Taliban offensive of 2021 and collapse of Afghan government.

It was a joke. The dudes doing "jumping jacks" knew they were just bullshitting around. Half of them had no intention of ever fighting the Taliban and the other half were Taliban. Even the dude teaching them jumping jacks knew it was a joke. The whole thing was bullshit from the beginning.
I remember a bit on NPR talking in no small part about how functioning in Afghanistan meant learning the idiomatic idea of "inshallah" where "if God wills it" means "God better will it, because my lazy ass ain't doing shit, asshole!"
 
The Taliban has always viewed heroin as something that only harms non-Muslims (they kill junkies) and therefore just taxes the poppy production.

Dunno what the fuck yall are talking about.
The Taliban, like all governments, has a history of flipflopping on its drug policy. Yes, the Taliban has, at times, taken a page from the CIA, and tolerated, even profited, from Afghanistan's heroin trade (journos have been acussing them of doing this for the last several years, for example).

However, one of the proximate causes of the Afghan Invasion was the Taliban narcotics crackdown of 2000, aka The Day of The Torch, which led to "a 99% reduction in the area of opium poppy farming in Taliban-controlled areas". (Farrel, Thorne) By sheer coincidence, after the US invasion, the opium poppy farms got back up and running.

Here's a graph showing Afghan poppy cultivation, in hectares, year by year:
Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cultivation_1994-2007b.PNG

That dip between 2000 and 2001 was due to the Taliban enforcing its trad Muslim, no-tolerance drug policy. That massive rise from 2003 onwards, had absolutely nothing to with US foreign intelligence services having free reign over the country, and is probably just some unexplainable, freak data anomaly.
 
We were also obliged to help Ukraine and see how that worked out for them.
Most Americans are well aware of their country relationship with Japan thanks to the post war economic boom, electronics, cars and of course anime have made their own little cultural impression in most Americans, almost no American knew that Ukraine even existed before Russia took it over.
Attacking Japan would rile up American support much much harder than the absolute apathy Ukraine got
 
Okay agreed. But then why tf Mr Donald 'Voter Fraud' Trump released 5000 taliban soldiers before getting out? What's your cope on that?
When you Sign a Treaty in WAR..you often Give up POWs because the OW is the important part of the Phrase.

Gundams are anti-nuclear mobile units so they don't need nukes where we're goin
Tell that to Anavel Gato.
 
A friend of mine just got this in his inbox.

View attachment 2450933
Maybe my perception's skewed, but most of us were pretty jaded and cynical to begin with.

The bigger problem is that, thanks to Covid lockdowns, mental health services have rapidly deteriorated while the need for mental health services has skyrocketed. Dunno many vets who'll angst out over this news specifically, but all it takes is one guy who's at the end of his rope and needs an excuse - ANY excuse - so I guess the VA's gotta cover their asses.

At least this time they're not asking you to snitch on your battle buddies who own guns...?
 
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