Finally done in Afghanistan?

[dream big]

11 minutes ago, torqued said:

Completely unrelated.

The Navy FIRES offensive coordinator for LOSING to the Air Force.

They can't do that, can they?

https://theathletic.com/news/navy-fires-longtime-offensive-coordinator-ivin-jasper-after-0-2-start-reports/SJ7wv1p3OpUn

Navy Offensive Coordinator’s mind right now: “I lost a stupid football game to Air Force and I’m out of a job, Biden, Miley and their incompetent defense staff lost one of the most embarrassing conflicts in modern history and they still have in a job” 

[HeloDude]

1 hour ago, dream big said:

Navy Offensive Coordinator’s mind right now: “I lost a stupid football game to Air Force and I’m out of a job, Biden, Miley and their incompetent defense staff lost one of the most embarrassing conflicts in modern history and they still have in a job” 

Well more people in the country today seem to care about football than what happened in Afghanistan…

[Lord Ratner]

On 9/11/2021 at 1:40 PM, busdriver said:

You don't know who signed off on the strike, or what the approval level was, or what the ROE was, or what the intel was, or anything really.  You're looking at an outcome and demanding... something. 

What, a public debrief and root cause analysis?  

War is messy, innocent people die, mistakes are made, people do horrible things.  This has always been.  There is no fancy all knowing technology that will make it something else.  There will never be a process that will satisfy a libertarian sense of due process prior to engagements.  It will always be fucking terrible.  The answer is to not engage in it when it isn't absolutely necessary.

I'm not saying accountability and transparency isn't important, or that simple admission that a mistake was made (when a mistake was made) isn't the ethical thing to do.  I'm saying the urge to cut off people's heads says something about the people demanding it as much as the act that draws the mob's ire.

This might be the worst post I've ever read here, only because of how insidiously dangerous this mindset is.

 

Yeah, war is messy. But this war wasn't messy for over 2 years, and really it wasn't messy for quite a bit longer than that. This war was very very clean, to the point where you can't even really call it a war anymore. But it suddenly became very messy because of the idiotic desires of the president (and his predecessor) and the bureaucracy that enabled them to fuck this up.

 

Under Trump a couple high-profile generals resigned because of this idiotic desire to return to isolationism. Where were the resignations under Biden? It is inconceivable that the military hierarchy did not know this was going to happen. Anyone who has been deployed there over the last two decades knew that this would happen if we left, so where are the high-profile resignations? Where are the generals falling on their swords in an attempt to prevent bloodshed?

 

Instead we get an airstrike as a consolation prize, a wishful distraction by an administration that is fucked up so royally even an incredibly accommodating press can't help but push back on their lies.

 

If you don't lose your job over a fuck up like this, then you are essentially advocating for a system that has no accountability.

[Beaker16]

39 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Instead we get an airstrike as a consolation prize, a wishful distraction by an administration that is ed up so royally even an incredibly accommodating press can't help but push back on their lies.

If you don't lose your job over a up like this, then you are essentially advocating for a system that has no accountability.

 

I don't believe the strike was a consolation prize by any means. In my opinion it was warranted based on a credible threat, but failed in execution due to the ISR and C2 limitations at the time. Senior leadership briefed the press with their knowledge at the time, and then the NYT did there own research and uncovered facts contrary to what was previously briefed. Gaps in information occur all the time - almost every damn decision made over the last 2 months was done in an asymmetrical information environment due to a multitude of factors.

As for leadership being fired, do you think the strike is a singular reason for that, or the entire withdrawal CF? 

__

For the ongoing ROE and strike authority conversation, if you have the clearance please take the time to look SIPR/JWICS and read the baseline docs.

[busdriver]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

Under Trump a couple high-profile generals resigned because of this idiotic desire to return to isolationism. Where were the resignations under Biden? 

So you're mad that more generals didn't resign in protest because you don't like the political decision that the elected president made? 

[ImNotARobot]

https://fox59.com/news/hundreds-turn-out-to-honor-corporal-humberto-sanchez-during-hometown-procession/

One of the 13 heroes come home today via Grissom ARB. 1000s (not an exaggeration) of motorcycles in the procession. It took hours to transfer Corporal Sanchez to his home in Logansport because the streets were lined with people paying their respects.

He was 22. And he was a patriot.

[dream big]

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

This might be the worst post I've ever read here, only because of how insidiously dangerous this mindset is.

 

Yeah, war is messy. But this war wasn't messy for over 2 years, and really it wasn't messy for quite a bit longer than that. This war was very very clean, to the point where you can't even really call it a war anymore. But it suddenly became very messy because of the idiotic desires of the president (and his predecessor) and the bureaucracy that enabled them to fuck this up.

 

Under Trump a couple high-profile generals resigned because of this idiotic desire to return to isolationism. Where were the resignations under Biden? It is inconceivable that the military hierarchy did not know this was going to happen. Anyone who has been deployed there over the last two decades knew that this would happen if we left, so where are the high-profile resignations? Where are the generals falling on their swords in an attempt to prevent bloodshed?

 

Instead we get an airstrike as a consolation prize, a wishful distraction by an administration that is fucked up so royally even an incredibly accommodating press can't help but push back on their lies.

 

If you don't lose your job over a fuck up like this, then you are essentially advocating for a system that has no accountability.

I agree with you to a degree, Trump was absolutely correct to get us out…the incompetence that plagues the DOD sat on their arses and never discussed a NEO strategy until it was too late.  Biden is too decrepit to understand nuances but the CJCS and the DOD should’ve seen this coming and had a branch plan ready to execute.  While Afghanistan was always doomed to be a disaster, we didn’t have to leave thousands of Americans behind with no exit plan. 

[Lord Ratner]

4 hours ago, busdriver said:

So you're mad that more generals didn't resign in protest because you don't like the political decision that the elected president made? 

No, I'm mad because all reporting/interviews/personal interactions indicated that they have always been, and remain completely opposed to the withdrawal. So a more accurate and less patronizing rephrasing of your assessment would be:

 

I'm mad that more generals didn't resign in protest because they didn't like the political decision that the elected president made.

 

You know, the decision that has been the biggest foreign policy embarrassment in modern American history? That got more Americans killed in one day than in the past several years combined.

 

Or are you aware of any flag officers who were advocating for a complete pull out?

Edited September 13, 2021 by Lord Ratner

[gearhog]

I would love to have a Humvee with a turret on top around the farm.

It's easier for Iran to get them by the dozen than it is for me to get one. Not fair.

https://twitter.com/KianSharifi/status/1433038861903532034?s=20

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by torqued

[fire4effect]

12 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

You know, the decision that has been the biggest foreign policy embarrassment in modern American history? That got more Americans killed in one day than in the past several years combined.

THIS. Hurt the most.

[gearhog]

Blinken getting absolutely destroyed by both Dems and Reps at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Afghanistan.

Brutal.

 

[McJay Pilot]

10 hours ago, torqued said:

I would love to have a Humvee with a turret on top around the farm.

It's easier for Iran to get them by the dozen than it is for me to get one. Not fair.

https://twitter.com/KianSharifi/status/1433038861903532034?s=20

 

If true, 100% certain those won’t be used in either propaganda videos or false flag operations.

[Breckey]

Now that the Afghanistan is over, does anybody think the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs will be repealed? AUMF reform is desperately needed so Congress can actually take some responsibility and actually vote for committing US forces to conflicts rather than abdicating all of the responsibility onto the Executive. Something that I learned from the below podcast was that the 1991 AUMF is technically still in effect and was used in part as the legal basis for committing forces to OIR in 2014.

The Lawfare Podcast: AUMF Reform After Afghanistan - Lawfare (lawfareblog.com)

[Lawman]

Blinken getting absolutely destroyed by both Dems and Reps at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Afghanistan.
Brutal.
 

Found it particular interesting when he threw the military in front of the bus when asked directly, “who authorized closing Bagram prior to the evacuation?”


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Lawman]

Now that the Afghanistan is over, does anybody think the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs will be repealed? AUMF reform is desperately needed so Congress can actually take some responsibility and actually vote for committing US forces to conflicts rather than abdicating all of the responsibility onto the Executive. Something that I learned from the below podcast was that the 1991 AUMF is technically still in effect and was used in part as the legal basis for committing forces to OIR in 2014.

The Lawfare Podcast: AUMF Reform After Afghanistan - Lawfare (lawfareblog.com)

So long as the Congress is democratically aligned with a sitting Dem president no. And I’d argue the same would be true the other way around.

Funny I remember all sorts of loud urgency on the need to collapse the expanded Presidential powers once Trump used the act to take out Solemani. Wonder where that emphasis went…


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[DirkDiggler]

23 minutes ago, Breckey said:

Now that the Afghanistan is over, does anybody think the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs will be repealed? AUMF reform is desperately needed so Congress can actually take some responsibility and actually vote for committing US forces to conflicts rather than abdicating all of the responsibility onto the Executive. Something that I learned from the below podcast was that the 1991 AUMF is technically still in effect and was used in part as the legal basis for committing forces to OIR in 2014.

The Lawfare Podcast: AUMF Reform After Afghanistan - Lawfare (lawfareblog.com)

They absolutely should be repealed or at the very least renewed but they won't be.  Right now Congress gets to have their cake and eat it too.  They can argue either for or against the use of military force without having to actually go on record to vote for or against sending their constituents and said constituents' sons and daughters to war.  A good majority of them rail against federal overreach and the expanding powers of the Executive branch but are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to voting to go to war.

[DirkDiggler]

  Interesting report discussing the future of US foreign policy post Afghan withdrawal.

 

https://www.csis.org/analysis/restoring-momentum-us-foreign-policy-wake-afghanistan

[Sendit_driver]

I don't know where is a good place to post this but I've found myself wanting to chat with other aviation enthusiasts that have a sense of military humor. I'm not military but a good friend of mine who was in the military took his own life on the day the US pulled out of Kabul. The timing of it all just has been hard. I'm an aviation enthusiast, engineer, have a PPL; it's just not the same talking to normal people, I have plenty of those

[gearhog]

4 hours ago, Sendit_driver said:

I don't know where is a good place to post this but I've found myself wanting to chat with other aviation enthusiasts that have a sense of military humor. I'm not military but a good friend of mine who was in the military took his own life on the day the US pulled out of Kabul. The timing of it all just has been hard. I'm an aviation enthusiast, engineer, have a PPL; it's just not the same talking to normal people, I have plenty of those

Damn, brother. So sorry to hear this. I don't have much humor for you. I was lacing my boots for an afternoon low-level formation airdrop as an Lt when my pregnant wife called me in to see the TV. I fought back tears after I saw the second plane hit and the towers fall.

20 years went by.  Almost the entire middle of my life.

Then, I watched the chaos at Kabul as we left.

Not to make this about me, but I understand what your friend may have been feeling. It took a lot of mental and emotional effort to remain stoic in the midst of what I was experiencing. Depending on what his individual circumstances may have been, he may have had a more difficult time wrestling with the thoughts of "What was it all for?, Why did something I believed in so much in, seem to fail so badly? What about the people I knew that were wrecked by that place? Why is my country abandoning so many other things I thought I was fighting for? Was I wrong about everything?"

How do we prevent someone from having to ask those sorts of questions? Maybe begin here at home. What can we do to fix this foundation, this society, so that none of our future military members ever have and doubts or second thoughts about what they're fighting for. The military needs civilians to fight just as hard back here. There is a different type of war still going on, and I don't think it's hopeless.  Go make sure this country is the one you want it to be, not the one he thought it might be becoming.

Again, very sorry for the loss of your friend.

[Springer]

The 2020 Trump-Taliban "Peace Agreement"—Time to End the War on Terror | Nebraska Law Review | Nebraska (unl.edu)

[fire4effect]

Taliban thank world for promised aid, urge US to show 'heart' (msn.com)

Part of me doesn't know how to respond. 

IDK "You broke it you bought it" "Be careful what you wish for you just might get it" (Taliban taking over Afghanistan)

Asking for Infidel money. Wow

Ok here's our long list of demands and BTW what's your credit score? 

Edited September 15, 2021 by fire4effect

[SurelySerious]

Taliban thank world for promised aid, urge US to show 'heart' (msn.com)
Part of me doesn't know how to respond. 
IDK "You broke it you bought it" "Be careful what you wish for you just might get it" (Taliban taking over Afghanistan)
Asking for Infidel money. Wow
Ok here's our long list of demands and BTW what's your credit score? 

Hah! Hell, what’s the U.S.A’s credit score?

On second thought, It’s probably infinity because of dividing by zero.

[Sua Sponte]

Homie needs some therapy.

 

[pawnman]

17 minutes ago, Sua Sponte said:

Homie needs some therapy.

 

The guy's mental state is clearly deteriorating...I just hope it doesn't end in a suicide.  Or a murder/suicide.

[FLEA]

DoD just took responsibility for striking civilians in Afghanistan. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html