“The Taliban shot 22 Afghan commandos on Tuesday in the northern province of Faryab, the Afghan Ministry of Defense confirmed to Fox News.
The Special Force members’ ammunition ran out as they fought with terrorist militants, leading them to surrender.
The Taliban told them to take off their bulletproof vests amid the surrender and then shot the 22 troops, including the son of a top Afghan general, the Ministry of Defense said. There is purportedly unverified video of the incident circulating online.” foxnews
Comment: Well pilgrim turcopoles, are you surprised? If you are, then you are a fool and should be working in the Biden Administration. Who are the fools who have been telling us that the Taliban are new, much improved Taliban? Speak up. Tell us again. Does that mean that were I president/CinC I would reverse course and re-commit to Afghanistan? NO! It means that as I insisted in 2009 we should never have committed to a nation-building counterinsurgency campaign in that “shithole” country. Sometimes the bell cannot be unrung and the Afghans will pay for that ignorant stupidity. pl
https://www.foxnews.com/world/taliban-fighters-execute-22-afghan-commandos
Seeing media reports the Taliban are “delighted” to be working with the CCP. Interesting considering the CCP hates all religions and any group that projects even a marginal amount of power from meditation groups to Didi the ride sharing service. For some reason I have a feeling the chemistry of these two Bosom Buddies will have far less appeal than Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.
You underestimate the mercantile ingenuity of the CCP. Given that the Taliban do not want any barbers around and the CCP obsession with regulating bodily hair among the Uyghurs to curb extremism, their mutual accomplice with a flair for greasing such hairy deals will broker a win-win fair trade deal.
The Taliban are not going to leave anyone alive who is potentially a focal point for organised anti taliban resistance, for example a color revolution in a few years time.
Educated women would also be on their “undesirables” list as would professionals.
Could not agree more Colonel. I said it on several Afghanistan-related posts exactly this and knew the true nature of the Taliban and their motivation and what they strive to achieve amid U.S. military pullout. I mean, who could possibly have had any skepticism about the Talibs and their objectives?
I fear that the plan now is to facilitate the ‘extraction’ of all the assimilated assets that the U.S/NATO forces managed to cultivate all these years, e.g. NGO workers, translators, local human rights activists, women’s movement activists/organizers, basically the majority of the so-called ‘Civil-Society’ into the U.S. and Western Europe. What will the U.S. ‘ulama’/’marja’iya’ will do about them remains to be seen. I think one thing is nearly certain that the west needs to buckle-up and be ready for another influx of ‘special’ migrants into their neighborhoods.
It is silly to assume the Taliban are “woke,” but it’s also hard to see who holds the moral high ground here.
My own hard hearted thought was, well, they wanted those vests in one piece.
John + Merryman
Do you understand the concept of “irtidad?”
I’m afraid not.
I keep finding more and more I don’t understand.
So I looked it up. Are you saying the Taliban are apostates for killing them after they surrendered, or the Afghan soldiers are, for working with the infidels?
In my own spotty efforts to understand culture and religion, it seems that to the Ancients, gods were what we would call ideals and that monotheism equated to monoculture. As in one people, one rule, one god.
Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures, as that was analogous to multiculturalism, the varied aspects and elements of reality interacting.
The Romans adopted Christianity as the Empire solidified and remnants of the Republic were being erased. Though vestiges of pantheism remained, in the Trinity. Which came from the Greek year gods, the cycling of the seasons, as the son was reborn in the spring, of the sky god and earth mother. Then edited to fit the needs of the Catholic church, which de-emphasized the premise of regeneration, given it was viewed as the eternal institution. At least until Martin Luther tried to do what Jesus tried with Judaism, push the reset button.
Consequently the default political system for Europe, for the next 1500 years was monarchy and feudalism. When the West went back to less centralized political models, it required the separation of church and state, culture and civics.
Which would be completely illogical, from the Muslim point of view.
As I see it though, a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
Given the ideal is aspirational, while the absolute is elemental, assuming ones ideals to be absolute does tend to create some particularly unforgiving attitudes.
J-M
To the Taliban the Afghan security forces are apostate not for working with the infidel as you put it but rather for not adhering to the idiosyncratic view of God’s will that they embrace. Like all Muslims they think that because God is one his will must be one as well. The various sects vary only in the extent to which they are coercive in applying that principle. Christianity as we know it emerged over centuries in the synthesis of various “mystery” cults present in the Roman Empire with a Jewish sect.
The book I found most enlightening for understanding the foundations of Western culture was Gilbert Murray’s; The Five Stages of Greek Religion;
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm
https://www.oann.com/responding-to-sos-afghan-commandos-caught-in-fierce-taliban-attack/
It’s a shame to leave good soldiers hung out to dry in an ambush like that when they were saving a policeman. The Taliban were obviously more interested in killing the SOF and using the officer as bait. No air cover.
It looks like we should have kept buying them the Russian helicopters instead of forcing them to switch to the black hawk since all our contractors are gone.
Congress really taught Putin a lesson.
Sometimes the bell cannot be unrung and the Afghans will pay for that ignorant stupidity. pl
Agree but, we will have no accountability for this endeavor.
China just sign a $60B deal with the Taliban, huge deal is coming soon with Iran, and report they are chasing our warship in the China Seas.
The damage will also affect us unless with find out why this happened.
Jose
Who said there would be accountability? There rarely is.
Too Jose,
China’s deal with the Taliban was [qualified] foreseeable. The Aynak rare earths mineral rights “purchase” – and then there was the oh, “issue” I suppose with the Pakis supposedly going to provide/arrange adequate security as part of China’s Belt and Roads – transporting the ore (Col. Lang correct me if I’m getting this wrong, it’s been awhile since I actively followed this)
Anyway, the Pakis were gonna be securing the route[s] of the production from Aynak to smelters in China proper and so with the withdrawal of ISAF & Associates security guarantees by the Pakis alone would turn not, oh, “precarious” to depend on.
So far as the China/Iran – that’s a done deal.
I heard about the $40B deal between China / Iran but no direct deal between the Taliban and China. I’ve been hearing this dread about Chinese investment in Afghanistan a lot on the circuit. We can’t have everything we want. I just want one thing.
1. Don’t harbor / sponsor terrorism against the U.S., keep your sick inside your own borders.
2. See #1.
If China builds out OBR, pays them for leases and royalties for their rare earth minerals, maybe they will produce less opium and become rich and decadent (or not). I find all of this talk about being on Russia’s southern flank, China’s western flank, and Iran’s eastern flank to be what always gets us into trouble. We always overreach.
Sir,
Is it possible they offered them their standard deal. Surrender, give up your weapons and go home. Or fight and die. The example of what happens if you fight vs what happens if you give up is a powerful tool.
Isnt this just the Melian Dialogue again?
harry
To these fanatics apostasy requires punishment by death.
To what extent are our military misadventures driven by the need for public debt to support our capital markets?
John + Merryman
Marxist propaganda. Our “misadventures” are driven by the political fantasies of academics and their former students as well as the ignorance of of hyper-ambitious generals.
Do not disagree. Do think that careful selection has replaced a taste for military adventure with hyper-achievement within the military bureaucracy among the corps of general officers .
J West
“a taste for military adventure” How condescending …
It’s not socialism. I would put welfare in the same boat.
Could the capital markets function, if the government didn’t borrow up trillions of what would otherwise be surplus investment money? Where would it go otherwise?
The debt really got started with the New Deal, so not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well.
As I said, I grew up on a farm. It’s all thermodynamics to me.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/07/12/video-afghan-commandos-taliban-coren-pkg-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/around-the-world/
My goodness! The clip was very disturbing to watch. I think it is waaaay beyond than ‘Irtidad’ and apostasy that the Taliban sees in those surrendered Afghan troops as the only reason to slaughter them like that. To suggest that CCP through Pakistan would be able to successfully ‘tame’ these barbarians once the dust is settled is a bad joke.
P.J.
This clip should be mandatory watching for those policy wonks who talk tough about bringing “democracy” to the unwashed. Humanoids like the kagans, albrights, psakis, petrauses, blairs, etc…
They should be made to watch this over and over until they would see it behind their eyelids every time they think of committing US troops to “COIN” and”nation building” in far-off lands. A multi-color “BOHICA” tattoo, engraved front and center at graduation might also help.
‘Tis a pity.
Ishmael Zechariah
Yes sir I completely agree with your statement…or maybe there must come in place a mandatory military service for the ‘borg’ as well as their children (think of a special infantry-sized company for these bastards) to go to wherever they advocate for military intervention or COIN and see live action for themselves. I’m sure they will like it…very much.
Polish Janitor
The Taliban’s ROE’s are as Medieval as the rest of their ideology. Melian Dialog is part of their strategy for reconquest and it seems to work. I am a little surprised the poor unfortunates in the video considered surrender, I guess they failed to save that last bullet.
I do not think the Chinese will attempt to tame them – as we did. Asia Times had a good article recently explaining why a Taliban government may be the lesser of two weevils as far as Russia is concerned. This is essentially my thinking re China’s view of the situation. Better a government of some kind than a failed state perfect for CIA backed mischief.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/for-russia-the-taliban-a-necessary-evil/
Sadly you are right. Those surrendered were spec ops and during their trainings by the NATO/U.S. one might assume-just speculating here- that they were probably taught about the principles of the Geneva Convention and prisoners of war and once captured, not to fight back and all. But the Taliban have their own ‘conventions’ and the captured ones saw themselves at the receiving end of it.
**********************
Just in,
“Pakistan bus blast kills 13 including Chinese; Beijing blames bomb”.
This is getting interesting by the day. The Taliban feels so emboldened that it is sending a warning message to the Chinese communist ‘murtads’ not to have any funny ideas about their turf. I mean, they might have a point here, because they are fighting in their own backyard and they most likely know every stone and gravel in the region, plus they drove the Soviets and now the U.S. out. Why not adding China to their trophy list? plus, their “Ikhwan” or fellow brothers are rotting at the hands of the CCP. BR Initiative? Screw BRI. People need mosques, maktabs and 1200 A.D. style way of life, not commerce and technology. Hadith and the Sunna is what people need not 5G and starlink free satellite internet.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/blast-hits-bus-northern-pakistan-killing-8-including-4-chinese-nationals-sources-2021-07-14/