No. No more occupying. No more pseudo colonies. Taliban is bad, but the Afghani people don't want the US there either.
I served there '06 and '07 in the infantry- glad we are now leaving. All the objectives we accomplished were destroyed years ago.
It seems weird to leave out the next line...
I linked an article earlier.
Meh. Doesn't matter. Time to move on. They'll get the people and resources out they they want. This is a big nothing waste of time. Energy needs to be focused on helping Haiti right now. That's the actual internationally important story right now.
Reading reports like this is astounding. I understand why the Biden administration went to bat for the Afghan govt in that press conference, but I can only imagine the meetings leading up to it.
When you said Haiti was the"important international" issue the implications was there.
The entire history of this war is two decades of generals and secretaries of defense boasting over and over that this will be easy, it's doable, we can do it, just give us some extra time to pull it off, with no end in sight for any of it. Hell, that's the entire history of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East!
I would argue the history of war is built on promises of quick and easy victory.
Nah, I just said it's more important. I've previously stated I feel horribly for the women and people of Afghanistan, but what's the solution? Evacuate the entire population?
Some people are still in denial that this whole "just rip the bandaid off and get it over with" approach was a terribly miscalculated mistake. There was a whole spectrum of options between troop surge 2.0 and what we ended up doing. It was never a binary choice between troop surge/indefinite presence and hasty withdrawal.
I don't think you can do a quiet withdrawal, everyone would notice declining troop levels. Orders would be made to evacuate XYZ numbers of troops, to empty out bases, etc. and those orders and outcomes would be reported on.
A whole spectrum of options that have just not been exercised by any of four administrations in 20 years.
Let's first see if there truly are any issues with the way in which we withdrew. This has been in the works for over a year. The only surprise right now is how fast the Taliban have regained power in the country. They were always expected to.
I'm not sure if I believe they did this to intentionally hurt Biden. Maybe they're just that inept.
Yeah. Why would we believe that generals who are heavily invested in staying in the country indefinitely would even know how to wind things down? Or, maybe to be more charitable, there might be not a very good way to wind down a war where U.S. military presence is the only thing propping up the government in the first place.
