroy in fighting the army.

@ArishMell The decision to pull out of Afghanistan WAS political. Biden chose a date which he had promised to the Taliban, and ignored the recommendations of his generals as to the strategy of pulling out, and the methodology. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if the generals obeyed the LETTER of Biden's orders, and spitefully ignored what they knew to be the correct methodology.

@4meAndyou Yes, I know. I think I said it was all political. I would not be too hard on the generals though.

I believe they were right but constitutionally and legally, had to obey an order from their Commander-in-Chief. After all, they expect their colonels, sergeants and squaddies to obey them. The US government had told the Taliban the date it could re-take what sadly, is their country, and the US Army and Air Force could not ignore that decree.

They must have been put in an awful position, but I can't see that they had any choice. The President and other policitians are elected to run the country inclduing how and when to use the Services. The Services are appointed to serve , not administer, the country whatever advice they give and whatever their opinions.