https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58238497 I agree with Biden's statements... when the local government and military fuck off, why should you care? It's their issue to figure out.... so let them.
I think they did all they could, given the circumstances, and there's no way in hell I'll sit here on my fat ass, second-guessing the boots on the ground.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. We should never have been there, I don't dispute that. However, the Taliban insurgency began on May 1. Biden assured us in July the country was not going to be over run. At some point since then he should've had an inkling that maybe the country could be over run and either gotten people out or at least had some sort of contingency plan in place that didn't involve deploying more troops when the wolves were at the door and left us begging the Taliban not to attack our embassy.
I really don't think ANYONE would have guessed the government and military would have just fucked off like they did. I think there are a ton of really smart analysts that are just gobsmacked right now. I mean, the Taliban outperformed fucking Schwarzkopf! There was NO resistance. I have to think that that kind of thing was an incredibly remote option, and such a low percentage play that they didn't plan for it. And really, that would have to be the hardest thing to plan for... as it requires an incredibly fast deployment of a shit-ton of resources... and this whole thing was over before people blinked. I know it's easy to say "there should have been a contingency plan..." but really, what would that plan have looked like? Would it have even been possible? How could it have gone right? I'd love to hear people's opinion on that, because I think such a thing would be an almost logistical impossibility.
Everyone saying why are you there, who are you there for that you care about or that this executing Trump's deal are completely missing the point and at this stage are just tripping on your clown shoes. You mean to tell me that the "Adults in Charge" or otherwise known as the most competent administration in cempetentness in the history of comepetence would have been listening to reports over the last month saying " Hey yo, Terry Taliban be creepin'" and say to themselves; "Hey, maybe it's time to call an audible" Even crazier idea, two weeks ago saying hey, this present an amazing opportunity....All 75k Terrys are in town now rushing to take as much ground as they can before snow flies; let's scamble the 82nd, 101st, and 75 Rangers, retake J-Bad, Baghram and Salerno, bring in all the CAS and SOF groups we need to snatch the immortal soul outta Terry's chest and send him to booger-eating heaven for good? I don't know why it happened, don't ask me. I voted for the guy who tweeted mean.
Do you really believe that, though? Think about it: they control the WHOLE COUNTRY now, including who gets in or out. We're only going to see what they WANT us to see. It'll be like what the Cartels have done in Mexico, only worse. Question for smart people: it's known that Afghanistan has important rare-earth minerals, and that China will no-doubt try to weasel their way in to get them. WHY DIDN'T WE SET UP MINING OPERATIONS IN THE 20 YEARS WE WERE THERE? Shit, we were drilling less than six months after taking Iraq.
Only 3 months ago the Afghan president was saying this. No mention of any backroom deals with Taliban, no hint of the instant capitulation to come. When the leader of a fully equipped army 300k strong tells you "we're fighting!" do you take him at his word?
Because that would look like war-profiteering and colonialism. And good luck getting a western mining company to set up shop in an active war zone. That’s probably the worst possible place to expand a business aside from California. China probably won’t roll into Afghanistan in any major degree. They don’t have great supply logistics and already have enough tension with India. Russia won’t either because of history. The Afghan army fell apart immediately because NATO support was the glue that held them together. The tribalism there is so incredibly strong that those trained soldiers will probably rejoin their tribes and form enthnic-based militias, which the Taliban will now have to contend or make a deal with. The President that fled is an ethno-fascist who primarily cared about ensuring his tribe gained and maintained power. That didn’t sit well with a large contingent of his military.
So if Afghanistan reverts back to a hotbed sanctuary for any terrorist cell looking to execute an attack on Western soil, and they then DO attack somewhere in the world and have success in their execution...what do we do?
But what if you throw a war and nobody comes? I'm seriously asking, are they expecting Gen Z to enlist "for the glory and the honor"? After everything they've seen? All they need is to look at the nearest GWOT vet to know what awaits them.
Looking at the timeline of the insurgency, at some point he should've started severely doubting the Afghan president's claims and started making contingency plans. But he didn't.
What contingency plans? What could he have done? I think the only one was "shit, hurry it up, we're getting out of here faster than we planned", which is what happened.
It took 3 months for them to accomplish the take down. And over a month on the final push. He didn't change course at all until the Taliban was entering Kabul. He could've done something to start withdrawing people long before the Taliban was in the streets or at least start drawing up a plan.
How do we know he didn't? I've seen nothing reported on who got out when, etc, or any other detailed logistics. Do you have sources somewhere that you can share? All I've seen is the shit-show at the end. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it was a good ending, at all... but in the vein of "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing", it was not a bad result. Again, when 300k fully armed military personnel just fuck off and do not provide any resistance to the 70k Taliban, that's an insane game changer... it's not a "let's call an audible" scenario.
I'm certain that there were plans for what happened in Afghanistan but I doubt that there was any willingness to engage in those plans. Withdraw by sending in 30,000 troops? Carpet bomb the whole countryside to delay the Taliban takeover? But then what? As long as a foreign power was present in Afghanistan it was just going to cost lives and money. And the collapse of the Afghanistan government was inevitable. Even the people in Afghanistan knew it was going to collapse. The fact that the military just rolled over tells us that they are smart enough to not die for nothing. Afghanistan will have to rebuild on its own, and they will have to figure a bunch of shit out to make sure that terrorists don't hang a "kick me" sign up in their back yard and to find a way to interact with the international community in a healthy way. Canada and the other NATO members got pulled into Afghanistan because the United States invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty. And now none of the 20 NATO countries can have a hand in helping Afghanistan rebuild maybe the UN can get involved but it'll probably fall on a combination of China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia. The only reason why this isn't very very bad news is that those four countries don't have a history of getting along. It doesn't help that tRump's bullshittery setback reintegrating Iran into the international community by at least a decade. Had he not fucked around on Saudi Arabia's behalf there might have actually been an opportunity to have some stability in the region.