PeterRS

Tony Blair has gone much further in his denunciation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Speaking to broadcasters, he claimed the decision to withdraw was made ". . . in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars'". "In terms of what was imbecilic, frankly it was the strategy that was followed for 20 years, which was to try to build a highly centralised state in a country that was as diverse - geographically and ethnically - as Afghanistan, and to engage in a counterinsurgency strategy without a local partner and the local partner was corrupt, ineffective, illegitimate," he said. He added that coalition partners "never seriously tried to address the corruption that was prevalent from the top", acquiescing in "fraudulent" Afghan elections, and trying to fit facts into a predetermined strategy, "rather than having a strategy that was based on the facts". Boris Johnson's Defence Secretary has also come out against the way the withdrawal has been planned and executed. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the West's exit from Afghanistan was "unedifying" and would have "consequences for us all for years to come". https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58295384

John Smyth was a British barrister and Queen's Counsel, an office conferred only on senior barristers by the Crown. A moral crusader and staunch believer in the Anglican Church of England, Smyth fought legal battles for "Christian values" in Britain's courts of law. He acted for Mary Whitehouse, a Christian morality crusader, in her 1977 action against Gay News for its publication of James Kirkup's poem The Love that Dares not Speak its Name. As we have heard before, those who are publicly among the most ardent adherents of their faith are sometimes those who use it for ulterior sexual and other series motives. A new book Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the Cult of Iwerne Camps by Andrew Graystone highlights a life of serial sadistic abuse inflicted by Smyth mostly on young men studying at Britain's elite private schools, most coming from the prestigious Winchester College. Smyth encouraged male pupils from elite schools to come to his home. He had first started his disgusting activities around 1970 after meeting young students attending sessions of the Scripture Union. Once there, they would be stripped naked and viciously beaten. Thereafter they would be kissed, stroked and fondled as if to contrast with the brutality and trauma of the beating they had just experienced. One boy, Andy Morse was given a "special beating" to mark his 21st birthday. After thousands of lashes and beatings over 5 years, he attempted suicide. A Report not compiled until 2017, over 30 years after the first formal allegations about Smyth's abuses were made, claims that three officials of the Scripture Union were aware of the allegations but did nothing about them. This report states that the abuse by Smyth was extreme and physical with "clear and continuous sexual framing." Soon Smyth had started up a Trust. The objective of the Iwerne Trust was to run holiday camps which would recruit and develop the brightest and the best from elite backgrounds as Christians who would go on to become dominant leaders in the Church. According to Graystone "the Iwerne project, in line with most cults, relied on three pillars: conversion, conditioning and coercion. Recruits had to 'declare total allegiance to Jesus' follow certain codes and practices, and observe 'sexual purity'. He said it was 'highly exclusive – this was not a movement for the poor. It accrued huge amounts of power, influence and wealth.'" Perhaps surprisingly given the abuse suffered by almost all the pupils, the Trust had no small measure of success. Some of its "graduates" became among the most prominent conservative evangelical leaders in the Church of England over 40 years. Smyth was Chairman of the Trust Board but rarely took other members seriously. He did what he wished. One victim was the late David Sheppard who went on to play cricket for England before becoming Bishop of Liverpool. Another was the present Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, who described his beatings as "violent, excruciating and shocking." The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, worked for the Trust briefly in the late 1970s. Earlier this year Welby made "a full personal apology" to Smyth’s victims, saying: “I am sorry this was done in the name of Jesus Christ by a perverted version of spirituality and evangelicalism. I continue to hear new details of the abuse and my sorrow, shock and horror grows.” Eventually Smyth's activities became known to the headteacher of Winchester College. Instead of contacting the police, Smyth was informed that he must never in future have any contact with the College and its pupils. As the author points out, Smyth was effectively "the Church of England's Jimmy Savile . . . we learned from Savile that abusers can only abuse in a culture that enables it." For those not aware of the Savile scandal, Sir Jimmy Savile had been a pop singer, radio and television host and one of the most popular entertainers in the UK. He was also big on philanthropy. Hospitals for the mentally disabled were one of his pet charities. One even gave him a room for his permanent use whenever he visited the hospital. Soon after his death, rumours began to surface that Savile was not the kindly man everyone assumed him to be, He was unmasked as one of the UK's most serious sexual abusers with over 450 victims (those that are known) ranging from young girls and boys to adults. His knighthood was quickly withdrawn. That no one was aware of his abuse is hardly credible. Some people certainly knew but kept it quiet. After a secret Report in 1982 described his "horrific" beatings of teenage boys, Smyth saw the writing on the wall and moved to Zimbabwe. Again he started up camps and again he was accused of serial abuse of young boys. In 1992 he was arrested in connection with the murder of a 16-year old boy, but was acquitted. He then moved to South Africa. Extraordinarily, Smyth's activités were not brought officially to the attention of the Church of England until 2012/13. The CoE then wrote to the Church in South Africa to warn them about Smyth and his abuse of boys. The text of that letter has never been published. Indeed, it is not known if it was in fact sent. In South Africa he campaigned against gay marriage. He also ran the Justice Alliance of South Africa (JASA) for some years. JASA describes itself as "a coalition of corporations‚ individuals and churches committed to upholding and fighting for justice and the highest moral standards in South African society." In February 2017 the Board asked him to stand down. No reason has ever been given. This sadomasochistic abuser of schoolboys died in South Africa in August 2018, allegedly of a heart attack. In England, the name of his iwerne Trust was changed to The Titus Trust. Little seems to have changed, though. At the top of the first page of its internet site there is the statement, "Providing Christian activity holidays for children and young people at independent schools." The CoE has very belatedly commissioned an independent report on Smyth's abuses. But with many of Smyth's victims now in a position of power within the Church, publication of the alleged independent Report on Smyth has already been delayed by a year. Will it ever appear? Bleeding for Jesus" John Smyth and the Cult of Iwerne Camps by Andrew Graystone is published in the UK on September 2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/21/bleeding-for-jesus-book-tells-story-of-qc-who-pitilessly-abused-young-men

There is a very perceptive article in Friday's edition of the UK's Guardian newspaper. Written by Simon Jenkins it delivers a blistering attack on British and American lawmakers. The article was written before Tony Blair, the British Prime Minster who had given his Ambassador to Washington in 2001 instructions to "Crawl up Bush's ass and stay there!", published a 2,700 word article on his website in which he claims "The abandonment of Afghanistan and its people is tragic, dangerous, unnecessary, not in their interests and not in ours,” This from a discredited Prime Minister who went in front of the nation in 2016 to apologise for his errors in taking part in the invasion of Iraq! "I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever know or believe." From The Guardian Friday 20 August 2021 (the use of bold face is mine - it is not in the original article). Britain’s MPs this week uttered one long howl of anguish over Afghanistan. Their immediate targets were Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, politicians who just happened to be on the watch when Kabul’s pack of cards collapsed. But their real concern was that a collective 20-year experiment in “exporting western values” to Afghanistan had fallen into chaos. MPs wanted someone other than themselves to blame. A politician is never so angry as when proved wrong. Like their fellow representatives in Congress, MPs somehow hoped the end would be nice and tidy, with speeches and flags, much like Britain’s exit from Hong Kong. Instead, tens of thousands of Afghans who had lived in an effective colony under years of Nato occupation had come to believe the west would either never leave or somehow protect them from Taliban retribution. They were swiftly disabused. In 2006 I stood at dusk on a castle wall overlooking Kabul with a young UN official. He had just heard the Kandahar road was no longer safe. “Why,” he sighed, “can’t Afghanistan be more like Sweden?” I tried to see if he was smiling, but he was grimacing. For another 15 years, armies of western soldiers and civilians hurled stupefying amounts of money at the country. They created a wildly corrupt western dependency, where some 50,000 Afghans have links with the west that are now lethal. As for the “western-trained” army, one of its trainers told me it was mostly for show. An occupying power could not possibly motivate local youths to kill their fellow countrymen who might soon be ruling them. He rightly predicted: “They will just walk home.” It is now 22 years since Tony Blair gave a speech in Chicago lecturing the US on his doctrine of international intervention. He wanted the west to invade countries across the world not in self-defence, but to save people everywhere from oppression. It was a reformulation of Alfred Milner’s Victorian concept of moral imperialism. British politicians on both the left and the right have long been uncomfortable about the abandonment of Milnerism as the acceptable face of empire. Global policing is somehow embedded in Britain’s political DNA. All Blair’s wars of aggression were cheered on in the House of Commons. Many people have spoken this week of the “decline of the west”, lamenting the collapse of US moral authority. Yet these theories are beside the point. The belief that our moral values are somehow meaningless unless they are enforced upon those who do not share them is imperialist bigotry. It also leads to absurd biases. Iraq is now thought of as “bad interventionism”, as opposed to Afghanistan’s “good” version. The virtue of the latter invasion led President Obama in 2009 to bless the war in Afghanistan with a “surge” of soldiers, taking the US total to 110,000, mere target practice for the Taliban. American gunboat diplomacy, initially supposed to salve the wounds of 9/11 in 2001, opened the door to fake morality and a trillion-dollar nation-building fantasy. The catastrophic return of Taliban autonomy became its inevitable conclusion. The US – with Britain as its lackey – committed liberal interventionism’s cardinal sin: half-heartedness. The craving to intervene is always followed by a craving to withdraw. Traditional empires at least pretended they would never leave. As it was, Afghanistan replicated departures from India, South Africa, Hong Kong and Iraq. If you invade and conquer an alien state, you own it, but must then disown it. Western rule has killed an estimated 240,000 in Afghanistan since 2001, more than the Taliban ever did. It has not left morality, just a mess. We must assume strategists in Washington and London are now planning interventions in Taiwan and Ukraine against possible Chinese and Russian expansion. If you ask taxpayers to spend billions on defence, you need something to show for it. So you pretend, as Johnson did in his bizarre conversation with Biden this week, that “gains” were made in Afghanistan. You accuse non-interventionists, as did the former Tory leader William Hague, of demonstrating “the enfeeblement of the western mind”. In a recent column, Hague called on Britain to continue invading foreign countries when “our common humanity demands it”. In doing so, he sounded like Pope Urban summoning the First Crusade. more at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/20/west-nation-building-fantasy-afghanistan-boris-johnson

I hope no one torments any other person near the moment of death for something they did or did not do. It should surely be a time for comfort and peaceful preparation.

A repeat of tumblr. I wonder if anyone knows how many subscribers tumblr lost in the years after it banned pornography.

Yes @JKane was correct. I was referring to the Afghan President. I am all for Joe Biden as President even though I think he and his administration have made a disastrous mistake in the way the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been handled. And yes, the Afghan President did flee. But who put him there? Who attempted to introduce western style democracy into a country which has rarely ever been democratic throughout its history and whose loyalties are far more localised and not to a central government? And yes again, without the presence of western troops, there would have been no democracy, functioning or otherwise. So what did anyone expect to happen when those western troops announced months in advance that they would leave? Chaos and a return the status quo before they arrived.

I think you might have hit on an ingenious way of dealing with flooding and making the bars less expensive. Surely the owners could make bigger boats into bars? So as you float along, the boys will be closer to the customers. Short time rooms could be more fun, especially if the boat crashes into a wave or two from time to time! Come to think of it, there could be a fleet of large boats each offering different services. A bit like in the Hong Kong of olden days when you could have dinner on small boats floating around the Yacht Club. Other boats would come up to yours, each with different foods and drinks. It was a lovely rather cute way to dine. The only problem was that at the end of the meal as you left the boat, all the left overs and trash would be mindlessly thrown into the harbour! Not a good idea to have condoms and tissues floating around Bangkok's floods!

Am I right in thinking that Malaysia was the first to move much of the government from Kuala Lumpur to the then-new city of Petaling Jaya? The problem with transferring government offices is that these employ more than 700,000 people. Where in a smallish city like Chiang Mai do you find accommodation for them? I suppose you could also build new housing for them at the same time as the government buildings but how many would want to be relocated so far from family and friends? I am sure there must be a city a lot closer to Bangkok on higher ground and away from the Chao Phraya river.

Now that is a position I cannot agree with at all. Biden knew perfectly well he was going to withdraw all troops. It was a campaign promise. He knew of the deal Trump had made even though its detail was is some senses ridiculous! The Taliban really agreed to the CIA operating in parts of a Taliban controlled Afghanistan? Oh, please! So Biden is elected in early November. There was a ton of time between then and the withdrawal date he announced in April for all his various government departments and the CIA to work out and hand him a host of all the possibie outcomes and to start working on them. We know the CIA experts (experts?) told him the Taliban would be in a position to take over in between 6 and 12 months after the US exit. Others told him they would be in Kabul much more quickly. Whatever, it is the duty of all administrations to plan for all eventualities. Several very senior US military figures have in recent days roundly attacked Biden's lack of planning and the utter disaster of the last few days in Kabul. Why was there no scenario for a total collapse of the Afghan army? Was it because the USA had spent years and billions of taxpayers $$ building it up? Could it not admit to itself that it might just collapse with its personnel just giving up and returning to their home provinces? After all, what loyalty did that army have? To a President who was elected by less than 2% of the population? When that election itself was first delayed by five months and then as a result of feudal factional in-fighting a further delay of another five and a half months before being ratified? After the disasters in Vietnam and in Iraq, did the USA seriously believe that democracy can be introduced into a country based on a feudal system where loyalty is to tribe and clan rather than to a bloated, corrupt national government, something which has rarely worked before? What were the military fighting for? A US-backed President who fled the moment things began to look really bad? All that could and should have bewn put into at least one scenario presented to Biden. As should all the paperwork and agreements regarding the quick exit of all the Afghan helpers another families before the USA troops left. But none of that was done. It is a total disaster.

We have talked about and been warned about global warming for decades - and have done precious little. But this year's disastrous fires in the US, Europe and elsewhere, the massive rains affecting Europe, Japan and elsewhere and the record heat levels in North America's north-west, in Sicily and elsewhere must surely have driven home the fact that the world is fast running out of time. California is on the front line and is danger of running out of water. This video on the BBC website illustrates the effect of drought on Lake Oroville, California's second latest reservoir. The photographer has been following the falling water levels since 2014. The result is frightening. It is now at its lowest level since 1977. The Lake's hydro electric plant serving 800.000 homes has had to be taken offline for the first time ever. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-58232044 On Monday the US declared its first-ever water shortage in the country's largest reservoir Lake Mead and ordered water cuts for the Colorado River which feeds it. Water cuts will affect Nevada and its gambling mecca Las Vegas, Arizona and parts of Mexico which also receives water from the Lake. The lake serves the Hoover Dam. I took a helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon 14 years ago. First we flew over the Hoover Dam. Comparing a photo I took with one from Reuters taken two months ago you can make out the drop in water level. It does not seem much from the air but when you consider this is just an outlet for the massive Lake Mead, it is a lot. You can see the change in the water line on the left bank as you look closely at the photos. 2007 August 2021 June Pho Photo: Reuters I wonder when the Bangkok area will see a repeat of the record disastrous floods last seen in 2011. These badly flooded Ayutthaya, closed Don Mueang airport for weeks and flooded much of the city. The economic cost was estimated at around $47 billion! I have a friend whose house was unliveable for three moths as the ground floor was covered in almost 2 meters of black, stagnant water. October is usually the worst month when water from the north drains down the Chao Phraya river and meets the year's high tide coming up from the sea. They usually meet at Bangkok. I can recall when the Shangri La Hotel by the river had sandbags not only on its river wall but also around the swimming pool. That was in the 1990s! With the city still sinking at a rate of between 2 and 3 cms per year, most estimates suggest that parts of Bangkok will be permanently under water by 2050. One estimate even goes so far as to suggest 30% of the city will be under water by 2030 if nothing is urgently done to halt land subsidence. After 2011 there was talk that many government departments should be moved further up river. As far as I know, nothing has been done about this. Bangkok and Jakarta are two of the fastest sinking cities in the world. The Dutch research institute Deltares estimates that Jakarta is the fastest anywhere, sinking at 7.5 cms per year. In 2007 70% of the city was submerged by floods. At least the present government has announced the creation of a new capital 1,200 kms away from Jakarta on the island of Borneo. About 1 million people will be relocated and the cost is estimated at around $33 billion. Naturally it will end up being vastly more than this! https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Jakarta-and-Bangkok-keep-sinking-as-infrastructure-projects-stall

You are the eternal optimist @vinapu!

1. I am sure you are correct. But I do not agree he was boxed in. He still had a choice as to precisely when to leave. After all, Trump had said he would pull out everyone considerably earlier. Also, Trump did not invite the Afghan government to these talks. It was as though he were the pro-consul acting on behalf of the entire Afghan people. That said, though, Biden has to bear all the blame for the disasters of the last week. He has said on several occasions that he had full faith in what was in effect the US installed Afghan government and its armed forces which the US had spent years and billions of $$ training up. When he made his announcements in April, he had had months to consider it (after all, it as a campaign promise) and to obtain advice from supposedly the best experts in the world. The CIA estimated it would take the Taliban a minimum of 6 months to gain control and as much as a year. This is the same CIA which got things so wrong in Iran, so wrong in Vietnam, so wrong in Iraq! One wonders why there has not been a total clear out of many of its top officials in that agency. I have no doubt it does considerable good. but when it comes to the US disasters in its overseas invasions, someone has to be accountable. Amid all the Republican's trashing of Biden's mishandling of the departure, I I notice that the Republican National Committee has deleted a webpage hailing Trump's peace deal with the Taliban! But Business Insider still has a screen shot. Note that Trump's so-called agreement permitted the CIA to stay on in Taliban controlled Afghanistan! Did anyone seriously expect that would ever be allowed to happen? Trump's deal making another fiction! https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-removes-page-hailing-trump-taliban-deal-2021-8 2. That successive US governments have thought they had some God-given right to spread democracy around the world is one reason for its foreign disasters since the end to World War 2. Democracy means different things to different peoples. But you cannot impose it on peoples who for centuries have remained clan and tribe based and have little idea what the word means. It has to come from within. Hopefully all countries will pay heed to the this in future. The following is part of the webpage from the RNC which was taken down 2 days ago. PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS CONTINUED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN PEACE TALKS AS HE SIGNED A HISTORIC PEACE AGREEMENT WITH THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN, WHICH WOULD END AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR On February 2, 2020, the Trump Administration signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Taliban that sets the stage to end America's longest war. Under the agreement, the U.S. will withdraw nearly 5,000 troops from the country in 135 days in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism. Time Magazine reported that other components of the agreement included an agreement that U.S. counterterrorism forces stay in the country, permissions for the CIA to operate in Taliban-held areas, and details of how the Taliban's promises to reduce violence will be monitored and verified. The deal has been called the " best chance to end this conflict ," a " decisive move " towards peace, and " the best path " for the United States. The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history, a conflict that has killed more than 3,500 U.S. and NATO troops and cost U.S. taxpayers nearly 900 billion dollars. As part of the peace agreement, the Taliban and the Afghan government recently began historic peace, talks which would end decades of war that Afghanistan has consumed. The negotiations will cover the terms of a " permanent ceasefire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarmament of the country's many militia groups .

I don't think that is the "official" name. It was the title given to mainland China in 1912 after the collapse of the rule of the Q'ing Emperors. It remained as the ROC until Mao's forces overcame those of the then ROC ruler Chiang Kai Shek in 1949. When he quickly fled with around 2 million of his followers to Taiwan, he also took the ROC name with him for it was always his intention to his dying day that he would return to take back the mainland. I believe international law does not now recognise Taiwan as the ROC. Hence the renaming of Chiang's ROC as Taiwan. As for Taiwan absorbing the mainland, I assume that is merely a joke! China has an active army of around 2.2 million plus a massive amount of military hardware and nuclear weapons. Taiwan has approx. 10% of that manpower and some aircraft. 'Nuff said! LOL

I agree with much of your comment. But the whole point of going in to Afghanistan was to root out Al Qaeda because the Taliban government had given Osama bin Ladan and his murderers safe haven. Does the USA - does any government - believe that the Taliban has basically changed? It is a hard line group of Islamic militants that has been kept out of power for two decades only because the USA invaded and after about a decade finally managed to get rid of bin Laden - in Pakistan. Is not the presence of a few thousand troops (NATO in addition to the USA) along with some military hardware a small price to pay to ensure that they do not get up to the same sort of destabilising tricks again? Is the difference between Afghanistan and North Korea largely because South Korea is an ally and North Korea has nukes? I really am clutching at straws as I have no ready answer. As for the disasters of the last few days, I recall a line from one of Shakespeare's plays whose title it is allegedly bad luck to mention. Of the death of the Thane of Cawdor, the King's son Malcolm tells his father, "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it." With all the time to prepare for all eventualities, what is happening is all so sad and unnecessary.

I am less certain than you. I think China will face almighty international opposition if it takes Taiwan by force. It's likely to be a bloodbath since very few Taiwanese want to be ruled by Beijing. But then, the US and many countries signed up to the one-China policy 49 years ago. So it is yet another relic of the Cold War agreed at a time when I doubt if any countries considered that China would be anything other than a relatively poor nation half a century later. Although China was then keen on a bit of sabre-rattling and occasionally fired missiles at Taiwan's offshore islands, the thought that this could be serious was rarely considered. Now, of course, China is about to become a superpower and the rest of the world is screwed! And this is desperately sad for the people of Taiwan unless negotiators can come up with some formula that will satisfy Beijing and Taipei. Relations between the two were far better as recently as 10 years ago. Taiwan investors were ploughing countless billions into businesses on the mainland and China had for the first time permitted unlimited non-stop flights between the two. Until around then, mainland Chinese could only visit Taiwan on flights which transited first in another country/territory and vice-versa. With Hong Kong being the most convenient and fastest route, Cathay Pacific made a mint of cash with dozens of daily flights. But under President Xi, all that has changed.

I am not sure of the regulations but I thought vaccinations are not yet generally available for people under a certain age. I persuaded my friend to try and get vaccinated. Fortunately he has a friend who is a hospital nurse and she got him an appointment for the Sinopharm vaccine. But I assumed that was an exception.

I think you've hit the next nail firmly on the head. China's determination to dominate the South China Sea in the face of opposition from a number of countries allied to all the veiled threats that Xi Jinping has been throwing out about Taiwan may well be the next major international dispute. We will see in the fullness of time if the opposition to XI within China's ruling mandarins will see him ejected from power. That could help diffuse both situations. Another could be if Biden attempts a closer relationship with Beijing. How useful that would be to him politically in the USA, I do not know - probably not much unless it opens up a lot more trade for US companies.

Thanks. Yes, I did misunderstand. I guess since I'm like you and personally don't like the idea of remote sex, I find it hard that others would. But when times are tough . . .

With the 25-year old friend of a good friend of mine having died yesterday of covid19 and with the Delta variant now running amok and accounting for many more cases in much younger age groups than before, I wonder who is going to take their life in their hands by bedding a young Thai guy who has not yet been fully vaccinated. My understanding is that few in the 18 - 30 group in Thailand have been vaccinated yet.

Just more thoughts. 1. Over millennia the great powers have discovered two things: that being the world's policeman is no easy job, and that very often their actions come back to haunt them at some time in the future. Also great powers never last - they never have. In that context I suggest those interested in the subject read a remarkable book by the British historian and specialist in economics and international relations, Paul Kennedy. When "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" first appeared in 1987 it was something of a revelation. It was one of the first books to examine and analyse in detail the relationship between military might, strategy and economics in determining the forces which result in the rise of Empires and their eventual - and inevitable - demise. Although the book only covers the period from 1500 onward, it is equally applicable to the Persian, Greek, Roman and other earlier Empires. Not long after its publication, the seemingly permanent Soviet Empire came crashing down. It had never mastered the balance between economics and military might. 2. Everything in our world changes much faster than before. Voters in many countries elect their governments every 4 or 5 years and it is surely true to say that most voters pay vastly more attention to local issues than foreign policy; hence domestic politics inevitably take precedence. But no great power can afford its major foreign policy goals always to change over the short term. Foreign policy requires a considerably longer time frame if it is to avoid often major errors further down the line, errors like mission creep, changing conditions on the ground and exit strategies. 3. The death of the Soviet Union was thought by some to be the end of a war. "We won," said Bush Snr. - a particularly stupid comment when it means rubbing another nation's face in the mud. I'll bet that was mild compared to Putin's feelings at the time! It wasn't an end. It was the start of a new international order where large and small nations flexed their muscle. The Korean and Indo-Chinese wars may have been to a large extent proxies of the Cold War. But the same is true today of much of the Middle East where the Iran regime is intent in righting the wrongs inflicted on it earlier largely by the USA and flying the flag of Shi'a Islam in a part of the world where Sunnis are very much in the majority. Russia with Putin in charge is determined not to forgive the USA for its "we've won" declaration and the way it won. China is flexing its muscles in a very big way and is on the verge of being a great power. Today it is just that the proxies have changed. 4. I don't have a solution to short-termism. But it is vital to my thinking that in terms of foreign policy great powers think long-term and have a constant body of expert advisors working closely with administrations to which administrations and their policy makers actually pay heed. The concept of invading a nation to impart America's values (or those of any other invading country) of democracy, freedom and a certain religion should be a dead duck. Nation building should be a thing of the past. Invasion should only be a final option. In the case of Vietnam and Iraq, the US Congress proved itself a fickle body by paying attention to a bunch of liars and interested parties paraded before it. It also took on board deliberate lies spun by its government officials. Look further back and you can say virtually the same about the parliaments of other nations. 5. The United Nations will never be an effective tool in controlling and solving world problems. Why have the 5 permanent members been there since the mid 1940s? China then was a third world country. The Soviet Union no longer exists. France and the UK may have had influence then. Today they are minnows. The make up of the Security Council was reshaped in 1965. Over the last 56 years, the world has seen massive changes. When it comes to the broader make up, why is Europe afforded 3 seats when the vastly larger Africa and Asia together only get 5? The former has a population of around 500 million. The latter over 5.7 billion! And its decisions are sometimes more than strange. Why was Pol Pot's genocidal regime permitted to retain Cambodia's seat in the UN thereby being the only legitimate representative of the Cambodian people after its defeat in 1979 until 1990? The UN's International Criminal Court in The Hague, on the other hand, has had a degree of success in bringing individuals from many countries to justice. But the USA is one of the main countries that refuses to join the Court or to have any of its citizens subject to the Court's Jurisdiction. In 2005, Hilary Clinton made the extraordinary statement, "Europe must acknowledge that the United States has global responsibilities that create unique circumstances. For example, we are more vulnerable to the misuse of an international criminal court because of the international role we play and the resentments that flow from that ubiquitous presence around the world." Unique circumstances? Such as, I wonder? Well, I know, but will not extend this further.

I do believe that is a subject for a separate thread. But I know much less about the Myanmar situation and do not believe my comments will be especially pertinent, apart from heaping a great deal of blame on Britain as its colonial power and what it left behind. But with respect, this Afghanistan thread is not about future years, it is about what has happened since the US invasion and its results. I can roam through various youtube sites to give ideas how Myanmar reached the present situation. But I am not ready to go further than that now. I am sure you could start a thread to stimulate discussion if you so wish. I can certainly say a lot more about Iran, but again that would require a separate thread. I'll start one if any reader is interested.

In a separate thread I recently wrote about my Thai/Burmese friend and his issue with the Sinpharm vaccine. 10 days ago he took his two flatmates, both also Thai/Burmese, to hospital as he suspected they might have covid19. Both tested positive. My friend was negative. One is now much improved and has been moved to 14-day quarantine. This morning his other friend died. He was only 25. Unless more vaccines are quickly located and those in the younger age groups are vaccinated, I fear this will become a much more common occurrence.

Try entering the USA with lots of Thai stamps in your passport. Living here and travelling a lot, virtually every page has entry and exit stamps. Whenever I enter the USA, I have no problem at Immigration. The moment a customs officer looks at the passport, I am told to go to a separate line. Then all my bags are searched.

Surely there has to be corruption somewhere in this idiotic decision. Roughly on the topic of medical costs, I always wonder why a drug I take occasionally for a relatively common condition costs so much more in Thailand when it is not even the original French drug. It is the Thai sanctioned clone version. If I buy it through a doctor in, say, Hong Kong, the cost per pill is around 20 baht with no doctor's fee added. When i buy the Thai clone version in Bangkok at the price mandated by the Ministry of Health, the cost is over 50 baht, plus I have to pay a doctor's fee for the privilege of having had him authorise it.

Thank you for a very perceptive post. There are indeed no good options. But let me try and give my view on some of your points. 1. It was clearly a major mistake, one which should have been realised when so-called negotiations with the Taliban commenced three years ago, to expect such an entrenched group as the Taliban to be a trustworthy partner. Besides, under the Accord which resulted in early 2020, the only deal was that the US would withdraw from the country and the Taliban would prevent attacks on US forces. It would also proceed to peace talks with the Afghan government (which oddly was not part of those early negotiations - did the USA actually rule the country?) and not allow terrorist forces to be based in the country. Why a mistake? Just look at its history. The Taliban emerged following the vacuum resulting from the withdrawal of the Soviets. They were backed by Saudi Arabia with the specific understanding that the Taliban would introduce the stricter Saudi form of Sunni Islam and Sharia Law. It seems that their initial takeover of the country in the late 1990a was largely welcomed. They rooted out much of the corruption. they made it safe for citizens to travel within the country thereby making local commerce easier, and they curbed lawlessness. The quid pro quo, as it were, were the much stricter religious laws. Men had to wear beards, women had to wear the full burka, girls only permitted to attend school till the age of 10, music, tv and movies banned. The worst was the introduction of horrible Sharia law punishments we all know about. The madrassas in Pakistan, despite that country's denial, clearly was another player in the creation of the Taliban. Thus only three countries recognised the resultant Taliban government - the US ally Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the UAE. Had Osama bin Laden and his lot not based themselves in Afghanistan, my view its that Taliban rule would have continued and the world as a whole would have paid it precious little attention. To expect that such a radical group would suddenly have changed its hard-line approach to rule and would be a worthy partner in peace negotiations was surely a monstrous leap of faith! As a perceptive report on the BBC a couple of days ago, the Taliban negotiators interviewed in Qatar presented a very different view of the group's intentions from those Taliban fighters interviewed in the country. It was chalk and cheese! 2. @fedssocrquestions "Would it be better that no one had a better life for that period of time because their hopes are going to be dashed now by the Taliban? Is the US required to stay there forever?" To the first part the answer has to be "Yes, it would have been better!" How do you explain to, say, a young 18-year old girl who is finishing school, looking forward to attending university and finding a good job, "Sorry dear, we opened the door for you but now it must be slammed shut. All you are good for now is to wear your burka, get married, stay at home to look after your husband, and bear his children. You are back to being a third class citizen, you cannot have a job and your punishments will be great if you dare to disobey." I'd rather be a gay man living in China than have all my hopes and dreams dashed in such a miserable manner. As to the US - and other NATO members, we know that around 5,000 US and NATO troops (sorry I don't know the exact number) along with their aircraft and drones were able to keep the Taliban at bay for some years. The US is perfectly happy to keep 11,000 troops in the Middle East, 28,000 in South Korea, 55,000 in Japan and 64,000 in Europe. It even has 1,700 in Australia. What is the difference between a few thousand troops stationed in Afghanistan to prevent a rogue state becoming a home once again to terrorist groups and 28,000 in South Korea because it has an unstable country to the north and an unfriendly country to the West. Why so many now still in Europe? Afghanistan was no longer a war zone in recent years. The US and its allies were there to maintain an uncertain peace and support a government it had helped to install. 3. "Sure, I think we all wish the Bush administration had more realistic goals. And the mission creep started long ago. But just because those things happened are we all required to stay there indefinitely? When does it end? How much more mission creep is required?" Are the Afghans to blame because the US invaded their country and then got bogged down in its own mission creep? With respect I find that a view I cannot support. Why do the Afghans have to suffer because the US got its nickers in a dreadful twist without realising in advance this could have been one of the possible results? Why do they have to suffer because the USA failed to learn the lessons of the Vietnam and IndoChinese Wars? And that's before looking at its adventure in Iraq! Why does the USA act first and then much later start to think about the consequences? (Yes, I know the UK had a disaster with a similar invasion of Suez in the 1950s. The UK policy makers had failed to accept that the UK was then a failed Empire and it could no longer do as it pleased. That massively embarrassing disaster resulted in the resignation of the Prime Minister and others). Besides, let's face it. The US mission creep in Afghanistan stopped some years ago and the number of US forces has been steadily reduced. 4. "People complain when the US intervenes and polices the world. And then they complain when the US doesn't." I agree. But in 2001 the US was the world's only superpower. And the invasion of Afghanistan was a decision by the USA which then persuaded NATO allies to come to the party. Let's also face the fact that the invasions of Vietnam (some will argue it was not an invasion; but when the CIA manipulates the government of the country you are supposedly helping and arranges the assassination of its leaders at the same time as you send 2.7 million troops and the good Lord only knows how much war equipment over a period of nearly 2 decades, that to me is an invasion) and Iraq were instigated by the USA. Let's also realise that both could have been avoided if the CIA and policymakers in Washington had had a much greater understanding of the countries they were invading, paid more attention to those who did know the countries (like the UN inspectors in the case of Iraq) and at the same time given much more consideration to possible consequences. It was reported a few days ago that in April the CIA informed Biden that the time it would take the Taliban to reach Kabul was between 6 - 12 months! How could so-called experts once again be so totally and utterly wrong? 5. "And there are plenty of other internal conflicts all of the world. Should we get involved in all of them?" Only the powers-that-be in Washington can answer that. But it is notable that those countries with which the USA has become involved were basically very poor, basically underdeveloped and initially with very few friends. With China now very close to great power status after around four decades when the USA has been the world's only policeman, the USA now has to refocus its foreign policy to a bi-polar world. When the Soviets invaded Hungary following the Prague Spring in 1968, the USA could do nothing because it feared nuclear war. Now in Myanmar, it can do virtually nothing because China is a neighbouring country and is backing the military. Further, with relations between the USA and Russia at such a low ebb, like it or not Russia will enjoy doing what it can to embarrass the USA. Trump's impact on US foreign policy was a total disaster. I believe Biden is aware the USA needs to build its alliances as a matter of great urgency. I do realise that the present situation in Myanmar can be traced back to British colonial rule. But the old colonial powers are now powerless. In any case, if the discussion is going to go that far back, the French created the problems in Indo-China and the British, French and Americans largely created all the multifarious problems in the Middle East. Last point!! One poster has mentioned sanctions. Today the USA today has more sanctions in place than ever in history - against more than 2 dozen countries, more than 7,000 companies, individuals and groups. Some - like those on Cuba - have been in place for many decades. Do they work? Mostly no. And one of many reasons why they don't is that the favoured form of sanctions - economic - usually punish the people of a country rather than the policymakers. Yet often the people have no say in the selection of those policymakers. One of the most sanctioned countries is Iran. I spent two weeks there 4 years ago. I thought it an amazing country, stunningly beautiful and with a rich and very long history. Everyone I met was warm and friendly, more than a few offering me coffee or tea, even though i was a westerner from a part of the world responsible for many of the hardships they endured. I also noted that every single Iranian I met not only disliked the regime, they loathed it. How do you sanction effectively without harming those who could be on your side?