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Yeah, is that the right decision to make? Should America just leave that country once and for all, and have them deal with their own shit instead? Or should they stay and try to fend-off the taliban?
| Yeah. Withdraw from Afghanistan | 23 | |
| No, stay there and fight the taliban | 11 |
Over the past 20 years, the U.S have wasted over a trillion dollars and sacrificed thousands of people on this horseshit, just to see the taliban take control over the country in the end. Reminds me of Vietnam.
Yes, give some of the Afghan military US citizenship for their help and let the taliban take it. They dont seem to want western style democracy (some do) they want Shariah. They have different values I dont like the USA forcing its values on a people who dont want it.
Any war that last longer than a few month to a few years has allowed politics to get to involved.
Sorry, but war was meant to be an atrocity. An action designed to break the others will to fight, get them to surrender and give up.
If your fighting a Guerrilla war your fighting on their terms, if your training their people who really don't like you either, and have policies that you can fight here but not there. Then you're in a political war.
When you need to take over a village or city you publicly let them know you're coming and to leave. If they don't leave then they choose a side. Feel free to wipe the city off the map.
A few people here just want to join in on the politics of it all, by placing blame on a political party or figure.
If anything I feel sorry for the poor stupid politicians that are guided by the media.
The media just want to make it a story.
For the last eight years and three US presidents or more you heard nothing more than how long the war was and ending it.
It happens and now they are all about "oh the poor people that we left behind, look how tearable they are getting treated".
The media drives the tilt and spin they put on it to get the desired result a sensationalize story.
The people get all worked up and the politicians think "oh no, I might lose my next election if we don't do something" they don't care if it's right or wrong, you just have to do it to keep the job and gravy train flowing.
As far as the money and military testing just remember there is as much if not more money to be made in rebuilding and reconstruction as there is in the war part.
Seems like a pointless war and it's best to let them figure out their own shit
Good for whom?
It's certainly good for American service people that they won't have to spend time in that God-awful country and run the very real risk of being killed or permanently disabled in an unwinnable war. (And it definitely was unwinnable, since the government supported by the US and other Western governments over the last two decades is corrupt to the core, inept, incapable of actually governing the hell-hole and despised by a large portion of Afghans, while an awful lot of Afghans think the Taliban are not all that bad.)
The withdrawal is awful news for all Afghans who ever worked for Western agencies and military forces and the previous Afghan government. It's terrible news too for Afghani girls and women who will go back to being considered the property of men.
Lest anyone forget, this whole shit-storm is something that's largely of America's own making. It goes right back to Carter and that hero of the American right, Ronnie Regan. It was under their presidencies that the cold-warriors decided to support the mujahadeen - the bunch of fanatical Islamic nutjobs that eventually transmuted into the Taliban. The USA did that because the mujahadeen were fighting the USSR, and as far as the USA was concerned, anyone who killed Soviets deserved all the help they wanted. And the reason the Russians were in Afghanistan was because they were supporting a liberal, secular government that was trying to drag the country into the 20th century, while the Islamic assholes of the mujahadeen wanted the country to stay stuck in the 6th century.
So Regan and like-minded, blinkered zealots kept pouring money and weapons into Afghanistan and causing problems for the USSR in other ways until the USSR recognised the war was unwinnable and left. Everything that has happened since then in Afghanistan all goes back to that: the rise of the Taliban, the refuge they provided to the even more insane al-Qaida, the 9/11 attacks, the more than 6,000 dead American service members and contractors, the 66,000 Afghan national military and police killed, and probably more than 50,000 Afghan civilians killed in crossfire and due to American targeting mistakes.
Of course, another group that the retreat from Afghanistan is not good for is defence contractors. Still, I'm sure they'll figure out some way to keep the American government spending vast sums of money on weapons systems that can't even defeat a bunch of idiots riding around in the back of Toyota pickups and armed only with decrepit AK47s and RPGs.
Nice summary, Booj. That entire region is headed back to the 6th century along with ownership of women and governance by war lords. My guess is that the obscene size of the U.S. defense budget will be channeled into advanced drone technology. Software to get smaller self guided drones to behave as a swarm of killer bees will be developed. The chipset, data links, and cameras on your cellphone if used in a micro-drone, have enough processing power for the job.
Looking forward a couple of years, I see factories near Silicon Valley producing millions of these things. You might look for startups to invest in. The early stages of proliferation are almost always the most profitable.
It will be interesting (and probably kinda horrifying) to see how drone swarm technology advances.
You mention US tech firms and I'm sure there must be a lot of work underway in Western (and, of course, Chinese) military research labs, but I'd keep my eye on Iran. They constantly brag about their advances in the field, and they used a relatively low-tech version of a drone swarm to attack that Saudi oil facility in 2019. The Iranian regime feels constantly under threat, they're totally convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and they've got a lot of smart people who are used to working with the limited resources that sanctions allow them to have.
As you say, you can buy a highly capable computer with attached high-definition camera and high-speed data connection for a few bucks these days. It's a science-fiction scenario at the moment, but I can imagine how a combination of advances in high-density battery technology and AI could result in hundreds of cheap drones the size of today's toys being released in a combat situation and launching coordinated attacks on individual soldiers and their vehicles. Or a couple hundred drones following the contours of the ocean waves over the horizon and then suddenly popping up right next to a commercial or military ship and getting to work. This threat would be very difficult to detect in advance, very difficult to shoot down and soldiers knowing that the threat existed would have to create a huge morale problem.
Yup. Three or four of the drones in a swarm of 50, could be local area servers coordinating the attack. A few lead drones could break windows allowing the swarm to get inside buildings for target hunting. Facial recognition and other target imaging would be precise enough to neutralize targets with as small as a .45 caliber tracer round having a tungsten penetrator.
Sorry to say, but armchair warfare may be here to stay. After an initial attack, relatively few armoured personnel carriers would be needed for the old fashioned clean up work.
Guerrilla tatics have always been this effective. If an occupying force is hated enough it could go on forever.
The only win we get out of this is 1. IRAN and 2. Further testing out military tech and strats for further use
I'm just amazed at how short people's memories are.
Especially the US, yes part of the reasoning to go in to Afghanistan was bin laden and al-qaeda but nobody seems to remember a part of that pledge. 'that any nation/state that harbours or provides safe sanctuary to the terrorist will be considered the same as the terrorist themselves'.
Not only the USA cheered those remarks so did a lot of other countries.
No one person or group can really achieve the success that some of these terrorist organizations do, without a safe place and way to funnel the cash flow.
20th aniversary coming up and nothing has really changed except a bunch of dead, wounded, and mamed people. I think part of those that should be considered mamed are the politicians and people who back those politicians that don't have the balls to do what they say. This includes and goes all the way through numerous countries and the UN.
It was just lip service from them after the initial shock wore off.
We (Americans) have been saying for several years now that US troops needed to be removed. It's definitely unfortunate for Afghan women and minorities but American troops were fighting a losing effort.
The annoying part is that even though "taking the troops home" was once universally seen as a good thing, it is currently being spun as a bad thing for political reasons.
In the minds of some people, anything Biden does is wrong. While I've always thought that Trump is an incompetent, deranged, narcissistic asshole, I am willing to give him credit for not doing anything so stupid on his watch that the world blew up.
My view is that Afghanistan was one of those situations where there simply was no good solution. There was never any chance that it could be turned into a drier, hillier version of Ohio, and the politicians in the USA (and the UK) who believed that was feasible were led astray by their hubris.
Afganistan was doomed to fail. The problem is that we assumed it would take longer to fail. The afgani tribes are worthless to protect when they wont protect themselves.
That being said I think the US could of stayed but with idk like 100 people plus a dozen drones to take out targets.
Now with Afghanistan being under control of the Taliban what's preventing us from going to war in 6 months because of a genocide that will very likely happen.
The reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Osama Bin Laden at least out of Afghanistan and to disrupt al-Qaeda to the point that they could not conduct much international terrorism.
That mission was accomplished in 2-3 years (thought it took another 7 years to find Osama Bin Laden).
The US and other NATO allies should have withdrawn at that point.
The Taliban controlled much of Afghanistan prior to that; and had people in all parts of the country.
The USA and its allies displaced the Taliban for much of the duration; and efforts to form an effective Afghanistan military that could stand up to the Taliban collapsed as this is a tribal society; and while people would serve to protect their tribe and the tribal lands - they were not willing to protect other tribes and the other tribal lands to prevent the Taliban from taking over.
The fact that the Taliban has retakend control of almost all of the country in something like 2 weeks shows just how useless our efforts there beyond the original Bin Laden and al-Qaeda mission was.
I put the blame on every president after 2006 for us remaining there.
I believe that President Biden did a very good thing by pulling out this year. Perhaps a slower pull out with better efforts to move more people who collaborated with the USA to the USA might have produced a prettier outcome for some. However, the fact that the Taliban was going to control the country again and impose their veiw of religious law was never in doubt.
The USA and allies would have likely had to remain for another 40 years (60 years total) to change the culture of 2+ generations of people to have produced a different change.
This has been happening since bush and every single president after said they would bring the troops home. I am shocked that we are actually pulling out.
It's pointless as a normal war.
Honestly it feels like just an open battlefield that us and our allies use to test out our war strategies and tech. To keep the overall sharpness of their militaries.
Morally I think it would be just as detrimental to leave than to just stay there with a garrison. We should be worried about al Qaeda acquiring good military tech. As that would most assuredly cause a genocide and a half before another coalition is formed to halt it.
It hasn't been our war from the get-go. We should have never gotten involved to begin with.