Since the finger of blame is being pointed in all directions, let's talk about

That's simply not true. There are ample examples in history of conventional militaries defeating guerilla forces. That's how the Indians ended up on reservations instead of them putting the Anglo-Americans in reservations.

Lesson # 1 in counterinsurgency is to cut off the insurgents source of resupply. Our military was never willing to do that, so that's why we lost the war. All of the other thousands of things we did right pale to failing to do that one big thing.

 

In the Indians case, there was no group of friendly Indians that they could blend in with. In Afghanistan and Vietnam and other such countries, the guerillas look just like everyone else. They can be friendly by day and cut your throat by night.

 

That's not the issue. The problem is not cutting off their sources of rearming and resupply. As I mentioned to you in a previous post:

This has been a consistent position on my account. As I said in 2015:

 

I am never willing to subject any woman, let alone tens of millions now and untold millions in the future, to sex slavery. all the while sacrificing geopolitical strategy. Sacrificing billions in equipment. Sacrificing a launching point for future anti-terrorism operations. Sacrificing an ally we had made of the Afghanis. Emboldening our enemies with now-guaranteed future acts of aggression to take advantage of a weak American President.

Do you see? It isn’t all about what’s to be gained. It’s also about what’s to lose. And we are losing a lot.

You apparently are willing for all that to happen with only an unbacked claim to knowing a culture and people well enough to foretell the hopelessness of it.

Biden’s “retreat at all costs!” motto might be yours as well, but anyone who thinks what is happening in Afghanistan now and in the very near future is in the USA’s best interest isn’t thinking about it hard enough.

 

If you think it's worth going to war over "sex slavery" there are plenty of other countries the US should invade in addition to Afghanistan. We didn't go there in the first place because of women's rights and to me, that's a laughable excuse. Women treated as animals is pretty much standard in Islamic (and probably not just Islamic) parts of the world. I'm unwilling to launch a feminist jihad to "liberate" them.

 

Biden deliberately sabotaged the Afghan Army:

Afghan Military Officers: We Fought Hard but Biden ‘Abandoned’ Us.

Why did Biden want Afghan to fall to the Taliban?

 

have you not noticed? We’ve been in Afghanistan for 20 years. We are responsible for what we leave behind. Sorry to hear that you don’t care about human rights that we are directly responsible for. “Oh they’re used to rape”…that is the weakest excuse I’ve ever heard.

so far you’ve offered no logic or rationale to back yourself up. You need to start

 

They can do it the same way they did in Vietnam. The Viet Cong attacked the ARVN troops and took their weapon and ammunition. Since they were Vietnamese, they lived off the land like everyone else.

 

I say airdrop thousands of crates of battle rifles to The People all across the country and see what they do. If they don't fight, then it'll be their fault. Thus far, they've been deprived of having much to fight with. ...and now the Taliban is confiscating civilian firearms to keep it that way.

 

It's against forum rules to make up quotes of a poster. I never said, "Oh they’re used to rape.”

I'm sorry if you feel there is "no logic or rationale to back" up what what I'm saying, however I'm not the one arguing that we need to reinvade Afghanistan to make sure girls can go to school and get masters in gender studies or whatever you think feminism entails.

Kipling said it best, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." Islamic civilization is not our civilization and you are advocating for a permanent occupation of Afghanistan for a reason that has nothing to do with why we went there in the first place. I'm unwilling to sanction a military occupation of a country in order to turn it into an Asian version of Wellesley College.

 

The war against the Viet Cong was more or less successful. South Vietnam fell to the NVA, not the Viet Cong.

 

But the war against the Viet Cong would have gone on endlessly. It is only a matter of how many they recruit and their determination. With sufficient determination, they cannot be defeated. It would have been similar to what was going on in Afghanistan.

 

They were mostly defeated. We dealt them a serious blow during the Tet Offensive and at the time, the Army understood that to defeat an insurgency you need to go for their supply lines, and we did at the North/South border and later, Cambodia. They still existed, but were not a significant factor. If it was up to the VC to overthrow South Vietnam, it would never have happened; it took the NVA's conventional forces.

 

Where did I argue a reinvasion? You just live in your own head huh?

you cry more about being paraphrased than you do about Afghanis being raped. Pathetic. Made even more so by the fact that you aren’t even arguing that you aren’t saying that. You are doubling down on it.


you don’t care that Afghanis get raped. Might as well say it cause that’s the only takeaway anyone can come away with. You don’t care about anything that happens there, including Americans being left behind after the deadline and being tortured, raped and killed by the Taliban for years to come. Your attitude is one of excuse making regarding your blatant and obvious stance of complete apathy.

Pathetic

Fact of the matter is You wouldn’t change a single thing about what Biden has done. You’d vote for it again if you could.

and having an opinion like that undermines everything and anything you have to say from now till eternity on any subject, because your judgement is as worthy of consideration as Doddering old Biden’s is.

Enjoy living in your own head buddy.

 

Heh, well that was delivered with an air of finality!

Well I can't do anything about it if you put me on your ignored list. That's your privilege, but before I vanish forever from your view, let me clear up a few misconceptions you seem to have:

I didn't vote for Biden. Anyone who's read even a handful of my posts would know that's preposterous. Nor do I like the way he turned an orderly withdrawal into a clusterf***. The level of incompetency he and his administration has shown is pretty well unprecedented.

But what's done is done. We can't turn back the clock on this withdrawal. We already gave up Bagram, our one ace in the hole and let it be turned into a Taliban rec center. So given that, what do you expect us to do about Afghani girls being raped? Reinvade again? Because if we are not doing that, we don't have any cards to play. Unless you have some suggestions, which you've failed to offer. Please, what should we do?

 

GWBush and Obama achieved victory in Afghanistan and pointed the way to a sustainable, low-cost, low-risk US role there for decades. Trump and Biden threw that away. This was a defeat of choice.

Biden’s Afghanistan policy shows the world a wobbly, impulsive U.S.

• By George F. Will

In the immediate aftermath of the heroic rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill addressed the British as adults, reminding them that “wars are not won by evacuations.” As the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan ends, the authors of the ignominious and tragic last chapter are hoping that perceptions will be more malleable than facts are.


With an effrontery that deserves derision, the Biden administration has compared U.S. flights out of Kabul to the U.S. flights into Berlin that began in 1948. Both exemplified U.S. military virtuosity, but sent different signals.

By sustaining a blockaded city of 2.2 million, the Promethean delivery of food and fuel into Berlin — almost 300,000 flights, over 11 months — announced that the United States had the will and capacity for a prolonged confrontation with the Soviet Union. The flights out of Kabul, rescuing some of the Americans and others caught in a made-in-America calamity, announce national bewilderment. This is what “America First” looks like when a slogan becomes a policy. . . .

 

It seems pretty inarguable that the Biden administration botched the withdrawal. But seems there's enough blame to go around for this war. I think it was sort of botched from the beginning by not having a clear objective, or at least a clear objective wasn't articulated to the American public. I mean if ask 20 Americans what we were supposed to be doing there, you would get 20 different answers: to kill bin laden, to punish the Taliban, to keep terrorists from coming to the U.S., to make life better for Afghans (building schools, etc.), to give Afghan women rights, to fix everything that got broken, etc., etc. IMO our two objectives should have been #1 to kill bin laden and #2 to punish Taliban, and that is all we should have been doing; all our efforts and resources should have gone to those two objectives. And yes, killing Taliban would have resulted in some civilian and collateral Afghan casualties. War always does that. Seems like by the time we knew bin laden was in Pakistan, we could have been finished giving Taliban a good taste of it, and maybe we should have carried the war to bin laden in Pakistan, thereby leaving Afghanistan? When bin laden was dead, it should have been over?

Lara Logan, in an interview, said that this war lasted so long because it was enriching contractors. That has the ring of truth, doesn't it?

P.S. Why does autocorrect capitalize the t in Taliban every time I type it? Seems like if I don't want to legitimize them by capitalizing their name it would be up to me. Just a little vent....

 

What that observation ignores is guerilla forces typically exist among the majority population in their native land fighting against invaders. White people quickly outnumbered native Indians by enormous margins.

 

Elements of it, yes. The calls early on the expedite the removal of Afghans who helped us that were not heeded was an inexcusable failure. But the vast majority of the problems with the withdrawal are traceable to the speed with which the Taliban took over the country. As prez Biden may be held responsible for that but he isn't to blame.

 

Oh no, he bears accountably for the withdrawal itself being a crap fest. But there's plenty of blame to go around for sure.

 

I had posted this link before, but David Petraeus was interviewed by NPR and mentioned that. "...and perhaps most importantly, just at the time that we were withdrawing the air support on which the Afghans always relied, we also withdrew about 18,000 contractors who were there to maintain the sophisticated U.S.-provided helicopters and planes that provide the resupply, additional forces, air medevac and close air support, all of which are critical, especially when your forces come under attack..."


The idea that the Afghan army and Air Force couldn't operate without thousands of American contractors and there was apparently NO PLAN to train up Aghan nationals is an indicator that the military had no plans, or intention, to withdraw from Afghanistan-ever.

"CORNISH: …Were you saying that there was no way for the U.S. – was – you were in charge – right? – of supporting the training and building up of this force? Did you know that it was not capable of surviving a U.S. withdrawal?

PETRAEUS: Well, we weren’t contemplating a withdrawal when I was doing this. We had 150,000 coalition forces when I was privileged to command, U.S. and all other forces in Afghanistan.

CORNISH: What were you contemplating? Did you think there would be an indefinite sustained presence?"

UGH

 

If you wouldn't deceptively cut off my post you would have already had your answer. No idea why you would do that. Anyway here is the rest of the post:

 

I actually completely agree with this entire post. Craziness.

 

It's unfortunate we did not elect Romney President in 2012.

Politics
Business Insider
Romney, criticizing Trump and Biden, says the US is facing current situation in Afghanistan 'because of terrible decisions made by two administrations'

 

Nah. Shoulda elected McCain. Romney is an elitist.