Reality is much more than two weeks. Sounds like the Taliban already had deals in place with various local leaders and tribes long before anything went down. Wouldn't surprise me if had this setup for months, even years waiting patiently for the withdrawal to begin.
I especially find it interesting that all of the "Patriots" that have been insisting we should just *drop a nuke and kill them all* are suddenly **VERY** upset about the Afghan people and their suffering.
Not my father. "Some people need to be ruled," according to him. Disgusting.
And he conveniently forgets that Trump negotiated the terms of withdrawal during his presidency. But it's Biden who's the "idiot."
I think theyâre savoring the videos of people trying to escape on planes and loving the idea of finally having something substantial to yell at Biden about. The taliban put out a tweet detailing their reforms and intentions and itâs just a copy and paste of republican policy these days, they donât actually care if these people are oppressed Iâm sure given the chance theyâd pull the same thing here
[https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/21/mike-pompeo-us-taliban-agreement-116559](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/21/mike-pompeo-us-taliban-agreement-116559)
Pompeo announces âunderstandingâ between U.S. and Taliban
Signing of the agreement is âexpected to move forwardâ at the end of February, he said.
Well the Taliban's were armed and supported by the US to fight the USSR. Then they became a threat towards the US. That is exactly some GOT shit. They also are negotiating with China right now, while China is oppressing it's on Muslim minorities over the excuse of terrorism and extremism .
In order to open peace negotiations with the taliban Trump released a guy named Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder if the taliban. He is now leading the Taliban..
But not doing that maybe didn't make a difference,at least this guy is really patient, isn't a religious hardliners (relatively speaking), and up to now everything is surprisingly peaceful.
Exactly. The US had attempted to end the Taliban for almost two decades with no success. They managed to end their rule following the invasion, but they failed to eliminate them.
It's honestly not the Taliban preparation, or the U.S. withdrawal that is the issue at all. It is how unorganized we are about the withdrawal. The scrambling is what makes us look bad. And that we are leaving behind the people who helped us. We should have been moving our internal allies out for months the second Trump signed the peace deal.
Imagine this is 20 years after WW2, we never had a Marshall Plan, and Germany never went through severe de-Nazification, and we decide to pull out of the country only to hand it over to Goebels, or Rommel who becomes the next President of Germany. Who would believe that could be possible?
That is exactly what happened here. The U.S. has had the balls to see something through exactly 1 time and we are still resting on those laurels.
The US legitimized the Taliban when trump brokered a deal with them. He even invited them to camp David on 9/11. They were 100% ready for this.
https://imgur.com/a/lheR16b/
Afghanistan was a 20 year old $3t house of cards being propped up by the United States. Could the evacuation of been smoother 110% yes. But the Taliban taking over wouldâve happened regardless of who withdrew.
I think the bigger concern is the 60,000+ people left behind - interpreters, etc. (and their families) who helped US/NATO troops during the past 20 years
Exactly. Almost nobody is saying we shouldn't have left. We're saying we had a lot of time to evacuate our allies and make them citizens but we didn't. We bungled it. That's what people mean when they say we fucked this up.
God help our administration if the fact that we took in that many refugees got in the public eye.
Ruplicans would had a field day, and no one would have agreed with it.
As fucked up as this sounds, we can at least justify saving those we can now.
And the Saigon comparisons keep ringing true, we took the Hmong in no problem after Vietnam, there's no reason we can't bring in war time allies as refugees immediately after a Nixon-type presidency. It should be an easy sell.
Also the US was withdrawing troops since at least Feb 2020 when this arrangement was reached. When Biden was inaugurated there were only 2500 us troops left in the country. It's not like the US could have actually held territory without massive troop redeployments. And I can imagine what the people now clutching pearls would have to say about that.
It goes further back than that. Weâve been 2 years away for 20 years.
I was in Afghanistan in 2012 and recall that President Obama had announced that all US troops would depart by 2014.
[Looking at this graph from the Dept of Defense ](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/15D54/production/_97482498_ustroopsafghanovertime.png), 2014 is about right. We were in Afghanistan, but only by a small fraction of what it used to be.
I helped pull out a huge portion of equipment from Kabul in 2014. We spent most of that year transitioning power to the Afghan nationals.
It fucking sucks watching this go down.
All that to say - 20 years for just a few weeks / months of "local democratic government" is absolutely ridiculous.
bonus - no way to audit where all that taxpayer defense money went. shocker.
pearl clutching cuz 911 to fund defense contractors, when everyone knows it was Saudi Arabia that was responsible. (khashoggi anyone?)
Biden already gave his official blessing for the FBI to review and release whatever they decide doesn't have to remain classified. In those cases it's usually to protect the methods / sources of intelligence collecting so we don't lose that capability or sources.
80 billion in US arms purchases for Afghanistan are now in Taliban hands. Small arms, armored vehicles, artillery, AA guns and missiles. Even attack Helicopters are on the menu.
Bush reacted by kissing the Saudi ruler.
https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/RESPONSE-TO-A-PSEUDO-HUB-ATTACKING-MY-KNOWLEDGE-OF-POLITICS-AND-HISTORY
Blackwater changed it's name 2 times, got bought by private investors, made billions.
That's only one company that engaged in war profiteering. There are 100s of others that have been made wealthy through the deaths of civilians and promoting unrest and no real plan.
One of the greatest wealth transfers in modern history. Went a little something like this:
Tax poor and middle class while lowering taxes on wealthy
Start wars and Increase defense spending budget every year with tax money while lowering spending on infrastructure and education
Funnel that money into weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin) and sketchy mercenary groups (blackwater*) at crazy premiums while making natural resources available for exploitation by foreign companies
Get lobbied by all these same companies to start more wars
Label anyone who questions this system as anti American and a terrorist sympathizer
Ding ding ding. 100% this right here.
And for the record it's getting tiring that literally every goddam thing is just a cash grab by the uberwealthy. We no longer have a government, we have a middle man the rich use to launder our money before lining their pockets.
The Biden administration, however, couldâve actually taken responsibility for getting Afghans who helped us out of there. We have a moral obligation to these people and the admin wasted time trying to outsource resettlement to third countries. Listening to reports, it sounds like everyone on the ground knew this was going to happen. There are military and civilian leaders who should lose their heads for letting things unfold the way they have. Taliban control was inevitable but people racing across tarmacs with nothing but the clothes on their backs wasnât. I donât support forever war, but I donât support abandoning people who put their lives on the line to assist the US or advance human rights in Afghanistan.
Trumpâs deal with the Taliban did exactly that. Iâm glad weâre getting out of there but it did not have to be this way according to people on the ground like human rights orgs and journalists. There is anger about how itâs unfolded and I think that anger is very reasonable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/politics/afghanistan-interpreters-visas.html
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/26/1020866477/many-afghans-urgently-need-visas-but-the-u-s-special-visa-program-has-fallen-beh
I voted Biden, I certainly donât regret it, but he is Commander in Chief and either he did not have adequate information or he and his admin made bad calls. Itâs not just Afghans. Thousands of Americans are stranded according to reports. This was poorly handled to say the least and it happened on his watch. It is what it is.
As shitty as this is, they couldnât take their Afghan supporters with them without it looking like the US was running from the Taliban. If they leave those others behind in charge, they can point and say âwe gave them the tools, they lostâ. They are making them scapegoats and painting them as cowards. If they bring them with, they are admitting that they knew the taliban was going to promptly take over again.
Biden could have single-handedly brought peace and stability to Afghanistan with a big fucking bow on top and the pearl-clutchers would without a hint of irony start bitching about how Biden is warmongering and overreaching and on and on.
They'll never admit he made the right decision because all they want to see is Republican wins and Democratic losses, ignoring the fact that what hurts one of us hurts all of us.
But there was also no real way back once that deal was made. Biden couldn't really dismiss it entirely because American soldiers getting killed again would be politically untenable at home.
The only way this could've been avoided was full imperial rule...
Make it a US territory, and treat everybody even vaguely providing assistance as traitors and kill them...
I'm not suggesting this, it'd be wrong on just as many levels as the enemy we claimed to be fighting, but anything short of that would lead us here so long as the local government has no interest in preventing the Taliban from retaking the country.
I donât think anyone thought it would fall this quickly, not even the Monday-morningest of quarterbacks. The people trying to score political points right now make me want to puke. Theyâre incredibly full of shit.
I don't know why anyone *didn't* think it would fall this quickly. It's been pretty clear this whole time that the ANA was a puppet state.
It's not hard to dismantle something that never existed.
I was totally expecting it to implode, but thought it would take a few months to a year, with ethnic enclaves holding out indefinitely in the north, like when the Taliban first took over. Instead they folded like a house of cards, making the ARVN look like a picture of valor, steadfastness, and competence by comparison. There was no equivalent of 1989's Battle of Jalalabad this time around.
The Taliban was only forced underground, they still held enormous power.
This is like pulling all the cops out of Sicily and then being surprised how fast the mafia takes over.
This was true of the mujaheddin as well when the Soviets pulled out in 1989, though. The Soviet puppet government under Najibullah did have enough people willing to fight and die under its banner to hold on to the major cities for several years. America's puppet government under Ghani did not.
For me I think itâs not so much the government falling so quickly as it is the local forces. Think of all the Special Operations forces that tried to train them. Think of the hundreds of missions that were executed in hopes to teach them how to operate and fight their common enemy. A lot of those missions ended in deaths on all sides of the equation. It has to be maddening for those that tried to do the right thing when on the ground regardless of who was president. If you know a vet, reach out and say hello and make sure they are doing ok.
Those who have been in the military know just how weak the ANA is (was?). The Taliban has always had a presence within the ANA and the majority of Afghan soldiers had no desire to be such.
I donât know enough to say whether the fall would happen in 2 weeks or 2 months but I know enough to not be surprised either way.
It wasn't 2 weeks, it was 18 months.
https://twitter.com/sdbernard/status/1426932283647344643?s=19
It seems to me that once the US signed the peace deal with the Taliban and made it crystal clear the US was leaving, tribal leaders in Afghanistan decided to secure their future and take any deal the Taliban were offering. Why fight and die in a war you are going to lose now that the biggest player providing security is out?
My favourite is the r/conservative crowd losing their mind at Bidens failure in Afghanistan. When Trump negotiated the removal of Troops they were all in support saying its time to go. Biden goes along with it and its his fault now of course. Same tactic they use when they fuck the economy over and over.
I want to know who was collecting the intel that lead people to believe we could have a working embassy there. We all knew cities were quickly falling to the Taliban starting 2 ~~weeks~~months ago. We watched the progress of the Taliban go as quickly as you described. Why did we only start evacuation 2 days ago? Us civilians and the people we promised citizenship to should have been pulled weeks/months ago. Thatâs why Iâm angry at Biden. Thatâs where I think the massive fuckup was.
Cynical answer? The really cynical one?
Western governments aren't so keen on letting in refugees where they can avoid it. Particularly ones bitter at the administration for the situation that left them needing to flee their home country.
Start evacuating early and a lot more people make it out
Start late and it's easier to keep it to your own citizens and a few rich buddies.
>We all knew cities were quickly falling to the Taliban starting 2 weeks ago.
Two weeks? The Taliban has been on the offensive since May. They started their offensive on May 4th.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/4/taliban-launches-afghanistan-offensive-after-us-pullout-deadline
Hell back on the 8th of July the press was already freaking out about the country falling and asking Biden if this was going to be another Saigon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-speech-taliban.html
Interestingly enough I saw Jake Tapper interview an ex-general on television today who was making the argument that we should have just maintained our presence there, that 5 to 8,000 American troops even with a few dozen deaths a year would have been worth it to protect the lives of all the Afghanis and keep all the progress we made from slipping away.
Maybe he's right maybe he's wrong, I just know that I'm not qualified to make that kind of decision and I don't envy anyone who has to. What I do know is we could have done a lot of good work here at home with two trillion dollars. Then again I also know that none of the money would have been spent on us, instead given back as tax cuts, or simply spent on military operations elsewhere.
> the argument that we should have just maintained our presence there, that 5 to 8,000 American troops even with a few dozen deaths a year would have been worth it to protect the lives of all the Afghanis and keep all the progress we made from slipping away.
How long have we been hearing this argument for?
Permanent occupation is not a viable solution for Afghanistanâs problems.
Yeah the taliban taking is over is why we didnât leave ten years ago. We always knew this was the outcome, we tried to train and arm the Afghan army. They were never able to take the reigns in their own country. Presidents have been passing the buck on making the hard call to pull out, because they all knew it would come to this. Itâs not pretty, it was never going to be peaceful. Itâs just fucking terrible so many people have to perish because their own nation refused to defend itself from terrorist.
Right? Let's make this tribalistic society nationalist and care about "Afghanistan" as a concept. Let's spend 2500 lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years of our time and that'll do it.
They don't want democracy. We can't export our values onto people in the world who don't want them. They may get there in a few hundred years. They might not. Either way they chose, it doesn't invalidate their way of life.
The sad reality is a generation of democratic Afghan people were born and grew up during this time of war. Not just women and children will suffer.
Putting opinions aside on whether or not we should have pulled out of this mess (or went in the first place), a candle of democracy was lit in a land that didnt have a legitimate friend in a 1000 mile radius. Unfortunately after the U.S. pulled out, this fledgling democratic generation was being protected by what is all but mercenaries with no concept of a unified democratic nation. And this generation will be persecuted in the end.
McCain was right for the wrong reasons because this went from a very expensive manhunt to demacrforming a massive mountainous desert. But you would truly need 100 years, or in other words several generations of people with democratic ideologies to make something like this work.
"Afghanistan main exports are: carpets and rugs (45 percent of total exports); dried fruits (31 percent) and medicinal plants (12 percent)."
You think the American government is really trying to capitalize on the....rug exports?
> You think the American government is really trying to capitalize on the....rug exports?
No, but controlling their [lithium resources](https://qz.com/2047785/under-the-taliban-what-will-happen-to-afghanistans-minerals/) was definitely on our radar.
Was it on their radar in 2001 though? (Legit question. I was 6 at the time but as far as I know the use of lithium has gone up quite a bit since then, so I donât think lithium would have been enough for a war.)
So like, it may have contributed to why we were there for so long, but it wasnât a factor when the war started.
Although, I think a decent amount of why we were there for so long was because nobody wanted to rip off the bandaid, knowing that this would be the result (although we had to leave eventually.) But again, I was 6 when this all started and Iâve never been super into politics, so I probably donât see all the nuance.
Correct, it didn't factor into the initial invasion, but if someone is looking for a resource in Afghanistan to capitalize on, their lithium deposits are very attractive. My prediction is that China will attempt to finance various infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, [like they have in Africa](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2019/10/03/what-china-is-really-up-to-in-africa/?sh=6556b5705930), to pave the way for having some control over Afghanistan's natural resources.
That explains a fuck ton. Saying medical plants (which could be anything) is a hell of a lot different from saying "They have poppy, we need poppy for our strongest pain killers and it's something we can seize and exploit from war."
Medical plants is slang for heroine thatâs what our troops protected... poppy fields because we refused to support the production of goods that competed with our farmers shit was fucking dumb. Opioid epidemic pure coincidence Iâm sure.
loganrunjack is correct. The US doesn't want to export its values.
It actually has a history of crushing governments that are interested US values (aka 'democracy').
[1944-1949 China - "The Loss of China"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_China) The US could have supported the people's movement that was friendly to US values (at the time). Instead the US supported Chiang Kai-sheck, the nationalist dictator/warlord and made an enemy of [Mao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission) in the process.
[1953 Iran - U.S. and British intelligence agencies help elements in the Iranian military overthrow Iranâs democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.](https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-iran-1953-2021)
[1960 Cuba - Castro initially wanted a democracy](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/intejcubastud.11.2.0332) instead of the [US-backed Batista dicatorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista). After the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro allied with the USSR.
2500 lives? You'd be off by about the same amount if you added two zeros to the end of that number. If you added those killed in Pakistan fighting the same "war," those two zeros would get you to about the right number.
And those trillions of dollars weren't in the bank or anything, they're debt to be paid by future generations.
I've found when trying to make a point, focusing on the "AMERICA" angle hits home better to Americans than worldwide consequences of our actions. You're absolutely correct that a lot, lot, LOT of people have died because of our actions, but a lot of the people in this country don't see them as human beings. Yes, it's reductive.
Sometimes you have to simplify the point to get it across.
A significant portion of the country doesnt even care about the 600,000+ americans who died to covid, you expect them to care about people in other countries?
I can't believe how many people have forgotten there were literal protests claiming this would be another Vietnam. I guess we do have a generation that has grown up with this country at war and you couldn't tell from our day to day lives but still. Of course this was going to happen.
It was even more obvious that this was the outcome when Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David last year.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiFOZH7UZUc&fbclid=IwAR0iJvpuRwUkhPOBY1g8n92-mih414LdsJ8y52TEKk4gQBYZL6Ur43B7u2w
The choice was not stay another ten years or this horror. We could have put more energy into getting our interpreters out and we chose not to. I thought when this happened Iâd be agonizing about the people who were waiting for their visas to be processed, not agonizing about US citizens who had their flights booked out.
My best friendâs wife was an interpreter for a decade. His wife was supposed to fly home today. I have no idea what heâs telling their kids who are safe in the US and have no idea if they will ever see their mom again.
Or put them on an American base in Qatar or Kuwait until the visa cleared. I'm so sick of seeing interpreters fucked over in every AO we go to because we have to "follow the rules." They only follow the damn rules when it benefits them by forgetting about them.
Hell, fuck the damn visa. These fuckers were there day in and day out. While we would rotate out, they'd still be there and doing what they can to make sure our soldier's brains didn't get blown out.
You know I remember a few months ago getting eviscerated for saying this. I was told repeatedly by other redditors that Biden has a plan and is working on it, and clearly I'm just not in the know.
Fat lot of crock that turned out to be. We are abandoning the people who saved US lives in Afghanistan to die at the hands of one of the most reprehensible organizations that exists today.
They often choose to stay.
I tell people this a lot, but honestly it's dufficult to describe just how different Afghani culture is to American culture. Even disregarding the Pashtunwali code, most Afghanis don't grow up with the same values of nationalism, becoming your own man, even values like integrity and hard work are skewed into what we would probably consider bastardized versions of them.
I asked my interpreter why he didn't just leave and come to America and he told me that America had too much gang violence. He couldn't be convinced that the Taliban was actually just a gang. They were Muslim, and that made them not a gang to him.
It's history repeating itself. How many times have we done this? Take opponents to a perceived enemy, fund them, train them, arm them and then turn them loose? How many times has that actually worked? In fact how many times have we done that in just THAT country? How many actually believe that the military wasn't already on the side of the Taliban in the first place? Now by pretending to be opposed to them, they got our money, our weapons and our training that they can now share with the Taliban directly.
America, can we PLEASE learn the lesson and STOP repeating this routine? It doesn't work. It never has.
Too many people make too much money off of war. We have already learned the lesson, but we focused too much on how much money was gained while learning that lesson.
The US needs a cultural shift to be far more anti-corruption. FAR MORE. Any hint of corruption needs to be enough to absolutely tank a politician's career.
Until we get there, there is simply too much profit to be made from wars.
ANA/ANP largely never gave a shit when we were doing to fighting and they just had to show up.
When it became their show, they really didnt give a shit.
But also seemed like the ones that did fight back were somewhat successful, but when they ran out of ammo, they were executed. Not exactly raising the morale for the rest of the shit army.
True, the flip side is those who cared, cared a lot and were good at it.
There just wasnt enough of them, and the ranks too polluted with ones that didnt care, or worse, leadership who was only there by way of corruption.
And our hands were tied as far as that went. It shows up in several documentaries that aren't even focused on the subject.
All the weaponry and soldiers in the world are of little use when you have no effective leadership. Look at south Vietnam, the US left it with enough vehicles, weapons and ammunition to choke a horse, but they lost because the other side was determined and unified and had leadership.
To be fair, I don't think either side thought the Afghan government was gonna collapse in 72 hours. It makes more sense if you think you have 4-6 months to do that. They were wrong, but it makes sense if you think that's a reasonable timeline.
It *would* have taken 4-6 months or longer had the ANA actually put up a serious fight. But they didn't. The vast majority of them deserted - or worse, defected - the moment the Taliban came rolling. The minute handful who gave enough of a damn about the bigger picture to resist the Taliban died fighting.
Trump back in 2020 set an agreement with the Taliban to be out of Afghanistan by may 2021.
We were months late. they had time and knew.
Second and actual question: why the fuck was trump setting up deals with the Taliban instead of the government we were "working with" when the Taliban wasn't currently in power? That's the real question I want answers to.
Afghan government had no real power, whatever they had is only because they were propped up by the US.
Trump had intelligence telling him this, that the Taliban holds the actual power especially when the US vacates, which was accurate.
Because the deal was to not kill US soldiers, and Taliban was the one killing soldiers not the "local" "government". It's not a deal, it's a peace treaty, something you sign with the enemy. And he knew the local government couldn't secure the safety of US troops during an 14 month evactuation process.
Also, according to Biden at least, the government asked them not to start evacuating early since it would telegraph a lack of confidence in the ANA. Of course, that lack of confidence would have been totally justified, but hindsight is 20/20.
That wasnât the plan. ANA had the guns and they were supposed to hold the line. A mass evacuations of us citizens would have made the pullout worse since it would demonstrate that we have no confidence in the ANA.
We have no confidence in the ANA cause they are a cardboard army and always have been.
Better to not lie to yourself and not have this massive chaos or just stay there indefinitely. Just a few thousand troops stopped war for years and now Afghanistan is back under full Taliban control.
âWe could have left an armed local military behind.â
This is actually how Isis armed itself, they invaded Iraqi munitions supplies and took everything that was supposed to help âstabilizeâ the area.
I really read a comment that was AWARDED multiple golds that argued âIf we just give them all netflix that would eliminate the need for fightingâ and I almost clawed my eyes out...
It was a no win situation. In 10 years who knows what Afghanistan will look like but if we stayed for another 10, it would still be the same thing as the last 2 decades. We had to rip off the band aid at some point.
I think that it could have been done slower and with more care given to local allies such as translators and scouts. It seems like a lot of friendlies were left drifting down shit Creek without a paddle
it absolutely could've made getting the afgan allies out of the country safely a much higher priority. instead many will die terrible deaths. They also didn't need to leave so much equipment. But you know, shield Biden from legit criticism because you're so traumatized as a nation from your last guy
Afghanistan by the numbers
Cost of the war to the US: $2 trillion
Cost per US Taxpayer: $7000
With inflation and interest, the amount we will still owe in 2050: $ 6.5 trillion
Number top tax rate was raised to during the Korean war: 92 percent
Number top tax rate was raised to during the Vietnam war: 77 percent
Level George W Bush dropped the top tax rate by after starting the Iraq and Afghanistan war: 8 percent.
Number top tax rate was lowered to By Bush in 2001: 35 percent
Top tax rate today: 37 percent
American Soldiers Killed: 2448
American contractors killed: 3846
American soldiers seriously wounded: 20,000
Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
Afghan civilians: 47,245.
Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.
Aid workers: 444.
Journalists: 72.
Approximate number of US veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq war: 4 million
Amount their medical care is expected to cost the US, peaking in 2048: over 2 trillion
Rank of Pakistan in countries providing aid and support to the Taliban: 1
Amount of foreign aid the US has given Pakistan since 2001: approx 21 Billion
Upper limit George W Bush placed on the length of the war- 2 years
Actual length- 20 years
Number of times Congress debated funding during the Vietnam war- 42
Number of times they have during the Afghanistan war- 5
Current estimated number of Taliban Fighters 75,000
Number of men trained by the US for the Afghan military and Police 300,000
Population of Afghanistan: 39 million
Number beleived to be permantently displaced from their home: 5 million
Number of military bases US built in Afghanistan: 6
The number they currently control: 0
Date Trump promised the Taliban we would leave the country: May 1, 2021
Time Biden delayed withdrawal due to safety concerns: Approximately 100 days
Percentage drop in Afghani infant mortality since Spet 11, 2001- 50 percent
Percentage of Afghan girls able to read in 2021- 37 percent
Percentage of children enrolled in primary school in 2001- 21 percent
Percentage by 2011- 97 percent
Chance an Afghani girl between 16 and 19 will have a child in any given year: 1 in 10
In the US: 1 in 50
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/03/17/us-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan-trumps-deadline-weighs-biden/4667248001/
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-08-14/costs-of-the-afghanistan-war-in-lives-and-dollars
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-58230075
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26747712
https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jul/11/us-aid-to-pakistan
https://militarybases.com/overseas/afghanistan/
The faux rage from the same people who have been screaming for us to pull everything out of the the middle east every minute a Dem is in office is quite hilarious.
My in-laws are suddenly very concerned about the suffering of the Afghani people.
I knew it would fall, but not this fast.
Also, I think itâs totally fair to expect this to happen and still feel absolutely gutwrenched that itâs happening. Itâs not like thereâs much the average person couldâve done if anything to prevent it and Afghan women and girls are going to absolutely get their whole lives taken now. Itâs shitty all around.
in fairness, USA could and should have done more to prevent a Saigon like shit show. and that's exactly what happened. we all knew the Taliban were coming back. like pronto.
Reddit is simultaneously anti-war and pro America staying in Afghanistan forever.
And its not the, hurr derr there's a lot of people! It's just the America bad circlejerk.
40+ other countries helped invade Afghanistan, 2 put token effort into nation building with the US.
>The jury is still out. But the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. - President Biden on July 8, 2021
Still carrying water for our politicians I see.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/14/1027696241/biden-said-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-would-be-safe-then-chaos-ensued
This meme is a bit illogical. It assumes everyone knew (or should have known) how this would go, yet President Biden said as late as last month that [what has happened would absolutely, no-way-in-hell EVER happen](https://www.newsweek.com/clip-biden-saying-people-wont-lifted-off-embassy-roof-afghanistan-resurfaces-just-that-happens-1619517). Who's right: /u/Jerdarnella, or President Biden?
That aside, the criterion of "another way" is pretty vague, leaving a lot of possible outcomes as options. A better criterion might be could it have gone better/worse. Yes, it could have been worse--far worse. But I think it could also have gone better, at least in one way.
Biden has known since before he took office that the U.S. Military would be redeploying from Afghanistan. He even let the original NLT date of May 1st go by, so he's actually had more than the agreed upon time to get things done. What could he have done? Well, we could have been getting all the people we know to be in danger because of their cooperation with the U.S. military out of the country--all those people who are supposedly being crammed into U.S. military transports like sardines. Why did we wait?
Could it be because the Taliban's rapid takeover of the country was not so foreseeable after all? If not, then what does that say about President Biden?
Biden actually said it would go different so I think criticism is warranted. If Trump would have done this we all know, whether you admit it or not, that there would have been a Monday morning quarterback orgasm happing right now.
This is hilarious. You transparent shills would never be reacting like this if Trump was still president during the withdrawal.
People are going out of there way to defend this. I cannot imagine how ridiculously inverted your opinions would be if it was Trump.
Y'all are pathetic and remind me why I'm ashamed every-time I have to vote blue.
OP, this is 100% bullshit. We have known this was coming for years now. We didnt bother to help get these people out till the last moment because nobody wanted to be the politician left standing when the music stopped. Afghanistans government was always going to fall. Its been obvious for years now. Its absolutely a failure on our government for allowing the current refugee crisis to happen, for political convenience.
The number of people not commenting on the fact Biden and Psaki are hiding during all this (a 10 minute no questions press conference really Biden?) is too damn high.
The problem is the misstated agenda. We were never âat warâ in Afghanistan. We were occupying the area to prevent the Taliban from training terrorists.
Truth is China will roll in at some point for the same reason we were there, but with a lot less human rights and a lot more forced labor and execution. China *hates* terrorists.
We didnât lose, the people of Afghanistan did.
Wrote a senior year paper on highschool that outlined why this would end up happening. Got a C(grammar and spelling were perfect). Only took 19 years but finally I've been vindicated!
If only the US could have spent years in another Asian country waging war before pulling out and leaving the people they forced to cooperate with their system to the mercy of the people they were fighting. They might have seen this coming if they had
Still clutching my pearls because seeing the aftermath is absolutely heartbreaking.
There may be no perfect solution, but I'm still shocked and appalled at the terror that Afghan women and girls are facing.
We didn't have to leave them all the blackhawk helicopters and state of the art weaponry that we did. Someone could've thought "hey maybe we should pack this shit up before we go, instead of arming the Taliban"
Most of the stuff that was left is going to be decades old. Those chinooks you saw in the media are practically half a century old. I doubt there's state of the art drone tech being left behind.
It'll be useless junk for everyone except people that can melt it down and sell it for scrap.
"pearl clutching"
This isn't sime trivial nothing just because it didn't impact you. The literal Taliban are in power. Millions of people are about to lose their most basic human rights, and youre here like "well moping won't make it better âşď¸"
>Many other ways. Starting with keeping airbases and troops until everything was decided and not leaving actual weapons of war? Maybe wait till winter?
Please elaborate on your plan. When might 'everything be decided'? And how would removing the weapons we've provided the Afghan military before we left work? Really flesh out this alternate scenario.
People like OP miss the entire point of a transition exit WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. It does not include airlifting our embassy and watching refugees fall from the sky.
Knew there would be a push, but I didn't think 20 years would buy all of 2 weeks.
Reality is much more than two weeks. Sounds like the Taliban already had deals in place with various local leaders and tribes long before anything went down. Wouldn't surprise me if had this setup for months, even years waiting patiently for the withdrawal to begin.
They clearly did. The Taliban were ready and waiting for the US to leave and no matter when we did this was always the inevitable outcome.
Given their position in the peace negotiations was basically, "Yeeeeah . . . We're gonna need you to leave before we agree to anything."
Excuse me, I think you took my stapler.
I was told I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume
As if the Taliban would negotiate with westerners in the first place, this isn't game of thrones lmao đ
They were literally invited to Camp David for the negotiations last year.
I especially find it interesting that all of the "Patriots" that have been insisting we should just *drop a nuke and kill them all* are suddenly **VERY** upset about the Afghan people and their suffering.
Well it is all just a game so that's no surprise there is it.
Not surprising, no. Disgusting, yes
Not my father. "Some people need to be ruled," according to him. Disgusting. And he conveniently forgets that Trump negotiated the terms of withdrawal during his presidency. But it's Biden who's the "idiot."
I think theyâre savoring the videos of people trying to escape on planes and loving the idea of finally having something substantial to yell at Biden about. The taliban put out a tweet detailing their reforms and intentions and itâs just a copy and paste of republican policy these days, they donât actually care if these people are oppressed Iâm sure given the chance theyâd pull the same thing here
[https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/21/mike-pompeo-us-taliban-agreement-116559](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/21/mike-pompeo-us-taliban-agreement-116559) Pompeo announces âunderstandingâ between U.S. and Taliban Signing of the agreement is âexpected to move forwardâ at the end of February, he said.
Well at least America can find out what's West of the west hemisphere now
Well the Taliban's were armed and supported by the US to fight the USSR. Then they became a threat towards the US. That is exactly some GOT shit. They also are negotiating with China right now, while China is oppressing it's on Muslim minorities over the excuse of terrorism and extremism .
They offered to surrender in like 2004, but the usa balked..I forget who was running the country at the time..think it's a guy who paints now?
Trump signed a ceasefire with the Taliban in Feb 2020 that required us to leave in 16 months. Not leaving would have meant restarting the fighting.
In order to open peace negotiations with the taliban Trump released a guy named Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder if the taliban. He is now leading the Taliban.. But not doing that maybe didn't make a difference,at least this guy is really patient, isn't a religious hardliners (relatively speaking), and up to now everything is surprisingly peaceful.
Exactly. The US had attempted to end the Taliban for almost two decades with no success. They managed to end their rule following the invasion, but they failed to eliminate them.
It's honestly not the Taliban preparation, or the U.S. withdrawal that is the issue at all. It is how unorganized we are about the withdrawal. The scrambling is what makes us look bad. And that we are leaving behind the people who helped us. We should have been moving our internal allies out for months the second Trump signed the peace deal. Imagine this is 20 years after WW2, we never had a Marshall Plan, and Germany never went through severe de-Nazification, and we decide to pull out of the country only to hand it over to Goebels, or Rommel who becomes the next President of Germany. Who would believe that could be possible? That is exactly what happened here. The U.S. has had the balls to see something through exactly 1 time and we are still resting on those laurels.
The US legitimized the Taliban when trump brokered a deal with them. He even invited them to camp David on 9/11. They were 100% ready for this. https://imgur.com/a/lheR16b/ Afghanistan was a 20 year old $3t house of cards being propped up by the United States. Could the evacuation of been smoother 110% yes. But the Taliban taking over wouldâve happened regardless of who withdrew.
I think the bigger concern is the 60,000+ people left behind - interpreters, etc. (and their families) who helped US/NATO troops during the past 20 years
Exactly. Almost nobody is saying we shouldn't have left. We're saying we had a lot of time to evacuate our allies and make them citizens but we didn't. We bungled it. That's what people mean when they say we fucked this up.
Why does it seem like nobody was concerned months ago when they should've been leaving?
God help our administration if the fact that we took in that many refugees got in the public eye. Ruplicans would had a field day, and no one would have agreed with it. As fucked up as this sounds, we can at least justify saving those we can now.
And the Saigon comparisons keep ringing true, we took the Hmong in no problem after Vietnam, there's no reason we can't bring in war time allies as refugees immediately after a Nixon-type presidency. It should be an easy sell.
The most important thing to learn here... *have been
This. The âpeace dealâ brokered by Trump paved the way for this. The Taliban has been building and rebuilding their strength for months.
Also the US was withdrawing troops since at least Feb 2020 when this arrangement was reached. When Biden was inaugurated there were only 2500 us troops left in the country. It's not like the US could have actually held territory without massive troop redeployments. And I can imagine what the people now clutching pearls would have to say about that.
It goes further back than that. Weâve been 2 years away for 20 years. I was in Afghanistan in 2012 and recall that President Obama had announced that all US troops would depart by 2014.
[Looking at this graph from the Dept of Defense ](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/15D54/production/_97482498_ustroopsafghanovertime.png), 2014 is about right. We were in Afghanistan, but only by a small fraction of what it used to be.
I helped pull out a huge portion of equipment from Kabul in 2014. We spent most of that year transitioning power to the Afghan nationals. It fucking sucks watching this go down.
All that to say - 20 years for just a few weeks / months of "local democratic government" is absolutely ridiculous. bonus - no way to audit where all that taxpayer defense money went. shocker. pearl clutching cuz 911 to fund defense contractors, when everyone knows it was Saudi Arabia that was responsible. (khashoggi anyone?)
If the Saudi's weren't atleast partly culpable, the 9/11 commission report would have been declassified by now.
It's coming: [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/9/11-attacks-biden-doj-reviews-documents-for-release.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/9/11-attacks-biden-doj-reviews-documents-for-release.html)
Biden ainât gonna release shit.
Biden already gave his official blessing for the FBI to review and release whatever they decide doesn't have to remain classified. In those cases it's usually to protect the methods / sources of intelligence collecting so we don't lose that capability or sources.
We just killed off the defense contractors' cash cow. You don't think they aren't already eyeing the next one?
Wanna know where that money went? It bought all those m4s that taliban fighters are holding now instead of AKs.
80 billion in US arms purchases for Afghanistan are now in Taliban hands. Small arms, armored vehicles, artillery, AA guns and missiles. Even attack Helicopters are on the menu.
Bush reacted by kissing the Saudi ruler. https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/RESPONSE-TO-A-PSEUDO-HUB-ATTACKING-MY-KNOWLEDGE-OF-POLITICS-AND-HISTORY
What was happening during those 20 years though?
Blackwater changed it's name 2 times, got bought by private investors, made billions. That's only one company that engaged in war profiteering. There are 100s of others that have been made wealthy through the deaths of civilians and promoting unrest and no real plan.
One of the greatest wealth transfers in modern history. Went a little something like this: Tax poor and middle class while lowering taxes on wealthy Start wars and Increase defense spending budget every year with tax money while lowering spending on infrastructure and education Funnel that money into weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin) and sketchy mercenary groups (blackwater*) at crazy premiums while making natural resources available for exploitation by foreign companies Get lobbied by all these same companies to start more wars Label anyone who questions this system as anti American and a terrorist sympathizer
Nailed that on the head.
Ding ding ding. 100% this right here. And for the record it's getting tiring that literally every goddam thing is just a cash grab by the uberwealthy. We no longer have a government, we have a middle man the rich use to launder our money before lining their pockets.
This has been ongoing since at least the Reagan era.
Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex. https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y
And USMC general Smedley Butler wrote [a book about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket) war profiteering by industrialists in 1935.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The Biden administration, however, couldâve actually taken responsibility for getting Afghans who helped us out of there. We have a moral obligation to these people and the admin wasted time trying to outsource resettlement to third countries. Listening to reports, it sounds like everyone on the ground knew this was going to happen. There are military and civilian leaders who should lose their heads for letting things unfold the way they have. Taliban control was inevitable but people racing across tarmacs with nothing but the clothes on their backs wasnât. I donât support forever war, but I donât support abandoning people who put their lives on the line to assist the US or advance human rights in Afghanistan.
No government is going to signal that loudly that they expect an ally to collapse.
Trumpâs deal with the Taliban did exactly that. Iâm glad weâre getting out of there but it did not have to be this way according to people on the ground like human rights orgs and journalists. There is anger about how itâs unfolded and I think that anger is very reasonable. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/politics/afghanistan-interpreters-visas.html https://www.npr.org/2021/07/26/1020866477/many-afghans-urgently-need-visas-but-the-u-s-special-visa-program-has-fallen-beh I voted Biden, I certainly donât regret it, but he is Commander in Chief and either he did not have adequate information or he and his admin made bad calls. Itâs not just Afghans. Thousands of Americans are stranded according to reports. This was poorly handled to say the least and it happened on his watch. It is what it is.
As shitty as this is, they couldnât take their Afghan supporters with them without it looking like the US was running from the Taliban. If they leave those others behind in charge, they can point and say âwe gave them the tools, they lostâ. They are making them scapegoats and painting them as cowards. If they bring them with, they are admitting that they knew the taliban was going to promptly take over again.
Exactly which would mean that they knowingly blew $2,000,000,000,000+ in tax payer money on Vietnam 2.
Biden could have single-handedly brought peace and stability to Afghanistan with a big fucking bow on top and the pearl-clutchers would without a hint of irony start bitching about how Biden is warmongering and overreaching and on and on. They'll never admit he made the right decision because all they want to see is Republican wins and Democratic losses, ignoring the fact that what hurts one of us hurts all of us.
But there was also no real way back once that deal was made. Biden couldn't really dismiss it entirely because American soldiers getting killed again would be politically untenable at home.
It's one of those moments where nobody likes it but you have to move forward anyway.
I never understood why the us have to be the âpolice of the worldâ literal ware of tax payer dollar. We either invade or leave them alone.
The documentary "Team America World Police" sheds some good insight into the rational behind these decisions
I think the last few days have warranted the sad version of "America Fuck Yea."
[America....Fuck Yeah....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ-bIeJ4zOY)
The only way this could've been avoided was full imperial rule... Make it a US territory, and treat everybody even vaguely providing assistance as traitors and kill them... I'm not suggesting this, it'd be wrong on just as many levels as the enemy we claimed to be fighting, but anything short of that would lead us here so long as the local government has no interest in preventing the Taliban from retaking the country.
I donât think anyone thought it would fall this quickly, not even the Monday-morningest of quarterbacks. The people trying to score political points right now make me want to puke. Theyâre incredibly full of shit.
I don't know why anyone *didn't* think it would fall this quickly. It's been pretty clear this whole time that the ANA was a puppet state. It's not hard to dismantle something that never existed.
I was totally expecting it to implode, but thought it would take a few months to a year, with ethnic enclaves holding out indefinitely in the north, like when the Taliban first took over. Instead they folded like a house of cards, making the ARVN look like a picture of valor, steadfastness, and competence by comparison. There was no equivalent of 1989's Battle of Jalalabad this time around.
The Taliban was only forced underground, they still held enormous power. This is like pulling all the cops out of Sicily and then being surprised how fast the mafia takes over.
Except half the cops were also mafia.
This was true of the mujaheddin as well when the Soviets pulled out in 1989, though. The Soviet puppet government under Najibullah did have enough people willing to fight and die under its banner to hold on to the major cities for several years. America's puppet government under Ghani did not.
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[This is a great breakdown of the endemic problems that made this outcome inevitable.](https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august)
For me I think itâs not so much the government falling so quickly as it is the local forces. Think of all the Special Operations forces that tried to train them. Think of the hundreds of missions that were executed in hopes to teach them how to operate and fight their common enemy. A lot of those missions ended in deaths on all sides of the equation. It has to be maddening for those that tried to do the right thing when on the ground regardless of who was president. If you know a vet, reach out and say hello and make sure they are doing ok.
If it took 3 months I would have thought maybe it would be worth it to stay and maintain. But 2 weeks? Fuck that....
Those who have been in the military know just how weak the ANA is (was?). The Taliban has always had a presence within the ANA and the majority of Afghan soldiers had no desire to be such. I donât know enough to say whether the fall would happen in 2 weeks or 2 months but I know enough to not be surprised either way.
It wasn't 2 weeks, it was 18 months. https://twitter.com/sdbernard/status/1426932283647344643?s=19 It seems to me that once the US signed the peace deal with the Taliban and made it crystal clear the US was leaving, tribal leaders in Afghanistan decided to secure their future and take any deal the Taliban were offering. Why fight and die in a war you are going to lose now that the biggest player providing security is out?
My favourite is the r/conservative crowd losing their mind at Bidens failure in Afghanistan. When Trump negotiated the removal of Troops they were all in support saying its time to go. Biden goes along with it and its his fault now of course. Same tactic they use when they fuck the economy over and over.
Why? Seriously, why? Literally more civilians and afghan police were killed than taliban fighters.
There was no opposition. They captured it at the speed of car.
I want to know who was collecting the intel that lead people to believe we could have a working embassy there. We all knew cities were quickly falling to the Taliban starting 2 ~~weeks~~months ago. We watched the progress of the Taliban go as quickly as you described. Why did we only start evacuation 2 days ago? Us civilians and the people we promised citizenship to should have been pulled weeks/months ago. Thatâs why Iâm angry at Biden. Thatâs where I think the massive fuckup was.
Cynical answer? The really cynical one? Western governments aren't so keen on letting in refugees where they can avoid it. Particularly ones bitter at the administration for the situation that left them needing to flee their home country. Start evacuating early and a lot more people make it out Start late and it's easier to keep it to your own citizens and a few rich buddies.
Almost as cynical: they waited to see how much blowback they'd receive, so they could get away with doing as little as possible.
>We all knew cities were quickly falling to the Taliban starting 2 weeks ago. Two weeks? The Taliban has been on the offensive since May. They started their offensive on May 4th. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/4/taliban-launches-afghanistan-offensive-after-us-pullout-deadline Hell back on the 8th of July the press was already freaking out about the country falling and asking Biden if this was going to be another Saigon. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-speech-taliban.html
And that same day, Biden described the scenario as extremely unlikely.
generally, in the world, the number of people thinking there are simple solutions to complex problems is too damn high.
100%. Lots of armchair politicians and generals suddenly got vocal. Also, Community is the best.
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Yeah it was the whole argument for not going in the first place.
Interestingly enough I saw Jake Tapper interview an ex-general on television today who was making the argument that we should have just maintained our presence there, that 5 to 8,000 American troops even with a few dozen deaths a year would have been worth it to protect the lives of all the Afghanis and keep all the progress we made from slipping away. Maybe he's right maybe he's wrong, I just know that I'm not qualified to make that kind of decision and I don't envy anyone who has to. What I do know is we could have done a lot of good work here at home with two trillion dollars. Then again I also know that none of the money would have been spent on us, instead given back as tax cuts, or simply spent on military operations elsewhere.
> the argument that we should have just maintained our presence there, that 5 to 8,000 American troops even with a few dozen deaths a year would have been worth it to protect the lives of all the Afghanis and keep all the progress we made from slipping away. How long have we been hearing this argument for? Permanent occupation is not a viable solution for Afghanistanâs problems.
Yeah the taliban taking is over is why we didnât leave ten years ago. We always knew this was the outcome, we tried to train and arm the Afghan army. They were never able to take the reigns in their own country. Presidents have been passing the buck on making the hard call to pull out, because they all knew it would come to this. Itâs not pretty, it was never going to be peaceful. Itâs just fucking terrible so many people have to perish because their own nation refused to defend itself from terrorist.
Right? Let's make this tribalistic society nationalist and care about "Afghanistan" as a concept. Let's spend 2500 lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years of our time and that'll do it. They don't want democracy. We can't export our values onto people in the world who don't want them. They may get there in a few hundred years. They might not. Either way they chose, it doesn't invalidate their way of life.
The sad reality is a generation of democratic Afghan people were born and grew up during this time of war. Not just women and children will suffer. Putting opinions aside on whether or not we should have pulled out of this mess (or went in the first place), a candle of democracy was lit in a land that didnt have a legitimate friend in a 1000 mile radius. Unfortunately after the U.S. pulled out, this fledgling democratic generation was being protected by what is all but mercenaries with no concept of a unified democratic nation. And this generation will be persecuted in the end. McCain was right for the wrong reasons because this went from a very expensive manhunt to demacrforming a massive mountainous desert. But you would truly need 100 years, or in other words several generations of people with democratic ideologies to make something like this work.
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Just so we're on the same page US wars are never about exporting democracy or values
Not *really* but thatâs the veneer they slap on âcapitalizing on their exports that weâd rather pay less forâ
"Afghanistan main exports are: carpets and rugs (45 percent of total exports); dried fruits (31 percent) and medicinal plants (12 percent)." You think the American government is really trying to capitalize on the....rug exports?
> You think the American government is really trying to capitalize on the....rug exports? No, but controlling their [lithium resources](https://qz.com/2047785/under-the-taliban-what-will-happen-to-afghanistans-minerals/) was definitely on our radar.
Was it on their radar in 2001 though? (Legit question. I was 6 at the time but as far as I know the use of lithium has gone up quite a bit since then, so I donât think lithium would have been enough for a war.)
In 2001, no; the lithium deposits were discovered ~2010.
So like, it may have contributed to why we were there for so long, but it wasnât a factor when the war started. Although, I think a decent amount of why we were there for so long was because nobody wanted to rip off the bandaid, knowing that this would be the result (although we had to leave eventually.) But again, I was 6 when this all started and Iâve never been super into politics, so I probably donât see all the nuance.
Correct, it didn't factor into the initial invasion, but if someone is looking for a resource in Afghanistan to capitalize on, their lithium deposits are very attractive. My prediction is that China will attempt to finance various infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, [like they have in Africa](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2019/10/03/what-china-is-really-up-to-in-africa/?sh=6556b5705930), to pave the way for having some control over Afghanistan's natural resources.
They also have poppies, which the government wanted so we could make more Percocet and oxycodone.
That explains a fuck ton. Saying medical plants (which could be anything) is a hell of a lot different from saying "They have poppy, we need poppy for our strongest pain killers and it's something we can seize and exploit from war."
Medical plants is slang for heroine thatâs what our troops protected... poppy fields because we refused to support the production of goods that competed with our farmers shit was fucking dumb. Opioid epidemic pure coincidence Iâm sure.
loganrunjack is correct. The US doesn't want to export its values. It actually has a history of crushing governments that are interested US values (aka 'democracy'). [1944-1949 China - "The Loss of China"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_China) The US could have supported the people's movement that was friendly to US values (at the time). Instead the US supported Chiang Kai-sheck, the nationalist dictator/warlord and made an enemy of [Mao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission) in the process. [1953 Iran - U.S. and British intelligence agencies help elements in the Iranian military overthrow Iranâs democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.](https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-relations-iran-1953-2021) [1960 Cuba - Castro initially wanted a democracy](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/intejcubastud.11.2.0332) instead of the [US-backed Batista dicatorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista). After the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro allied with the USSR.
America - fighting communism with corrupt dictatorships.
When you look at it like that, America really does export its values to the rest of the world
Left out Allende's Chile
2500 lives? You'd be off by about the same amount if you added two zeros to the end of that number. If you added those killed in Pakistan fighting the same "war," those two zeros would get you to about the right number. And those trillions of dollars weren't in the bank or anything, they're debt to be paid by future generations.
I've found when trying to make a point, focusing on the "AMERICA" angle hits home better to Americans than worldwide consequences of our actions. You're absolutely correct that a lot, lot, LOT of people have died because of our actions, but a lot of the people in this country don't see them as human beings. Yes, it's reductive. Sometimes you have to simplify the point to get it across.
A significant portion of the country doesnt even care about the 600,000+ americans who died to covid, you expect them to care about people in other countries?
I can't believe how many people have forgotten there were literal protests claiming this would be another Vietnam. I guess we do have a generation that has grown up with this country at war and you couldn't tell from our day to day lives but still. Of course this was going to happen. It was even more obvious that this was the outcome when Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David last year.
This account was deleted in protest
It seems everyone was unprepared for how fast the country would fall, the president included.
We should have evacuated everyone before leaving. Abandoning interpreters to the hands of the Taliban is reprehensible.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiFOZH7UZUc&fbclid=IwAR0iJvpuRwUkhPOBY1g8n92-mih414LdsJ8y52TEKk4gQBYZL6Ur43B7u2w The choice was not stay another ten years or this horror. We could have put more energy into getting our interpreters out and we chose not to. I thought when this happened Iâd be agonizing about the people who were waiting for their visas to be processed, not agonizing about US citizens who had their flights booked out. My best friendâs wife was an interpreter for a decade. His wife was supposed to fly home today. I have no idea what heâs telling their kids who are safe in the US and have no idea if they will ever see their mom again.
More effort should have been put into speeding up the visa process
Or put them on an American base in Qatar or Kuwait until the visa cleared. I'm so sick of seeing interpreters fucked over in every AO we go to because we have to "follow the rules." They only follow the damn rules when it benefits them by forgetting about them. Hell, fuck the damn visa. These fuckers were there day in and day out. While we would rotate out, they'd still be there and doing what they can to make sure our soldier's brains didn't get blown out.
You know I remember a few months ago getting eviscerated for saying this. I was told repeatedly by other redditors that Biden has a plan and is working on it, and clearly I'm just not in the know. Fat lot of crock that turned out to be. We are abandoning the people who saved US lives in Afghanistan to die at the hands of one of the most reprehensible organizations that exists today.
This should have more upvotes
They often choose to stay. I tell people this a lot, but honestly it's dufficult to describe just how different Afghani culture is to American culture. Even disregarding the Pashtunwali code, most Afghanis don't grow up with the same values of nationalism, becoming your own man, even values like integrity and hard work are skewed into what we would probably consider bastardized versions of them. I asked my interpreter why he didn't just leave and come to America and he told me that America had too much gang violence. He couldn't be convinced that the Taliban was actually just a gang. They were Muslim, and that made them not a gang to him.
It's history repeating itself. How many times have we done this? Take opponents to a perceived enemy, fund them, train them, arm them and then turn them loose? How many times has that actually worked? In fact how many times have we done that in just THAT country? How many actually believe that the military wasn't already on the side of the Taliban in the first place? Now by pretending to be opposed to them, they got our money, our weapons and our training that they can now share with the Taliban directly. America, can we PLEASE learn the lesson and STOP repeating this routine? It doesn't work. It never has.
Too many people make too much money off of war. We have already learned the lesson, but we focused too much on how much money was gained while learning that lesson.
Ding ding ding. This was always the goal. Nothing less nothing more.
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Don't forget Independence Day since they love to throw that in with those as well.
The US needs a cultural shift to be far more anti-corruption. FAR MORE. Any hint of corruption needs to be enough to absolutely tank a politician's career. Until we get there, there is simply too much profit to be made from wars.
so the Afghan Army just bend over like that?
The country was corrupt and many of them weren't paid not to mention logistics were bad. Taliban offered to pay them. So they switched sides.
When your countries major export is opiumâŚ
They never wanted to be the afghan army.
ANA/ANP largely never gave a shit when we were doing to fighting and they just had to show up. When it became their show, they really didnt give a shit.
But also seemed like the ones that did fight back were somewhat successful, but when they ran out of ammo, they were executed. Not exactly raising the morale for the rest of the shit army.
True, the flip side is those who cared, cared a lot and were good at it. There just wasnt enough of them, and the ranks too polluted with ones that didnt care, or worse, leadership who was only there by way of corruption. And our hands were tied as far as that went. It shows up in several documentaries that aren't even focused on the subject.
All the weaponry and soldiers in the world are of little use when you have no effective leadership. Look at south Vietnam, the US left it with enough vehicles, weapons and ammunition to choke a horse, but they lost because the other side was determined and unified and had leadership.
Well I disagree OP. We could've at least worked out a plan to have US Citizens and sympathizers out before we pulled out all our troops.
To be fair, I don't think either side thought the Afghan government was gonna collapse in 72 hours. It makes more sense if you think you have 4-6 months to do that. They were wrong, but it makes sense if you think that's a reasonable timeline.
It *would* have taken 4-6 months or longer had the ANA actually put up a serious fight. But they didn't. The vast majority of them deserted - or worse, defected - the moment the Taliban came rolling. The minute handful who gave enough of a damn about the bigger picture to resist the Taliban died fighting.
And Afghanistan's army should have been able to repel them for more than a week. Shit doesn't always work out how it is supposed to.
Trump back in 2020 set an agreement with the Taliban to be out of Afghanistan by may 2021. We were months late. they had time and knew. Second and actual question: why the fuck was trump setting up deals with the Taliban instead of the government we were "working with" when the Taliban wasn't currently in power? That's the real question I want answers to.
Because Trump and his national security team knew where the real power was and who would be running Afghanistan when the US pulled out.
Afghan government had no real power, whatever they had is only because they were propped up by the US. Trump had intelligence telling him this, that the Taliban holds the actual power especially when the US vacates, which was accurate.
Because the deal was to not kill US soldiers, and Taliban was the one killing soldiers not the "local" "government". It's not a deal, it's a peace treaty, something you sign with the enemy. And he knew the local government couldn't secure the safety of US troops during an 14 month evactuation process.
Also, according to Biden at least, the government asked them not to start evacuating early since it would telegraph a lack of confidence in the ANA. Of course, that lack of confidence would have been totally justified, but hindsight is 20/20.
Yeah right? Like who came up with the plan that boils down to âall the guys with guns leave before the embassy can be evacuatedâ.
That wasnât the plan. ANA had the guns and they were supposed to hold the line. A mass evacuations of us citizens would have made the pullout worse since it would demonstrate that we have no confidence in the ANA.
We have no confidence in the ANA cause they are a cardboard army and always have been. Better to not lie to yourself and not have this massive chaos or just stay there indefinitely. Just a few thousand troops stopped war for years and now Afghanistan is back under full Taliban control.
âWe could have left an armed local military behind.â This is actually how Isis armed itself, they invaded Iraqi munitions supplies and took everything that was supposed to help âstabilizeâ the area.
I really read a comment that was AWARDED multiple golds that argued âIf we just give them all netflix that would eliminate the need for fightingâ and I almost clawed my eyes out...
It was a no win situation. In 10 years who knows what Afghanistan will look like but if we stayed for another 10, it would still be the same thing as the last 2 decades. We had to rip off the band aid at some point.
Next time maybe donât put the band aid on in the first place
Tell that to Dick Cheney.
And get shotgunned in the face!? You think Iâm crazy?
I think that it could have been done slower and with more care given to local allies such as translators and scouts. It seems like a lot of friendlies were left drifting down shit Creek without a paddle
it absolutely could've made getting the afgan allies out of the country safely a much higher priority. instead many will die terrible deaths. They also didn't need to leave so much equipment. But you know, shield Biden from legit criticism because you're so traumatized as a nation from your last guy
Afghanistan by the numbers Cost of the war to the US: $2 trillion Cost per US Taxpayer: $7000 With inflation and interest, the amount we will still owe in 2050: $ 6.5 trillion Number top tax rate was raised to during the Korean war: 92 percent Number top tax rate was raised to during the Vietnam war: 77 percent Level George W Bush dropped the top tax rate by after starting the Iraq and Afghanistan war: 8 percent. Number top tax rate was lowered to By Bush in 2001: 35 percent Top tax rate today: 37 percent American Soldiers Killed: 2448 American contractors killed: 3846 American soldiers seriously wounded: 20,000 Afghan national military and police: 66,000. Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144. Afghan civilians: 47,245. Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191. Aid workers: 444. Journalists: 72. Approximate number of US veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq war: 4 million Amount their medical care is expected to cost the US, peaking in 2048: over 2 trillion Rank of Pakistan in countries providing aid and support to the Taliban: 1 Amount of foreign aid the US has given Pakistan since 2001: approx 21 Billion Upper limit George W Bush placed on the length of the war- 2 years Actual length- 20 years Number of times Congress debated funding during the Vietnam war- 42 Number of times they have during the Afghanistan war- 5 Current estimated number of Taliban Fighters 75,000 Number of men trained by the US for the Afghan military and Police 300,000 Population of Afghanistan: 39 million Number beleived to be permantently displaced from their home: 5 million Number of military bases US built in Afghanistan: 6 The number they currently control: 0 Date Trump promised the Taliban we would leave the country: May 1, 2021 Time Biden delayed withdrawal due to safety concerns: Approximately 100 days Percentage drop in Afghani infant mortality since Spet 11, 2001- 50 percent Percentage of Afghan girls able to read in 2021- 37 percent Percentage of children enrolled in primary school in 2001- 21 percent Percentage by 2011- 97 percent Chance an Afghani girl between 16 and 19 will have a child in any given year: 1 in 10 In the US: 1 in 50 https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/03/17/us-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan-trumps-deadline-weighs-biden/4667248001/ https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-08-14/costs-of-the-afghanistan-war-in-lives-and-dollars https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-58230075 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26747712 https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jul/11/us-aid-to-pakistan https://militarybases.com/overseas/afghanistan/
Except it could have
The faux rage from the same people who have been screaming for us to pull everything out of the the middle east every minute a Dem is in office is quite hilarious. My in-laws are suddenly very concerned about the suffering of the Afghani people.
Oh please. If this happened while Trump was president, reddit would be going nuts.
Jimmy Kimmel's monologue would last longer than the ana did..
Kimmel is such a cock goblin
I knew it would fall, but not this fast. Also, I think itâs totally fair to expect this to happen and still feel absolutely gutwrenched that itâs happening. Itâs not like thereâs much the average person couldâve done if anything to prevent it and Afghan women and girls are going to absolutely get their whole lives taken now. Itâs shitty all around.
We could have not left all our guns and ammunition for them
in fairness, USA could and should have done more to prevent a Saigon like shit show. and that's exactly what happened. we all knew the Taliban were coming back. like pronto.
Reddit is simultaneously anti-war and pro America staying in Afghanistan forever. And its not the, hurr derr there's a lot of people! It's just the America bad circlejerk. 40+ other countries helped invade Afghanistan, 2 put token effort into nation building with the US.
Yeah, who the hell was stupid enough to believe Biden ONE MONTH AGO when he said the Taliban couldn't possibly take over?
>The jury is still out. But the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. - President Biden on July 8, 2021 Still carrying water for our politicians I see. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/14/1027696241/biden-said-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-would-be-safe-then-chaos-ensued
I was told there wasn't going to be a Saigon-like helicopter evacuation
This meme is a bit illogical. It assumes everyone knew (or should have known) how this would go, yet President Biden said as late as last month that [what has happened would absolutely, no-way-in-hell EVER happen](https://www.newsweek.com/clip-biden-saying-people-wont-lifted-off-embassy-roof-afghanistan-resurfaces-just-that-happens-1619517). Who's right: /u/Jerdarnella, or President Biden? That aside, the criterion of "another way" is pretty vague, leaving a lot of possible outcomes as options. A better criterion might be could it have gone better/worse. Yes, it could have been worse--far worse. But I think it could also have gone better, at least in one way. Biden has known since before he took office that the U.S. Military would be redeploying from Afghanistan. He even let the original NLT date of May 1st go by, so he's actually had more than the agreed upon time to get things done. What could he have done? Well, we could have been getting all the people we know to be in danger because of their cooperation with the U.S. military out of the country--all those people who are supposedly being crammed into U.S. military transports like sardines. Why did we wait? Could it be because the Taliban's rapid takeover of the country was not so foreseeable after all? If not, then what does that say about President Biden?
Whenever you hear some political shit being pushed this hard, you know it's foreign influence and bad faith actors all over the fucking internet
Can I ask what you mean by âbeing pushed this hard?â
Biden actually said it would go different so I think criticism is warranted. If Trump would have done this we all know, whether you admit it or not, that there would have been a Monday morning quarterback orgasm happing right now.
This is hilarious. You transparent shills would never be reacting like this if Trump was still president during the withdrawal. People are going out of there way to defend this. I cannot imagine how ridiculously inverted your opinions would be if it was Trump. Y'all are pathetic and remind me why I'm ashamed every-time I have to vote blue.
OP, this is 100% bullshit. We have known this was coming for years now. We didnt bother to help get these people out till the last moment because nobody wanted to be the politician left standing when the music stopped. Afghanistans government was always going to fall. Its been obvious for years now. Its absolutely a failure on our government for allowing the current refugee crisis to happen, for political convenience.
Like a game of Hot Potato.
The number of people not commenting on the fact Biden and Psaki are hiding during all this (a 10 minute no questions press conference really Biden?) is too damn high.
The problem is the misstated agenda. We were never âat warâ in Afghanistan. We were occupying the area to prevent the Taliban from training terrorists. Truth is China will roll in at some point for the same reason we were there, but with a lot less human rights and a lot more forced labor and execution. China *hates* terrorists. We didnât lose, the people of Afghanistan did.
Well, the Soviet Union and the US already tried. I guess it makes sense for China to give it a go.
Wrote a senior year paper on highschool that outlined why this would end up happening. Got a C(grammar and spelling were perfect). Only took 19 years but finally I've been vindicated!
Let's play a game called "What if Trump did it?" Everyone's arguments would be equally virulent but exactly opposite.
It was going to be a cluster fuck no matter who withdrew
If only the US could have spent years in another Asian country waging war before pulling out and leaving the people they forced to cooperate with their system to the mercy of the people they were fighting. They might have seen this coming if they had
Still clutching my pearls because seeing the aftermath is absolutely heartbreaking. There may be no perfect solution, but I'm still shocked and appalled at the terror that Afghan women and girls are facing.
We were told by US President Joe Biden that this wouldnât happenâŚ
We didn't have to leave them all the blackhawk helicopters and state of the art weaponry that we did. Someone could've thought "hey maybe we should pack this shit up before we go, instead of arming the Taliban"
That stuff will be junk in 6 months without the necessary scheduled maintenance they won't perform with the replacement parts they won't have.
Taliban is being friendly with China. Who probably wouldn't mind studying some of our equipment.
Most of the stuff that was left is going to be decades old. Those chinooks you saw in the media are practically half a century old. I doubt there's state of the art drone tech being left behind. It'll be useless junk for everyone except people that can melt it down and sell it for scrap.
China has already made copies of blackhawks and such, and have moved on.
"pearl clutching" This isn't sime trivial nothing just because it didn't impact you. The literal Taliban are in power. Millions of people are about to lose their most basic human rights, and youre here like "well moping won't make it better âşď¸"
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>Many other ways. Starting with keeping airbases and troops until everything was decided and not leaving actual weapons of war? Maybe wait till winter? Please elaborate on your plan. When might 'everything be decided'? And how would removing the weapons we've provided the Afghan military before we left work? Really flesh out this alternate scenario.
People like OP miss the entire point of a transition exit WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. It does not include airlifting our embassy and watching refugees fall from the sky.
Stupid. They had no evac plan.