Basic_GnR_Fan

1 hour ago, Orsys said:

Trump's February 2020 announcement of the "deal" with the Taliban should have started the plan for excavation of allies and US citizens. But they didn't do that. Because they, too, believed that there was no need. Under Trump, thousands of US military were brought home leaving 2,500. And 5,000 extra Taliban were added after they negotiated for release. Trump even said that the Taliban was now preparing to fight the terrorists.

I believe that the Trump admin saw it the way the Biden admin did. That the Taliban was acting in good faith, and would honor the "deal".  It is a Trump/Biden fiasco that they believed the Taliban to be allies. 

 

To what extent is the Taliban not respecting the deal? There hasn't been a US soldier killed since the deal and supposedly the airport has now been secured and the Taliban has announced a general amnesty. We'll see if their amnesty holds up, but things appear to have stabilized.  

23 hours ago, downzy said:

Trump's last Secretary of Defence (he had many) came out today and said that they never really had any intentions of leaving Afghanistan.  The exit of forces agreement with the Taliban was only meant to be a ploy, and that American troops would have remained in the country even if the Taliban retook power. 

Ultimately I think what we've seen in the last two weeks comes down to an intelligence failure.  Biden was informed that the Afghani military could hold the Taliban for longer than they actually were able to (which was none at all).  Hence they operated with the expectation that they would have more time.  I don't think anyone would assume that the Afghani military was going to be able to keep the Taliban in check for any serious amount of time.  But there's a lot of monday-morning quarterbacking going on with the revelation that Afghan forces couldn't even keep Kabul for a week.  Other than the intelligence missteps, I don't have an issue with Biden operating on the belief that there was at least another month or two to get their affairs in order.  

I think we also have to take into account Biden (like previous Presidents) was probably just being lied to by the military about how well the war was going and how strong the Afghan forces were. That's what the Afghanistan Papers released 2 years ago suggests.

18 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Fingers crossed but this is an absolute nightmare and one that was totally avoidable. I’ve been consistently critical of Trump and I’d be hypocritical not to give Biden a kicking when it’s deserved. He’s fucked this up big time and he needs to do better. Quickly. 

Why is this all on Biden? As I said earlier, what the hell was the Pentagon doing for the past 18 months when Trump made the deal with the Taliban? Did they do ANY planning here?

10 minutes ago, EvH said:

Looks great !

50USD for a shirt is really excessive though.

It is, but that is standard for any big band at the gig.

2 hours ago, Jakey Styley said:

I will say that I appreciated that about the speech. But if he wanted to be really honest, he would have taken more responsibility for the horrible execution of the withdrawal. He said something like "sure, it's been messy" - no, it's been chaotic and humiliating, with many of our allies in the country getting fucked over unnecessarily.

When was the last time a politician just said "sorry, I/we fucked up." Never happens. I think voters would appreciate it, but probably wrong of me to have hope in the general population

Here's my thing, Trump struck a deal with the Taliban 18 months ago. What was the Pentagon doing this entire time? Did they not think this was actually going to happen and they could just ignore it?

5 hours ago, Padme said:

I don't have a problem at all. The U.S. shouldn't spend billions in Afghanistan or elsewhere when there are biggest priorities at home. The problem is that in the U.S.  the media left and right are pissed off. And what they say and write has influence in people's mood and minds.

  Now, If the Taliban turned things up side down in a few days. It is because most people in Afghanistan don't have a problem with Taliban being in charge. Nobody moved a finger to stop them. It seems the U.S. and NATO were cluless about this indiference or whatever it is. They should've known better

I don't buy the US was clueless about how poorly the war was going or how weak the Afghan government and armed forces were. The Afghanistan papers showed their internal communications showed they knew how bad it was going and how bad the Afghan forces were, they just decided to lie to the American people about it to keep the war going.

I'd like to add that the Biden speech about the Afghanistan was one of the most honest and level-headed speeches on foreign policy given to the American people I've ever seen. Truth hurts people, would you rather have Biden leveling with you, or what the past 3 Presidents have done, and lie to you about how well the war was going and how strong the Afghan government was.

Hmm, what aged better here, Ron Paul or Rudy....Ron Paul trying to talk sense to a room full of dumb neocons.

I'm going to be watching what China does. My guess is they play this way more intelligently than the US did. The US decided to occupy the country for 20 years and try to remake the society in it's own image. I suspect the Chinese will just pay off the Taliban to gain access to resources, markets, etc. 

1 hour ago, Dazey said:

So this aged well.  

 

Haha, well to be fair, you do have to be brave to defeat empire after empire!

51 minutes ago, -W.A.R- said:

The gist of Biden's speech is that the US is pulling out of Afghanistan so they can focus more on bombing and intervening in other countries.

Empires never come home unless they are forced to.

1 hour ago, Oldest Goat said:

Forum is going haywire.

Taliban hackers?

40 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Wow, how you guys are spinning. I was talking about international forces and that it may have been with good intentions. 

Maybe those NGO's that tagged along after the US invasion had better intentions than the war architect's. I don't find that objectionable. But we have to admit it was all a house built on sand, those missions were only possible on the back of US military force (very similar to the Catholic church tagging along after colonial empires established their beachheads). Once the US pulled out, Afghanistan just reverted back to what it wanted to be....an illiberal, heavily Islamic influenced state.

9 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

Uh, yeeeah. Obviously have to concur with you on this one "the USA had good intentions in the Middle East." Wow. No, they didn't. Absolutely baffling.

They shouldn't have invaded in the first place. At most they should've gone over there just to assassinate Bin Laden, you know that CIA asset.

The fact that in 2021 the Military Industrial Complex etc isn't understood is startling. "USA was there for women's rights and infrastructure." No lol.

Yeah, the whole 'the US is there for women's rights" is such an obvious cope we don't even have to analyze it too deeply. If that were the case, the US would be invading and occupying literally every poor country in the world, not just the ones they have a geo-strategic interest in!

2 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

Surreal scenes from the airport in Kabul, a US Air Force plan rolling over the airstrip with dozens of Afghani clinging on , trying to escape the country. Just made my jaw drop.

The withdrawal of international forces forces from Afghanistan is just the period to 20 years of waste and futility. The intention of invading the country may have been okay, the execution was terrible and the outcome are so many people dead and nothing to show for it. Taliban will reverse any improvements made. The people will suffer.

I disagree, the intention wasn't even good. When has the US proven it can nation-build? All people can point to is Germany and Japan after WWII, but those were actual prosperous countries beforehand, all they needed was money and resources to rebuild what they had.

Afghanistan is more proof of the obvious point that the US is very good at blowing things up, but doesn't know how to nation-build. Given the state of the US, that is not shocking in the slightest.

Just now, Sosso said:

November is a popular month for GN'R to release new music 

11/02/1999: Oh My God 

11/23/1999: Live Era 

11/23/2008: Chinese Democracy 

11/26/2022*: New album??? 

_________

*November 26 is a Friday 

11/23/1993 The Spaghetti Incident  

52 minutes ago, GoBucky said:

That's the main reason I pulled the trigger tonight once tix dropped. We have a few more shows in a month and things are changing for the worst pretty quickly. I want to guarantee seeing a show before things get shut down. Sunmerfest in Milwaukee just mandated masks in September and that's outdoors. 

Hell yeah man I'm hoping I can make Summerfest!

I would love to see a release of Going Down, and would be excited to see Slash's leads replace Bumble. Bumble tended to be hamfisted on his leads and kind of ruined would should have been a more chill song on that one.

5 hours ago, Cosmo said:

This is not punk music. This is pseudo industrial nu metal inspired edgy 2000s teenage music

I'm sorry sir, I fail to see a problem!

40 minutes ago, GNRfan2008 said:

 

And you think there will be less helium in his voice now? All evidence in live performance would suggest that the helium is worse now than it was 20 years ago. 

I'm hoping there was another vocal take he did some time after 99 and before 2017.

10 minutes ago, MrMojo said:

If state of grace or perhaps get released do you think there'll be much change to it? Those 2 imo need no work, atlas on the other hand needs a little.

Newer vocal takes. I don't like the 99 vocals on those, same reason I didn't like them on Catcher in the Rye, too much helium in his voice. I had no problem with the 99 vocals on Absurd because he's just doing a Prodigy voice on that. But I really don't want to hear 99 vocals on those two.

30 minutes ago, PaoloLA said:

Love the punk vibe to it and British accent. Totally grown on me

This song has got me on a Prodigy kick right now. Reminds me how great they were. I love that style. Don't want a whole album of it, but damn it if isn't a fun change of pace.

6 minutes ago, James Bond said:

Or... it could be that I just don't mind the song and am having fun with the ridiculousness of it.

Yep, that's where I got after about 3 listens.

And I keep saying "pussy full of mangoes" in my own head, that's my remixed version 

3 hours ago, whatashame said:

please no box set!

the AFD box set is horrible. GNR did (past tense) like three real albums (AFD , UYI, CHIN) and unless you're into bootlegs (I am) that ain't much music to spend your life to. As a kid, way before going online, I used to wear down a few copies of AFD on vinyl, tape, cd, mp3, flac , etc. When they released the remaster in 2018 it just sucked. The sound quality wasn't any better than a good old tape on a proper home system, but the music sounded different. And we ain't talking covers or re-recordings. It was just irritating. Everything that I was used to wasn't there. Like somebody was purposely trying to fool me selling me a chinese imitation of a video console that I used to own as a kid, and I'm looking at it going "damn, I could have sworn I remembered it differently. it's not an original, it's a clone. that's so close yet so far away". It's like you wanna get Playstation 1 in 2021 but you find PSX classic under your xmas tree.

 

oh and did I mention it's overpriced? and stick those lame ass patches and posters up your ass.  a thousand bucks? kiss my fakkin ass. and you dare to deem yourself a street punk band. fakk you and your 100 000 bucks a month divorce allimonies . not from my pocket you won't celebrate 30 years of UYI with a fakkin Silkworms re-release and a boxset

Lol playa, I didn't buy any of that, but am glad the extra material got put on spotify!