DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Biden says US war in Afghanistan will end August 31

Looks like we are hanging them out to dry. So much for helping those who helped us.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/spe...t?ocid=msedgntp

Those assassinations are pretty terrible, but let me ask this: how would our presence there prevent these types of assassinations from occurring? This doesn't seem like it's a military force getting overwhelmed. It seems more like an OPSEC issue.

I'll preface what I'm going to say by acknowledging that I don't know the proper solution to this problem. There doesn't seem to be any 'good' way to address this.

Reading the article is pretty damning. Afghan govt can't/won't protect its pilots. They can't maintain the equipment we're giving them. American-funded contractors completely run maintenance of the larger aircraft, and whenever they get pulled out, those planes are essentially dead.

We're not even totally out yet, and the Afghan military is already getting boat raced by the Taliban... and this is after 20 years of propping them up with equipment and training and doing more than our fair share of heavy lifting ourselves. At some point you have to confront reality and admit that what you're doing just isn't working. Turning your back to the fight (and allies) is bad, but is it worse than throwing an endless amount of American lives and $$$ at something with no positive end in sight?

I wouldn't mind taking the soldiers that want to come here... but man if the folks staying behind weren't screwed before....

Op security is always a issue.

How would things change? I don't know. In many ways I suppose.

I do know that everywhere we have pulled out, it has been over run by insurgents, and pilots weren't being gunned down while seeking safer refuge a month or so back..

I am sure we knew this was going to happen, so don't make some prelamination that we are going to take care of those who helped us.

As we found out in Vietnam, we knew these people were dead men walking. Just say so....sorry guys, you are on your own now.

I am not really blaming anyone individually. President Biden just happens to be the one in office as this is happening. It's just another example of a politically run military operation.

If we are going in, go in to burn it down, so to speak.

Taking over and running Afghanistan was never the mission. We should have left as soon as we killed Bin Laden.

But that's the rub, right? Seeing as how nobody has a time machine, we have to figure out what is the best (or more accurately, least worst) move at this point.

To your point, the way this conflict has unfolded should inform how our govt and military approaches any of these situations in the future.

I think most are pretty clear on how it "should work". You state your mission and once you accomplish that mission get the hell out.

We were never there to take over the Afghani government or topple them. We were never at war with the people of Afghanistan.

At this point it's also quite clear. This part of the world has been at war with each other for centuries. We are not ever going to stop this. We have spent many years training and arming their military to fight for themselves. At some point we have to step back and let them, fight for themselves.

Vietnam should have informed them. While the reasons for those wars were different, not having the foresight and vision to see how it would end or listening to someone who did was their downfall.

Colin Powell told this president [Bush] the Pottery Barn rule: "If you break it, you fix it. Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it."

Bush senior was the only one I saw that knew how to do it during Desert Storm. State your mission. Accomplish your mission and get the hell out.

Nah, we're bringing the translators and the people who helped us to the US. These active duty Afghan military personnel are the people we just trained and handheld for 15-20 years. The Taliban will probably rout the Afghan military in at least part of the country, and I think this is expected by our leaders.

I don't get how their military seems to cower at the thought of the Taliban. You would think they would fight like hell for control of the country, especially with assassinations taking place. We've been the buffer for 20 years. We've trained them and provided weapons. Other than staying forever, I don't see what else we can do.

It's a shame Trump didn't keep his promise to end these wars. We could have been out already and could be putting that money toward things our country needs.

JC..


If you've never experienced freedom, how do you know what to fight for?

Most of these Afghan soldiers have never known or experienced freedom, they don't understand or desire it enough to fight for it, because they don't know what it is.

It's why so many nations see us as arrogant. We know what we have and what we want, and we are not shy about standing up for it or speaking our minds.

It also could just be that they're scared. The Taliban is ruthless, and the only people capable enough to do anything about them are about to pack up and leave.

I think Florida may have a point. I mean after years of us training their military and funding their equipment, there must be some deep rooted reason they are unwilling to step up. I suppose I could agree that fear may be a factor for some of them but usually if human beings think there's something worth fighting for and they are given the tools to fight for it, if they think it's worth fighting for, they will.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tal...E?ocid=msedgntp


Oh well...

Oh well … they didn’t want to fight their enemies for their freedom and surrendered.

Remember Donny boys comments? “I don’t like people who are captured” He’d be proud of them.

They ran out of ammunition and weren't resupplied (request went out, wasn't answered).

Right.

Surrender is a right of war. It's not a right to shoot them down after surrender.

We probably don't care that Afghan women and girls are going to be subjugated again in horrible ways.

Why care about that?

I agree with you, to a point. The tricky part (I don't pretend to have the answers, which is great because these decisions are far above my pay grade) is that there is a line somewhere between caring and being the World's police officer, and we've solidly been the latter for quite a while now.

Just think, if Trump had been elected it would have been happening since May 1st. That was his deadline for troop withdraw.

Nah, we should stay there for another 20 years.

There's a difference in not caring and remaining in a war forever. I guess you don't care about the lives of our military then according to your own logic.

DON'T BE RIDICULOUS. Everybody cares about these women, but this time it will have to be their men that stand up for them. If there was another way to withdraw that kept them safe I'm sure we would have done that. It's time to leave, especially if GOPers want us to stay.

But they didn't..... when Trump was president.

Biden faces Trump's deadline on Afghanistan troop withdrawal: 'Any way you cut it, we are headed for a messy outcome'

U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan two decades. Will they be out by May 1?

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/p...den/4667248001/

When Trump agreed to the May 1st deadline you didn't hear a peep out of them. They had no complaints. You didn't hear the faux outrage over "We probably don't care that Afghan women and girls are going to be subjugated again in horrible ways."

Yet when something occurs that both Trump and Biden agree on, that the Trumpians didn't care about when trump decided to do it, suddenly it's some terrible thing.

Like I've been saying, it's not a question of what's being done. It's a question of who is doing it.

#facstdon'tmatter. This we know.

Ok...so the administration doesn't care about womens rights.

Now they will go back to Taliban rule where they are pretty much forced to cook and have sex with no chance to say no. I guess you could call them sex slaves.

You are good with that? I guess so when you say let their own men take care of them.

You do realize their own men are being hunted as we speak, right?

Stop trying to pin this on Biden. Did Biden start the war? Dems care about the atrocities that will happen, but they would happen now, a year from now or ten years from now because those people refuse to change... they are like bible thumping republicans in that regard...

AND I think it's funny as hell that you are going so hard at trying to make dems look bad... YOUR BOY WAS TRUMP! Didn't he abandon allies on the field so Turkey could kill them? He gave Russia and Turkey their way like a coward. Yet now you want to drone on and on about Biden... right. whatever. get a life.

I understand this has gone on for 20 years or more, so it isn't so much to pin it on President Biden. I am simply pointing out how devastating the actions of this administration are going to be to women and children.

The actions we now take are going to throw them back to the stone age. Something inside of me says that's wrong. Worse than wrong, it's immoral.

Some can turn their back on doing the right thing, some can't.

Oh I think what will happen is awful too, but how do you get around the religious zealots doing all the harm? Should we stay forever? Short of a Taliban genocide (if that would even be possible), I can see no way of ensuring their safety and still pulling our troops out. The only other alternative would be to nuke the whole thing and turn those sands to glass. But I don't see how that would help those women either.

We have stayed in South Korea as a deterrent for a long time.

Yeah, this is the "only other alternative".

Winner: Hyperbole Post Award of the Month (July 2021)

What other alternatives did you come up with? Of course it was hyperbole, it was meant to be. This situation is full of extremes. We leave, people die. We leave people will be tortured, beheaded, etc. We leave, those women will be abandoned to their fates... ALL hyperbole in one way or another. None of us know that harm will come to those women for sure, but we know the history and can predict it. So is it really hyperbole when I say our options are limited to leaving and letting the chips fall or staying forever? And if those two are acceptable options, why wouldn't total annihilation also be an option? Radical, yes. Hyperbole, yes of course. Honest option, not really but nonetheless a possibility.

The difference being that the Korean war was a war with lines/borders that can be defended from an OUTSIDE threat. The Taliban are an INSIDE threat. Major difference in protecting a people from a well defined outside enemy threat and one that is inside and only visible when it wants to be.

No doubt.

Our being there did something to help because life for people became much more "normal". Freedom and rights is sometimes more than lines of demarcation on a map.

Ditto what you said, my war, Vietnam, had same issues. I'll NEVER forget flying my helicopter and as we lifted off our pad, we'd occasionally take AK-47 fire from the village right up against our large base. ROE stated we couldn't return fire. Very weird, first week in country, went to downtown of the village, after that week NEVER entered village again and it was in safe, friendly area. AS a lifer and Vietnam vet I'm damn glad we are leaving. I hope we learn- NEVER GET INVOLVED IN A LAND WAR IN ASIA. History tells us stuff and next generation ignores it. Let the Asians fix it.

Yet "doing the right thing" was something you never even bothered to mention when Trump made the agreement to pull them out by May 1st. So how many more lives, arms and legs of our troops are you willing to give up to do "the right thing"?

So glad we’re leaving. Hope we take the interpreters and their families with us as well.

China and Russia can have Afghanistan. Good luck.

It isn't called "The graveyard of empires" for nothing.

I'm with you: we should have had a plan for the day after ObL went for his last swim. Everyone saw what happened to the Soviets. We stepped right into the same quagmire, not 20 years later. Stupid is as stupid does.

This entire region is not suitable for 'nation building.' The prevailing culture is tribal, has been for thousands of years. Punk upstarts like Americans and Soviets get schooled by 'the old ways' every time.

Here's a quote that's very telling:

"America has all the watches; we have all the time."

want a rabbit hole?

Sykes–Picot Agreement, 1916.

the middle east will make so much since once you get knee deep into it...

Trump isn't the only person to not keep that promise.. he wasn't even the first...

j/c:

Pentagon sends 3,000 troops BACK to Afghanistan to evacuate Americans and won't say whether US will stay past August 31: State Dept announces Kabul embassy drawdown as Taliban captures 12 cities

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...l.html#comments

Was watching all of this on the news earlier, what a cluster.