Thread by @GrayConnolly

Apropos the Afghanistan War aftermath debate:
1/ everyone gets to have their own opinion on the War & your take cannot be any worse than the fools who 'led' us in the War; and
2/ I support evactuating Australia's intepreters/helpers but they need vetting before coming here.

Weird part of our role in the Afghan War ending amid much consternation is that, clearly, this most probable and frankly obvious end ('we are withdrawing after [insert years] of military failure;) was & is something that shocks a large number of presumptively intelligent people.

This is what I wrote in 2017 re the Afghan War from a military perspective and I am not too sure I would change much here, now, on reflection

https://twitter.com/GrayConnolly/status/1204656739167035392

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/…

Anyway, it is late here, so if you want to post your Afghan War take below here, however outlandish or brutally realistic, please feel free to do so .... noting the War's upstanding examples of the modern soldiery, such as these two ..... See you in the 'morrow.

This by @SchubertBrian is very good - the pederastic warlords that NATO ISAF supported/tolerated only made the Taliban a more attractive alternative:

"Child sex abuse by Afghan police and military commanders was endemic, particularly with young boys."

medium.com/@schubertbrian…

The Media esp the ABC has spent the better part of the year pushing uncritically the most lurid allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan - but now thinks we should have stayed in Afghanistan forever apparently

The basic argument to be put to the Australian Govt should be one they will understand: ie no local will ever support us again if we do not now look after our Afghan guides/helpers

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

'The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases'

nytimes.com/2015/09/21/wor…