Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 10 Feb 2021
EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you all the news you need to know as you start the day.
1. #ABUSE: Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said he worries that the ramping up of rhetoric against public figures could result in violence.
2. #HEALTH MINISTER: The HSE warned Stephen Donnelly of staff shortages in the health service in a pre-Christmas message.
3. #VACCINES: Ursula von der Leyen faces a grilling today in the European Parliament over the stumbling rollout of vaccines.
4. #MINNESOTA: One person was killed and another four were injured after a man opened fire at a medical clinic in the US.
5. #TRANSGENDER: A question on gender identity won’t be on Census 2021 – but may be in future ones.
6. #IMPEACHMENT: The US Senate voted to continue with the impeachment trial as Democrats will today outline the case against Donald Trump.
7. #NATIONAL RALLY: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen will face trial today over IS tweets.
8. #BRRRRRRR: There are ‘hazardous conditions’ in many areas amid snow-ice warnings today and tomorrow.
9. #FELINE FINE: A lawyer in the US went viral for having an accidental kitten filter during a court sitting conducted online.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
A peace deal that excludes the internationally recognised government of Afghanistan. One cant help but feel that’s a synonym for we surrender now just let us get the hell out of here. You can be sure that the Taliban will be ruling the country again within the year. So 17 years later, unimaginable amounts of money spent and god only knows how many lives lost and destroyed and we are back to where we began. You have to hand it to the americans, they sure know how to waste lives and money to no effect. That’s not entirely true of course, some people have made astronomical amounts of money out of this farce. God bless America and all those unfortunate enough to get in their way.
@Ivan Connolly:
Your statements bring up a few follow up questions, how long should they stay/have stayed? What would be “victory”/”success” ? How much money spent is acceptable? It seems for most of history a country invades, takes over, it is ours now situation. Now it seems you invade, take over, change guy at the top, try and leave crossing your fingers that it runs smoothly.
@Maurice: it’s my opinion that they should never have invaded in the first place. History foretold the inevitable, and that was that no occupying army could win in Afghanistan. The conditions, environment and as with most invaded countries the desire of the population to resist were always going to result in the inevitable outcome. The US went in there for a number of reasons, none of which was worthy or justifiable and they are now departing with their tails between their legs and more misery ahead for the local population. This is merely another example of the US attempting to succeed where they have failed every time previously and will be buried in their history books as another worthy attempt to bring freedom and the American Way to a people to ignorant to know what’s good for them.
@Ivan Connolly: I keep on hearing that Afghanistan was never conquered I think that the Taliban managed it ok.
@Ivan Connolly: your right in all ways but one.. they didn’t waste money.. the right people got very rich from this war..
@Ivan Connolly: when you have a military that’s bigger than the next 10 biggest countries combined you have to find some use for it!
@Mweevoo: not exactly correct, but war is the US business.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.worldatlas.com/amp/articles/29-largest-armies-in-the-world.html
@Ivan Connolly: so what should the Americans have done when the taliban refused to hand over the man who had ordered the murder of thousands of its citizens
@Ivan Connolly: just a modern Version of the Vietnam war….except where Americans thank there veterans for “their service”. Once again Trump MAGA by abandoning its anybody who aligns themselves with them, so Trump can get a few soundbites at his rallys…Stellar stuff from uncle sam…if they’re the beacon of the western world…were all screwed.
@Pat Joffre: not invaded the country and not fought for 18 years would have been a much better idea
@Dave Harris: hindsight is a great thing Dave isn’t it,
750,000,000,000 dollars on the one nation conflict
Truly mindboggling
@Quentin Moriarty: Just to put things in perspective, ITER, the international effort to build clean, almost infinite nuclear fusion energy generation will cost $20 billion, split between The EU, USA, Russia, Japan, India and China. The USA has spent 37.5 times this amount on trying to blow up caves in the Middle East and achieved absolutely nothing. You just have to question how the West’s priorities are so far off the mark.
Right so, where shall we send the troops next …
@Barry Teehan: Iran. Perfectly timed for the election in November. Troops now available. Sorted.
@Stephen: You’d like that, wouldn’t ya. It would feed your dirty little narrative. Not gonna happen though I’m afraid. Maybe you should just pray he’ll be Arkansawed.
@Barry Teehan:
Pretty sure the answer is space.
House of representatives (democrat controlled) approves space force as part of 738 billion defence bill.
http://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/11/house-passes-massive-defense-bill-authorizing-a-space-force-as-the-sixth-armed-service-of-the-us.html
@Barry Teehan: their southern border.
Before the US went in, there were an estimated 8,000 girls going to school in Afghanistan. Now, there are millions. Given that education, and the lack of it, is one of the main reasons the region’s 7th century culture prevails, that’s not nothing.
@Mark Kelly: Hmm – for those of us who were strongly against US going to war in Afghanistan in the first place – watching them squander hundreds of billions of dollars , ruin thousands of lives including thousands of america service families who have to live with disabilities and wonder on the difference that money could have been if spent on the US on infrastructure or US education cannot be dismissed by such claims imo
@Mark Kelly: also before the US “went in” the Taliban had eradicated close to 90% of the opium produced there.
Before the US invaded, America wasn’t suffering from a national opioid epidemic.
After the invasion, Afghanistan now produces 90% of opium globally & the US has close to 120 herion overdoses every week.
@Gazza Lazza: yes but very little heroine from Afghanistan ends up in the States way too expensive on a logistics basis, its the way more potent and cheaper black tar heroin from Mexico that is causing the opiod deaths and od’s in the States
@Darren Callaghan: Oh that’s ok then as long as the opium/heroin doesn’t make it to the US……as long as it’s going to other countries, I suppose we should be grateful to the US for upping the production of opium in Afghanistan, from nearly 7% global supply to nearly 90% global supply…….pfffff……
I did say globally, there are many, many reasons why the US has a national heroin epidemic. Opium coming from Afghanistan is but one of the many reasons.
Legalised opioids being the main contributors, like US troops returning from places like Afghanistan who suffer from PTSD, being prescribed/over prescribed legal opioids. Then switching to heroin because of addiction or when health insurance runs out and have no access to prescription drugs.
Legging it after leaving the place in an utter heap. Sounds like a surrender to me.
@DJ François: Trump keeps troops in afganistan bad guy . Trump pulls troops out it’s surrender and Trumps a bad guy . He can’t win either way . This action by Trump will be in part a vote winner and him getting re elected in November
So it took 18 years to figure out that the might of the US army couldn’t beat a few goat farmers living in caves.
@Badger the witness: US Army with $750b to spend on it
In the near future this day will be deemed the root cause of a big problem. But there’s no easy way out here while oil is the fuel of choice.
Oil and opium are the root causes of all the misery, Britain tried to conquer it in the early 20th century, Russia had a go in the 80s, then it was America’s turn. All the thousands killed on both sides for what? Military supplies and arms profits.
@HuffnPuff: Conspiracy nonsense. Afghanistan oil remains in the ground – if the US came for that why didn’t they exploit it? The US gets its opium from Turkey and have tried to kill the opium industry in Afghanistan. Norway has huge deposits of oil and isn’t stuck with a 7th century culture. Afghanistan’s problems come from one thing: begins with an “I”, ends with an “m”. It’s the reason they banned education for 50% of the population (the women).
@Mark Kelly: You mention Turkey in your post, the vast majority of it’s population are Islam and yet they don’t have the same problems as Afghanistan so how can Islam be the root problem?
@Diarmuid Hunt: because ataturk made turkey secular would be one big reason
@Pat Joffre: I understand that Turkey is secular but that shows that Islam in and of itself is not the problem, you’re only proving my point further, Islam can, as Turkey has shown, co-exist with secularism. Muslims are not all fundamentalist nutjobs hellbent on jihad or implementation of Shariah law, just like not all Christians are ultra-conservative nutjobs. I don’t advocate for any religion, I think they’re all damaging, some more than others, but to blame all of the problems of Afghanistan on Islam is naive and narrow-minded, it is much more nuanced than having a single root cause.
@Diarmuid Hunt: no not all Muslims are fundamentalist nutjubs but the ones who took over afghanistan were, yes religion isn’t the the only reason there are many but its certainly a major one for Afghanistan’s problems
@Pat Joffre: Fundamentalist nutjobs of any creed that attain a position of power are dangerous, not just Islamic ones. So I agree that religion playing a major role in the governance of Afghanistan is a major problem but not specifically Islam as Mark had stated. I think we are mostly in agreement, I don’t see why you bothered answering a question that was directed at Mark. It was directed at Mark because of the comment he made, you don’t seem to share the same opinion as him so answering it for him is of no benefit to him or me.
@Diarmuid Hunt: The line about fundamentalists of any creed has been addressed time and time again. How would a fundamentalist Jain act? Jains are vegan and do not harm any living thing. A fundamentalist Jain would be unable to walk the street for fear or crushing a bug. Ideas matter. Some religions have much worse ideas than others – and one has a particularly set of awful ideas. We all know this.
What happened to the whole “never negotiate with terrorists “ malarkey
@Dessie: they are just pretending. Will find a way in a few months to cancel the agreement one sided like they did with iran.
@Dessie: the Taliban said they would make an exception this time.
Homeland is right up to date!
@John Kenny: Saul Bernstein is some man at negotiations!
The US invades countries blows the bejayus out of them. They are just bullies. The yanks are only care about the almighty Dollar they have wrecked the middle east .
Fair play for Trump for having the balls to pull out. It’s the right thing to do, but like with Covid-19, the Dems will put all their efforts into blaming him and will have a complete hissy fit. Blah, blah, blah…
Result for the taliban, to the Victor the spoils. Tanks, APCs, army surplus and whatever else. After this there will be a purge and trump can falsely pontificate he won the war in Afghanistan.
No oil in Afghanistan only heroin and cant be seen to be selling that ……..
18 years to end up signing a deal with the people you went in to remove. Great job
Oil and opium are the root causes of all the misery, Britain tried to conquer it in the early 20th century, Russia had a go in the 80s, then it was America’s turn. All the thousands killed on both sides for what? Military profits.
When you have a military that’s bigger than the next 10 biggest countries combined you have to find something for it to do!
Well earned victory for Murica ……
Arms industry will be up in arms over this no pull out Ivan Connolly did not Regan win In panama@grenada lol
The poor women of Afghanistan……
Homeland right up to date.
Looking forward to getting the stadium stonings back
have your say