Finally done in Afghanistan?

[nsplayr]

They can have a good ole time ruling over the rubble pile.

Sunk cost fallacy: the best time to leave was 15 years ago and the second best time is right now. It ain’t called the graveyard of empires for nothing, but the real joke is that all the powerful armies stack the rocks on top of their own heads!

Despite spending >$2T and countless lives, Afg sucks nearly as much as the day we arrived and I for one say good riddance. Time to spend our blood and treasure more wisely elsewhere. It’s not somehow more patriotic to want to continue losing every single day, year after year, decade after decade.

"Retreat, hell! We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction." - General Oliver Smith, battle of Chosin Reservoir

[Danger41]

Get our people out and stop with these stupid ass ROE. These Taliban fucks want to come out and conquer territory and threaten Americans, I hope we kill a few thousand of them via PGM as our parting gift.

[JBueno]

Always thought it was weird that the military was putting Seth Green’s In The Graveyard of Empires on reading lists. Did senior leaders ever read it themselves?

[Swizzle]

1 hour ago, TheLaughingCow said:

Probably, but from what I've seen senior military leaders don't usually get to make actual strategic decisions of consequence.  They publicly agree with the politicians who appointed them, or they are replaced by someone who does.  The best they can do is give recommendations in private, which seem to be frequently ignored.

For his many flaws, I respect Biden for finally pinching this turd.  For all his bluster, Trump couldn't bear to have his legacy tarnished by the ugly but necessary withdrawal he promised in 2016.

Trump tried...

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2020/07/unconventional-tactic-becomes-congresss-go-weapon-against-troop-withdrawal/166880/

Power of the purse kept Trump too from spending $$ on the withdrawal...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/house-democrats-working-with-liz-cheney-restrict-trumps-planned-withdrawal-of-troops-from-afghanistan-and-germany/

Edited August 15, 2021 by Swizzle
Congress extends it, power of the purse controls so much...

[McJay Pilot]

J-Bad gone now too…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58219169

[FLEA]

Trump actually set and approved a May withdrawal date he intended to see through in his second term. When Biden took office he was uncomfortable with a upholding a decision that quickly. So he requested the JCS replan for a later withdrawal but one that absolutely did not prolong the war past 20 years. That's how you go the official end of operations date for OEF on 9/11 this year. 

Edited August 15, 2021 by FLEA

[brabus]

“Reports on Sunday morning said the Taliban overran the city, the capital of Nangarhar province, without a shot being fired.”
 

Yeah I feel for the good people there, but not even one skirmish before handing over J-Bad? These people really have no concept of dying on your feet is better than living on your knees. They have no backbone. Nobody deserves the Taliban, but for fuck’s sake, they’ve pretty much earned it at this point. 

[GrndPndr]

Only a metaphor right now, but here's your photo op...

 

[MD]

Absolute cowardice. At least the ARVN, South Vietnamese army, and other South Vietnamese forces fought against the onslaught of the North Vietnamese army…..even if they had to keep establishing defensive positions while retrograding. These Afghan government clowns have put up zero resistance. Which makes me think they’re either Taliban sympathizers, or outright cowards.

Even the final night, 29 April 1975, saw a VNAF South Vietnamese Air Force AC-119G aerial gunship crew, along with two A-1 Skyraider planes, attacking advancing NVA armor and vehicles that were traveling south towards Saigon. The crews would land to refuel and rearm themselves since no one was available to do so, and relaunch in order to get airborne and keep attacking the enemy. Right up until sunrise when one A-1 and the AC-119G were both hit by SA-7 Grail MANPADS and shot down, with only a couple of crewmen from the AC-119 bailing out, did the resistance end as the last A-1 expended the last of its munitions, and turned west for Thailand.

Edited August 15, 2021 by MD

[HeyEng]

All the shoe clerks running around ensuring we had our reflective belts on and our PT T-shirts tucked in, all the BS deployments in-theater for the sake of being deployed, all the GO number 1 rules rigidly enforced, and for what!

I hope there is a lot of soul searching in our senior leadership, but I doubt it will ever happen. 

[BashiChuni]

biden is showing how incompetent he is. can't blame trump for this one it happened on his watch. disgraceful.

[FLEA]

Afghan president just fled the country. Taliban have entered Kabul city limits. It's over guys. I hope what dudes we have left there can get get out safely. I also hope this conflict leaves a stain on the political careers of every politician and general that's served in the last 20 years. This was disgraceful. 

[BashiChuni]

amen to that. total disgrace.

also i never want to hear "hearts and minds" again or "nation building". as a country we should only commit military force to totally fucking smash the enemy and get out. it makes me sick remembering how we had to operate under some of the most bull shit ROE i've seen. and having to listen to karzi on his high fucking horse criticizing US forces.

 

the afghans had 20 years to decide if they wanted freedom. it's sad they decided it wasn't worth it.

Edited August 15, 2021 by BashiChuni

[HeloDude]

On 7/10/2021 at 2:00 PM, HeloDude said:

President Biden: 

“We can be value added, but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have.”

Also:

He claimed the Afghan military fields a force of 300,000 that is "as well equipped as any army in the world, an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban."

Behold, Afghanistan’s Air Force:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/afghan-pilots-assassinated-by-taliban-us-withdraws-2021-07-09/

And now Biden is blaming Trump…suggesting that he couldn’t change the policy that was laid out by Trump before Biden took office.  But yet Biden has reversed Trump’s policies on everything from the border, to immigration, to the pipeline, to transgenders serving in the military…on and on.

Full disclosure:  I’m glad we’re out, and it’s long overdue, so I’m not blaming Biden per se.  But if Biden truly believed that Afghanistan’s military was going to be effective then he’s more incompetent than I thought (or a liar) and/or needs to replace his most senior advisors who are incompetent and giving Biden bad info.  
 

And for all the progressives and neocons arguing that nationalism and “America First” is wrong or somehow racist, this is what happens when you put the well being of other countries above your own citizenry.  It sucks that the Taliban will go back to treating women so poorly and commit other atrocities, but it’s not our responsibility to fix it.

[jrizzell]

What’s happening now, is the unavoidable outcome unless we choose to occupy Afghanistan forever. You can’t force “American freedom” on a population who’s unable/unwilling to accept it. It’s unfortunate how quickly this country will revert to Taliban rule; but this isn’t Biden’s fault. It would have happened regardless of the sitting POTUS after a US withdraw.


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[FLEA]

15 minutes ago, jrizzell said:

What’s happening now, is the unavoidable outcome unless we choose to occupy Afghanistan forever. You can’t force “American freedom” on a population who’s unable/unwilling to accept it. It’s unfortunate how quickly this country will revert to Taliban rule; but this isn’t Biden’s fault. It would have happened regardless of the sitting POTUS after a US withdraw.


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Biden got handed a hot sack of shit. He did contribute to that sack though in his tenure as VP, but that sack is filled with shit from the last 3 administrations. Politicians, generals, IC leaders, state department leaders. The media needs to play this out because this is our countrys failure and if we don't take it and own it and spend the next 20 years reflecting on it, all of those lives would have really been given for nothing. 

[Negatory]

Primary blame goes to the Bush admin for fighting a war whatsoever. Turns out having an emotional response to a terrrorist attack isn’t a good grand strategy. Going to Iraq on top of that was inane. If you don’t have goals and a realistic exit strategy, you don’t get to go to war.

The other thing that we have to realize is that we, as a nation, can’t just “fix” the world to be pro-US. But over 70 years of propaganda in US education during the Cold War teaching American Exceptionalism and 30 years of being the only superpower - something that is extremely rare in all of human civilization - is going to be hard to come to terms with. The future is not one of American unquestioned superiority. We’re going to have to find our place in a world that equalizes, and it’s gonna suck. Because I can tell you very few people on any political side have really embraced that reality.

And let’s be real, both Obama and Trump were handed a hot bag of shit. Obama tried to just leave and ISIS happened. Trump was faced with largely the same problems and it’s a lose-lose.

Now imagine that China invades Taiwan in 1-5 years. Do we go? Why? It sure as hell shouldn’t be because it feels right.

Add Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Crimea onto Vietnam as big L’s for the US. We need to do some serious soul searching in the coming years. We need a better strategy than going by feel - it’s not working so good.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Negatory

[jrizzell]

Bull. We could have won if we tried. We would have to have killed a lot more people. We decided it was more important to be seen as the good guy than to win.
If you're not willing to do what it takes to win a war, which is to kill pretty much the entire population that is fighting you or supporting the enemy, do not go to war.
War is hell and can never be pretty no matter how many over-educated idiots in charge think it can be. They valued the lives of random Afghans and the enemy over the lives of their own troops.
 

This right here is why we choose to stay in places we shouldn’t be in…”If only we killed more military aged men”, then we would have turned the tide to support America…
Every drone strike that killed innocent civilians, created 10 new enemies, it was never going to end like we choose.

We went to Afghanistan to avenge 9/11 and got stuck in nation building, all while we got sidetracked in WMD Iraq war.

It’s a massive shit sandwich with no good outcomes, unless we we’re willing to be a indefinite occupier.

[HeloDude]

6 minutes ago, Negatory said:

And let’s be real, both Obama and Trump were handed a hot bag of shit. Obama tried to just leave and ISIS happened.

Be careful, you’re letting your bias show by giving Obama a pass.  He owns quite a bit of the mess that occurred during his administration.

“President-elect Barack Obama says that Afghanistan is "the right war." "It's time to heed the call from General [David] McKiernan and others for more troops," Obama said in late October, referring to the US commander in Afghanistan. "That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan."

Obama increased troop levels and the most amount of troops ever in the country was under Obama…and the most amount of troops being killed was under Obama’s leadership as well.  
 

Bush F’d up quite a bit wrt foreign policy and Obama made his own foreign policy mistakes for most of his presidency.  
 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamas-afghan-dilemma/

[Negatory]

14 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

Be careful, you’re letting your bias show by giving Obama a pass.  He owns quite a bit of the mess that occurred during his administration.

“President-elect Barack Obama says that Afghanistan is "the right war." "It's time to heed the call from General [David] McKiernan and others for more troops," Obama said in late October, referring to the US commander in Afghanistan. "That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan."

Obama increased troop levels and the most amount of troops ever in the country was under Obama…and the most amount of troops being killed was under Obama’s leadership as well.  
 

Bush F’d up quite a bit wrt foreign policy and Obama made his own foreign policy mistakes for most of his presidency.  
 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamas-afghan-dilemma/

I’m comfortable with my worldview. Obama actually withdrew from Iraq, even with almost unilateral republican opposition in case you don’t remember.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/21/obama-us-troops-withdrawal-iraq

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/gop-presidential-field-unified-in-opposition-to-iraq-withdrawal/2011/10/21/gIQAp03o4L_story.html

I don’t actually fault him as much as you do, either, when it comes to the troop buildup. Especially when the whole military and Congress said the only option we had to end things was one more plus up or offensive.

Edit: this is why I largely don’t blame Trump at all, either, for how the Middle East went during his presidency.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Negatory

[HeloDude]

5 minutes ago, Negatory said:

I’m comfortable with my worldview. Obama actually withdrew from Iraq, even with almost unilateral republican opposition in case you don’t remember.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/21/obama-us-troops-withdrawal-iraq

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/gop-presidential-field-unified-in-opposition-to-iraq-withdrawal/2011/10/21/gIQAp03o4L_story.html

I don’t actually fault him as much as you do, either, when it comes to the troop buildup. Especially when the whole military and Congress said the only option we had to end things was one more plus up or offensive.

Edit: this is why I largely don’t blame Trump at all, either, for how the Middle East went during his presidency.

Of course you don’t…

Denial…it’s not just a river in Egypt.

[DirkDiggler]

Maybe us military folks on this forum should have the SA to hold of on the blame/pointing fingers game that all these worthless suits and talking heads in Washington are engaging in while our brothers and sisters are still in harms way in that shithole of a country.

Edited August 15, 2021 by DirkDiggler

[Negatory]

19 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

Of course you don’t…

Denial…it’s not just a river in Egypt.

Address your point if you have one. Your response which only added Obama to my Bush opinion and conveniently not bringing up anything about Trump shows your bias.

I also will contend that Republican leaning bias is worse in this specific issue, as numerous polls have shown that republicans who opposed action in the Middle East under Obama actually supported it under Trump. Democrats - relatively unchanged.

I have dozens of these polls if you’d really like to go down this route. Go with bias.

[pbar]

8 minutes ago, RedEye1911 said:

No, you misunderstood me. Kill pretty much all of them. Civilians that are not actively fighting the Taliban or other enemies are valid targets. Hearts and minds does not work. Kill every single one of your enemies. Kill their families. Make the thought of going against America a nightmare. That is how you win a war.

Kill your enemies and leave. Never occupy. There was never anything to gain in Afghanistan.

If that is too ugly for you, do not start the war.

Yep, only Ghenghis Khan subdued Afghanistan and he did that with mass slaughter.  That isn't an option in this day and age and it would ultimately be counterproductive.  Afghanistan should have just been a series of raids to get OBL and the Taliban elite, not boots on the ground.  

[Negatory]

10 minutes ago, DirkDiggler said:

Maybe us military folks on this forum should have the SA to hold of on the blame/pointing fingers game that all these worthless suits and talking heads in Washington are engaging in while our brothers and sisters are still in harms way in that shithole of a country.

I get the sentiment, but not ever asking questions just because I am deployed to Afghanistan and you shouldn’t be disrespectful to me isn’t productive for the nation.

See why it was seen as unpatriotic to even question the Iraq war in 2003.