Finally done in Afghanistan?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, FLEA said:

I have a friend/former pilot trapped in country now. Taliban have raided his home several times. He is hiding in a friend's basement with his family. He said they already executed his cousin. 

Unfortunately none of the state department programs for evacuation covers former Afghan government officers or former Afghan military personnel. They are on their own right now. 

May God be with him.

 

42 minutes ago, TheNewGazmo said:

We made them.  For every bad guy we took out, we probably made 2-3 more.  These are not old dudes set in their ways not wanting to see Afghanistan change.  Most of them are younger than you and I.

We did not make them. Our establishment government, bureaucrats, and globalists did. It sucks big time, but don't think for a second that any of us actual service-members (not you patsy Generals) wished to see this outcome. When we get out, we have to collectively get involved in our communities and governments. No apathy, no sitting on our asses watching sportsball, we have to take back control of this government that is hellbent on destroying our people and others.

[arg]

8 hours ago, uhhello said:

Airstrikes on who?  The people who are providing the first layer of security for the only foothold you have left to get thousands of people out of the country?  I'm guessing that number you're looking for is going to be zero.  

Crazy idea here, but strikes on the weapons we left behind?

[slc]

Makes me cringe to see all the M4s w/ ACOGS in the hands of the Taliban.  Hell, looking at various news clips/pics the M4s outnumber the AKs

[brabus]

In an alternate reality:

1. Pull all Americans, and truly loyal-to-US Afghans (terps and their families, etc.), to Bagram/Kandahar/maybe Kabul

2. Evac all of those people in an organized fashion

3. Maintain offensive/defensive ops during step 1-2

4. Pull out ground troops except for those required for defensive ops of air bases (namely BAF and KAF)

5. Keep air for a while longer to destroy as much critical materiel left behind as possible, with a measurable amount destroyed end state, NTE 90 days post step 4. Kill Taliban targets of opportunity when able. 

6. Pull out remaining personnel involved with step 5.

I mean, it’s not that fucking hard. Copy lots of details in the background, but pretty sensible big pic plan, probably executed over a course of 4-6 months.

Instead we got step 1: pull military out, step 2: Ummm, the thing, you know… step 3: Panic, send 5k back to AFG, step 4: we’ll get you out, maybe…if you made it to Kabul, if not, good luck!

Fucking ludicrous…I’m pissed, and every sensible person on the planet should be as well. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by brabus

[TheNewGazmo]

50 minutes ago, dogfish78 said:

May God be with him.

 

We did not make them. Our establishment government, bureaucrats, and globalists did. It sucks big time, but don't think for a second that any of us actual service-members (not you patsy Generals) wished to see this outcome. When we get out, we have to collectively get involved in our communities and governments. No apathy, no sitting on our asses watching sportsball, we have to take back control of this government that is hellbent on destroying our people and others.

I'm sorry you misunderstood me.  When I said "we", I did not mean us service members.   Maybe I should have said, "they".  We, the service members, spent 20 years polishing a turd better than anyone else on the planet could have and made many, many sacrifices doing it, but I can't help but admit that as time went on, our (the service member's) view of the situation became quite cavalier knowing that there was no end in site.

[Boomer6]

53 minutes ago, dogfish78 said:

No apathy, no sitting on our asses watching sportsball, we have to take back control of this government that is hellbent on destroying our people and others.

Lol “sportsball”. I think you gave yourself away there… This chach:

 

[fire4effect]

4 minutes ago, slc said:

Makes me cringe to see all the M4s w/ ACOGS in the hands of the Taliban.  Hell, looking at various news clips/pics the M4s outnumber the AKs

Especially when I think of the ass pain that went into the investigation when ONE ACOG went missing from the arms room several years back. Wonder if the Taliban will sell any cheap on E-Bay

[pilot]

2 minutes ago, brabus said:

In an alternate reality:

1. Pull all Americans, and truly loyal-to-US Afghans (terps and their families, etc.), to Bagram/Kandahar/maybe Kabul

2. Evac all of those people in an organized fashion

3. Maintain offensive/defensive ops during step 1-2

4. Pull out ground troops except for those required for defensive ops of air bases (namely BAF and KAF)

5. Keep air for a while longer to destroy as much critical materiel left behind as possible, with a measurable amount destroyed end state, NTE 90 days post step 4. Kill Taliban targets of opportunity when able. 

6. Pull out remaining personnel involved with step 5.

I mean, it’s not that ing hard. Copy lots of details in the background, but pretty sensible big pic plan, probably executed over a course of 4-6 months.

Instead we got step 1: pull military out, step 2: Ummm, the thing, you know… step 3: Panic, send 5k back to AFG, step 4: we’ll get you out, maybe…if you made it to Kabul, if not, good luck!

ing ludicrous…I’m pissed, and so should every sensible person on the planet. 

Elections have consequences. “The buck stops with me.” Can’t forget the spineless generals and secretaries of defense/state and heads of CIA who allowed this plan to proceed either. They have some culpability as well. Heads need to roll. Lots of them. 

[pilot]

2 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

Especially when I think of the ass pain that went into the investigation when ONE ACOG went missing from the arms room several years back. Wonder if the Taliban will sell any cheap on E-Bay

I also wonder what their NVG capability is now. 

[TheNewGazmo]

7 minutes ago, brabus said:

In an alternate reality:

1. Pull all Americans, and truly loyal-to-US Afghans (terps and their families, etc.), to Bagram/Kandahar/maybe Kabul

2. Evac all of those people in an organized fashion

3. Maintain offensive/defensive ops during step 1-2

4. Pull out ground troops except for those required for defensive ops of air bases (namely BAF and KAF)

5. Keep air for a while longer to destroy as much critical materiel left behind as possible, with a measurable amount destroyed end state, NTE 90 days post step 4. Kill Taliban targets of opportunity when able. 

6. Pull out remaining personnel involved with step 5.

I mean, it’s not that ing hard. Copy lots of details in the background, but pretty sensible big pic plan, probably executed over a course of 4-6 months.

Instead we got step 1: pull military out, step 2: Ummm, the thing, you know… step 3: Panic, send 5k back to AFG, step 4: we’ll get you out, maybe…if you made it to Kabul, if not, good luck!

ing ludicrous…I’m pissed, and every sensible person on the planet should be as well. 

When's the last time the Bone's did some show of force passes over Kabul?  We wouldn't even have to drop ordinance on them.  Just a few round-robins to get these dudes back in their momma's basements.

[slc]

8 minutes ago, pilot said:

I also wonder what their NVG capability is now. 

Oh yeah, they now have plenty of NODs as well.  We no longer "own the night"  Thanks Biden!!

[SocialD]

Mujahideen requesting help! The cycle starts over. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, TheNewGazmo said:

I'm sorry you misunderstood me.  When I said "we", I did not mean us service members.   Maybe I should have said, "they".  We, the service members, spent 20 years polishing a turd better than anyone else on the planet could have and made many, many sacrifices doing it, but I can't help but admit that as time went on, our (the service member's) view of the situation became quite cavalier knowing that there was no end in site.

Ah. Agreed! It's sickening.

 

7 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

Especially when I think of the ass pain that went into the investigation when ONE ACOG went missing from the arms room several years back. Wonder if the Taliban will sell any cheap on E-Bay

The establishment domestically: Let's add 200 more special agents to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to specifically target and Ruby Ridge patriotic gun owning citizens!

The establishment internationally: Oh those rifles and crew served weapons? ACOGs? MRAPs? lol keep 'em. It's too expensive to get bring them back;)

[Q1Checkride]

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/20/highly-visible-cnn-journalist-whose-reporting-caught-biden-administration-in-lies-pulled-from-kabul-airport/

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, pilot said:

Elections have consequences. “The buck stops with me.” Can’t forget the spineless generals and secretaries of defense/state and heads of CIA who allowed this plan to proceed either. They have some culpability as well. Heads need to roll. Lots of them. 

Lmao

[fire4effect]

3 hours ago, TheNewGazmo said:

When's the last time the Bone's did some show of force passes over Kabul?  We wouldn't even have to drop ordinance on them.  Just a few round-robins to get these dudes back in their momma's basements.

Add this to your show of force

[Springer]

4 hours ago, TheNewGazmo said:

I'm sorry you misunderstood me.  When I said "we", I did not mean us service members.   Maybe I should have said, "they".  We, the service members, spent 20 years polishing a turd better than anyone else on the planet could have and made many, many sacrifices doing it, but I can't help but admit that as time went on, our (the service member's) view of the situation became quite cavalier knowing that there was no end in site.

That's not what Gen Petraeus thinks:

David Petraeus Reflects on the Afghan Debacle

He offers unsparing words about Trump and Biden, a defense of nation-building, and he says U.S. soldiers may have to re-enter Kabul in force to rescue Americans.

 

By Tunku Varadarajan

Aug. 20, 2021 6:18 pm ET

As Americans despair over the Afghanistan catastrophe, few have more cause to take it personally than retired Gen. David Petraeus. Not only was he commander of U.S. and allied forces there for 13 months in 2010-11; his son and daughter-in-law both served there in the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade. That involved an additional measure of personal sacrifice: During his command, he didn’t see his son to avoid making a target of the young man’s unit.

In a Zoom interview, I ask Mr. Petraeus, 68, what effect the ignominious withdrawal will have on military morale. He chooses his words carefully without masking his indignation. “I think—particularly for those who served there—that it is very sad,” he says. “It is heartbreaking. It is tragic. And I think it is disastrous.” He asks: “Is American national security better now than it was four months ago?” Then he answers indirectly: “It’s a tough answer to arrive at if folks have given 20 years of service and sacrifice.”

The general hastens to add, however, that “this is not the post-Vietnam military; there is no hollow Army.” He says what every American fighting man is inclined to say, “that this is best-equipped, best-trained, most combat-experienced military by far in the world.” It isn’t the Army he joined “as a very young lieutenant” in 1974. “That was a very different Army. That was an undisciplined Army.” He was “very fortunate” to go to an airborne battalion combat team in Italy that was “very elite, and everybody else wanted to go to.” But when he and his fellow officers would “go up to Germany at that time, the indiscipline was just stunning.” And “the racial issues were draining.”

Mr. Petraeus sounds pained when comparing “the reality we had” before the pullout to the new status quo. He valued—even cherished—the fallen Afghan government. “However imperfect that government was, however flawed, however many its maddening shortcomings and corrupt activities,” he says, its leaders were “great partners” in ensuring that al Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups couldn’t re-establish the kind of sanctuary that al Qaeda had under the Taliban before 9/11.

Yet he suggests the Taliban are so constrained that they may end up being less difficult to deal with than many Americans fear. Minutes before our interview, he says, he told Tony Blair : “The Taliban may discover that just like a political party, sometimes it’s easier to be an opposition than it is to actually govern.” The former British prime minister “just chuckled,” Mr. Petraeus says, declining to elaborate on Mr. Blair’s reaction. “I’m a loyal man,” he says. “Blair was my wartime prime minister.”

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens remained in Afghanistan at the time of the pullout, and the most urgent priority is to ensure the evacuation of all who wish to leave, as well as the safe passage of the 18,000 Afghan battlefield interpreters—“we call them ‘terps’ ”—and their families, who face mortal peril from the Taliban. The latter “is a very big deal, a real moral obligation which we have not met in three consecutive administrations.”

The U.S. has to “continue to pressure the Taliban to enable these individuals to move to Kabul airport right now.” He is certain that the U.S. military is “examining various possible courses of action, where you go into the city—very visibly, and with very substantial capacity—and you may have to go get some of these people.”

“Does the U.S. have leverage with the Taliban?” he asks. “It has enormous leverage, and the Taliban is very familiar with it.” They’ve been “on the receiving end of our leverage. That’s our military power.” We don’t want to use it, Mr. Petraeus emphasizes. “But I don’t think they want to provoke us into a position of having to use our military power against them, given that they have experienced this on innumerable occasions, most of which have ended very badly for them.”

Thus, he thinks the Taliban won’t want to jeopardize their control of the country by taking hostages. “They’ve achieved what they set out to accomplish,” he says. “They control probably more of the country now than they did prior to 9/11.”

As for the challenges of governing, “I assume they have to be painfully aware that they face an enormous budget deficit.” Not only have Afghan assets been frozen and Western aid withdrawn, but the “big-spending Western organizations, nonprofits, and embassies that were really a part of the ecosystem of Kabul and the major cities around Afghanistan, are gone too,” as are many Afghan entrepreneurs.

The Afghan government budget is “roughly $18 billion a year,” Mr. Petraeus says. The government “might generate $2 billion in customs duties, some taxes, and so forth,” he says—and that’s “in a good year—a really good year.” They’ll supplement that with drug money, he says, but that won’t be enough. The economy is “clearly going to tank for a period of time.”

The Taliban will have to pay salaries, import fuel to keep generators going, provide basic services, and repair damaged infrastructure. That’s “a pretty tall order” in itself, Mr. Petraeus says, “and they’re about to get acquainted with the reality of governing a country that generates at most one-tenth of what it needs to meet its fiscal obligations.” What happens “when they just flat run out of money and the lights go out?”

Perhaps a bailout from Beijing, which has appeared to embrace the new regime in Kabul and is on the verge formally recognizing it? Mr. Petraeus says that he is “fully cognizant of the possibility that China is standing ready to try to exploit the $2 trillion or so in mineral wealth in Afghanistan,” including copper, iron, lithium and rare-earth metals. The Chinese may have an easier time than they’ve had, since they won’t have the Taliban shooting at them as happened at the Mes Aynak copper deposits, 25 miles southeast of Kabul, where the Afghan government awarded a concession to two Chinese state-owned companies in 2008. The Taliban “was shooting rockets and mortars” at Chinese operations, which eventually shut down. After the Taliban retook power, the China Metallurgical Group Corp. said it would resume mining.

Besides, there are limits to what the Chinese can—and will—do. Beijing will invest in Afghanistan, says Gen. Petraeus, and “that’ll help. But keep in mind that the normal way that China goes in and does this is to bring in Chinese workers, Chinese construction materials, Chinese design . . . even Chinese food!” In any case, he adds, it will take a long time to establish the extractive industries from which the Taliban could derive revenue.

On Monday President Biden blamed Afghans for the Taliban’s quick victory. “The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” the president said. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”

Mr. Petraeus bridles at such criticism. “Their soldiers fought and died in very substantial numbers,” he says with the protective indignation of a fellow soldier who fought alongside them. “It’s way over 60,000 dead. Roughly 27 times as many Afghans died fighting for their country as did Americans.” He points out that it’s been 18 months since the last U.S. combat death in the country.

He’s critical of Mr. Biden’s predecessor as well, calling the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban “disastrous.” The U.S. “conveyed that we wanted to leave, and we thought we could get something from the Taliban in return for our leaving—which, of course, didn’t work out.” The agreement that was struck, “negotiated without the democratically elected government of Afghanistan at the table,” provided that the government would release more than 5,000 Taliban-affiliated detainees. Most went back to the battlefield.

He rejects the view that—as he sums it up—“it all went wrong when we started to nation-build.” He notes that the U.S. and its allies had 150,000 troops in the country at the height of the war, a figure that had dwindled to a few thousand “until about four months ago.” That was accomplished by “transitioning security tasks” to the Afghans.

Doing so required efforts of the sort that critics deride as nation-building. Unlike in Iraq, where literacy levels are high, the coalition in Afghanistan had to teach remedial skills “before we could do basic training for the future Afghan soldiers and police. Because if you can’t read numbers, how do you get someone to be on the lookout for license plates on cars? If you can’t read an instruction manual, if you can’t add and subtract, you’ve got serious problems.” If you don’t do nation-building, “to whom do you hand off tasks that you’re performing when you topple a government and are in charge of the country?”

At the same time, Pakistan was a major headache for the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. Mr. Petraeus recalls a September 2005 briefing with Donald Rumsfeld, in which Gen. Petraeus stressed to the defense secretary that “Afghanistan does not equal Iraq.” In Afghanistan, “the enemy’s headquarters were outside the country and beyond our reach.” Only occasionally was the U.S. able to strike in Pakistan, such as the 2011 raid against Osama bin Laden and the 2016 killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, Mullah Omar’s successor as head of the Taliban, who was targeted by a drone in Balochistan.

Efforts to press Islamabad were complicated: “Pakistan could shut down the ground lines of communication, and we were conscious of that,” Mr. Petraeus says. “We needed them to allow that to continue, for us to go to and from Afghanistan.” Afghanistan is landlocked, with Iran to its west, and “you can’t fly everything in and out of a country when you’ve got 150,000 troops on the ground.”

Mr. Petraeus is adamant that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was “sustainable,” and he expresses consternation that Mr. Biden felt compelled to follow through on a pullout to which Mr. Trump agreed. “Why did we just get so impatient that we didn’t appreciate that you can’t take a country from the seventh century—which is where it was under Taliban rule, when we toppled them—to the 21st century, in 20 years or less?” He observes that the new administration quickly reversed Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords. “There has seemed to be no compulsion to continue all that Trump had decided to do, but here, in Afghanistan, we followed through.”

What lessons should friends and foes draw from the Great American Pullout? “I don’t think you can dispute that the outcome here is a blow in some fashion to our reputation and credibility,” Mr. Petraeus says. “I think you have to be forthright and acknowledge that.” The U.S. has to “begin immediately to shore up that credibility and that reputation.”

Should someone in government be compelled to resign over the Afghan debacle? Again Mr. Petraeus chooses his words with care: “Without knowing who said what to whom and when, it’s impossible to answer that question. What I will say is, there is a long history in Washington and other national capitals of describing an undesirable policy outcome as intelligence failure, and we have to be keenly aware of that at present, clearly.”

When I ask Mr. Petraeus—who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after retiring from the military in 2011—to elaborate, he says: “I think it’s very clear what I just said.”

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.

WSJ:

[Guardian]

Please no one quote that whole thing.

[fire4effect]

All military operations are defined in one of two ways. An operational success if it goes right or an intelligence failure if it goes wrong. 

[Guest]

12 hours ago, fire4effect said:

Add this to your show of force

The Bone gives me a bone.

[DUNBAR]

Nice.  Of course, we could have 10,000 B-1 bombers dropping 1,000,000 GBU-39s, and our political class would still lose the war to a psychotic band of illiterate, fanatical goat herders.

[fire4effect]

7 minutes ago, DUNBAR said:

Nice.  Of course, we could have 10,000 B-1 bombers dropping 1,000,000 GBU-39s, and our political class would still lose the war to a psychotic band of illiterate, fanatical goat herders.

I wish I had an argument against our political buffoons.

I will say this. The Taliban are now trying to hold an entire country with some flashes of resistance from the former Northern Alliance. I'm curious what is their long term logistical sustainment plan is now for say feeding/paying/and transporting fighters as long as we have an albeit small footprint in the country. What we effectively have is a ******* standoff (though I'm sure Kabul International would be re-named the Alamo by some troops at the moment) and beyond stealing from the locals can they stay reasonably sustained?  They can't really relax their force posture any more than we can at the moment. I'm certainly not on the ground over there now but this is my take.

[HeloDude]

6 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

I'm curious what is their long term logistical sustainment plan is now for say feeding/paying/and transporting fighters as long as we have an albeit small footprint in the country.

CCP

[FLEA]

11 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

I wish I had an argument against our political buffoons.

I will say this. The Taliban are now trying to hold an entire country with some flashes of resistance from the former Northern Alliance. I'm curious what is their long term logistical sustainment plan is now for say feeding/paying/and transporting fighters as long as we have an albeit small footprint in the country. What we effectively have is a ******* standoff (though I'm sure Kabul International would be re-named the Alamo by some troops at the moment) and beyond stealing from the locals can they stay reasonably sustained?  They can't really relax their force posture any more than we can at the moment. I'm certainly not on the ground over there now but this is my take.

Afghan SOF is still fighting. They are also maintaining a portion of the allied parameter at the airport. 

[FLEA]

This makes me literally sick inside. 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/world/taliban-unit-wearing-us-gear-mock-iconic-american-wwii-photo