[JohnE]

Vietnam redux...

At what cost freedom?

When I was a kid I was surrounded by Vietnam Vets, and as I grew older I learned about what a debacle it was and how the military industrial complex benefitted from it while all others ate a big shit sandwich. Then we learned about how awesome we are by kicking Saddam out of Kuwait and then again after 9/11 when we went into Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq to finally rid the world of Islamist extremism and make it safe for all good little Xtian's and their progeny. Woohoo, 'murika...

I had a ringside seat for much of this idiocy, and saw firsthand the costs-physical, financial and spiritual. From the outset, I opined to anyone who would listen that this should be a Special Operations war. Surgically precise, shock and awe...then get out. Get the bad guys, get out. Leave a vacuum...no worries. Just get the bad guys, leaving calling cards and messages for the next ones that we would come for them too if they tried exporting their shit to the rest of the world. Eventually, they would get the message. I had forgotten that war is big business. Companies many of have never heard of got their hooks into things and made fortunes. From small time equipment manufacturers to big time weapons of mass destruction corporations, everyone made $$ while the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, along with the average people of Afghanistan and Iraq, ate shit sandwiches. (I would be remiss if I didn't state for the record that I was very fortunate personally during this time. I spent almost 2 years deployed, but never stepped foot in either country. Many, many friends did, some of them leaving pieces of themselves behind, and all of them coming home changed.)

Back to my point. I am torn and twisted about our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As in Vietnam, we were not militarily defeated. We dominated the battlespace in every way, shape and form. Period. However, we were once again defeated politically. As I also opined, winning the battles was the easy part, winning the peace was the hard part.

On the ground, we did a lot of good things. We also did some bad things, I get it. Those who are taking over there today do and will continue to do much worse than we did.

Is it right to leave there, leaving good people to suffer under the despotic rule of the Taliban? Is it right to spend more human and financial capital there in a losing fight against a different blend than ours of small minded extremism? I know now that in contrast to the optimistic yet deluded 20 something I was upon my first enlistment that war is a losing game...as they say, it doesn't determine who is right, only who is left. How far could the trillion$ of dollar$ we spent there have gone if invested wisely in our countries infrastructure/education/healthcare systems? How much is too much?

Next asshole who wants to start a war needs to send his/her sons and daughters to lead the first charge.

///rant///

 

[johnbryanpeters]

Thanks, John, stuff that needed to be said.

 

[Sandro]

Just going to post this entire piece by a vet:

Afghanistan Meant Nothing

By the time you read this, the Taliban may already be in Kabul. If not now, then soon.

Nixon wanted — and got — his decent interval between the United States pullout of Vietnam and the inevitable North Vietnamese takeover. Afghanistan’s interval was never going to be decent, but I confess I expected an interval. We’re scrambling to leave in time, we’re racing for the helicopters as the Taliban burns through Afghanistan like a forest fire.

I remember Afghanistan well. I deployed there twice — once in 2008, and again in 2009–2010. It was already obvious that the Taliban would sweep through the very instant we left. And here we are today.

I know how bad the Taliban is. I know what they do to women and little boys. I know what they’re going to do to the interpreters and the people who cooperated with us, it’s awful, it’s bad, but we are leaving, and all I feel is grim relief.

This is what I remember:

I remember Afghanistan as a dusty beige nightmare of a place full of proud, brave people who did not fucking want us there. We called them Hajjis and worse and they were better than we were, braver and stronger and smarter.

I remember going through the phones of the people we detained and finding clip after clip of Bollywood musicals, women singing in fields of flowers. Rarely did I find anything incriminating.

I remember finding propaganda footage cut together from the Soviet invasion and our own Operation Enduring Whatever. I remember laughing about how stupid the Afghans were to not know we aren’t the Russians and then, eventually, realizing that I was the stupid one.

I remember how every year the US would have to decide how to deal with the opium fields. There were a few options. You could leave the fields alone, and then the Taliban would shake the farmers down and use the money to buy weapons. Or, you could carpet bomb the fields, and then the farmers would join the Taliban for reasons that, to me, seem obvious.

The third option, and the one we went for while I was there, was to give the farmers fertilizer as an incentive to grow wheat instead of opium poppy. The farmers then sold the fertilizer to the Taliban, who used it to make explosives for IEDs that could destroy a million dollar MRAP and maim everyone inside.

I remember we weren’t allowed to throw batteries away because people who worked on base would go through the trash and collect hundreds of dead batteries, wire them together so they had just enough juice for one charge, and use that charge to detonate an IED.

I remember the look on my roommate’s face after she got back from cutting the dead bodies of two soldiers out of an HMMWV that got blown up by an IED that I have always imagined was made with fertilizer from an opium farmer and detonated with a hundred thrown-out batteries.

I remember an Afghan kid who worked in the DFAC (cafeteria) who we called Cowboy. He always wore this cowboy hat and an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt someone had given him, always with a big smile, high school age.

Cowboy was a good student. His family, who all worked on base, was incredibly proud of him. He wanted to go to college in America. But there weren’t colleges that took Afghans, the education system was too shit. No program to help kids like him. I looked.

I wonder if he’s dead now, for serving us food and dreaming of something different.

But if Cowboy is dead then he died a long time ago, and if Cowboy is dead it’s our fault for going there in the first place, giving his family the option of trusting us when we are the least trustworthy people on the planet.

We use people up and throw them away like it’s nothing.

And now, finally, we are leaving and the predictable thing is happening. The Taliban is surging in and taking it all back. They were always going to do this, because they have a thing you cannot buy or train, they have patience and a bloody-mindedness that warrants more respect than we ever gave them.

I am Team Get The Fuck Out Of Afghanistan which, as a friend pointed out to me today, has always been Team Taliban. It’s Team Taliban or Team Stay Forever.

There is no third team.

And so I sit here, reading these sad fucking articles and these horrified social media posts about the suffering in Afghanistan and the horror of the encroaching Taliban and how awful it is that this is happening but I can’t stop feeling this grim happiness, like, finally, you fuckers, finally you have to face the thing Afghanistan has always been. You can’t keep lying to yourself about what you sent us into.

No more blown up soldiers. No more Bollywood videos on phones whose owners are getting shipped god knows where. No more hypocrisy.

No more pretending it meant anything. It didn’t.

It didn’t mean a goddamn thing.

https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5

 

[Changleen]

Reports of civilian casualties after US takes control of Kabul airport
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/449300/reports-of-civilian-casualties-after-us-takes-control-of-kabul-airport

 

[Sandro]

Not going to share the videos of desperate Afghanis trying to grab on to planes taking off from Kabul and falling from the sky. Runways are being cleared by Apaches.

 

[Pesqueeb]

TO THE MEMORY HOLE WITH YOU!

GOP takes down 2020 page touting Trump's 'historic peace agreement with the Taliban'

theweek.com

 

[JohnE]

"We just made so many fundamental mistakes in how we approached it that the question is, which again, you and I can't answer: Had we gone in with a different mindset, a totally different approach, which would have been more of a counterinsurgency approach, building through the state, would it have worked? I can't say it would've, but I think it would have been a better approach."

Well no shit. That guy oughta be a General. Oh, wait...he is. I remember endless COIN lectures and trainings before deployments at my level...apparently those who directed such things to us Joes didnt take the same instruction.

I used to ask my troops who came to me with problems how they would handle same and what they thought was the root cause. If they couldn't answer or hadn't thought it out that far I would send them away to put on their thinking caps and figure it out. Did anyone ask the Afghanis how to take on the Taliban or how to handle and eliminate Islamo-fascist extremism in THEIR country? Did they even want to get rid of them?

If they export terror, respond quickly, decisively and surgically. Then look at the cause of the problem and work to eradicate it at he base level. Do it with sincerity and purpose, but all the while realizing who truly owns the problem. It is often theirs to solve, not ours.

Now our generation has a syndrome of its very own, to replace the one that the prior generation had...that the rich kids dad who got us into this shit said we had defeated in his debacle in the Middle East.

Thanks for nothing.

 

[Pesqueeb]

Did anyone ask the Afghanis how to take on the Taliban or how to handle and eliminate Islamo-fascist extremism in THEIR country? Did they even want to get rid of them?

I think, this is the money question right here.

Just how quickly the whole house of cards collapsed I think shows the answer.

Imagine what we could have done in this country with more than 2 Trillion dollars and 20 years.

But National Healthcare is too expensive.

 

[Brian HCM#1]

Once again the Biden administration shits the bed. Do we need out of Afghanistan? Absolutely! Did we need to be there in the first place? Absolutely not! However, since we are already knee deep in this shit, there should have been a better exit strategy. More negotiations with the Taliban, drawing lines in the sand (figuratively speaking) cause that's totally doable there and should have been done. Now with our fully open southern boarder, I fear some of these nut cases will just mosey on in and wreck havoc once again on our soil. I hope I'm wrong, but not holding my breath.

 

[rideit]

My biggest fear is that Biden may have handed ‘24 to the Republicans, who will try to create a conservative caliphate right here, at home.

 

[JohnE]

...and your experience, Brian, in dealing with people like the Taliban is what? They piss on agreements, they care not for international treaties or legalities.

This is not Bidens fault...it is the former guys, (You know, the one who negotiated with the Taliban?) and the guy before him and the guy before hims. I praise Biden for having the balls to get us out of a 20 year shitshow. We will see how the international community deals with them now, because we know how the government we propped up handled it.

The "president" fleeing the country with cars and bags full of ca$h says a lot about the generally duplicitous and self centered nature of those in charge. Nothing would thrill me more now that to have the Taliban ask for his return to the country so he could be tried for the corruption that we enabled.

Better exit strategy...thats funny. Where were you when Bush was getting us into this mess? Colin Powel advocated for an exit strategy even before plans were laid for an entry.

"Now I've trained an army for my kids to fight one day
We'll teach them all our secrets and then we'll walk away..."

"Citizen CIA," DkM

 

[rideit]

More negotiations with the Taliban, drawing lines in the sand (figuratively speaking) cause that's totally doable there and should have been done. Now with our fully open southern boarder

100% complete bullshit on both points here. If the Taliban were in a negotiating mood, then why the fuck did Trump do his shitty deal? And no, the border is not any more ‘open’ than the Bush, Obama, or Trump years, it is all optics. For everyone. Terrorists don’t coyote across the border, they come on fucking student visas, with money.

 

[Pesqueeb]

100% complete bullshit on both points here

Have you not met Brian before?

 

[Jm_]

Did we win the Middle East yet?

 

[Nick]

Terrorists don’t coyote across the border, they come on fucking student visas, with money, from Saudi Arabia.

FTFY

 

[Westy]

Once again the Biden administration shits the bed. Do we need out of Afghanistan? Absolutely! Did we need to be there in the first place? Absolutely not! However, since we are already knee deep in this shit, there should have been a better exit strategy. More negotiations with the Taliban, drawing lines in the sand (figuratively speaking) cause that's totally doable there and should have been done. Now with our fully open southern boarder, I fear some of these nut cases will just mosey on in and wreck havoc once again on our soil. I hope I'm wrong, but not holding my breath.

Exactly, that whole North Korea thing worked out well.

 

[rideit]

I love wrecking havoc, myself. As a snowborder.

 

[Pesqueeb]

My biggest fear is that Biden may have handed ‘24 to the Republicans, who will try to create a conservative caliphate right here, at home.

It was only acceptable to Republicans to withdraw from Afghanistan once a Republican president decided it was time to leave. Before their imperial sovereign Trump issued his decree, leaving Afghanistan was unpatriotic and an insult to the sacrifice of the troops. They've also IMMEDIATELY forgotten that this withdraw was TRUMP'S orders. Once started, there was no reasonable way to reverse course. This toppling began a long time before Biden was elected, which trump negotiated WITH the taliban. He also made Pakistan release the founder of the Taliban in order to even have those talks. This is a guy the Obama admin was deeply concerned about. They got the CIA to track him down and forced the Pakistan ISI to imprison him indefinitely, and Trump just let him go to have these BS talks. Low and behold a couple years later he's spearheading the takeover of Afghanistan for the second time in his life.

The only reason this might not be a complete disaster for the GOP, is because their brian dead base has the attention span of a goldfish missing a chromosome, and the (as I pointed out in my first post in this thread) scrubbing of the party history books has already begun. The usual propaganda outlets will of course ignore history and fact and pump the base full of your aforementioned bullshit, the kind of which we can already see in this thread. It doesn't matter one iota what Biden does. This disaster was AT LEAST 2 years in the making, and quite arguably was foreseeable in 2001.

Graveyard of empires, indeed.

 

[6thElement]

Did we win the Middle East yet?

Jared fixed that whole region a couple of years back.

 

[maxyedor]

I'm convinced that the only time Trump ever listened to his advisors was when it came to leaving Afghanistan. He was negotiating with the Taliban, then abruptly stopped and that was the last we heard of a US withdrawal under his leadership. Somebody convinced him to kick the can down the road, the same was W and Obama had.

This was the inevitable outcome of a US withdrawal, whatever deal there was to be struck with the Taliban was only worth the blood we were willing to spill in order to enforce it. There were two options, peace or withdrawal, there's no way there was every going to be both. Biden chose withdrawal and the obvious thing happened, his mistake, if he made one, was not doing what his former boss did, make powerful speeches about a lasting peace, and a drawdown of troops, then polish his fucking shoe and winding up to kick the can down the road.

Did anyone ask the Afghanis how to take on the Taliban or how to handle and eliminate Islamo-fascist extremism in THEIR country? Did they even want to get rid of them?

300k Afghani troops, trained and supplied by the US, against 70k Taliban with with a hodgepodge of battlefield pick-ups and the country fell in what, 72 hours? I think it's pretty clear that they did not, in fact, want the Taliban gone.

We made the mistake of believing the few Afghanis willing to work with us represented the entirety of their population.

My biggest fear is that Biden may have handed ‘24 to the Republicans, who will try to create a conservative caliphate right here, at home.

I'm not sure it matters. It won't move the needle enough to anybody who would have actually voted for him in the first place.

 

[mykel]

Once again the Biden administration shits the bed. Do we need out of Afghanistan? Absolutely! Did we need to be there in the first place? Absolutely not! However, since we are already knee deep in this shit, there should have been a better exit strategy. More negotiations with the Taliban, drawing lines in the sand (figuratively speaking) cause that's totally doable there and should have been done. Now with our fully open southern boarder, I fear some of these nut cases will just mosey on in and wreck havoc once again on our soil. I hope I'm wrong, but not holding my breath.

JHFC - Seriously?

Fuck, were you born this stupid, or do / did you have to practice?

 

[Pesqueeb]

We made the mistake of believing the few Afghanis willing to work with us represented the entirety of their population.

Not to mention the entire generation of sympathetic religious "freedom fighters" we've created during two decades of forced occupation.

 

[Jm_]

Not to mention the entire generation of sympathetic religious "freedom fighters" we've created during two decades of forced occupation.

This.

Oh, there's some militants/terrorists or whatever in that building/cave? What about the people who aren't? What about the women and children? And so now you take out that building/cave, but now all the relatives of those people know that you just wiped them off the planet. Some of them maybe deservingly, but for sure, civilians too. This basically magnifies the problem every time we take these kinds of actions. Every action basically creates the next generation of terrorists. The problem gets exponentially worse the further we go, like trying to stamp out a fire and it continuing to spread and fan. The amount of resources we've thrown at this is beyond comprehension. I'm not against retribution or taking out clear threats, but the flipside, which is not easy to see at the time of the action, has to be considered equally and again, the further it goes, the more it gets screwed up when you aren't there to just take an objective or blow up a column of tanks. The whole regime change thing is fucked from the start.

And it's always, "if we had just hung out there a little longer, or dropped a few more bombs, or had a few more troops, we could have finally won the Middle East!"

It's a basic comprehension problem. Sunk cost.

Unless the entirety of the population is behind this, it will always revert back.

 

[maxyedor]

Not to mention the entire generation of sympathetic religious "freedom fighters" we've created during two decades of forced occupation.

In fairness, there's also an entire generation of Afghanis who grew up without the Taliban enjoying a more Westernized life, so American influence wasn't all bad.

That's unfortunately the real tragedy, we half assed the war and let people experience life without the Taliban in power for 20 years, only to suddenly flip a switch and revert to how it was pre 9-11. Nobody under 25 has any concept of a pre-American time in Afghanistan. We should have either kept it to surgical strikes and never a full invasion and occupation ,like Gulf War 1, or gone full Curtis Lemay on the whole region, anything in between was bound to cause more harm than good. Even if those people who grew up under the US backed Government and never aligned themselves with the Taliban, you can bet they won't take too much of an issue with any sort of anti American movements in the future, Al Qaeda 2.0 is only a matter of time.

 

[Pesqueeb]

In fairness, there's also an entire generation of Afghanis who grew up without the Taliban enjoying a more Westernized life, so American influence wasn't all bad.

Well sure.

There the ones bum rushing the airport right now, thinking they can hang on to/sit on the landing gear doors of a C-17 in flight. We're hanging them out to dry, just like the Kurds in Iraq.

And in 20 years Tucker Carlson will be on state TV asking "Why do they hate us?" in complete, dead eyed, idiotic, sincerity.

 

[kidwoo]

our southern boarder

??

You Know You're a Redneck Skateboarder When... - Skateboarding Magazine

Skate Harvest. You know you’re a redneck skateboarder when: 1. There’s corn, tractors and cows in the first 15 seconds of your video 2. You do tricks off of a rusty abandoned washing machine. 3. You’re more worried about landing in cow shit than getting cut off of the rusty shit your doing...

skateboardingmagazine.com

It must be so exciting to be born yesterday literally every day of your life. It's all so fresh and new! And fortunately there's an entire industry of brain rotting bullshit to tell you what you care about every night.

 

[Westy]

 

[Pesqueeb]

Allow myself, to quote myself.

I find it horrifying that WaPo's story on the "Afghanistan papers" appears to be getting no traction. What should be pulitzer winning, absolute fucking bomb shell of a story will disappear just like the Panama Papers story.

Interesting times.

Edit:
A reminder that this happened:

 

[Westy]

Allow myself, to quote myself.

Linky link?

 

[Pesqueeb]

Linky link?

It's in the quote.

 

[Westy]

It's in the quote.

Derp

 

[SkaredShtles]

It's awfully nice to have Brain on Ignore. His drivel doesn't even show up in the thread... except on the rare occasion that someone quotes him. And even then it just shows up as "You are ignoring content by this member."

 

[Westy]

It's awfully nice to have Brain on Ignore. His drivel doesn't even show up in the thread... except on the rare occasion that someone quotes him. And even then it just shows up as "You are ignoring content by this member."

You can play a fun game where you try to guess what he is saying then click "show content" to see if you were right.

No cheating and watching Tucker Carlson.

 

[Pesqueeb]

Biden Was Right | by Charles A. Kupchan - Project Syndicate

Charles A. Kupchan argues that the Taliban's rapid takeover in Afghanistan vindicates the decision to end US military involvement.

www.project-syndicate.org

The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and governing institutions largely substantiates US President Joe Biden’s skepticism that US-led efforts would ever have enabled the government to stand on its own feet. Even two decades of steady support failed to create Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.

Someone mentioned it earlier. "Sunk Cost Fallacy".

 

[Jm_]

Biden Was Right | by Charles A. Kupchan - Project Syndicate

Charles A. Kupchan argues that the Taliban's rapid takeover in Afghanistan vindicates the decision to end US military involvement.

www.project-syndicate.org

Someone mentioned it earlier. "Sunk Cost Fallacy".

But just a few more troops and years and dollars!

 

[Westy]

But just a few more troops and years and dollars!

The second generation of Afghanis born under U.S. occupation would have gotten it.

 

[stoney]

Once again the Biden administration shits the bed. Do we need out of Afghanistan? Absolutely! Did we need to be there in the first place? Absolutely not! However, since we are already knee deep in this shit, there should have been a better exit strategy. More negotiations with the Taliban, drawing lines in the sand (figuratively speaking) cause that's totally doable there and should have been done. Now with our fully open southern boarder, I fear some of these nut cases will just mosey on in and wreck havoc once again on our soil. I hope I'm wrong, but not holding my breath.

Bush took us there - problem #1.
Trump decided we should leave with no plan in place - problem #2
Biden is left holding the bag, both finishing something the Republicans started and poor attempted to finish.

Oh, and our Southern border is the same as it was over the last 4 years. So moving on...

 

[SkaredShtles]

It's like heaven...

 

[AngryMetalsmith]

Imagine what we could have done in this country with more than 2 Trillion dollars and 20 years.

But National Healthcare is too expensive.

My guess is that there would have not been a massive amount of misinformation in regards to Covid. Spend a little on infrastructure, education and health care and we probably would not be a bad off as we are now. In my little slice of the South, NC has had a history of GOP lead efforts to deny decent education to the public. Senator Jesse Helms was notorious for voting down every education bill put before him. This went on for decades and now we are seeing the grim reality of a poorly educated public rife with distrust in science and prone to believe conspiracy theories.

Back in the early days of my venture into the realm of no alcohol I went to AA meetings. And I cannot help but think of one of their most basic messages to recovering alcoholics which was "worry about your side of the street and not your neighbors". It sucks that a murderous band of religious zealots has taken over Afghanastan but it is high time we start dealing with our own problems.

 

[AngryMetalsmith]

Have you not met Brian before?

Amazing that anyone here still responds to his posts. You would have better success teaching Algebra to goldfish.