It was inevitable. Ultimately, there were only two possibilities: either the US eventually gets driven out by force, or they get driven out by political and economic pressure, conceding that the occupation is no longer worth it. It's what always happens with Afghanistan.
The thing is, democracy is more of a social institution than a governmental one, and you can't force people to adopt it if they don't want to- oh, you can send in guns and bombs and soldiers and FORCE them to do what you want, but it'll only last as long as your military presence does. And the Afghans aren't a democratic people- as a whole, they don't WANT to be. That's what the world seems to have lost track of, that a person can have different desires and priorities than you and not be wrong. I sure wouldn't want to live in a theocratic state, but if the Afghan people DO, what gives me the right to say they can't?
Of course, most of them probably don't, but if they're not ready or willing to take the steps necessary to reform their culture into making it viable, why should we spend fortunes and lives forcing it? What do we get out of the deal? Cuba's not democratic; we haven't invaded them. Hell, Canada has lese-majeste laws on the books; should we invade THEM? It IS one of the few countries the average American could find on a map.
Invade Afghanistan and you take the cities, and the warlords bury their hatchets and unite to drive you away. They did the Persians and the Greeks, the Russians and the British. I guess invading Afghanistan for empires is like buying a katana for suburbanites: a sign that you've peaked, and are inexorably on the way down.
Well, you have NATO training an army to operate with NATO intelligence, NATO logistical support, NATO close air support, NATO transport and NATO repairs. And if you remove all of that suddenly, you’re effectively teaching someone to fight with eyes open and then blindfold them. That is especially if the numbers between Taliban and the Afghan army are so similar.
With respect to the USA, they clearly made extremely incorrect estimations about the tactics of the Taliban and also completely fucked up the planning and execution of evacuations. The fact that the USA was basically begging the Taliban to not attack the Embassy speaks volumes.
u Difficult to put into words without sounding like an entitled edgelord. Still... To me it just looks like weakness on both the Afghanistan government and the US sides. They wasted all their efforts over the 20 or whatever years they pushed the taliban back for nothing.
Afghanistan government supposedly had superior quantity of troops in comparison to the taliban even after the US left but they were incompetent and gave up.
The US simply said no more deaths and left, wasting all their effort thus far and making all the deaths that were lost in the war... meaningless. I agree that sending troops just to die in a war that's not relevant for now seems pointless but pushing the taliban back is crucial securing a foothold against terrorism in general.
I'm from the UK, but there has been years for the Afghan Gov to train and deplore troops, and Biden is right to pull US out, but should have made sure all national and others were also pulled out first
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32Opinion
US withdrawal was going to happen regardless. The only major difference between what Biden admin has done versus what Trump had planned as that Trump's plan included heavy-handed retaliation if the Taliban broke the terms of the cease-fire, and would've started the withdrawal sooner (May 1). There's also the fact the world actually believed Trump would follow through with threats like that. Biden is by contrast an incredibly weak diplomat; nobody cares what he says in regards to foreign policy, because they know he's not really in charge. One can only imagine how different the scenario would actually be at this point, because it's obvious now that the State Department either lied about or had no idea how much power and influence the Taliban actually had built up.
It's worth mentioning that in excess of 200 US military officers were caught continuously falsifying reports to the office of the POTUS over the course of the last 20 years, but that story got completely buried by other, much less important events, even though that's one of the worst blunders/scandals in US military history. No doubt it's relevant now...
Overall, I largely agree with Trump's view on the Middle Eastern conflicts: we shouldn't have even gone into them in the way that we did without clearcut objectives, because we put ourselves in not only unwinnable situations, but situations where we would inevitably have to set preference of certain allies over others, all without a real endgame. It's a morally difficult call to make, but personally I have no interest in wasting American lives and resources to achieve nothing. It barely even makes the news anymore, but my experience in Syria was basically the same: a waste of everything, and largely just knee-jerk reactions to an incredible number of stupid political maneuvers on all sides, basically trying to keep our allies on a leash and avoid them dragging us into an alliance war with Russia's clients.
The Afghan problem started w/ W and escalated w/ Obama (aka Black Jesus). Bush should have made the war limited where they should have just captured Osama bin Laden. But when the Iraq War part 2 started in 2003, interest in Afghanistan and Osama became secondary issues. Then Obama became president and changed the goals where it became nation building rather than seek and capture. Then Trump setup a withdrawal date, but the Biden admin doesn't want to give any credit to Trump so being the collective dunce his administration is they changed the withdrawal date. As a result of changing the withdrawal date, to September 11, 2021, this caused many Afghans to no longer see their government as legitimate, which at that point, it was easy for them to take over their country.
Because the Biden administration was so reckless, we left behind a shit ton of military equipment, just 3 days ago, the Taliban captured an entire airfield of helicopters that include Blackhawks and many other choppers and there is the untold number of high tech missiles, military vehicles left behind, rifles, ammo, fuel, bombs, etc remaining. At this point, the Taliban is well armed.
Had Biden not be so vindictive, stuck to the withdrawal date, and clear all of the military's equipment out in a timely and orderly fashion, we wouldn't be dealing w/ a well armed state.
Never had a vision of what we were trying to do outside of getting Osama Bin Laden.
The Russians tried to get this country back on it's feet in the late '70s and early '80's and they failed miserably, just like we did.
The people in this region have been fighting each other and themselves for thousands of years, we were fools believing we could solve this problem.
Western countries made this situation worse with all the military hardware they gave them.
If they only had rocks and pointed sticks to fight each other with we wouldn't have the problem we have today.
The fact that the Afghan army collapsed so quickly shows how rotten Afghanistan is. There’s really nothing there to fight for, just like South Vietnam. The ONLY thing keeping the Taliban in check were the US military forces. It’s probably best that we got out.
It's like weeding a garden in the middle of a field of weeds. You can clear it but your fighting a losing battle.
I support withdraw, but it should have been done over 5 years, at quickest. My biggest issue with the withdraw was that Biden wanted to do it on 9/11, which... seriously? You want to give the terrorist assholes their country back on the day they successfully attacked our country?
The mistakes were made a long time ago. It would be great to just pull out and that is the end of it but I feel like we are going to have a lot more trouble from the taliban now that they have access to all the weapons that Afghanistan had, most of which U. S paid for. From pistols to jets and nobody there to keep an eye on there actions. I don't see anything good happening. Maybe we save money and for a short time troops but it's not going to last long in my opinion.
Heartbreaking situation The USA needed it's troops home from fighting a winless war but what's happening now is so sad
as i see it we should not be over there any damned way. we should be taking care of our own backyard first.
Because instead of focusing on getting on Bin Laden and working on what we should have after the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan we got side tracked in Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fg3cGwwGX6o
The Nation building went wrong
Wrong ideal for the people.
The USA should have completed the combat mission and left
After Japan's surrender, 20 years later they hosted the 1964 Olympics.
Germany is a stable country 20 years later after the end of the NAZIs.
Something about the people didn't work right.
Politicians is what’s wrong. Military operations should be conducted by military men, not suit wearing idiots that never held a real job and never served in the military.
President Biden said that it was former President Trump had orders to bring all the Troops home from Afghanistan , So now he is sending like 3000+ Troops back to there
USA should have never invaded other countries and must've kept it to itself.
Get all of the good people out of Afghanistan, drop an Ivy Mike on Afghanistan, and we're done! I doubt refugees will miss that wasteland and enjoy living in America
The US getting involved in that shit in the first place was a terrible mistake.
This was good
Biden screwed the pooch when he decided to wait to get Americans out of that shit hole country. Then he goes the WH yesterday, to blame Trump for his fuck up, then proceeds to back on vacation? How stupid can he be?
I don’t think that the US should be the Earth Police, especially when we have had a hand in almost every war that’s going on
We should’ve pulled out 20 years ago with the warning that if the taliban harbors terrorists and they in turn harm any American we will make their land uninhabitable for decades from nuclear radiation
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