Afganistan

[Wet Knight]

4 minutes ago, Pamperbum_uk said:

1: biden only did what has voters wanted him to.

2: how did the Afghans fold so easily, when they had an airforce. I can only assume they were full of Taliban sympethizers....

FEAR !

They are more than sympathetic, they are Taliban of old, who were leading a normal life and are much feared when they now appear with a gun to support a bunch of fighters that come to a town, because they know their local population.

[AwakenEvil]

58 minutes ago, Pamperbum_uk said:

1: biden only did what has voters wanted him to.

2: how did the Afghans fold so easily, when they had an airforce. I can only assume they were full of Taliban sympethizers....

1. I am doubtful all Biden voters wanted a stupid style withdrawal. It isn't simply Conservative Republicans Libertarian types in the armed forces... way to much money and lives and limbs lost to simply say that...

2. What do you expect... we abandoned them all to these horrible fate... the Taliban didn't gain ground from fighting. They understood without the United States to keep their terrorist activities in check they would target Afghans families destroying anyone that didn't join. It's why all sides of the political spectrum should be ashamed of this. We have 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans and host of other nations simply allowed this mess to happen... We the People should be angry as hell... families that lost everything cause of their sacrifice should be out in force demanding answers from our leaders.

[rusty pins]

We have to protect ourselves from terrorism, but there is a fine line to it.  We in the U.S. are one military with lots of resources, but we also shouldn't have to step into every country and take over as their protectors.  That would spread us too thin.  On the other hand, if those countries don't do anything to protect themselves, some terrorist country will storm right in and take over.  Can anyone say Kuwait?  We are in that catch 22 situation.  Either we step in and help, especially nations where we buy our oil from, or we do nothing and hope there isn't a take over and we lose our allies and oil along with anything else we get from them.  In this case, there have been 4 presidents while we have been in Afghanistan, two republicans and two democrats.  You know who will take the blame for this even though the previous president had made arrangements to be out by May.  Looking back, what we did was actually sensible in theory.  Even though we were there for 20 years and did push back the Taliban, rather than just take over the military we trained and taught that countries military to defend their own country.  That's the way it should be if we are going to step in and help.  What happened?  Those that we trained to defend their own country dropped their guns and quit.  Had they sucked it up and done their job, sure, some would probably be dead but at least they would have made a stand instead of turning and running.  The Taliban knew this was coming and had all the time in the world to make plans to storm the country and take over.  That, and the fact that the Afghanistan army didn't even try to fight is what got them where they are today.  I don't think anyone expected it to happen this fast, and it wouldn't have had their military fought like we trained them to.  We need to protect ourselves from terrorists but we can't place our people in countries all over the world to fight someone else's wars.  Likewise, we can't be Adolph Hitler either and take over all these countries ourselves as our own.

[AwakenEvil]

1 hour ago, rusty pins said:

We have to protect ourselves from terrorism, but there is a fine line to it.  We in the U.S. are one military with lots of resources, but we also shouldn't have to step into every country and take over as their protectors.  That would spread us too thin.  On the other hand, if those countries don't do anything to protect themselves, some terrorist country will storm right in and take over.  Can anyone say Kuwait?  We are in that catch 22 situation.  Either we step in and help, especially nations where we buy our oil from, or we do nothing and hope there isn't a take over and we lose our allies and oil along with anything else we get from them.  In this case, there have been 4 presidents while we have been in Afghanistan, two republicans and two democrats.  You know who will take the blame for this even though the previous president had made arrangements to be out by May.  Looking back, what we did was actually sensible in theory.  Even though we were there for 20 years and did push back the Taliban, rather than just take over the military we trained and taught that countries military to defend their own country.  That's the way it should be if we are going to step in and help.  What happened?  Those that we trained to defend their own country dropped their guns and quit.  Had they sucked it up and done their job, sure, some would probably be dead but at least they would have made a stand instead of turning and running.  The Taliban knew this was coming and had all the time in the world to make plans to storm the country and take over.  That, and the fact that the Afghanistan army didn't even try to fight is what got them where they are today.  I don't think anyone expected it to happen this fast, and it wouldn't have had their military fought like we trained them to.  We need to protect ourselves from terrorists but we can't place our people in countries all over the world to fight someone else's wars.  Likewise, we can't be Adolph Hitler either and take over all these countries ourselves as our own.

But if you look at every single major war we been in over the last 100 years we have a presence in those countries... Germany, Korea, and Japan to simply name a few.

[WBxx]

5 hours ago, Pamperbum_uk said:

1: biden only did what has voters wanted him to.

2: how did the Afghans fold so easily, when they had an airforce. I can only assume they were full of Taliban sympethizers....

1 - no way

[Evelyn Dellcerro]

I love all of you here and I read this and all I can think of is losing my husband back in 2012. I sit here crying and wonder to myself why ? I lost a good man that I loved and held for a quarter of a century and all I can ask or say is why. No words can really come to mind. Love you all...

[dlnoir]

Well I am no specialist as it comes to things like this, never the less I share a small fragment of my thoughts. The Taliban had a couple of things the USA and their allies didn’t have or had a shortage off, being time and will, both cost nothing but patience. They had the time to wait it all out and they had the will to do so. If you were to look back in history only a view countries whom conquered by another held on to it indefinitely. Maintaining a status like that takes billions and billions in cash and resources and numerous lives unfortunately. Given the fact that the Taliban took over control after the US and their allies retreated, is proof they still had some sort of control in every layer of the society and army.

[Firefly 35]

I think it's interesting how Biden has ambitious goals for building renewable energy infrastructure while at the same time wanting to pull troops out of a major oil producing country.  Obama's goals seemed to be the opposite.

[rusty pins]

Keep in mind that it was Donald Trump who made the pact to have the troops pulled out by May 2021.  Trump admin. did make deal with Taliban to withdraw | 10tv.com

[AwakenEvil]

16 minutes ago, rusty pins said:

Keep in mind that it was Donald Trump who made the pack to have the troops pulled out by May 2021.  Trump admin. did make deal with Taliban to withdraw | 10tv.com

You can't blame Trump for the execution under Bidens watch. Trump wanted them out and his advisors all said if he did this as Biden did this would be the result.

[rusty pins]

We will never know since Donald Trump lost the election and never had the chance to pull the troops out last May as he had planned.

[AwakenEvil]

25 minutes ago, rusty pins said:

We will never know since Donald Trump lost the election and never had the chance to pull the troops out last May as he had planned.

We can speculate till the cows come home but the reality is Biden screwed the pooch on this one.

[Elfy]

I'll be honest I don't think any US President from Bush Jr onwards have covered themselves in glory when it comes to these wars.

[DailyDi]

14 minutes ago, Elfy said:

I'll be honest I don't think any US President from Bush Jr onwards have covered themselves in glory when it comes to these wars.

Nope, been a fluster cuck from the get go. I am disappointed in Biden though, he should have gotten our citizens and those promised visas out before you pull the guys with the guns and tanks.

[AwakenEvil]

1 hour ago, DailyDi said:

Nope, been a fluster cuck from the get go. I am disappointed in Biden though, he should have gotten our citizens and those promised visas out before you pull the guys with the guns and tanks.

The whole idea of hunting down terrorists seemed to have gotten lost around 2003 I think and from there it became nation building which never works anywhere we tried it before.

[Babyqtboy]

On 8/16/2021 at 5:49 PM, DailyDi said:

I see your point, but the people there don't want an American-style democracy, so they don't fight for it.

Absolutely not true, I did 2 tours there with the Army and I can tell you for a fact that the people want American style democracy, the tribal leaders and the religious leaders don’t. It’s very hard to fight against tribal elders and religious leaders, especially when they hold the weapons and power. I agree we needed to withdraw but Biden wasn’t timely nor strategic about the withdraw, saying he didn’t think it would fall that fast. An indication that he hasn’t surrounded himself with the best military advisors because I could have told him it would have. Konduz fell within hours of the departure of the last American Soldiers back in 2015, which forced the Marines and Army to go back and recapture it

On 8/17/2021 at 3:05 PM, Pamperbum_uk said:

1: biden only did what has voters wanted him to.

2: how did the Afghans fold so easily, when they had an airforce. I can only assume they were full of Taliban sympethizers....

Uninformed and self entitled voters want lots of things, it’s the President’s job to make decisions based on logic and strategy, not on what the people think they want. 
 

as for how the Afghanistan people folded so quickly, it’s because the tribal elders and clerics hold all the power in Afghanistan. The central Government had no power 5 miles outside of Kabul, not to mention the lack of infrastructure, making it harder for an organized military to be able to respond to insurgencies in multiple places

[Nyte Kitsune]

3 hours ago, Elfy said:

I'll be honest I don't think any US President from Bush Jr onwards have covered themselves in glory when it comes to these wars.

And there's the other shoe, Honestly when all this started I was just a teenager and yet after a news broadcast from the White House, Bush had said and I quote "We went there because of the oil", he retracted that statement later that day. I am sure more than just Americans saw that broadcast and though he retracted that statement, I am sure those words have festered within Afghanistan since that day. Of course we now say it was a war on terror, when in reality it was a war on who got their oil rights.

 

No matter what the reason now, this was an inevitable conclusion, Those of us who tried to help them (US, EU, etc.) weren't there to fight their war for them, which is what we were doing, the minute we left this was the most likely outcome if they didn't stand up for themselves, and what happened?, their own leader abandoned them.

[spoonchicken]

I'm glad to see people are discussing the matter rationally 

[spoonchicken]

Nearly 90 retired generals and admirals call on Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley to resign (msn.com)

Taliban commit 'house-to-house executions' in Kabul after US exit as chilling audio demonstrates Afghans' fear (msn.com)

Clusterfuck....complete and absolute