Afghanistan

[pondwater]

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.

Left leaning snopes said "less than $10 Billion". So we can assume $9-10 billion. That's a lot of scratch to just leave behind.

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?

 

1 Pulled all our people out first
2 Pulled all of our equipment out
3 Pulled our military out

[pondwater]

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   

So basically we wasted 20 years and $2 Trillion plus interest fighting people wearing flip flops, driving old toyota trucks, and using Soviet era small arms. Annnnnnnd, we lost.

[Dolphster]

So basically we wasted 20 years and $2 Trillion plus interest fighting people wearing flip flops, driving old toyota trucks, and using Soviet era small arms. Annnnnnnd, we lost.

I'd say that pretty much sums it up, yeah. 

[pondwater]

I'd say that pretty much sums it up, yeah. 

Don't let Spider know that a nuclear power lost to a non nuclear power. He'll throw a fit, LMAO

[Dave Gray]

We didn't really "surrender".  I mean, we were the occupying force.  It's not like we gave up control -- it's not our country.  We just left.

As for won/lost -- what was the mission?  That's kinda the whole point; we lost simply by fighting.  There really wasn't a war to win.  I think we basically went in there to seek justice for 9/11, essentially did some version of that for a long, long time, and then couldn't find a way to get out of there smoothly.

And the real kicker is we were still bombing in retaliation on the way out.  Same shit.  More civilian death.

[pondwater]

We didn't really "surrender".  I mean, we were the occupying force.  It's not like we gave up control -- it's not our country.  We just left.

As for won/lost -- what was the mission?  That's kinda the whole point; we lost simply by fighting.  There really wasn't a war to win.  I think we basically went in there to seek justice for 9/11, essentially did some version of that for a long, long time, and then couldn't find a way to get out of there smoothly.

And the real kicker is we were still bombing in retaliation on the way out.  Same shit.  More civilian death.

Surrender, give up, submit, quit? It's all the same, they WON using the strategy they said they would use a long time ago. A long, expensive, and unpopular war against an enemy that blended in with the civilian population. Aside from nuking the whole country into a sheet of glass, they were always going to win.

[Dolphster]

We didn't really "surrender".  I mean, we were the occupying force.  It's not like we gave up control -- it's not our country.  We just left.

As for won/lost -- what was the mission?  That's kinda the whole point; we lost simply by fighting.  There really wasn't a war to win.  I think we basically went in there to seek justice for 9/11, essentially did some version of that for a long, long time, and then couldn't find a way to get out of there smoothly.

And the real kicker is we were still bombing in retaliation on the way out.  Same shit.  More civilian death.

Dave, regarding your comment about "surrender", there has been a lot of what I call "antics with semantics" in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  To most vets like myself, we see it as surrender.  But you are right in that there could be an argument made about whether pulling out of there meets the dictionary definition of surrender.  Hell, it wasn't even a war for that matter.  Congress never actually declared war in Afghanistan.  It sure seemed like war to me, but war was technically never declared by Congress.  The US has a history of avoiding using the term "surrender" because our collective ego as a nation doesn't like the humiliating nature of the term.  I guess no matter what we call it, it sure as hell wasn't a victory.  We lost.  And anyone who isn't willing to say we lost is like when a team loses a game in sports and afterwards they keep talking about how much of a better team they were than the other team.  Yeah, it doesn't matter if you were "better" if you lost.  

You hit on the very key problem with the entire conflict/war/hissyfit/whatever when you said "what was the mission".    The mission was never clearly defined.  It is wildly wrong to send a military force into any kind of battle without a clear identification of what the end game (mission) is.  Was the mission to overthrow the Taliban in 2001?  If so, then that was accomplished in a matter of weeks and we should have left right then.  Was the mission to disrupt the terrorist training camps throughout Afghanistan?  If so, that mission was accomplished within a couple months (although a lot of them just moved into the mountains or across the border into Pakistan).  Was the mission to kill Bin Laden?  Considering he had been in Pakistan for YEARS when the SEALs took him out during the Obama administration then that mission didn't even have anything to do with Afghanistan.  

Your comment about "civilian death" was a big part of our problem in the war/conflict/whatever in Afghanistan just like it was in Iraq when I was there.  The fighting against any uniformed military units was over within weeks in both countries.  After that, the enemy were ALL civilians.  Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc etc etc are all civilians.  They aren't military.  The "enemy combatants" looked just like the average every day citizen.  In fact, they were EXACTLY like any other citizen in that for the most part they went about their business just like everyone else most of the time and fought against the U.S. as almost a part time hobby.  This made it damn near impossible to identify the "enemy" from "regular civilians".  

Afghanistan was a shitty, no-win situation with no clearly defined mission, idiotic Rules of Engagement that made it virtually impossible for soldiers to do their job effectively, and possibly worst of all, destined for failure because the politicians and the decision makers within the Pentagon tried to turn the U.S. military into police officers and also charged the military with the impossible task of trying to train Afghans not just military tactics, but to train them to care about something that none of them cared about.  Afghanistan has never been truly a centralized government.  It has always been a nation of hundreds of villages (for lack of a better term) run by war lords and they had no interaction with a centralized government and didn't want one.  Police work, nation building, creation of infrastructure etc. are not what the military does.  The military's job is to kill people and blow shit up.  Anything above and beyond that is the job of the State Dept.

Sorry this was so long.  Being a combat veteran and having lost good men under me in the crapholes of the middle east has left me pretty opinionated.  LOL

[Dolphster]

Surrender, give up, submit, quit? It's all the same, they WON using the strategy they said they would use a long time ago. A long, expensive, and unpopular war against an enemy that blended in with the civilian population. Aside from nuking the whole country into a sheet of glass, they were always going to win.

I don't always agree with you on a lot of things, but you are exactly correct.  Those of us old enough to remember the USSR invasion of Afghanistan can tell you all about how we (the U.S.) laughed our asses off at how the second most powerful nation in the world got their asses kicked by a bunch of goat herders who had never seen indoor plumbing in their lives.  And a lot of the world is now laughing at us for the exact same reason that we laughed at the USSR.   

And I think you and I are the only ones here who have mentioned the fact that by Bin Laden's documented, detailed, and written plan for the "war", his mission was a resounding success.  His writings detail that victory meant tying up the US in a long, drawn out, expensive stalemate.  He didn't accomplish his end game of crippling the US economy only because he underestimated the resiliency of the American economic system (hooray Capitalism!) and our love of borrowing craptons of money from our own future and from the Chinese in order to stay financially vibrant.  Ya know how some individuals can continue to lead their very nice lifestyle with no money by essentially living off credit cards?  Yeah, that is what we've done as a nation. 

[Spider-Dan]

And I think you and I are the only ones here who have mentioned the fact that by Bin Laden's documented, detailed, and written plan for the "war", his mission was a resounding success.  His writings detail that victory meant tying up the US in a long, drawn out, expensive stalemate.

The problem with this analysis is that it is not solved by staying in Afghanistan for another 20 years.
If you believe Bin Laden and the Taliban have "won" today, then if we pulled out in 2040, they would have "won" even more (by forcing us to spend more in blood and treasure).

This entire concept of "winning" is really strange.  So if we had turned around and pulled out of Afghanistan in December 2001 (right after toppling the Taliban), would we have "won" the war?  What about in May of 2011, right after killing Bin Laden... would we have "won" the war then?  What does "winning" the war entail exactly, outside of literally occupying Afghanistan forever?

Again, this isn't like Vietnam, where there was a region (South Vietnam) that was previously NOT controlled by the enemy at the start of the war, but was conquered as a result of the war.  At the beginning of the Afghanistan War, the Taliban controlled the entire country; 20 years later, they control it again, after the person they were fighting to protect was killed by us.  The idea that it's as simple as "We lost and they won" is pretty silly.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

1 Pulled all our people out first

At gun point?  By kidnapping them?  The state department issued a statement telling people to leave, they choose not to. 

[Pappy13]

Anybody watch the Netflix documentary Turning Point? The saddest part to me was listening to the Afghan soldiers saying they were going to be fine after the US withdrawal that they were ready to fight. Not so much it seems.

[Dolphster]

The problem with this analysis is that it is not solved by staying in Afghanistan for another 20 years.
If you believe Bin Laden and the Taliban have "won" today, then if we pulled out in 2040, they would have "won" even more (by forcing us to spend more in blood and treasure).
Dan, I think you might have misunderstood.  I was definitely not saying that we should stay in Afghanistan.  We shouldn't have stayed as long as we did.  There was nothing to be gained by being there.  I wasn't saying that the Bin Laden "won today" when the US pulled out.  Bin Laden "won" by keeping us engaged (financially and otherwise) for 20 years.  Hopefully that makes sense.  These things are a lot easier to talk about verbally than to try to put it in written word.

This entire concept of "winning" is really strange.  So if we had turned around and pulled out of Afghanistan in December 2001 (right after toppling the Taliban), would we have "won" the war?  What about in May of 2011, right after killing Bin Laden... would we have "won" the war then?  What does "winning" the war entail exactly, outside of literally occupying Afghanistan forever?
That was actually part of my entire commentary was that unless you have a specific mission and/or end game clearly identified, it is impossible to say that you "won".   The US never clearly identified what the mission was, so there is no way to gauge if we "won".  But by not gaining anything (meaning ultimately after a lot of money and lives spent) and the same people (Taliban) in charge of Afghanistan as who was in charge pre-911 I'd say that is a measurable barometer enough to say that we "lost"  Essentially, Afghanistan is the same today as it was pre 9/11, so we accomplished nothing. 

Again, this isn't like Vietnam, where there was a region (South Vietnam) that was previously NOT controlled by the enemy at the start of the war, but was conquered as a result of the war.  At the beginning of the Afghanistan War, the Taliban controlled the entire country; 20 years later, they control it again, after the person they were fighting to protect was killed by us.  The idea that it's as simple as "We lost and they won" is pretty silly.
I agree, and although I do use the words "won" and "lost" in my comments, I agree with your comments about Viet Nam in comparison to Afghanistan.  It is not really an apples to applies comparison because of the very point you made about control of regions.

[pondwater]

The idea that it's as simple as "We lost and they won" is pretty silly.

It's entirely that simple. Regardless of anything you say, most rational people damn sure know we didn't win. There's only one other option. When you don't have a goal or plan. And there's no end in sight and you concede, quit, submit, surrender, or give up. You effectively lose.

Your hypocrisy has you bragging about our superior military industrial complex bombing brown people for profit in a losing effort. Can't make this shit up, LMFAO

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

It's entirely that simple. Regardless of anything you say, most rational people damn sure know we didn't win. There's only one other option. When you don't have a goal or plan. And there's no end in sight and you concede, quit, submit, surrender, or give up. You effectively lose.

Your hypocrisy has you bragging about our superior military industrial complex bombing brown people for profit in a losing effort. Can't make this shit up, LMFAO

We achieved the goal on May 21, 2011.  Shouldn't have taken a decade to leave.

[pondwater]

We achieved the goal on May 21, 2011.  Shouldn't have taken a decade to leave.

Call Obama on the "radical" left wing hypocrisy hotline and let him know your displeasure with his presidency. Good luck