More Endless War In Afghanistan Again? Who Are The Taliban?

Set aside for the time being everything you've seen or heard about "The Taliban". Here's some recent online sources you might want to read, look and listen to and learn after 16 years of endless war and billion$$$$$$$$$$$$ - and now more - of U.S. Taxpayer money thrown at a military-to-military solution . . . When everyone says "There is NO MILITARY SOLUTION" ??

Afghanistan Again?

The American Military’s Repetition-Compulsion Complex by Ann Jones*

Here we go again! Years after most Americans forgot about the longest war this country ever fought, American soldiers are again being deployed to Afghanistan. For almost 16 years now, at the command of three presidents and a sadly forgettable succession of generals, they have gone round and round like so many motorists trapped on a rotary with no exit. This time their numbers are officially secret, . . The conflict, we’re told, is at present a “stalemate.” > We need more American troops to break it, in part by “training” the Afghan National Army so its soldiers can best their Taliban countrymen plus miscellaneous “terrorist” groups.  In that way, the U.S. military ― after only a few more years of “the foreseeable future” in the field ― can claim victory.

But is any of this necessary? Or smart? Or even true? . . A prominent Afghan diplomat doesn’t think so.

She reminded the author of this article that the Taliban are not some invading army - That would be us.
They are Afghan citizens, distinguished from their countrymen chiefly by their extreme religious conservatism, misogyny, and punitive approach to governance.
Think of them as the Afghan equivalent of our own evangelical right-wing Republicans.
You find some in almost every town. And the more you rile them up, the meaner they get and the more followers they gain.  But in times of peace ― which Afghanistan has not known for 40 years ― many Taliban most likely would return to being farmers, shopkeepers, villagers, like their fathers before them, perhaps imposing local law and order but unlikely to seek control of Kabul and risk bringing the Americans down on them again.
Few Afghans were Taliban sympathizers when the U.S. overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001. Now there are a great many more and they control significant parts of the country, threatening various provincial capitals. SEE VIDEO UPLOAD farther in post

They claim to be willing to negotiate with the Afghan government ― but only after all American forces have left the country.

For the Trump administration, that’s not an option.
(Think what a negotiated peace would mean for our private arms manufacturers for whom America’s endless wars across the Greater Middle East are a bonanza of guaranteed sales.) . . .

Instead, the president has put “his” generals in the Oval Office to do what generals do. Those in charge now ― James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly ― are all veterans of the Afghan or Iraq wars and consequently subject to what Freud labeled the “repetition compulsion”: “the blind impulse to repeat earlier experiences and situations,” often in the expectation that things will turn out differently. You’d think these particular generals, having been through it all before, would remember that very little or nothing ventured in Afghanistan (or Iraq) by “the greatest military the world has ever known” has worked out as advertised. . . .
- Ann Jones, Contributor Author, ‘They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars — The Untold Story’
Link > http://www.huffingtonpost.com

* Ann Jones, ContributorAuthor, ‘They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars — The Untold Story’
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Published on Sep 25, 2017

President Trump recently announced he would send more troops to Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is the longest conflict in US history, and it has been primarily against the Taliban and now ISIS.
Both insurgencies have made ground against the Afghan army and are now in full control or have support in many sectors of the war-torn country.
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Stratfor pans Trump’s new Afghanistan War plan

Editor of the Fabius Maximus website Stratfor, Iraq & Afghanistan 26 August 201725 August 2017

Summary: Stratfor reports on Trump’s new strategy for the Afghanistan War, showing its low odds of success. It’s a follow-up to my post Why Trump’s plan for Afghanistan will fail. How many US troops will die or be crippled trying to make this doomed plan work___________________________________________________________________________________

More excerpts from Ann Jones' article:
The accretion of witless insults, like those dogs, or the pork ribs in the MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that the U.S. military hands out to Afghan soldiers, or endless fatal U.S. airstrikes (mistakes!) on villages, hospitals, wedding parties, and Afghan National Security Forces have all added up over the years, making Americans unwelcome and their Afghan friends targets.
You undoubtedly noticed some of the headlines at the time, but the Afghanistan story has proven so long, complicated, and repetitive that, at this point, it’s hard to recall the details or, for that matter, the cast of characters, or even why in the world we’re still there doing the same things again and again and again
American victory certainly hasn’t materialized, but the greatest military the world has ever known (as it’s regularly referred to here) cannot admit defeat.
The American effort is now to be exclusively military.  There will be no limits on troop numbers or time spent there, nor any disclosure of plans to the enemy or the American public.  There is to be no more talk of democracy or women’s rights or human rights or peace negotiations.
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Lessons Learned (and Unlearned)
We can’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists, Trump insisted, echoing (however unintentionally) Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him. 
He seems unaware that the terrorists who acted on 9/11 had found safe haven in San Diego and Oakland, California, Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona, Fort Lee and Wayne, New Jersey, Hollywood and Daytona Beach, Florida, and Newton, Massachusetts, among other American towns and cities. 
On 9/11, those 19 terrorists possessed 63 valid U.S. driver’s licenses issued by many different states. It was in the United States that all 19 of those terrorists found safety.  It was here, not in Afghanistan, that the prospective pilots for those hijacked planes learned to fly.