Afghanistan

[Dave Gray]

I think it's fair to criticize the Biden administration for getting caught off guard with how fast things went South.  It's not our FAULT, per se -- this isn't our country or our military, but perhaps it could've have been foreseen.  That's a fair knock.

And Trump -- I'm not going to put this on him either.  There's no right way to leave a country with an undefined war ending -- there was never a way to do it right.  Negotiating with the Taliban would've had the GOP killing Dems had they done it, but I get it -- it's not ideal, but it's the reality that we live in.  Like it or not, Trump made it happen.  It's like pulling off a band-aid.  Ultimately, I think like 70% of the country wanted out of Afghanistan, so at the very least, he started the process.

For now, I can't really see anything that Biden can do differently.  Other than leaving people there indefinitely, a shitty group is going to oppress a population.  What can you do, other than occupy it forever.  The big lesson here is about world building.  The real winners in this fight, politically, are the Libertarians and Isolationists.  It seems you can't grant democracy with military intervention, something that both major political parties have been trying to do for half a century.

And in the future, once we're out, this is done and over with.  You go home and lick your wounds and hope you learn from it.  But this isn't likely to be a lingering issue.

[Phishfan]

The one thing that gets me though is the loss of military technology. That should have been planned for better.

[CF DolFan]

Pretty much every way we have handled this has been wrong. Just today we secretly met with he Taliban asking for more time. When they rejected we told our allies that we were not going to extend the deadline and that no Afgans would be allowed to leave. The Taliban is coming off as kicking us out of the country.

[Dave Gray]

The one thing that gets me though is the loss of military technology. That should have been planned for better.

Yeah.

I agree with this.

But what bothers me most is that there's just a feeling of helplessness that there is a generation of people who are used to living one way (in a moderate lifestyle) and they are likely to be thrown back into the stone age.  I literally don't know what to do about that on any level, but it's just so incredibly shitty.

I hope that the Taliban surprises us and they are less shitty just for PR purposes.  They still want foreign aid and stuff, so maybe they won't be so barbaric when it comes down to it, but I'm not holding my breath.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The one thing that gets me though is the loss of military technology. That should have been planned for better.

We really didn't lose much.  We never gave the national government the super high tech stuff.  Any advance stuff China or Russia got to reverse engineer was previously captured from dead American soldiers.

[pondwater]

Pretty much every way we have handled this has been wrong. Just today we secretly met with he Taliban asking for more time. When they rejected we told our allies that we were not going to extend the deadline and that no Afgans would be allowed to leave. The Taliban is coming off as kicking us out of the country.

It's was their strategy from the early stages. They made it clear many years ago that they would outlast us by drawing out a long, costly, and unpopular war. The old way of winning wars like WWII are gone. It's almost impossible to win a war against an enemy that doesn't wear uniforms and blends into the "innocent" civilian population.

Make no mistake, they won. We quit the fight and lost. No different than a UFC fighter tapping out after "technically" winning most of the fight. If we had won, we wouldn't have to ask them for more time. We wouldn't have to ask them for anything because the loser is the one who capitulates. That's us. Maybe Pudding Brain Biden will grow a pair and do the right thing.

[Phishfan]

We really didn't lose much.  We never gave the national government the super high tech stuff.  Any advance stuff China or Russia got to reverse engineer was previously captured from dead American soldiers.

For some reason it wasn't letting me type at the time. I should have used the word gear instead of technology maybe. We left a lot to be taken.

[Dave Gray]

So, now that the pullout is done, I wonder what we learned from this or where America stands with things like this in the future.

I think there's an odd coalition of bedfellows about this issue.  It's not really a right/left thing.

There is a libertarian-leaning, Ron-Paul-style, isolationist thinking.  There is a Trumpy, America-First thing.  There is also an anti-war, anti-occupation Bernie-style movement.  They aren't exactly in line with the reasoning of the methods, but the result is the same.  Don't fight foreign wars unless you absolutely have to.

And then there are the hawkish Republicans and military types, like David Patreaus, the old-school John McCain types.....and what were the interventionist Democrats, like the Clintons and Obama.  These Democrats don't really have much of a platform right now within the party, but they're still in the inner-workings, I'm sure.

I fall into the prior group.  I said a while ago to just get on planes and leave.  I was being a little hyperbolic, but the thought was there that this is just never-ending.  I think I personally learned from this conflict: You just can't solve human rights issues with occupation.  You may beat it back some, but I think the occupation actually causes more harm than you're fixing, and worse yet, it never ends.  ...short of just taking ownership of these lands and essentially making them US territories with our laws, there is no way to hand-off a government amidst a civil war.

I am just happy it's over.  Props to Trump, too, for making it happen.  For all the shit I've talked about him, and I think it's fair to criticize the method in some cases, at least he made the commitment to leave when nobody else would.  And props to Biden, too, for not extending it and dragging it out.  Sometimes you have to yank off the band-aid.

[pondwater]

So, now that the pullout is done, I wonder what we learned from this or where America stands with things like this in the future.

I think there's an odd coalition of bedfellows about this issue.  It's not really a right/left thing.

There is a libertarian-leaning, Ron-Paul-style, isolationist thinking.  There is a Trumpy, America-First thing.  There is also an anti-war, anti-occupation Bernie-style movement.  They aren't exactly in line with the reasoning of the methods, but the result is the same.  Don't fight foreign wars unless you absolutely have to.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best approach. We missed out on Ron Paul as president. Instead we got a feel good story because a black guy won POTUS with absolutely nothing to show for it when all was said and done.

And then there are the hawkish Republicans and military types, like David Patreaus, the old-school John McCain types.....and what were the interventionist Democrats, like the Clintons and Obama.  These Democrats don't really have much of a platform right now within the party, but they're still in the inner-workings, I'm sure.

I fall into the prior group.  I said a while ago to just get on planes and leave.  I was being a little hyperbolic, but the thought was there that this is just never-ending.  I think I personally learned from this conflict: You just can't solve human rights issues with occupation.  You may beat it back some, but I think the occupation actually causes more harm than you're fixing, and worse yet, it never ends.  ...short of just taking ownership of these lands and essentially making them US territories with our laws, there is no way to hand-off a government amidst a civil war.

If it was up to me I would pull the majority of our military back to the US and would cut off all foreign aid money to all countries. Instead, I would keep a handful of strategic military bases throughout the globe and reallocate some of that money to lease the land from those countries. No more free handouts to countries just so they say their our friend.

I am just happy it's over.  Props to Trump, too, for making it happen.  For all the shit I've talked about him, and I think it's fair to criticize the method in some cases, at least he made the commitment to leave when nobody else would.  And props to Biden, too, for not extending it and dragging it out.  Sometimes you have to yank off the band-aid.

I disagree on Biden. He fucked up the pullout. You guys say, "what could he have done, he had no choice". Of course he had a choice. He made the choice to postpone the original pullout date. He made the choice to not evacuate all our personal before pulling the plug. He made the choice to leave billions upon billions of dollars worth of equipment. And worst of all, his choices led to the deaths of our people. To answer the question, he could have made the correct decisions and heeded the warnings that were presented to him before those decisions were made.

[Dave Gray]

^ I don't agree with much of what you're saying.

But I also think it doesn't matter.  If we both don't want to be in that conflict anymore (or others like it), I'll take that compromise.  I probably disagree with you on the methods, what to do with refugees, foreign aid, etc.  -- But it's over and we're out of there, so I'll take the win.

[CF DolFan]

I'm sure I'm in the minority but I had no problem with us being there. I think the world was safer while we were there and we have lost that advantage. Similar to the situation in Korea. South Korea needs us to keep North from eating them alive.

[Sunstroke]

Obviously not a laughing matter, but I saw a headline on Afghanistan during lunch today that made me snort a good bit...

"Nation Stunned That 20-Year Catastrophe Could End So Catastrophically"

 

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I think a fact lots of people are ignoring is that very little of the gear the Taliban captured belonged to the USA at the time it was captured.  Almost all of it was owned by the Afgan government.

So what should we have done different?

1 Never provided any arms to allied Afghans?

2 Disarm the national government before the withdrawal?

3 Stayed indefinitely?

 

[Dave Gray]

I'm sure I'm in the minority but I had no problem with us being there. I think the world was safer while we were there and we have lost that advantage. Similar to the situation in Korea. South Korea needs us to keep North from eating them alive.

There's a split.  Part of your party feels that way -- the John McCain hawks.
Part of my party feels that way too.

It's really one of the truly non-partisan issues where neither of the two political parties has truly staked that claim as their own.

[Dolphster]

Obviously not a laughing matter, but I saw a headline on Afghanistan during lunch today that made me snort a good bit...

"Nation Stunned That 20-Year Catastrophe Could End So Catastrophically"

 

True.  And it sounds really weird to hear politicians  (whichever party was in charge during the pullout would have done the same thing) bragging about what a great surrender we had.  They of course don't use that word, but that is essentially what they are saying.  We consider our surrender to have been an outstanding success!   Because when all is said and done, we are leaving with the same people in charge who were in charge when we invaded, except now they are better armed with our weapons instead of 45 year old Soviet AK-47s.   Anyone who doesn't consider that a surrender is just too 'Merica Proud to admit it.  Kinda reminds me of the Iraqi Information Minister whom we lovingly called Baghdad Bob who was on tv talking about how the Americans would never survive to make it to Baghdad and that their blood was running in the streets in the rural areas of Iraq.  And in the background you can see shit burning in in Baghdad, hear American planes flying overhead and hear bombs hitting within a couple miles of him as he is reporting. LOL