[EnergyUnlimited]

But Biden reportedly IGNORED the advice of all those "good advisors". For instance Biden was advised not do the US withdrawal in the middle of the Taliban "fighting season" when they were all in the field and move quickly. Biden was advised not to stop paying the contractors who were essential to keeping the Afghan air force flying. Etc. etc. etc.

But Biden overruled everyone advising him and insisted on his own disastrous plan and his own disastrous timetable.

For what it know it was Trump who was negotiating in Doha conditions of withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and agreed timeline was indicating 11th Sep. 21 as a final pull out date.
This was implying pull out during Taliban fighting season.

My impression about this disaster is a bit different - Americans were tricked to believe that Afghan government forces will fight.
But apparently they have just shaken hands with Talibs and surrendered/merged.

So where were your intelligence services?
Why your command was not aware of such possibility?

Really it would be best for all if Biden would just resign now.

The man is a disaster and a disgrace. IMHO Biden should resign or he should be impeached or be removed from office due to his obvious cognitive decline.

Do you sincerely believe that Kamala Harris will do any better job?
She is a disaster in waiting, even more so than Biden.

IMHO major problems of Americans is that they got so brainwashed by progressivism, antagonized by racial divisions and damaged by decadence and entitlement culture that selecting competent leadership is no longer possible there.

Your political class is very comparable to Soviet gerontocracy from late Brezhnev onwards.
BTW, by age they are at average probably older than Soviet apparatchiks of 1980-thies so it is not strange that they lose a touch with reality.

[Newfie]

Air Force Times piece about logistics.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your ... n-mission/

[ROCKMAN]

Not difficult to understand how quickly T took over the city IMHO: there has been tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) living there for years. The T is not a nation or even a uniformed military: they are civilians with likeminded attitude of how people should conduct their daily lives. Some did take up arms to try to unforce those beliefs. Nut others did not. Even those that weren't strong backers of that extreme belief had no2 trouble seeing the future: you joined the "party" or became a enemy of the new power base. And that was the same option the govt military forces faced. Many of whom may have had the same beliefs. Yes: our military probably trained many of the current T force. Remember that country is similar to Texas in one way: everyone is armed.... 12 year old kids, granddads, etc. LOL

Same situation in Vietnam when we pulled out. Very old joke: how do you tell he difference between a VC and a civilian? One is smiling at and the other is shooting at you....at that moment.

[dissident]

Good argument to stop the "humanitarian" "nation building". Ironic that in the name of democracy we get propping up of unpopular and rotten regimes that fold like wet toilet paper without direct military support.

[Plantagenet]

So where were your intelligence services?
Why your command was not aware of such possibility?

Actually, Biden was warned by the military and the US intelligence services that his plan was really really stupid. But Biden is a stupid, senile man and he didn't listen to his own advisors.

Your political class is very comparable to Soviet gerontocracy from late Brezhnev onwards.
BTW, by age they are at average probably older than Soviet apparatchiks of 1980-ies so it is not strange that they lose a touch with reality.

You've got a valid point.

Biden is most likely older then Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders when they drove the USSR to destruction, and Biden has additional handicaps of not being very smart to begin with and losing more of his wit every day due to senility and dementia.

With any luck Biden will stay in hiding at Camp David, and just let his advisors run things from here on out.



Cheers!

[theluckycountry]

Trump Trump Trump; Biden Biden Biden

It's just a disinformation show to keep everyone confused about the real world of corporations and profits. They knew well in advance that the taliban was going to take over, the midnight desertion of Bragam AB proves that. US agents were probably in negotiations with the leaders well before, to ensure a "peaceful" handover as we have seen. 20 years of profits for the industrial military complex and 20 years and trillions of dollars added to the US debt.

Needed debt by the way. Without that growth of debt the US economy would have collapsed. Some it it was siphoned off to pay interest on the old debt, very important! And then there was the taxes collected from those profiting from the war. A win win really. I don't know what the pharmaceutical corporation's play in all of this was but Afghanistan is the world's largest grower of opium and opium is the basis for the morphine industry. The invasion in 2001 about coincides with the beginning of the opioid epidemic in the US BTW...

There is very little in the news about where all that opium went other than headlines about the illegal drug trade, but since that is the only resource the dump has I know it was a major factor in the invasion. It may be the banks? Certainly the world's banks would lose big time if the illegal drug trade was stamped out, they make untold profits shuffling all that cash around the planet. Whatever the mix of motives for occupying Afghanistan were you can be assured it had nothing to do with freedom and democracy as the talking head Presidents claim. They are just apparatchiks of the corporations they serve. Swamp-rats as trump said, and he is one too.

[careinke]

Regardless of how well the withdrawl is being executed, I'm extremely happy we are FINALLY getting the F#CK out of there. We already have and are going to be having many more immediate challenges in the near future.

PEACE

[JuanP]

Regardless of how well the withdrawl is being executed, I'm extremely happy we are FINALLY getting the F#CK out of there. We already have and are going to be having many more immediate challenges in the near future.

PEACE

Hear! Hear!

[Plantagenet]

Trump Trump Trump; Biden Biden Biden

Why the confusion?

Biden is currently the president. He's to blame for bungling the US withdrawal from Aghanistan.

For instance, Joe Biden signed off on giving away the super-secure Bagram Air Force Base on July 1st.

It really woud've been a lot smarter to hang on to Bagram until the end of the withdrawal process. If Biden had a brain the US would be processing people through Bagram Air Force Base right now, instead of being trapped in the chaos at Kabul City airport.

If/When Joe Biden is impeached for his inept handling of this fiasco, Biden's idiotic decision to give up Bagram Air Force base will be one of the items he'll be charged with.


Biden-the-old-fool abandoned Bagram AFB on July 1, and just six weeks later US forces are struggling to make do in the chaos of Kabul Airport. Biden really#$%$# =ed up this time.

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

It's like Biden said, there is no compelling reason for the US to be in Afghanistan. The US military went in to either stop or capture Bin Laden and any terrorist endeavors associated with him. The Taliban "harbored" Bin Laden. I guess that means that it is ok to misconstrue the situation, and stay in Afghanistan for 20 years. It is ok to use the violation of the Taliban of conspiracy to commit terrorism to stay, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a swipe at trying to topple the easy to strike target in retaliation rather than the hard to strike but much more pertinent target.

As far as nation building goes, what sort of nation building could take place under those circumstances? I think it is obvious that you won't get the all out kind. That's not PC. Since you need the all out kind, because something needs to change about the way the people think, leaving at any time is equal to leaving at the same time. It doesn't matter when they left. What you see happening would have happened then too. All of those people should have gambled differently, it seems. It is gambling, since they based their lives upon an American promise that anybody should be able to see was based upon a dangling premise whose life line was in danger of snapping at any point. The absence of any real mandate to be there was glaring.

[Tanada]

It's like Biden said, there is no compelling reason for the US to be in Afghanistan. The US military went in to either stop or capture Bin Laden and any terrorist endeavors associated with him. The Taliban "harbored" Bin Laden. I guess that means that it is ok to misconstrue the situation, and stay in Afghanistan for 20 years. It is ok to use the violation of the Taliban of conspiracy to commit terrorism to stay, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a swipe at trying to topple the easy to strike target in retaliation rather than the hard to strike but much more pertinent target.

As far as nation building goes, what sort of nation building could take place under those circumstances? I think it is obvious that you won't get the all out kind. That's not PC. Since you need the all out kind, because something needs to change about the way the people think, leaving at any time is equal to leaving at the same time. It doesn't matter when they left. What you see happening would have happened then too. All of those people should have gambled differently, it seems. It is gambling, since they based their lives upon an American promise that anybody should be able to see was based upon a dangling premise whose life line was in danger of snapping at any point. The absence of any real mandate to be there was glaring.

IMO the whole concept of "nation building" is a losing proposition. Somehow we spend blood and treasure "nation building" but the pest holes we "build" turn back into pest holes ASAP once our government decides they have wasted enough blood and treasure on someone pet project.

Nicaragua. Venezuela. Haiti. South Vietnam. Somalia. AT different times under different presidents of all parties these places and more have been invaded and/or co-opted by the USA and look at what happened the moment we left. Chaos came back amplified by resentment for our interventionist policies. Most of them eventually became stable in some sense of the term stable but none of them closely resemble what our politicians claimed they were making them into. Afghanistan is just the most recent screw up, it is hardly in a class all its own.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

My belief is that it is something the population has to mature into.

If it does not come from within it won’t stick.

[Plantagenet]

It's like Biden said, there is no compelling reason for the US to be in Afghanistan.

No one disagrees with that. Trump and Biden and everyone else all across the political spectrum all support a US withdrawal.

The problem here is that Biden BUNGLED the withdrawal.

In fact, rather than completing a peaceful and orderly withdrawal Biden has bungled things so bad that he has had to send thousands of US Troops BACK INTO AFGHANISTAN to try to effect a rescue of thousands of stranded Americans. And all those people are stranded because Biden misjudged the situation and bungled things.

It doesn't matter when they left. What you see happening would have happened then too.

Obviously it does matter when the US pulled out and it does matter how the pullout is done.

Just imagine if Joe Biden had been smart enough to keep Bagram Air Force base and run the withdrawal through there. Imagine if Biden had done it slowly, so Americans were slowly and carefully removed over a period of months rather then suddenly abandoned and forced to scurry to get out in 10 days, and the Afghan Army wasn't panicked into collapsing. At Bagram you'd have a well fortified and protected place with multiple airstrips where the US could control who entered and how many planes are involved, instead of the chaos at the Kabul airport, the lack of security, and the danger of having US troops rubbing against Taliban fighters right in Kabul.

Cheers!

[Pops]

The reason we've been there 20 years is on the front pages of every paper in the country. Politically it's better to lie about "winning" than admit it's a fools errand and get out.

[Plantagenet]

Politically it's better to lie about "winning" than admit it's a fools errand and get out.

Its a fools errand to pull out the military first and then try to evacuate civilians.

I guess Biden thought everyone was just going to waltz down and get on commercial flights.

What an utter moron Biden is.

And now Biden is sending THOUSANDS of US troops BACK INTO Afghanistan.

Biden screwed up big time.

Let just hope things don't get worse.....By giving away Bagram Air Force Base Biden has created this situation where all those US troops he is sending into Afghanistan are squeezed into an indefensible space at Kabul Airport.

Lets hope Biden doesn't screw up again and the evacuation works out OK.

Cheers!

[vtsnowedin]

It looks like when it is all said and done we will have lost another thousand or so US soldiers and the Afghan allies to us will have lost 30,000 dead and 200,000 Afghan women and girls will have been raped and sold into slavery.
But "America is back". " Here is the deal!"

[Newfie]

CNN with an European take. Thought provoking.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/20/europe/e ... index.html

Biden's decision and lack of contrition has been criticized for many reasons. But perhaps the least palatable aspect of it is that America, bluntly, has the luxury of being able to leave in a way Europe -- and other regional neighbors -- cannot.

[theluckycountry]

Let's simplify things.
Afghanistan is a sovereign nation, that was invaded and occupied by US forces in a blatant act or war. After using the nation for their own profit for 20 years they have withdrawn. My guess is they will invade Somalia next.

[Plantagenet]

Let's simplify things.
Afghanistan is a sovereign nation, that was invaded and occupied by US forces in a blatant act or war.

Lets simply things.

The Taliban in Afghanistan connived with al Qaida to attack the US 20 years ago by hijacking airplanes and flying them into the World Trade Center Buildings and the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane was probably intended to hit the Capital Building but heroic passengers fought the hijackers and the plane came down in Pennsylvania.

When al Qaida in Afghanistan attacked the US on 9/11/01 it was a blatant act of war. The US responded to the Al Qaida attack by toppling the Taliban, mostly destroying Al Qaida in Afghanistan, and killing Osama Bin Laden after he fled to Pakistan.

After using the nation for their own profit for 20 years they have withdrawn.

You really don't know the facts about this, do you?

The US never "profited" from their 20 years of engagement in Afghanistan.

In fact, the US spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, much of it on a failed effort to improve the infrastructure and reform the political and social make-up of Afghanistan .


The war in Afghanistan started after the US traced the terror attacks of 9/11/01 back to their source in Afghanistan.

Cheers!

[JuanP]

"Ultimate insult? Taliban fighters mock iconic Iwo Jima flag raising photo, posing in seized US military gear"
https://www.rt.com/usa/532730-taliban-mocks-iwo-jima/

"According to some estimates, the Taliban may now be in possession of more than 2,000 US Humvees and other armored vehicles, and as many as 40 aircraft – including Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and military drones. It may also take advantage of the vast arsenal of 600,000 M16 assault rifles and other infantry weapons, some 162,000 pieces of communications equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles, gifted by the Pentagon to Afghan forces since 2003."