Back over in Ukraine...

Are you also suggesting that Afghans are cowards, Winker?
Again....they beat the British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th and forced the British and Americans to eventually withdraw in the 21st.
The Taliban ARE Afghan.
I'm sure there were cowards in the Afghan army. As there are in any army. I'd suggest that there were far, far more relevant factors at play in their failure to stop the Taliban though.

 

Difficult to label a nation as cowards when they have managed to resist any form of occupation repeatedly and some quite shocking atrocities in some of them.

 

Of course not you Marc. I mean, you might be a silly sausage for all I know but no, I can read your comments any time

 

Sounds like a bit of an innuendo…
Get a room… or a restraining order!

 

Wouldn’t be the first restraining order against me. Although he would have the distinction of being the first male………

 

Did you assume gender?

 

Always.

 

The Afghan army wasn't militarily overwhelmed. The Taliban in 2020 were confined to one area and had an estimated 65,000 lightly equipped men. The army was over 200,000 western trained and equipped troops. However those troops didn't recognise a cause worth fighting for.
The true debate to my mind is not the end game in Afghanistan but the start, the end being a corollary.
My son gave me a very thin book written in ancient China called the art of war. Basically only go to war if you answer a few questions, among others:
1. Do you have moral high ground/do you carry the belief of your nation
2. Do you know what you want to achieve.
3. Can you achieve it?
4. Are you prepared to do what it takes to achieve it?
If you can't answer yes to these, don't go to war.
Sadly Blair/Bush either never read it or ignored it. Striking bin Laden's bases was right, putting boots on the ground and keeping them there to try and force a democracy (or a crap version of it) on a disinterested people wasn't. Also distracting yourself 2 years later by trying to do the same thing in Iraq (for reasons I still can't fathom) didn't help either. Did we go into eradicate the Taliban? We could have done so but it would have been close to genocide. So the whole thing was muddled, remember the defence secretary saying we wouldn't have to fire a single shot?
The comparison to Ukraine belongs to Putin who can't answer yes to all the questions either. The Russian army are in a worse position than the Afghan army in so far as both lack motivation but the Russians are poorly equipped. Both are facing a highly motivated enemy.

 

He’s worse than a silly sausage in fact I’d say he’s a cottonheaded ninny muggins

 

The January window should be interesting then.

 

Afraid not mate. That's £41.999 billion (recurring) for the board and £100,000 to sign Carlisle United's under 23 striker for the development squad

 

That's not as much as Peterborough got for selling Ivan Toney. They know how to conduct transfers.

 

Just been speaking to a friend today who has a client in Moscow who knows some pretty big cheeses.

"The winds of change are blowing. Just nobody knows quite how or when."

I also have clients, one in particular who is very close to some people near the top. I haven't tried to get too much information out of him, just because I don't want to put him in a compromising position. But I'm also getting the impression that all is very much not well in the upper echelons of power.

However, the champagne is definitely on ice for now, purely because we have no idea who the replacement will be. Personally, I think there is likely to be a clean sweep and a fresh start, although of course I can't be remotely sure.

 

Huge if true!

 

That wouldn't surprise me, but it does leave an opening for a future betrayal myth along the lines of the one that Hitler pursued.

 

Coward is a harsh word i never used it, i stated a fact that an Army of 200,000 plus gave up without firing a shot apart from a few units.