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Thoughts of an Afghan vet
DerekJohnson
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Posted by @LoneStarDawg in a different thread. This is from the TexAg board.
Thoughts of an Afghan vet
4,141 Views | 64 Replies | Last: 7 sec ago by CDUB98
aalan948:05aAG
I served in both Iraq (2007-8) and Afghanistan (2017-18). My position in the latter was as a strategic-level position, so I had a view of every aspect of the country, from the fight against narcotics to training of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan tactics, techniques and procedures, to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, basically everything.
Let me provide some context and thoughts about what I'm seeing today. First of all, as someone who gave a lot of my time, blood, sweat and tears to that country and its people, and served alongside a lot of other people like me, it sickens my stomach to see what we have done. I have never been more angry with my government in my life.
What it means:
The collapse of the Afghan government is a direct result of US policy. We betrayed them, and pulled the rug out from under them. We told them for years we had their back and we pulled out so fast they couldn't even shift their troops to cover their flanks.
The current president's action is the most incompetent military disaster in U.S. history since James Buchanan abandoned military supplies to the confederacy, thus ensuring the Civil War would break out several months later.
Trump vs. Biden
Trump, of course, made the decision, so he absolutely shares some of the blame. But there's a huge caveat to that. Trump set forth a conditions-based withdrawal with a timeline that could shift based on those conditions. After negotiations with the Taliban, who promised to stop attacking the Afghan government, we started to implement that. The Taliban began violating that agreement. When Biden took over, he did not embrace the Trump policy of conditions-testing, but kept to the timeline even advanced it blindly.
Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, call the ****ing Pakistanis who fund the Taliban and hold their ****ing feet to the fire, all that ****, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump. Now, if he cares more about promoting transgender access to high school girl's showers than the lives of millions of people and saving the world from terrorism, THAT IS ON HIM.
Why the ANA collapsed.
A lot of pundits are saying that the Afghan military should have put up a fight. We pulled out from covering their backs so fast, they haven't even been able to train to fight without our intelligence or airpower. They literally picked up a phone one day and could get a bomb on the enemy and picked it up the next day and it rang and was never answered.
THAT is what a unilateral, non conditions-based withdrawal, advanced timeline looks like on the ground.
The Afghan fight is a tough one, and training an Afghan army that can successfully defend its country is not as easy as you think. First of all, you're dealing with a population that is 70 percent illiterate. How many Afghans can truly understand the GPS coordinates they call in for an airstrike if they don't even understand how the solar system works. Or that there IS a solar system. That's a bit of a trite answer but therein lies the truth.
My buddy who tried to teach them to shoot said they would miss and then say, "If Allah had wanted me to hit, I would have hit."
You couldn't REALLY train them until you could at least bring them into the 19th Century at least, if not the 20th or 21st. But you could train them enough to pick up a phone and say, "Commander, tell the American bird in the sky to drop a bomb on this or that hill."
And of course, the only reason they knew it was that hill or that road, or that village, is because we gave them the intelligence they needed. This is an intelligence architecture that is 100 years in the making, with traditions that go back to the Battle of Midway. You certainly couldn't just teach that to an illiterate peasant and let him take over that role.
But, you might say, the Taliban fights fine without technology and intel, etc. First of all, bull***** There is this little country with a green flag and a crescent on it that hates India that is providing them all the intelligence and logisitical support they need. Get over this myth that the Taliban is just a bunch of rednecks on motorcycles. At the end of the day, they're backed by a nuclear-weapon-owning country.
Secondly, there is a huge difference between offense and defense. If you defend a checkpoint, you have to be at the checkpoint. If you're attacking, you can pick any one of 10 checkpoints to hit. Also, if you're the Taliban, you can get the countryside to "support" you by all sorts of murder, intimidation, brutality, torture, etc. that the government cannot do. Keep in mind that the 1997-2003 Taliban burned the opium crops and cut the hands off opium farmers. They were defeated. The 2012-2021 Taliban allows, encourages, participates in and profits from opium production. That is also a HUGE reason why they are more able to move around the countryside. Having that mobility gives them great advantages over the ANA.
You sit in your comfy chair and say, well, if the Afghan Army were real men, they'd stand and fight. Bull***** When you have the power of American intel and American airstrikes, and you can wipe out any Taliban attack, you stand and fight. When that is pulled out from under you, not just over time, but in a heartbeat, you don't stand and fight.
When the Taliban calls on the radio, reads off your roster from a captured document and talks about how they're going to kill your son and rape your daughter in X village, you don't stand and fight. When they cut the road and the ANA doesn't have food or medivac, they can't stand and fight. Wars are won by logistics, not bullets.
The army can't stand in little Alamos all over the country. Without airstrikes, ambulances, or even resupply of food, that all breaks down. Ghani's government was weak and even if he wanted to stand, they simply didn't have the capacity to respond quickly enough to this.
It's really complex, and of course there's so much **** I know and can't tell you, but suffice it to say, with us having their backs, the ANA would do it. Without us, they couldn't.
Policy has consequences.
There are people who are my friends, who have been condemned, possibly to death, by Joe Biden and his reckless pullout of Afghanistan. Just to give you one example: Mohammed, a rug merchant who sold his wares on our base. I became good friends with him after I bought a rug or two. I only paid $20 for the first one, but that was enough to send his daughter to school for a year. I bought a few more. He used to light up when I walked in. "You are my special friend." Yeah, all the guys say that, but Mohammed was sincere. We talked about our families and after I told him I had a young son, he said, "a son is the greatest gift a man can ever have." He gave me an elaborate, hand-sewn Afghan tribal hat with geometric patterns, etc. for my son. I tried to pay him and he refused. I said, well, can I get your son a cowboy hat when I'm back in Texas? He said no, he couldn't wear it, the Taliban would kill him. So I gave him a package of pecans from our family farm instead. He could eat those in secret.
The media frames this as just a few translators or specialists. No, the Taliban historically could kill ANYBODY who worked with the United States in any capacity, whether they swept the floors of my barracks, cooked the meals I ate, worked on a US base as a barber or a rug merchant, it doesn't matter.
The Taliban have been taking their names down for years, and no doubt these people are all on lists already. Ignore the Taliban spokesmen who say that they will not conduct reprisals. His statements are as false as the Iraqi information minister. A wave of slaughter will engulf the nation. These good people, their families, and thousands of others across that nation, will be endangered.
Thoughts of an Afghan vet
4,141 Views | 64 Replies | Last: 7 sec ago by CDUB98
aalan948:05aAG
I served in both Iraq (2007-8) and Afghanistan (2017-18). My position in the latter was as a strategic-level position, so I had a view of every aspect of the country, from the fight against narcotics to training of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan tactics, techniques and procedures, to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, basically everything.
Let me provide some context and thoughts about what I'm seeing today. First of all, as someone who gave a lot of my time, blood, sweat and tears to that country and its people, and served alongside a lot of other people like me, it sickens my stomach to see what we have done. I have never been more angry with my government in my life.
What it means:
The collapse of the Afghan government is a direct result of US policy. We betrayed them, and pulled the rug out from under them. We told them for years we had their back and we pulled out so fast they couldn't even shift their troops to cover their flanks.
The current president's action is the most incompetent military disaster in U.S. history since James Buchanan abandoned military supplies to the confederacy, thus ensuring the Civil War would break out several months later.
Trump vs. Biden
Trump, of course, made the decision, so he absolutely shares some of the blame. But there's a huge caveat to that. Trump set forth a conditions-based withdrawal with a timeline that could shift based on those conditions. After negotiations with the Taliban, who promised to stop attacking the Afghan government, we started to implement that. The Taliban began violating that agreement. When Biden took over, he did not embrace the Trump policy of conditions-testing, but kept to the timeline even advanced it blindly.
Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, call the ****ing Pakistanis who fund the Taliban and hold their ****ing feet to the fire, all that ****, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump. Now, if he cares more about promoting transgender access to high school girl's showers than the lives of millions of people and saving the world from terrorism, THAT IS ON HIM.
Why the ANA collapsed.
A lot of pundits are saying that the Afghan military should have put up a fight. We pulled out from covering their backs so fast, they haven't even been able to train to fight without our intelligence or airpower. They literally picked up a phone one day and could get a bomb on the enemy and picked it up the next day and it rang and was never answered.
THAT is what a unilateral, non conditions-based withdrawal, advanced timeline looks like on the ground.
The Afghan fight is a tough one, and training an Afghan army that can successfully defend its country is not as easy as you think. First of all, you're dealing with a population that is 70 percent illiterate. How many Afghans can truly understand the GPS coordinates they call in for an airstrike if they don't even understand how the solar system works. Or that there IS a solar system. That's a bit of a trite answer but therein lies the truth.
My buddy who tried to teach them to shoot said they would miss and then say, "If Allah had wanted me to hit, I would have hit."
You couldn't REALLY train them until you could at least bring them into the 19th Century at least, if not the 20th or 21st. But you could train them enough to pick up a phone and say, "Commander, tell the American bird in the sky to drop a bomb on this or that hill."
And of course, the only reason they knew it was that hill or that road, or that village, is because we gave them the intelligence they needed. This is an intelligence architecture that is 100 years in the making, with traditions that go back to the Battle of Midway. You certainly couldn't just teach that to an illiterate peasant and let him take over that role.
But, you might say, the Taliban fights fine without technology and intel, etc. First of all, bull***** There is this little country with a green flag and a crescent on it that hates India that is providing them all the intelligence and logisitical support they need. Get over this myth that the Taliban is just a bunch of rednecks on motorcycles. At the end of the day, they're backed by a nuclear-weapon-owning country.
Secondly, there is a huge difference between offense and defense. If you defend a checkpoint, you have to be at the checkpoint. If you're attacking, you can pick any one of 10 checkpoints to hit. Also, if you're the Taliban, you can get the countryside to "support" you by all sorts of murder, intimidation, brutality, torture, etc. that the government cannot do. Keep in mind that the 1997-2003 Taliban burned the opium crops and cut the hands off opium farmers. They were defeated. The 2012-2021 Taliban allows, encourages, participates in and profits from opium production. That is also a HUGE reason why they are more able to move around the countryside. Having that mobility gives them great advantages over the ANA.
You sit in your comfy chair and say, well, if the Afghan Army were real men, they'd stand and fight. Bull***** When you have the power of American intel and American airstrikes, and you can wipe out any Taliban attack, you stand and fight. When that is pulled out from under you, not just over time, but in a heartbeat, you don't stand and fight.
When the Taliban calls on the radio, reads off your roster from a captured document and talks about how they're going to kill your son and rape your daughter in X village, you don't stand and fight. When they cut the road and the ANA doesn't have food or medivac, they can't stand and fight. Wars are won by logistics, not bullets.
The army can't stand in little Alamos all over the country. Without airstrikes, ambulances, or even resupply of food, that all breaks down. Ghani's government was weak and even if he wanted to stand, they simply didn't have the capacity to respond quickly enough to this.
It's really complex, and of course there's so much **** I know and can't tell you, but suffice it to say, with us having their backs, the ANA would do it. Without us, they couldn't.
Policy has consequences.
There are people who are my friends, who have been condemned, possibly to death, by Joe Biden and his reckless pullout of Afghanistan. Just to give you one example: Mohammed, a rug merchant who sold his wares on our base. I became good friends with him after I bought a rug or two. I only paid $20 for the first one, but that was enough to send his daughter to school for a year. I bought a few more. He used to light up when I walked in. "You are my special friend." Yeah, all the guys say that, but Mohammed was sincere. We talked about our families and after I told him I had a young son, he said, "a son is the greatest gift a man can ever have." He gave me an elaborate, hand-sewn Afghan tribal hat with geometric patterns, etc. for my son. I tried to pay him and he refused. I said, well, can I get your son a cowboy hat when I'm back in Texas? He said no, he couldn't wear it, the Taliban would kill him. So I gave him a package of pecans from our family farm instead. He could eat those in secret.
The media frames this as just a few translators or specialists. No, the Taliban historically could kill ANYBODY who worked with the United States in any capacity, whether they swept the floors of my barracks, cooked the meals I ate, worked on a US base as a barber or a rug merchant, it doesn't matter.
The Taliban have been taking their names down for years, and no doubt these people are all on lists already. Ignore the Taliban spokesmen who say that they will not conduct reprisals. His statements are as false as the Iraqi information minister. A wave of slaughter will engulf the nation. These good people, their families, and thousands of others across that nation, will be endangered.
Comments
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"But we couldn't stay there forever"
For all of the isolationists, who were repeating the endless trope that Afghanistan was horribly bloody and expensive for America, and we couldn't sustain it forever...
We were successfully holding back the best-funded insurgency in the history of the world with 10,000 American and 10,000 NATO troops who weren't even doing actual fighting, they were just backing up the Afghans. 20,000 troops. That is it. That is 1/5 the seating capacity of Kyle Field.
In 2020, the US military lost a grand total of just 9 soldiers for the entire year, since our role was overwhelmingly support of the Afghan National Army. We lose more soldiers than that a month due to drunk driving. In terms of cost, it was less ($45 billion) than the budget of the US federal Department of Education, which doesn't have a single school or directly educate a single child.
$45 billion and 20,000 troops was a damn small price to pay to keep our boot on the neck of the snake. Keep in mind, that's FEWER than the 28,000 troops we keep in South Korea SEVENTY YEARS after that war ended.
Broader implications.
If anyone who thinks this is just about Afghanistan, think again. NO NATION IN THE WORLD would consider allying with the United States now after we betrayed the Afghan people. So you can put the Philippines in the Chinese orbit already, ditto Indonesia. Putin can probably absorb more former Soviet states into his.
Terrorism
THERE WILL BE ANOTHER 9/11.
Resign yourself to it. Afghanistan was home to 29 of the 32 Violent Extremist Organizations worldwide. There are thousands of Muslim refugees all throughout Europe, all of whom have families back in the old country who are subject to manipulation. Don't buy this "oh well, they're isolated" bull****, because as long as the Pakistani string pullers care, they will not be.
So just accept the fact that Americans will die as a result. And when it comes down to it, it will be a hell of a lot more than 9 per year.
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Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
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Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, call the ****ing Pakistanis who fund the Taliban and hold their ****ing feet to the fire, all that ****, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump. Now, if he cares more about promoting transgender access to high school girl's showers than the lives of millions of people and saving the world from terrorism, THAT IS ON HIM.
I also didn't realize how few troops were holding off the mighty Taliban.
Fighting a war for someone else is like welfare. As long as you are there fighting its fine. When you leave they still don't know how to fight for themselves. Take away welfare and people starve. We didn't teach them to fish we fished for them
Afghanis hate the Taliban but hate the foreign invader more. The Coalition is the guys in contact and shit goes wrong and civilians die that shouldn't have the the hatred grows. Happens every tim -
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Durka Durkastan is back! BidenBros cheer! They can't wait for all the conservative Afghans to be executed in gruesome ways!
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Biden recklessly advanced the timeline for withdrawal from May, 2021 to August, 2021?
That passes for analysis here. -
This tripe is what passes for rebuttal when the guy you support is now directly responsible for getting our allies in Afghanistan murdered?HHusky said:Biden recklessly advanced the timeline for withdrawal from May, 2021 to August, 2021?
That passes for analysis here.
Cool, I guess. -
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I don't know about you but I like it when the people who might burn me alive or stone me to death are also polite.LoneStarDawg said: -
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess. -
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
They don't appear to have picked any plan other than just leaving. Why leave Bagram in July, when obviously right now it sure would be nice to have a secure airfield? Why weren't we much further along in our plans to get our people out? Our entire leadership class, including Biden, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA brass should be forced to resign. This was always going to end badly but there was no reason for it to end this way other than complete incompetence and indifference.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
I'm glad you're coming to this conclusion but how couldn't you see this coming for the past 4.5 years? These same people (mostly Bush and Obama loyalists) lied non stop and tried to set Trump up 24/7/365. The media ran cover for them all.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
Speaking of cognitively impaired. How phucking oblivious do you have to be not to realize that there are no competent dem advisors. Have you listened to the Joint Chief of Staff and the US Secretary of State? They aren't leaders of men and women, they are leftard bureaucrats and more interested in open borders, global warming and LGBTQ issues. Projecting American power and promoting American interests aren't in the top issues in the Biden administration. These are the same advisors who were predicting World War III when Trump offed Soleimani. Just think that pre-dementia Biden advised AGAINST offing OBL. That's the type of competency that has surrounded the head incompetent. But you voted for the dementia patient that is bought and paid for by the chicoms.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
Yeah all CRT jokes and malarkey aside, I am genuinely concerned with what type of leadership we have in this country that could let this happen. I mean even if Biden does the dumbest shit possible and says "withdraw in a week" surely someone should have been saying "okay, keep the Marines on perimeter at the airfield, approve all visas in progress for Afghan nationals in the 'friends of America' queue, take them to Fort Bliss and we will sort it out later, continue an orderly evacuation around the clock under Marine guard with Air Force heavies going morning noon and night. Have Embassy staff destroying all sensitive documents and destroying what's left while the 82nd Airborne goes after our old weapons depots and destroys them (or drone strike it all)...." I mean whatever, that was just a stream of consciousness rough draft and I hit most of the high points.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again?
But almost none of that happened. It's like we just said "Hey time to go, turn off the lights behind you and hopefully this shit all works out." Mind boggling. -
I was never under any illusions about who is in the press and how anti-Trump the entire establishment is. None of this does anything to change my opinion about how utterly disastrous and incompetent the last admin was, albeit in completely different ways. You probably don't see it that way, and that's fine, we don't have to agree. Trump isn't POTUS, Biden is. And therefore he rightly gets all the blame for every fuck-up under his watch.RoadTrip said:
I'm glad you're coming to this conclusion but how couldn't you see this coming for the past 4.5 years? These same people (mostly Bush and Obama loyalists) lied non stop and tried to set Trump up 24/7/365. The media ran cover for them all.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
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Yeah, I'd be interested in a few examples as well. What has Biden handled more competently than Trump?WestlinnDuck said:You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
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Mean tweets were utterly disastrous and incompetent. Trump should just have let the dems and the MSM lie about him. Making them feel bad was a deal breaker for high character dudes like GRG and Snow.SFGbob said:
Yeah, I'd be interested in a few examples as well. What has Biden handled more competently than Trump?WestlinnDuck said:You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
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This is Obama freeing his mosselimb brothers.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess. -
Imagine voting for this.HHusky said:Biden recklessly advanced the timeline for withdrawal from May, 2021 to August, 2021?
That passes for analysis here.
Worse, imagine supporting and defending it. -
Update: I was right. This is exactly the kind of shit the military apparatus has been pulling for decades. Good thread from Greenwald, as well as Richard Hanania. Withdrawal was always going to be tainted by the generals. They were never interested in putting in place conditions that would allow for a seamless withdrawal.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
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Escalate? The generals never put plays that would win the game. But then neither did Bush or barry. Trump did know that the game was up and wanted to end the forever war.GreenRiverGatorz said:
Update: I was right. This is exactly the kind of shit the military apparatus has been pulling for decades. Good thread from Greenwald, as well as Richard Hanania. Withdrawal was always going to be tainted by the generals. They were never interested in putting in place conditions that would allow for a seamless withdrawal.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess. -
Mohammed the rug merchant was a fag
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I'm not sure that I completely agreeSwaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
Like he said, we have an almost 3x presence in South Korea ... so to me it's about how do we allocate resources.
Nobody wants to fuck with a strong US ... never have and never will.
The problem with all of this is that Biden has basically given a 3.5 year blank check to anybody around the world that wants to expand their reach, will laugh while doing so, and look at the US by saying "what are you going to do about it." China's already ramping up pressure on Hong Kong and Taiwan.
His last point is one that I've been asking my friends that have pushed back ... this idea that we couldn't be there for the long haul but also asking what's the price for avoiding another 9/11? All of the obvious things combined with the fact that we have literally no control of our Southern border is going to create a massive security issue. Who knows what form it will take going forward but anybody that doesn't think that we're at a far greater risk of terrorist activity than we were 2 weeks ago is fooling themselves. The fact that the current Administration thinks that the biggest threats are domestic based is staggeringly wrong. -
A fcking menTequilla said:
I'm not sure that I completely agreeSwaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
Like he said, we have an almost 3x presence in South Korea ... so to me it's about how do we allocate resources.
Nobody wants to fuck with a strong US ... never have and never will.
The problem with all of this is that Biden has basically given a 3.5 year blank check to anybody around the world that wants to expand their reach, will laugh while doing so, and look at the US by saying "what are you going to do about it." China's already ramping up pressure on Hong Kong and Taiwan.
His last point is one that I've been asking my friends that have pushed back ... this idea that we couldn't be there for the long haul but also asking what's the price for avoiding another 9/11? All of the obvious things combined with the fact that we have literally no control of our Southern border is going to create a massive security issue. Who knows what form it will take going forward but anybody that doesn't think that we're at a far greater risk of terrorist activity than we were 2 weeks ago is fooling themselves. The fact that the current Administration thinks that the biggest threats are domestic based is staggeringly wrong. -
I missed the “No more Wars” in his campaign. I mean it really wasn’t a campaign. It was him stammering in front of 6 people saying something about somebody.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
And popular opinion is that He,.. er,uh Susan and Valerie ignored the Chiefs and moved on their own.
And we needed to be there in the first place.
And edit to add: I happened to come across Bongino on the radios today. And He spent time there. And his main point above all was outside the Capitol, few considered themselves to be citizens of a country. Most that are fighting on either the Taliban or the other side. Only the Taliban and really Pakistan cared about a country. Those fighting them only care about their little slice of the world.
