US troops are going back to help with the withdrawal. The UK Parachute Regiment are going back. (My old mob) Some awful planning and underestimation of the Taliban. The UK pulled their interpreters out a while ago. The US are embroiled in paperwork. Even after some have been beheaded. Meanwhile as the Taliban sweep forward unhindered by Afghan forces. the biggest deterrent, the one that theTaliban has no answer to, is the US Air-force. Where is it.? It’s not looking good at all.
please think/say a prayer/acknowledge what our soldiers, gov't employees, workers, afghan allies, and those in between are going through yr post @usscouse made me go back and listen to an NPR series from 2010 on the USS Kirk and it's actions on the final days of Vietnam part 1, part 2, part 3
Not like anyone could see this coming, the moment the US would leave the country. Feels like such a waste of energy, resources, time and lives (among other things). Everything that was done in the last 18-19yrs, just poof about to go up in smoke-all for nothing...
On the bright side, all the Maga Hats who were bellowing about Trump ending endless wars will be sure to respect and applaud Biden for ending this endless war.
What has he ended exactly? Not a "MAGA hat", but I sure would love it if he stuck to his guns on this, but we know that's not likely.
What exactly are you thinking he would do at this point? The country is almost entirely under Taliban control already, he’d have zero international support for diving back in and outside of a few grumblers the american populace has no stomach for another war.
Biden is facing the obvious / inevitable. Afghanistan is ungovernable. Britain tried and failed to control it, Russia tried, now you guys. there is no option for western nations except to step away. yes it is a horrendous thing to contemplate but just wtf is the alternative? unless you guys want to go 100% all-in by flooding it with god-knows-how-many troops and proclaiming it as your 51st state that is. Canada and the UK are also getting their people out asap and closing down embassies.
Canada to accept 20,000 afghans refugees. Reuters: "Canada to accept 20000 vulnerable Afghans such as women leaders, human rights workers" https://t.co/vbwzCt1y3r— Evan Kohlmann (@IntelTweet) August 13, 2021 This whole cluster******** makes me sick to my stomach. Can't see any good option at this point. There is enough blame to go around too, from Bush to Obama, TFG, Biden and the successive Afghan presidents & leaders (as corrupt and incompetent as ones can be). There "peace" agreement pushed by this clown Pompeo last year was a complete disgrace. I feel so sad for women, minorities and others regular afghan who will have to live under the thumb of taliban regime. Ahmad Shah Massoud must be turning in his grave.
Much the same for the rest of NATO forces there. It’s a mess that isn’t going to get better any time soon. IM (not so) HO. It could have been handled better. A lot of it was trusting the Taliban comply with the withdrawal agreement. Yeah! Good plan. like I said earlier one advantage if the Taliban forces their hand, is air superiority over thin skinned vehicles. Give them a line to stop at, or use it. Can only imagine what the Afghanis are feeling right now. These are not nice people moving in.
yeah but those cave-man bastards would just load up their vehicles with kids hanging off the outside and breeze through.
Paul Wolfowitz was just on the radio. He seems to think that nation building is the solution to this problem
Now there’s an idea. And it can be the model for expanding US values and relationships through the region. By gum, I wish I’d come up with this idea, say twenty years ago.
I am puzzled. I thought that posters were in almost complete agreement that the U.S. should cease its Middle Eastern military involvement, from the lefties through the libertarians. Apparently I was wrong ...
I'm fine with us leaving. I'm just really bummed about the millions of people who "collaborated" with the US and the millions more who have vaginas. If I was God, I'd set up a virtual bridge to get every single person who doesn't want to live in a fundamentalist theocracy out of the country before the beheadings begin in earnest. By the way, it's a constant source of anger for me that the word is "be-heading" which implies that someone got a head and not "de-heading" as it obviously should be.
Some people bitched that we were there, some of the same people will bitch that we betrayed the people of Afghanistan by leaving. Well 20 years didn't help the afghan people figure out how to run their government, more time would do nothing. Maybe if the islamist concentrate in just fvcking their own citizens and not outside people they will be left alone to run their version of Islamic paradise. I have seen some European tweets worry about refuges, but is not like they are willing or able to do anything about it. Europe in many ways is more fvcked up than we are.
I cannot think of to what you may be referring as precedent! On the other hand, now that it's the Right Person doing it, maybe those people feel backed into a corner and they will try to ride this out.
The problem really goes back to Bush. This was all about the war and nothing about the peace. I remember back then many questions about how the opium trade would be reduced or eliminated, and how working with the warlords was the solution (give them a ton of cash to burn their product). Seriously, that was the answer? No, once the warlords gained legitimacy, that screwed any serious legitimacy the US could ever try and gain. Once that was the case, no matter what we did, nothing stable would come of it. And nation building will not solve the problem. Our version of what is right and true is culturally different than theirs. It will fail.