PeterRS

I think your facts are slightly skewed. According to news reports, the first planeload of 200 Afghans helpers landed in the USA only on July 31. Estimates of those yet to be repatriated to the USA vary from 50,000 to 80,000. These 200 "are the first of a group of 2,500 SIV applicants and their families who have almost completed the process." Those are the words of the Secretary of State. "Almost completed?" Given that the bureaucracy has a backlog of around 200,000 applicants (not all from Afghanistan), anyone who expects more than a thousand or so to be evacuated by the time all the troops depart must surely be living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/airlift-begins-afghans-who-worked-us-during-long-military-campaign-2021-07-30/ “'Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,' Biden told reporters at the White House last month . . . Advocates are baffled as to why the Biden administration was so slow to act on evacuations, leading to a last-minute scramble that has already resulted in dozens of Taliban revenge killings and record levels of civilian casualties in the first half of 2021. "Chris Purdy, project manager of the Veterans for American Ideals program at the advocacy group Human Rights First, told me that the Biden administration seemed to assume that the Afghan government was going to be able to hold the Taliban at bay for a few years, or at least long enough for the US to process the 18,000 individuals in the SIV pipeline and tens of thousands of their family members." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/8/9/22612320/afghan-evacuation-biden-refugee-taliban-withdrawal The UK appears to have acted with more haste. By May it accelerated its withdrawal programme. It had already pulled out 1,300 Afghan helpers and the Defence Secretary informed the media it planned to pull out the remaining 1,700 or so quickly.

Agree with your first sentence. But I think you are way off the mark in the second. For western powers to invade a country, flush out terrorists and then get out, there is perhaps some international legitimacy. But the USA in both Iraq and Afghanistan has this great power notion - one that the old colonial powers seemed not to have: the objectives then were much more trade, territory and markets - that along with invasion they have an almost God-given right to change a country by introducing the values they cherish but which have rarely if ever worked in those countries. Democracy is not alien to Afghanistan but it has rarely worked in such an entrenched tribal society. Why insist on it in Afghanistan apart from the US greater-than-thou belief? We may be appalled at the treatment of women by the Taliban. But what right have we over many years to fling open the doors to a far brighter future for the women of that country, to introduce full time education and provide opportunities for jobs, to provide security for educational establishments etc. when we then suddenly disappear in the certain knowledge that this brighter future was not merely a mirage, it has created expectations that will be totally dashed. For many young women in the country that will be a blow of the most crushing kind. I can't remember which US President said the US was not in the business of nation building. That's certainly not how it has seemed in Iraq and Afghanistan, sadly. The West puts up with and does virtually nothing about the massacres in a large country like Myanmar, the crushing of the 12 million or so Uyghurs in much larger China and goodness knows how many lesser conflicts around the world. Yet mission creep and the lack of a detailed, thought-out plan for the adventure in Afghanistan will result in a true tragedy for so many.

Thank you for clarifying the location. I remember the plan was to have two evacuation locations and just assumed this was the Embassy.

I just listened to the interview. Carter Malkasian has much of interest and of fact to say. I only wish the interview could have been much longer for I feel he could enlighten us on many, many more issues that will be vital if the world is not to get into such a complicated conflict again. Over the course of today, I have been watching various news programmes, most including the views of politicians, military men and commentators. According to several Ministers and former Ministers, the UK government seemed genuinely taken by surprise by Biden's announcement. It then talked to other NATO members to see if a small military team could remain in the country. Without the USA, there was just insufficient interest. The other point made clearly by several is that effectively there has been no war in Afghanistan for the last 5 or so years. US forces, including those of NATO members, were there primarily to help train up the Afghan military, to provide command and control, some air support and to keep the Taliban as firmly as possibly in their own areas. US troop levels were less than 10% of their peak and deaths of US servicemen totalled less than 100 during this more than 5 year period. Most UK troops had left its main base in Helmand Province in 2014. A smaller number remained with the Americans and will be pulled out soon. Only 2 British troops were killed during this period. The one lesson I wish the US had drawn from the adventure in Vietnam is the manner of its departure. In Vietnam, many US troops had to stay on specifically to train up the army of the corrupt government of South Vietnam. Despite Nixon's PR speeches about how successful this was, the fact is that it was spectacularly unsuccessful. Several major operations involving both US and South Vietnamese forces prior to the US departure had seen commanders disappearing and many troops without the guts to fight. The same seems to be generally true now, with a few notable exceptions, in Afghanistan. The decision to pull out all remaining personnel from Saigon in a fleet of 18 helicopters making round trips from the top of the US Embassy to nearby naval vessels, left behind a heaving crowd of desperate Vietnamese helpers and their families unable to get out. I had the pleasure of knowing Hugh van Es, the Dutch photographer who took one of the most iconic photos of that war - the last helicopter as it was about to leave Saigon. The helicopters were supposed to have a maximum load of 8 people but most were taking off with 12 or 14. Photo: Hugh van Es

23,418 new cases yesterday and 184 new deaths. Stay safe out there.

I totally agree with the first part. But not the second. What has the US achieved in Afghanistan? As you rightly point out, the original mission was accomplished many years ago - and in Pakistan at that, not in Afghanistan. But the US stayed partly because it had no real plan for what it was doing and what its exit strategy would be. So the US attempted, as it did in Iraq and as it attempted to do in Vietnam, to convert a society it did not understand (how many Iraqi, Vietnamese and Afghan experts worked in the State department? Almost none). Afghanistan is made up of a very large number of tribes unified for the most part only by common adherence to one religion. The US tried to fashion it into a country-wide democracy. It attempted to break down tribal values regarding education for women and their role in society and there being no need to adopt strict Islamic dress. 100% I agree these are laudable goals. But having gone much of the way, at least in terms of opening up Afghan society and the position of women, it decides to withdraw all its troops leaving the country about to be taken over yet again by strong Taliban Islamic militants who will overturn every gain made in the last two decades. That surely is the real tragedy of the US adventure in Afghanistan.

My OP was about what the US does when it leaves a country it has earlier invaded. The issue of other NATO and participant countries is a separate matter. You imply the USA has already evacuated "thousands of them." Funny, that's not what is being reported. As of August 7 the US had evacuated less than 1% of the more than 80,000 Afghans who assisted it. That does not even reach one thousand - and still leaves more than 79,000! "The plight of thousands of other Afghans who worked for U.S. troops or diplomats is even more uncertain and it's not clear if the administration will opt to fly them out. At the current tempo of 700 evacuees a week, it would take more than two years to fly out the roughly 20,000 Afghans who are in the SIV pipeline along with their families. "Meanwhile, the Taliban is on the march, advancing on major cities and setting off panic among Afghan civilians." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-evacuation-afghans-likely-drag-after-american-troops-leave-n1276245

Are you sure it includes the translators etc.? All the reports state it is to evacuate the Embassy staff and Afghan personnel who work in the Embassy. Nowhere do the reports state that the troops will evacuate the tens of thousands of Afghanis who have helped the troops in the field.

If you read my post I was referring specifically to the powers-that-be who have been making regular pronouncements of this opening up date or that opening up date, only for them to eat their words when no dates are met and the situation in cities and the country as a whole just goes from bad to worse. Of course hope is vitally important. But rather than overly optimistic prognostications, a harsh dose of reality is surely far better at this time. That and providing a great deal of much needed assistance to all those who have been so badly affected by incompetent and corrupt government actions.

Say what you wish, there is absolutely no denying the fact that the invasion of Afghanistan was entirely at the instigation of the United States, firstly on September 26 2001 through covert infiltration of CIA operatives and thereafter with military force. As a US ally, the UK also infiltrated MI6 operatives only days later. The war was not a NATO instigated war. NATO as an organisation was not involved until later. But UK forces played a major role very quickly and several hundred of its military were killed and many more wounded. The UK and other countries still have forces there which will not be withdrawn until the US withdrawal. Some of the nations you list were part of the original Operation Enduring Freedom campaign. Others joined later as part of the NATO lInternational Security Assistance Force. But let's not forget that many of these nations in your list contributed just a few dozen soldiers and/or support staff up to in some cases a few hundred. Very few had more than 1,000 or more troops in the country at any one time. And let's also not forget that the NATO countries did not resolve to leave Afghanistan. So to put any blame on them is pointless. The fact is they are withdrawing only because the United States announced unilaterally that it planned to leave. According to General McMaster on CNN this morning, the first date of the US departure from Afghanistan was not conveyed to NATO by the Trump administration which regarded NATO as an inconvenient, irrelevant sideshow rather than as allies. McMaster added that Biden also did not inform NATO officially in advance of his announcement in April and further failed to consult neighbouring countries in advance as it had hitherto promised to do! McMaster added his view that the departure from Afghanistan now is a disaster. But the points you raise do not directly reply to the points I made. The fact is that the USA, often through the CIA, has been involved in operations in overseas countries from the time it, along with the British, arranged the ouster of the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953. In siding with the corrupt, repressive Shah, it thereby cooked its own goose when the Iranian public rebelled, the Shah was booted out and a violently anti-US regime installed in 1979, a regime that remains in power today and that has spread all manner of havoc in that part of the world. The main point of my OP was the lack of consideration given to the extreme urgency of getting those who had helped the USA out of the country before they are murdered by the Taliban. As stated, precisely the same happened after US invasions of Vietnam and Iraq. It is not as though the mandarins in Washington were not aware of the promises they made to those poor people. It is more the incompetence of those in the administration responsible for getting those people to freedom. That is the disgrace.

So after 20 years the US is almost out of Afghanistan. The peace talks with the Taliban which have been going on for three years next month were clearly a sham. Now the Taliban has speedily controlled far more territory than anyone involved seemed to have anticipated and we can surely expect the entire country to be taken over once again by that ultra Islamic bunch. Women will be forced out of schools, will have to wear strict Islamic dress, music will be banned, adulterers stoned, gays thrown from buildings - and goodness knows what else. That country has been fought over almost more than any other since the British disaster around 1840. In more recent times, the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979 achieved little apart from enabling the CIA to furnish a huge amount of weaponry to the local guerrillas, weapons that would eventually come back to haunt them. The CIA had actually been involved in Afghanistan even before the Russians arrived. As for their the Russian adventure, British journalist Patrick Brogan probably summed it up best when he wrote, "They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimated the hostility they would arouse." The end result was a country all but ruined by war of whose population a third (over 5 million) had became permanent refugees. The guerrillas which saw the back of the Soviet forces in 1989 were led by the Afghan Mujahideen backed by the US, the UK and other powers using it as a proxy in the Cold War. Having thereafter backed the moderate Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud, the western powers were left rudderless when two Al Qaeda operatives posing as cameramen filming an interview blew themselves up along with Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. Soon thereafter the US troops and their allies attacked with the aim of quickly flushing out Osama bin Laden. As in Vietnam, they found themselves stuck in the Afghan mud! President Biden may well be happy that his troops will all have departed by next month. But as has become a pattern, the USA's departure after invasion leaves a stink in the air. Just as happened at the end of the Vietnam war and just as happened at the end of the Iraq invasion, the US is leaving behind tens of thousands (if not many more) Afghanis and their families without whose help they would have had little chance of any success. And in all three cases it is not as though they did not have time to plan for these intelligent and now desperately afraid people's exit. Trump announced the withdrawal of troops 10 months ago. Biden, having hinted it for months, finally announced it four months ago. Yet the excuse now given for leaving behind so many who aided the US is that there has not been enough time to process the paperwork! I find that not merely utterly disgraceful. In my book it comes close to a war crime! Who in future is going to believe what have become essentially US lies? "Don't worry! We will look after you," surely rings more than hollow when a translator working for the USA for years is looking down the barrel of a Taliban gun seconds before becoming a corpse in the dust.

I'm sure lots loved it. The viewing figures must have been great to have kept the original running for 7 series. So many romantics around! LOL

Oh dear! I loathed Fantasy Island when it was aired decades ago and gave up watching after a couple of episodes. I won't be watching the new series. Thankfully we all have different tastes.

How many times have we heard similar nonsense by those hoping to influence both the public and the powers-that-be that miracles will happen, only for them to lose face in having to climb down when reality hits them in the face?

One of the problems clearly concerns what its termed, for reasons i totally fail to understand, the Modern Pentathlon. This requires fencing (using only épées), freestyle swimming, pistol shooting, cross country running and ending with equestrian show jumping! This combination was thought up by Baron de Coubertin and seems both futile and crazy. The event has been part of the Games since 1912 and has remained despite several strong attempts to remove it. The problem with the show jumping part is that athletes rarely make the best riders. Show jumping horses usually develop a rapport with one rider for several years. But in the Modern Pentathlon athletes are not paired with horses they know or with which they will have had any prior experience. It is purely the luck of a draw made 20 minutes beforehand who rides on which horse. I happened to be watching when one horse was clearly unhappy during the round and then totally failed at one fence more or less running through it and throwing the rider. What followed was a disgrace with the horse trainer running on to violently hit the horse with his fists. He was quickly banned from the Games and sent home. If you think that was only a ridiculous one-off, do please watch this video. Many top athletes, including those in medal positions up to that time, scored zero in the jumping when their horses either were just not prepared to jump or threw off their riders. They therefore ended up close to last place. It was a total farce. Soon several allegations of animal cruelty were being alleged. Why should any event based exclusively on skills required by soldiers during World War 1 be part of today's Olympics? Madness! From Deutshe Welle "Bucking horses urged on with a riding crop although they clearly don't feel like jumping over obstacles or even entering the course. Howling riders who have completely lost their nerve. Numerous falls by riders that just about walk away without serious injuries. "Sweating animals with wide eyes who, even after several throw-offs, have to ride on until the finish line is finally reached and the agony is over. No one needs to see scenes like these. The show jumping portion of the modern pentathlon on Friday was anything but good advertising for equestrian. What occurred in Tokyo's Baji Koen Equestrian Park was far from normal show jumping and should instead be described as animal cruelty." https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-animal-cruelty-on-display-at-the-olympics/a-58790373

I believe it was only you! I have read this poster's contributions on two chat room sites. He means what he says - even though there may sometimes be a lack of forethought before writing.

The frenzy on social media is unsurprising since many Thais still remember the disasters of the 1997 Asian Economic crisis. During the boom years that preceded it, the government was determined to maintain the long-standing exchange rate of US$1 = 25 baht. To do so it had to keep increasing interest rates. But due to various economic pressures, it also decided to dismantle foreign exchange controls. This led to some banking institutions and several finance companies borrowing overseas at much lower interest rates and then relending in Thailand at much higher rates to make major profits. When the speculators arrived in force in 1997, they were successful at the third attempt after Thailand had spent almost its entire foreign exchange reserves attempting to defend the $/baht peg. Crony capitalism had taken a hard knock. The crisis led to several major financial institutions and at least one bank going bust, including the country's largest Finance One. They all held non performing loans on their books amounting to over $3 billion. But many of the borrowers could not repay. The property market collapsed leaving many upstart companies also bankrupt. By December 1997, 56 finance companies had collapsed permanently. Another 58 required emergency funding of 660 billion baht. Bangkok Metropolitan Bank had gone bust but was eventually taken over by Siam City Bank. So a reduction in the guarantee by such a large amount inevitably caused a great deal of concern. Does it mean the country is heading for another meltdown? Very unlikely, I believe. But some may not agree.

Your assumptions are partly downright wrong - and partly vastly too simplistic! Many restaurants have closed for good. One of my favourites off Saladaeng in Bangkok Le Table de Tee closed for good during the first lock down in April last year. It was a small niche restaurant that could take not more than 20 diners per evening. Many others will never open their doors again. Restaurants and bars are once again closed in Thailand. Some are able to offer meal delivery. Many of those that survive have fired huge numbers of staff in the hope they can keep losses to a minimum. I spent a few days in a good hotel in Hua Hin last November. Most floors were closed off and staff numbers had again been drastically cut. Many other hotels across the entire spectrum of prices have been closed for many months if not for a year. I have little sympathy for gogo bar owners who in the past did indeed raise drinks prices when the tourism economy was in a bad way. But I have no time for anyone who criticises hotels and restaurants for having overcharged guests prior to the pandemic. I think Thailand has always had a hospitality and restaurant industry with standards of service and cuisine that are as good as anywhere - and better than most.

With apologies to @captainmick and others, again on the equestrian events. For the Olympics and Paralympics a total of around 325 horses are flown in on 19 chartered aircraft. 247 flew through Liege in Belgium where there are special arrangements for equine transport. There they had to wait for 60 days of stringent health checks and then a 7 days quarantine for covid checks before being loaded on specially adapted Emirates Boeing 777 cargo flights via Dubai. Most are in 2 per stall - i.e. per pallet. On board they are accompanied by vets and trainers. Once in Japan, the horses have their own specially built Olympic Village. Leaving aside the substantial costs of that 67 day wait, the actual cost of flying one horse obviously depends on distance, weight and other factors. The website CBS8 estimates that cost can be up to $30,000 although the average is obviously considerably less. Even if it is $20,000 that still amounts to $6.5 million In theory, 19 Emirates 777s can carry more than 6,000 athletes. This will still represent a much cheaper cost because horses require much more expensive ground handling at departure and arrival airports. Since a total of 11,090 athletes took part in the recently concluded Olympics, all could have been accommodated in just double the number of aircraft required for the non-human horses! Given that athletes came from such a large number of countries, the above costs/estimates are bound to be mere ballpark figures. But with the Olympics getting more and more expensive to mount, I for one simply cannot see the value of paying huge amounts for a few events requiring horses. But I do realise it will be the panjandrums on the Olympic Committee and the viewing figures of NBC that will ultimately decide. https://www.insider.com/olympic-horses-travel-tokyo-plane-passports-in-flight-meals-grooming-2021-7

Great for those using the 800,000/400,000 baht retirement option which has to remain unspent!

As a postscript to the Olympics, there is an interesting little article on the BBC's website. We are used to seeing the big boys go home with the most medals - in this case the USA and China. But is that a fair way of looking at a country's achievements just because both are huge countries with huge populations and huge sporting programmes at almost all levels of society and massive sports facilities? Frankly it is not! What if the medals table is arranged on the basis of total population? Would that not be fairer? On the basis of total population, the USA would have been ranked 60th. The top 10 would have been San Marino, Bermuda, Bahamas, New Zealand, Jamaica, Slovenia, Fiji, Georgia, The Netherlands and Hungary. How about based on GDP per capita? On this basis, the top 10 would have been China, ROC (Russia), Kenya, Ukraine, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Iran and Uzbekistan. There are other anomalies. The UK, many Commonwealth countries and those from the former Soviet Union tend to have a better sports infrastructure than many others. India excels at cricket, but that is not an Olympic Sport. It also excels at hockey, but that yields only 2 gold medals, one for men and one for women, whereas a top male gymnast has the possibility of up to 8 gold medals and a table tennis champion 4 gold medals. An individual in my bete noire the equestrian events can win up to a staggering 6 gold medals. Yet a high jumper or a javelin thrower can win just one. To judge success merely on account of the number of medals won without taking into account several other key factors inevitably discriminates badly in favour of the big boys. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58143550

Another disgrace among the litany of so many by Prayut and some of his government, especially the dreadful Minister of Health!

The Washington Post has a paywall. Could you kindly copy and paste for those of us too mean to cough up the subscription! Many thanks. On the topic, the Winter Olympics seem to have little more success at minimising losses than the Summer Games. Perhaps that is because some of the host cities have been mere towns or even villages. The 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics was held in a village with just 3,000 tax residents. They were left with a $6 million debt, although the New York State government helped take over much of that. Albertville in the French Alps fared little better in 1992. The French government spent around $1.2 billion to upgrade the region's infrastructure. Neither during the Games nor thereafter did Albertville and its neighbouring towns see any increase in tourism. The government was left with a debt of $67 million. Nagano in Japan had around 350,000 residents when it hosted the Olympics in 1998. As the Games neared, a quarter of the hotel rooms reserved for visitors were cancelled. Ski villages nearby which normally ran at 80% occupancy saw that drop to 60%. During the bidding process, Nagano officials plied the Olympic Committee members and their entourages with first class air tickets, stays at luxury resorts and pricey entertainment. No one now knows how high the loss of those Games rose. A member of the local Olympic Committee ordered all financial records burned before auditors could get near them! South Korea's 2018 Games in Pyeongchang is believed to have cost $13 billion against the original estimate of $7 billion. Bigger cities did little better. Vancouver in 2010 was left with a hangover estimated at $1 billion. It is unlikely it will ever be repaid in full. Nothing beats Sochi in 2014, though. That cost overrun is estimated to have risen from a budget of round $11 billion up to a staggering $51 billion. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/10-olympic-games-bankrupted-host-countries.htm https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/south-koreas-pyeongchang-winter-olympics-costs-benefits-of-hosting.html

I know nothing about the case beyond what i read in the media. But should I find it strange that a 27 year old Thai male out to collect wild orchids was aroused by any 57 year old woman? The blurry photo of the arrested man in the Phuket Daily News looks like he is around 164 cms in height and has a full head of fluffy hair. The photo of the man on the motorcycle in the Bangkok Post photo looks taller with hair having receded slightly at the temples. Not that this proves anything. Merely an observation. A South China Morning Post description of the incident states the woman was swimming below the waterfall. It adds she was "partially clothed". Her purse had been robbed of 300 baht which according to the police the suspect used to buy "drugs, drinks and phone repairs." If you have what is clearly quite a large motorbike, after paying for phone repairs, how much would be left over for booze and drugs? Again something seems a bit odd here. Yet one more oddity is that the Ton Ao Yon waterfall is not well known, it's hard to find and very difficult to access. Several websites also state the pathways are confusing and you need good shoes to avoid sharp rocks. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3144249/thai-police-arrest-suspect-killing-swiss-woman-island

So glad you did. Double gold medallist skater Yuzuru Hanyu is one of the greatest and cutest of all athletes and has become a huge superstar in his native Japan. Only another 6 months before the next Winter Olympics. Will he still be taking part? I sure hope so. At the risk of hijacking the thread, here are two lovely photos - especially the one where he is bending down (oops!) Although it should have no effect on his athleticism and artistry, there is a lot of discussion on Japanese and other social media about his sexuality. He often appears with slightly gay mannerisms. His coach in Canada is openly gay and a gay designer often makes the costumes he wears.