Finally done in Afghanistan?

[Clark Griswold]

This podcast series is hit or miss but this was a good one, pretty good history and overview of the Soviet experience, background, operation and withdrawal from Afghanistan
They took two years to withdraw and their client state lasted several years AFTER they withdrew. You would think we could’ve learned something from their efforts.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/angry-planet/id1023774600?i=1000532417551


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DUNBAR]

I think the Hitler videos are best suited for the Dallas Cowboys losing or someone not getting a AUAB BPC dorm room.  Not for something of this magnitude.

Are there "Hitler finds out the World Trade Center was destroyed and 3,000 people are dead" videos?  I guess there are.

 

 

 

[fire4effect]

10 hours ago, jazzdude said:

To what strategic end does this help? Sure, it'd feel good from the tactical operator perspective. But that's expensive (cost of weapons, flight time, basing and associated support and logistics infrastructure).

On top of all of that, Pakistan has been friendly towards the Taliban, so how long does it take for Pakistan to close of overflight rights to deny airstrikes in Afghanistan?

Frankly my strategic goal is to show to the world that even if you bloody our nose we don't completely cut and run though that's admittedly probably a hard sell at this point. Second to degrade the Taliban and at least keep them  somewhat looking over their shoulder so they aren't as free to start training terrorist wholesale and brutalizing their own people.

As for Pakistan they've always had the ability to shut down overflights and I'm surprised if they really wanted why  they hadn't a long time ago. I also think we need to make it abundantly clear to Pakistan that we aren't playing any more and to that end reach out and strengthen our ties with India. On a side note India as I recall in the past was sending a not insignificant amount of aid to Afghanistan. Which touches on something else. I think that something like 70-80 percent of the Afghan Government budget is foreign donation an along with the freezing of assets has slowed money flow to trickle. Obviously a LOT more could be added to this discussion but and I would add one last think targeting the transport of fuel into will degrade the Taliban's mobility IMHO. All part of the effort to squeeze the Taliban.

[Danger41]

12 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Do we think they care and what gains are we going to attack...the third compound from the north T intersection?  There is no infrastructure to attack.  We can keep manhunting but we have been doing that for 20 years.

Not the infrastructure but the made to order military that was left for them. Anything outside of Kabul airport now that’s not in Panshjir and is a military piece of equipment is now on the targeting list. They don’t want to lose that stuff. Forget HVI crap, plink all the vehicles and ammo dumps if they fuck around. Sure, they can get more from China etc but it appears we don’t have much leverage at this point to prevent the aforementioned scenario you laid out, unfortunately.

[Prozac]

2 hours ago, Premo said:

Trending on Reddit right now—Guardian story from 2009.

 

CGOs & NCOs knew the score in 2009 (and probably even before that). The fact that it’s taken this long to come to terms with reality speaks volumes to the fact that our military is way too top heavy with far too much insulation of senior leadership from shit any troop with half a brain knows to be truth (also ref. pilot shortage/bonus). 

[Lockjaw]

To sum up on senior DOD/IC/political leadership...let me get this straight. 

The brain trust couldn't figure out the plan or capability of the Taliban, their supporters, or the partner force/government?

But we can definitely know the intention of a peer or near peer foe and be ready for them...

Sure. 

[uhhello]

Watching DOS brief right now.  Reporter just asked if there was COVID testing at the airport before letting people in or on planes.....How fucking out of touch can you be with reality there on the ground. 

[ClearedHot]

Biden told George Snuffleupagus "No one is being killed there"...so we got that going for us.

 

[Guardian]

This is worse than Vietnam. In a large way. Our country is going to go through some rough times coming up. We just took a back seat to China and Russia. And terrorists organizations.

[Premo]

“The modern National Security Council, for example, created by Henry Kissinger, had no more than 50 people. It stayed around that level for most of the 20th century, though even so, by 2000 it had crept up to about 100. In the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, it doubled again. Under Barack Obama, it doubled yet again. Donald Trump shrunk it some, but President Biden has brought it back to more than 350, with lots of deputies, layers and complexity.”

“New York University scholar Paul Light says that the top five tiers of the Pentagon have gone from 363 people in 1998 to 870 in 2020. At the assistant secretary level alone, the numbers have gone from 193 to 629. There are now 33 layers of bureaucracy at the top of the Defense Department.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/heres-why-us-national-security-apparatus-keeps-producing-failures/

[busdriver]

Taliban urge Afghan unity as protests spread to Kabul

Also read a blurb saying the Taliban was threatening Afghan civil servants to get them to go back to work.

I'm sure they'll just start killing people to get compliance, but it does present an interesting conundrum if the Taliban are trying to take control of the already established bureaucracy as the "new legitimate ruling class" rather than tear it all down and start over.

[ClearedHot]

Nothing political, just a first hand reflection of a linguist who spent a lot of time listening to the Taliban during fights.

What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

[Scooter14]

I'm curious about who is in the stack above Kabul.
Not much reporting on airstrikes, but they must have been heavy over the last week.

It’s almost like the ATO is classified for a reason.

[uhhello]

1 hour ago, RedEye1911 said:

I'm curious about who is in the stack above Kabul.

Not much reporting on airstrikes, but they must have been heavy over the last week.

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.  

[DUNBAR]

It's being reported the State Department intended to charge evacuees >$2K each, and only scrapped the plan after being met with collective outrage.

I am just living in the Twilight Zone now.  How pathetic, incomprehensible, and incompetent can these people be?  What the f&%k is going on?

Edited August 20, 2021 by DUNBAR

[TheNewGazmo]

6 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.  

We could easily have a carrier sitting in the Arabian right now, but the tankers are going to have to come from somewhere far, far away........................again.  I remember those days of flying 11 hour sorties to offload less than 45k.

Edited August 20, 2021 by TheNewGazmo

[Sua Sponte]

Wow!

[Guest]

3 hours ago, DUNBAR said:

How pathetic, incomprehensible, and incompetent can these people be?  What the f&%k is going on?

Those pathetic, incomprehensible, and incompetent "people" are the same LITERAL bean counters than allowed our taxes to pay $34,000,000 for a failed attempt to force Afghans to grow and eat S O Y B E A N S. They're so far remove from reality, stuck in an office huffing their own farts about how great they are keeping our federal government's wheels "turning". Don't be surprised if you see them recant that $2,000 demand a year from now then say they never recanted it and are going to use the politicized Internal Revenue Service to extract it from those people who failed to pay, with usury of course.

Listen up!!! I tried to post a link to the soybean comment I made ^ but I kept getting "access denied" on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan websites. Turns out our government is now purging federal websites of information under the guise of "protecting" people over there. Who buys that excuse? Protect them? If the federal government wanted to protect them, 1. they wouldn't have posted the information to begin with, and 2. they would have not done what they did when exiting Kabul a few days ago. Check this out: https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-technology-online-us-civilians-e13530f8b8d41268cd5b582fb59bbe20

• Archive of AP News article:https://web.archive.org/web/20210818115614/https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-technology-online-us-civilians-e13530f8b8d41268cd5b582fb59bbe20
• Archive of USDA webpage 1 about soybeans in Afghanistan:https://web.archive.org/web/20210820172716/https://www.fas.usda.gov/newsroom/us-soybeans-support-sustainability-afghanistan
• Archive of USDA webpage 2 about soybeans in Afghanistan:https://web.archive.org/web/20210820172951/https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/02/21/us-soybeans-support-sustainability-afghanistan
• Archive from June 2021 of the SIGAR report of USDA's response of soybeans in Afghanistan:https://web.archive.org/web/20210608230414/https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/special projects/SIGAR-14-69-SP.pdf
• Archive of the SIGAR webpage displaying "page not found" when searching today for the report of USDA's response of soybeans in Afghanistan (had to use a different archive website since previous one wouldn't save due to the link ending in .pdf): https://archive.is/93fFa

Edited August 20, 2021 by dogfish78

[LookieRookie]

This is a terrible speech.

 

edit:

VEEP rolled her eyes and looked down when POTUS went off script and said “look, mumble mumble mumble”

Edited August 20, 2021 by LookieRookie

[FLEA]

41 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

This is a terrible speech.

 

edit:

VEEP rolled her eyes and looked down when POTUS went off script and said “look, mumble mumble mumble”

Well yeah he wasn't doing as she instructed him to do. 

[Sandiegosurf]

57 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

This is a terrible speech.

 

edit:

VEEP rolled her eyes and looked down when POTUS went off script and said “look, mumble mumble mumble”

Q&A is really pathetic. "First part of your question, I can't remember now," he says.

[GrndPndr]

From the Read-the-Teleprompter-Contemporaneous speech:

Quote

REPORTER: 'We learned over the last 24 hours that there was a dissent cable from the State Dept saying that the Taliban would come faster... Can you say why after that cable was issued, the U.S. didn't do more?' BIDEN: 'We got all kinds of cables.'

I'm not sure if that was really Larry, Moe - or curly who answered that...

 

[ClearedHot]

Horrifying video reportedly shows Afghan police chief executed by Taliban

But Biden said the Taliban promised amnesty...Why would anyone ever trust us again?

 

[FLEA]

4 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Horrifying video reportedly shows Afghan police chief executed by Taliban

But Biden said the Taliban promised amnesty...Why would anyone ever trust us again?

 

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. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by FLEA

[TheNewGazmo]

24 minutes 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. 

Christ.... what a disaster.

Whether you agree with the reasons why we went into that country two decades ago or not, every 1st-world nation on this planet has failed Afghanistan.  Watching Muslims hand their children over a wall to American service members for a better life is eye opening and sickening to watch.  It makes me re-evaluate all of the times I bitched about the mold in the trailers or doing the walk of shame through customs at the Died for a month or two.... or heck, complaining that someone is making me wear a mask.  Life could could definitely be worse.  

If you look at pics of some of these Taliban fighters, I bet you most of them were either not born prior to 9/11 or born shortly there after.  They're 18-25 years old, which means, we killed their father, their brother..  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.