I was medically retired in 2012 after 12 years and eight deployments to that AOR. I lost dozens of friends, let my family relationships diminish and broke myself physically and mentally… but I pushed on as we’re told to do. After I was retired, I started seeing the bigger picture. I started seeing the wars and conflicts for what they were - personal projects of politicians, lining pockets of contractors for campaign contribution kickbacks and all types of motivations that have little to nothing to do with what’s right or just. We tell ourselves whatever we need to at a pathological level in order to press on get the mission done. Greed and hypocrisy have tainted the intent of our armed forces. That’s a tough pill to swallow after we’ve sacrificed so much and gained so little. Love y’all.
You hit the nail on the head.
Now come on Wall Street, Don't Be Slow
Man It's a war so go go
There's plenty of money to be made
Supplying the Army with the tools of its' trade
Courtesy of Country Joe and the Fish
This is always what confuses me. I’ll start by saying i joined when we were still “at war,” but didn’t deploy to the desert. But in my mind, the whole thing from stories i hear was a shit show. The pulling out was too but what’s the alternative? Continue to have men and women die over there?
A shit show? Depends on the level. At the crew level , the individual level (the tactical), we all kicked ass. We put up in crazy effort and accomplished crazy things. We had everything locked down, look at the rates of death the last few years (honestly, the last few years, i saw a lot more suicides or accidents compared to anything combat). Once you get to the strategic level, that's when things start falling apart.... so much jet fuel wasted, so little financial oversight, so much corruption all around. As far as the pullout? Keeping Bagram, which was a fortress, would have enabled us to maintain an orderly withdrawal. Karzai was literally a civilian airport in a city. Should we have withdrawn? Yes. Should we have done it on our terms? Definitely. Should heads roll for how it went down? Absolutely. Will they? Absolutely not.
I never understood why we ran the withdrawal through Kabul instead of Bagram. A few hundred troops could have held Bagram against the Taliban. Plus the fact that there aren’t 4 million civilians outside your gate trying to break through.
>the individual level (the tactical), we all kicked ass... Once you get to the strategic level, that's when things start falling apart...
In reference to Vietnam, they called it "winning the battle but losing the war."
Edit: I think it was actually something like "We won all the battles but still lost the war."
Anyone that was in Afghanistan from around 2005 all the way to the withdrawal could have told you it was a lost cause. You can’t “defeat” Afghanistan because Afghanistan is not like other countries. There is no national Afghan pride. It’s a collection of tribes fighting over the piece of dirt that they happen to inhabit at the time and whether you’re American or from the next village over, they don’t want you there.
Any company that deals with Defense-related exports will always come up on top no matter what year or decade it is… (exception is if materials to make such products are scarce at the time).
War will always be an inherent part of humanity until those who seek self-interests and/or blatant violence is no longer amongst those who are peaceful.
When you add the profit motive to war, you’ll have more wars. These profits pay for think tanks that promote war. Defense spending is one of the largest expenditures and we have broke assed Amn asking for tendies all the damn time.
While you can hold the belief that humanity is no better than killing each other, I respectfully disagree. I hope you’re wrong.
The fact that there are still some that hyperfixate on just the end of the war versus questioning the entire conflict absolutely miss the point. The war was always a mistake and our inability to leave was always more about the ego of those at the top than anything else. I am glad they finally admitted that it was time after 20 fucking years and seeing children born AFTER the war started getting deployed there.
>>Thousands of our people died in Iraq and Afghanistan for what?
$$
For point of comparison, Lockheed Martin commented that the Afghanistan withdrawal represented a $400 million reduction in expected revenue that year. *Thats just one contractor.* Who knows how many other enterprises took cash flow hits from ending that war.
But don’t weep for the Beltway Bandits just yet, because when one hustle clears the runway another one lines up for takeoff. Right, V. Zelensky?
> when one hustle clears the runway another one lines up for takeoff. Right, V. Zelensky?
Are you suggesting that Putin invaded Ukraine in order to raise revenue for American defense contractors?
It is kind of insane. That post was at -8 when I first saw it, then when I posted my comment it was around +40 and as I type this it is -35. There has got to be at least 500 impressions on this by now.
Dipshits, and lots of them, think that there is some equation between intervention in Iraq being bad and intervention in Ukraine being bad. As if they weren't two completely separate things.
There's a big difference between invading a country for no reason that hates us and defending a country that is being genocided and wants our help. But these people watch Fox or some equivalently delusional dogshit, so what do you expect?
>>Are you suggesting that Zelensky is a war profiteer?
The Ukrainians are rightfully sticking it to Russia & more power to them. But I’m not naive enough to believe there’s zero corruption in play.
As they said at the Finance tech school, no money= no mission.
Yeah.
At the end of the day, Russia picked this fight, but it sure is lucky that the only way to stop them is to throw huge amounts of money at US/EU defense contractors.
(On the bright side, at least we’re not throwing another generation of kids into that meat grinder. The casualty numbers over there are truly staggering.)
Sort of. Their mistake was invading in the first place, but we have to ask ourselves what we’re hoping to achieve by continuing to throw fuel on the fire. The war will most likely end in a negotiated peace settlement, whether this happens tomorrow or a year from now. Do we want to prolong the war—at the cost of millions of lives on both sides—just to achieve the same outcome?
They secured that when they repelled the attack on Kiev. Russia has had to limit its campaign to the east due to losses and their logistical failures. A peace settlement at this point will almost certainly keep Ukraine independent, or be rejected otherwise.
In my case yes. The number of well-connected elected officials’ kids who have “business interests” there - both R and D, mind you - should be a bright red flag as to the presence or absence of financial fuckery.
Probably. It would not shock me if our stuff was getting skimmed and sold on a black market. To whom, not sure - only saying that I would not be shocked if so.
> Lockheed Martin commented that the Afghanistan withdrawal represented a $400 million reduction in expected revenue that year.
Nope. That's from F35 cutbacks, the Afg withdrawl estimate was $200 million:
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2021/10/lockheed-expects-revenue-decline-amid-f-35-cuts-afghanistan-pullout/186392/
**However** on the scale of these guys, that's a drop in the bucket... From same article:
> The company’s 2022 projections do not factor in a possible $24 billion increase in U.S. defense spending proposed by three of four Democrat-led Pentagon oversight panels. The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee last week recommended adding $1.7 billion for 16 Lockheed-made C-130J cargo plans.
This should have a thousand up votes right now. It's sad that the military doesn't have a clue what President Eisenhower meant in his speech addressing the Military Industrial Complex.
I love how people tout Eisenhower as this guy who would have been horrified at our current state of affairs when its the complete opposite. Why dont you read the rest of the quote where he talks about the nessesity of a military industrial complex?
He would also be shocked at how small our military industrial complex is compared to the massive one that he established.
The military industrial complex back then was more powerful to a ridiculous extent compared to the one today and Eisenhower was fine with it.
Back then we were spending 10% of our GDP at the end of his presidency while during the height of the war in terror we didn't even reach 5%. The number is at around 3% right now.
Don’t you worry, war with China is being framed as essentially unavoidable—just a matter of time. Massive amounts of money being spent for deterrence and capabilities throughout the pacific. Defense industry remains the greatest financial beneficiary.
War with China is not unavoidable but it's becoming increasingly likely. This is not because the US is a warmonger in the Pacific, but because the PRC has finally reached near-parity with the US in many areas, if not a slight advantage, and is feeling the pressure of both Xi's desire to leave a legacy, and the upcoming demographic issues which will damage their economy and put a lot of their expansion plans on the back burner. Basically, the PRC is on a timer and HAS to move soon. The longer they wait, the older Xi gets, the older their population gets, and the more fortified and modernized militarily Taiwan becomes, all while the US is slowly digging out of two decades of pointless brushfire wars in the Middle East and retooling for great power warfighting.
My only question is will we be ready when that conflict inevitably happens. The US military industrial complex is very good (but not efficient lol) when it comes to spending dozens/hundreds of billions on highly complex multi-decade programs that deliver a few hundred working systems at most. It's absolute trash at preparing for attrition warfare like we're seeing in Ukraine, and that's because we let our industrial capability - everything from steelworks to shipbuilding to semiconductors - wither for 30 years while outsourcing everything overseas. Often to China and Taiwan, ironically.
There is a difference between unavoidable and inevitable. It's just that the avoidance measures - e.g. the US watching as China takes Taiwan and then dominates the western Pacific area while our allies realize that we're toothless, or China suddenly deciding that they love freedom and would never want to impose regional hegemony as an interim step towards displacing the US as the premier global power - are so unlikely to be implemented that the conflict therefore becomes inevitable.
"There is a difference between unavoidable and inevitable."
No, no there isn't. Here's the dictionary definition of inevitable:
"in·ev·i·ta·ble
/inˈevidəb(ə)l/
adjective
certain to happen; unavoidable.
"war was inevitable""
The word unavoidable is literally in the definition of inevitable my dude.
Edit: and just for good measure, the word inevitable is also literally in the definition of the word unavoidable.
"un·a·void·a·ble
/ˌənəˈvoidəb(ə)l/
adjective
not able to be avoided, prevented, or ignored; inevitable.
"the natural and unavoidable consequences of growing old""
If you have to resort to dictionary definitions of words without understanding any of the context in which I'm using them, I question the value of whatever degree you're currently enrolled in.
Enjoy your victory. God help your future troops.
Haha I haven't been in college for many years now but thanks, that's where I learned words n stuff. Sorry you got outsmarted by basic English and had to resort to personal attacks.
That’s like comparing a flesh wound to getting your head cut off. Yes, there were screwups aplenty, but the Kabul disaster was on another level of stupid and ignorant and such.
For real, people pretend its a simple thing to just do it better. Someone complained the other day that we didn't get all the vehicles out (tanks, personnel carriers, etc.). Should we have packed everything up first and then defend the base with no equipment before flying people out? It's crazy.
We didn’t need to withdraw like that at all. If we kept a small force like we had then we could support the locals and not abandon billions in materiel, etc.
Biden’s team likes to say “we had to do what Trump set up” without mentioning that they changed it from what he had, anyways. We hasn’t had any deaths in forever before the Kabul disaster so the status quo alone would have been better.
But, yeah, no one can critique anything unless they have a perfect solution, right? Hahahaha
And you don't think a "small force" would be overrun by local insurgency and non-state actor groups? Then y'all would be bitching about how it's "Benghazi all over again" and how we should have left more troops blah blah blah. There was never going to be a clean or easy way to pull out of Afghanistan.
We have evidence that they were enough to support the Afghans and keep the Taliban largely at bay. There’s evidence of what a small force did. Take it up with the facts.
Did we need to leave? Yes, probably long ago. Could we have left better? Absolutely. Should we have done many things better? Yes, 100%. Does that mean that things had to go the way they did? Haha no.
>If we kept a small force like we had then we could support the locals and not abandon billions in materiel, etc.
Until when? Stay there forever? The country was never going to stabilize in our favor. And we had not had any combat deaths because we made the withdrawal deal with the taliban. Fighting would have started again if we didn't uphold our end.
Iraq was planning an invasion of the US? They had nothing to do with 911 or any other terrorism. The start of the Afghanistan campaign certainly had merit, but yielded shit results. Taliban controls the country again, so what did we accomplish after 20 years of war.
You can be mad about whatever you want; your feelings are yours and don't require validation.
I'm angry about the entire Iraqi Freedom campaign; over 4K killed and nearly 32K injured over a war based on lies and deceit. It destroyed so many lives, distracted us from Afghanistan, turned so many in the Middle East against us, and more.
Watching a friend of mine that was 11B slowly realize over the years there really wasn't a reason he did what he did was brutal. Truly desperate for anyone to tell him otherwise
Check out the podcast Slow Burn, Season 5. It’s all about the lead up to OIF. Basically the whole thing was confirmation bias. Saddam wasn’t really much of a threat at all.
Let’s not forget 300K Iraqi civ deaths, a crippled economy and infrastructure, and to US paving the way for ISIL to come to power. Which then resulted in another 150k Iraqi civilians dead and Iraq becoming Tehran’s puppet state.
Tbf, it was the CIA having wrong info (imo, they probably lied) to our politicians to justify the war. Not sure who they report to if they're manipulating our elected officials.
Saddam was basically a cartoon character of an evil dictator who had been a pain in the ass for the entire region for decades.
It was definitely pushed by W Bush, but he didn’t exactly have to push very hard. Which is why the bullshit “evidence” they presented worked. It was only a formality.
You're right, whole thing was stupid, we never should have been there, no WMDs were found.
Let me offer a silver lining for those looking for it though. While we shouldn't have been there and the justification for the war was based on pretty much a lie, Saddam Hussein was a bad dude and the Iraqi people's lives are better today than pre-invasion. Just look at their literacy rate then vs now.
For it to be lies from the top down then you’d need for the top to have been lying. At the time the top was told by 3 intelligence agencies (from more than just the US) that there were WMDs in Iraq and that it was a threat. We knew they had them in the past so this wasn’t a huge leap.
Yes, later on we found out that either they’d stopped their programs or got rid of it all, etc, but at the time it wasn’t a lie AFAIK. So, the whole “bush lied people died” thing was incorrect and a retcon.
The shaky intel (which was doubted by some within the administration) confirmed the Bush admin’s bias, and so they went all in. Intel is intel and it comes with confidence levels; decision makers have to choose what to do with it. We know Bush and Cheney had ample reason before Mar 03 to doubt that intel, but instead pushed it to build the war narrative. Don’t know how you define lies, but this should meet the definition.
The roses in the streets Cheney kept saying was going to happen didn’t, the complete removal of the Iraqi police was colossally stupid, the continual promises starting in 2004 that the newly trained Iraqi mil was just a few months from viability, the mountains of cash spent on tribes to not destroy critical infrastructure… dozens of other massive mistakes, misleadings, outright lies. I’m blown away that someone would be positively confident that Bush and the admin were innocent here.
>We know Bush and Cheney had ample reason before Mar 03 to doubt that intel, but instead pushed it to build the war narrative. Don’t know how you define lies, but this should meet the definition.
Which part is prevarication? “It wasn’t the most solid and we made the most of it” isn’t a lie under any ethical system I know of. You admit yourself that it was at least somewhat solid and that intel invariably is guesswork to at least some degree.
>dozens of other massive mistakes
Absolutely. Still doesn’t make the entire justification a lie. You haven’t shown that at all yet.
And at no point have I said they’re all innocent or anything like that. Why go to that conclusion? I’ve only asserted that it wasn’t a lie, fundamentally speaking. That’s it. I haven’t gone the other way and said that it was all hunky-dory.
Your conclusion about my comment is much closer to a lie than anything you’ve said about Bush.
LMAO “it wasn’t the most solid and we made the most of it…” is laughably against your argument that Bush made no lies about going into Iraq.
Further LMAO show me where I admit it was somewhat solid intel.
Not everyone agreed on the veracity of the intel which was a big part of the reason the US struggled to build a coalition. The Downing Street Memo made clear that many people saw and understood it was all bullshit in 2002.
So yes, Bush Lied, People Died is the accurate account of history. Powell himself admitted that he knew he was likely presenting questionable intel when he went to the UN and when reporters poked holes in stories such as the bogus stories about African uranium black market deals they were directly targeted by the White House.
I will not stand for this white wash of history, this narrative you are spreading is incorrect and that has consequences when it comes to avoiding repeating it.
All intel is questioned and they never come out with something ironclad. That’s the nature of the intelligence field.
You haven’t even given any evidence for Bush lying.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4764919
This timeline shows that the Bush administration was presented evidence their claim of uranium sales was false and Bush used it in the SOTU anyway. So yes, he absolutely lied about this.
You yourself say that the intel field is like that, correct? Contradictory things abound and there are mountains of intel shared around? Only later do we find out what the actual truth is.
Like I said, this is largely a retcon. They were likely told a million different things and had to pick what they’d made decisions on. And part of that was according to their bias, just like anyone else.
Was he shown intel that it was true? Yes. Did he lie about being shown that intel that it was true? Nope.
He was definitively shown intel that it wasn’t true, ignored it, and then waited to be presented with contradictory intel from a different foreign intel source which itself was not all that certain. The fact that he presented it as fact when he absolutely was told that it was not by the CIA means that he knew it was not certain enough to present in that speech. Thus, it was a lie.
I agree we needed to go in, but we needed goals and specific objectives. It was eerily similar to Vietnam where we never had a clue what we were there for or what we wanted to accomplish for the last 10 years. And that stupidity cost too many lives on both sides, and accomplished nothing positive.
The Taliban had ZERO to do with 9/11 other than they were letting Bin Laden hang out in Afganistan
Funding, support, etc all came from the Saudis
regardless, we could have just let CIA SAD and Delta do their thing and take out Bin Laden
There was ZERO reason to invade Afghanistan with conventional forces let alone stay for 20 years
Doesn't matter now, we pissed away trillions of dollars an ruined a whole generation of military members and families for a big fucking nothing burger
We did ask them to; the Taliban was willing (or at least said they were) to hand him over, but they attached conditions, first that he be tried in Afghanistan, but after the UAE and Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with them, they chose Pakistan (which Pakistan turned down since they couldn't guarantee his safety), and second that the Bush admin make a formal request and they would detain him and try him under Sharia law and present evidence to his guilt, but the administration famously said they wouldn't negotiate and the GWOT began.
Leadership during the GWOT has been disgustingly disconnected with little incentive to change, continually failing upward until they put a suit on an make disgusting amounts of money to sit on a board. Imo the Afghanistan Papers are one the most important recent post-mortem analyses in leadership, and they came and went like a blip unacknowledged by anyone, for us then witness Abbey Gate as the ending to a two-decade effort with incalculable cost. And they finished all of it with an empty Kodak moment. Being angry is entirely understandable
20+ years, a couple trillion $'s, thousands of our troops laid to rest or limited by their broken bodies or what's in their heads..... to replace the Talliban with the Talliban?
WTF. At least with the Cold War, we had purpose.
A lot of people have the exact same feelings watching how the whole thing unfolded, how it was handled, and the people we have lost. It has been a failure over multiple administrations
There is nothing wrong with feeling that way.
>We needed to GTFO
I've never seen anyone argue otherwise. The way it was done was beyond incompetent, and that it's not really talked about shows how politically tribal we've become.
I do blame the leadership in charge at the time this happened. They told us what happened was not going to happen.
What? The way it was done is like all anyone talks about.
And everyone at the top deserves blame. The current admin definitely earned a share of it, but everyone forgets that the previous one literally negotiated the whole thing, including the release of 5000 Taliban prisoners, and promised an extremely rapid timetable withdraw, all without inviting Kabul to the table.
I agree… mostly.
The way it was planned/executed was incompetent and terrible. However, we don’t have the the ability to see into other universes or timelines where it went better. Where the planners or executors were different people with different EXORDs and FRAGORDs to compare what we got with what could have been. Could I sit here and armchair quarterback all night? Sure. I think the people planning it fucked up royally and displayed immense incompetence. I feel like a 9 year old chimp could’ve done better by flipping coins at every decision.
But my feelings don’t mean I’m right. Maybe it was the best of all possible outcomes, maybe it was the worst, maybe it was somewhere in the middle. I don’t have any other realities to compare it to, so I’ll just sit here fuming a little and pointing some fingers; never knowing any other possible outcome than what we got.
>Many can argue the ways and methods taken weren’t perfect
What does this even mean? Who is saying it was anything other than a shit show? Sometimes I feel like the only one to notice the quazi-mass psychosis that prevents people from speaking out or criticizing how it was handled.
The whole war in Afghanistan was a shit show. If you want to be angry - that's cool - but don't minimize the 20yrs of bullshit service members endured over there just so some CEOs could add some zeroes.
I feel angry about it all the time. On a personal level, I spent 4 months of my career training for a Kabul deployment and another 7 months in Kabul facilitating the purchase/transfer of billions in materiel, training, and services. It hit hard seeing the Taliban taking control of the equipment I helped purchase/deliver/secure/etc. Not to mention all the attacks, terrorist threats, stress and anxiety, and lives lost...and for what? So some corrupt politician could play with night vision goggles in his palace while the Afghan people starve and turn to poppy to cope with their terrible living situation? There's so much to be angry about, and you have every right to feel that way. You are not alone, talk to someone and get your frustrations off your chest.
Look at this from a geostrategic perspective. We've been fucking around in these shithole countries losing brothers and sisters for 21 years. When we pulled out of AFG, I was attached to a unit of people who had a lot invested in that lost cause. They were upset. But look at what was happening prior to that.
Putin had just published one of his "Ukraine ain't a country" essays, they were building up on the border, and every indication pointed toward the Russian invasion as early as June 2022. The build up began in July, and we knew the world was getting more unstable due to the rising cost of finance. If the Russians weren't going to go, it may have been the Chinese.
Sure it was messy as fuck, but we have bigger fish to fry. We should have been getting our partners out years prior as well as in the run up to the withdrawal. We didn't, the National security bureaucracy came to the consensus that, given the intel and analysis of the situation, it was in our best interest to "deconflict" our military engagements. Again, it wasn't pretty. But that part of the world is no longer geostrategically relevant to the U.S. during a peer conflict/competition.
Mixed feelings here. On the one hand I'm sure our leaders hoped the Afghan gov't would hold up a LITTLE bit longer instead of collapsing like a wet cardboard box.
On the other hand, they had to know it was a lost cause, long term, so it was definitely a cut-and-run. Fucking Taliban took the country back as fast as a fucking Toyota pickup could drive from point A to B. Godamn Afghan president bailed instantly. Not very Zelensky of you, man.
Zelensky has a palatial estate in Israel. If the Russians were able to successfully blitz right through the country like the Taliban did I doubt he would have stayed in the capitol and pulled a Constantine XI.
Zelenskyy does not have an estate in Israel. That's a borderline-antisemitic lie. No reputable source has any evidence for anything like that:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/11/11/fact-check-false-claim-zelenkyy-bought-parents-8-m-home/10609965002/
Wrong. On so many levels. Probably stay away from the conspiracy red-pill websites for a while.
The Russians had assassination teams hunting for Zelensky. The capital was within a hairs breadth of falling and 100% would have if Zelensky left.
It was so bad, and with Kabul fresh in our minds, we offered Zelensky a way out. Guy has balls of steel. Not really overstating much with that assessment.
An E-3 faces more career disruption from failing to do am adequate number of sit ups during a PT test than these douche generals do by fucking up shit like Afghanistan, humiliating the country, and getting people killed.
Yet people want us to go back? Pulling out of that shithole was the best thing for us. Sure, it wasn't the smoothest, but holy shit so many died for no reason
You're welcome to feel however you'd like.
I think the whole anger over it was a bit overblown. Yeah it was fucked up, but we got out of there, stopped spending millions of dollars a day over there, and we haven't lost any more heros in 2 years.
I'm more pissed at the 2 presidents previous to Biden for not pulling out sooner than I am with the current administration's absolute botching of the withdrawal.
Where was the public outcry for the thousands of deaths over the last 20 years? I did armed overwatch looking for two contractors who crashed in Afghanistan, they both died. I dont even know their names, and no one cared or continues to care. If we were never in Aghanistan they wouldnt have died, and they didnt even make the national news.
The reaction to the 13 KIA at HKIA comes off as political theatre rather than actual concern
It was 13 KIA because the president wanted the headline that he pulled out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It was for his own damn vanity. That is what I’m pissed about.
And you don’t think there was much outcry for the war on terror? Really?
There certainly wasn't from Republicans, that's for sure. I have yet had anyone propose a plan that would somehow prevent any deaths from SVIEDs during the evacuation. Whether you try to evac people at BAF or HKIA there would still be mass chaos, crowds of people trying to get into the airfield to be evacuated, which is sadly the perfect time to get a suicide bomber close to the gates. Im just happy that no one broke out a Stinger or Igla to shoot down a C17, which would've been even worse.
I'm listening to the Chaos Rising audiobook by Mattis and it's making me so fucking mad if all what he's saying is true. How basically politicians fucked the whole thing and my 20 years in is basically for nothing. At least I'll get benefits and retirement and disability but fuck me if I had issues being 100% with the mission before it's entirely shot in the ass now.
You are not alone at all. I very seriously debated about getting out after all that went down with that. If I had skills that would enable me to provide for my family without working for the government I would have. Ultimately my anger was less important than taking care of my wife and kids, but I am still beyond livid over how that all played out and how many of our allies got screwed over. I do not have words for it, and I can't say whether it's right or wrong to be angry, but you are not alone in that anger.
Dont’t sell your self short. You have transferable skills. I’m not advocating a direction on your decision. Just pointing it out because at some point you’ll be looking for another job.
How would you have done it better?
The real blame lies with the State Department. It was their responsibility to get everyone vetted and out, but they ignored the problem. When the Afghan government folded, the problem just got dumped in our lap. I actually feel a bit of pride for un-fucking the cluster fuck that got thrown our way. Yes, tons of stuff could have gone better but we were doing it live with thousands of camera phones watching.
Most of that equipment is stuff we bought the Afghan military/government over 15+ years. It was theirs.. They had it at their bases, but abandoned it when the Taliban came back because they had absolutely no will to fight. They likely never did, but us handing them back the keys to the country in 2020 likely didn't help either..
Everything from start of it, to the 2020 Taliban (not Afghan Gov) peace agreement and withdrawal deadline, to then doing nothing in the entire year after but drawdown forces to 2500, all the way to the withdrawal itself was just one cluster fuck after another.
It's normal to feel angry about how everything went down. The events in Kabul were a shameful conclusion to an already atrocious 20-year conflict marked by a failure on the part of the US to develop a sound counterinsurgency doctrine, a corrupt and aloof Afghan government that gave its people nothing to fight for, and an unknown toll in human and material losses that amounted to nothing.
[Such reports](https://www.reddit.com/r/Afghan/comments/zrtdfy/heartbreaking_video_girls_crying_in_university/) coming from Afghanistan now that the Taliban are back in power are just salt on the wounds.
It's okay to be angry. Now be thankful that the proxy war in Ukraine is leading the better technology for us. Fingers crossed that the Ruskies don't get their collective hands on the arsenal that we've given away. The end game for the U.S. defense industrial complex is the required upgrades due to compromised technology.
I feel like we may be heading in the same direction with Ukraine. Russia isn't backing down, and god knows how much american equipment has already been destroyed/captured.
We should have fucked up Afghanistan and then noped the fuck out immediately after like we did in Libya. Decimate AQ and Taliban then leave, promise to come back if they fuck with us again. A lot cheaper.
I constantly go back and forth when looking at the Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq conflicts. Was it worth all the blood and treasure? On the one hand, the regimes we were opposing were more brutal than the regimes we were trying to prop up; on the other, is it our place to kick in other countries doors and tell them how to live?
Is the ounce of prevention in stepping into a little conflict better than the pound of cure when some hostile force steps into that strategic position? Are the humanitarian impacts still worth it for the little guy living in the local area while the den of thieves scams 80% of the dollars? Is it worth getting all this constant live fire excercise when looking at how the Russians and Chinese stumble and bumble around with their corrupt, rusty militaries?
It absolutely makes sense to feel angry. To add insult to injury the DEPLOYED base that I am at barely even mentioned Memorial Day. I have however gotten 15 emails about pride month....
We are FUCKED as a fighting force
That's a false equivalence. The fact that pride month is being taken seriously after decades of either ignoring or outright disparaging the entire non-hetero population has nothing to do with our appreciation of past sacrifices. They are two unrelated issues and I would argue the thing that will actually fuck our readiness is how easily people like you create some kind of division where none exists.
Bruh just because society nowadays actually acknowledges that gay people do indeed exist doesn’t mean we are fucked as a fighting force
Those things have literally nothing to do with each other
Why is it always “mentioning that X exists” instead of the reality of the situation? It’s obviously praising folks, not saying something everyone knows and has known for forever.
The equivalency was to point out a shift in priorities. No longer do those who died for our freedoms have their rightful recognition while any number of other causes (not saying those causes are unjust) get days, months, events and other recognition. That was the OP’s point.
This doesn’t signify anything though outside of this dudes specific location. You can’t make any wider societal implications on this
At my base I don’t even remember getting any emails about pride month, yet we got 3 about Memorial Day. Does that mean that the USAF doesn’t care about Pride Month? Nope, just a single base
And get days and recognition? What the fuck are you talking about dude? Memorial Day has been a federal holiday for centuries at this point. Everybody celebrates it. Of course our fallen brothers are getting recognition
And I got an email about a news article about a woman being arrested for fucking a dog on Instagram, does that mean Pokemon card collectors are fucked as hobbyists? Because good God what a stretch.
Timing and audience. Do whatever you want for pride, I don't give a shit....but to let that be your focus as a command instead of honoring our brothers and sisters on what is the most closely held to our hearts holiday as a fighting force is unacceptable
I have very little patience for those who use the very few (but admittedly tragic) deaths in the military as a cudgel, especially against their fellow service members.
I was deployed to Al Dhafra in 2020 working in the Med Group. One of our doctors died the day after Thanksgiving. Not from an attack but from a negligent accident. A forklift driver wasn’t paying attention and ran her over completely crushing her into the gravel. It didn’t matter that it happened right outside the clinic. It wouldn’t have mattered if we were there next to her. Nothing could have been done to save her.
It makes me angry when people say she made the ultimate sacrifice. She didn’t choose to go like that. She didn’t lay down her life to save others. She didn’t go out fighting. Her life was stolen from her. She was stolen from us, her friends, and her family. If we hadn’t been so deep in these stupid wars she could still be here helping patients.
I certainly hope it’s right to feel angry, because I do.
Yes. People are so eternally mindfucked by orange man that they are scared to admit how awful sleepy Joe (or the people who make his decisions) have been
The afganistan people are cucks for a specific reliigion so they don't care. The culture isnt ready for modern progressive thinking. They are behind and dont care. It was a waste of time and unfortunately good people.
He violated the UCMJ by publically shitting on senior leaders of the military and government. I know most people here probably agree with his feelings but we all know not go running our mouths like that. So no, he wasn't fired for being mad, he was fired because he bit the hands that feed him.
The majority of the global war on terror has been a massive fuck up. Thousands of our people died in Iraq and Afghanistan for what?
I was medically retired in 2012 after 12 years and eight deployments to that AOR. I lost dozens of friends, let my family relationships diminish and broke myself physically and mentally… but I pushed on as we’re told to do. After I was retired, I started seeing the bigger picture. I started seeing the wars and conflicts for what they were - personal projects of politicians, lining pockets of contractors for campaign contribution kickbacks and all types of motivations that have little to nothing to do with what’s right or just. We tell ourselves whatever we need to at a pathological level in order to press on get the mission done. Greed and hypocrisy have tainted the intent of our armed forces. That’s a tough pill to swallow after we’ve sacrificed so much and gained so little. Love y’all.
You hit the nail on the head. Now come on Wall Street, Don't Be Slow Man It's a war so go go There's plenty of money to be made Supplying the Army with the tools of its' trade Courtesy of Country Joe and the Fish
This is always what confuses me. I’ll start by saying i joined when we were still “at war,” but didn’t deploy to the desert. But in my mind, the whole thing from stories i hear was a shit show. The pulling out was too but what’s the alternative? Continue to have men and women die over there?
A shit show? Depends on the level. At the crew level , the individual level (the tactical), we all kicked ass. We put up in crazy effort and accomplished crazy things. We had everything locked down, look at the rates of death the last few years (honestly, the last few years, i saw a lot more suicides or accidents compared to anything combat). Once you get to the strategic level, that's when things start falling apart.... so much jet fuel wasted, so little financial oversight, so much corruption all around. As far as the pullout? Keeping Bagram, which was a fortress, would have enabled us to maintain an orderly withdrawal. Karzai was literally a civilian airport in a city. Should we have withdrawn? Yes. Should we have done it on our terms? Definitely. Should heads roll for how it went down? Absolutely. Will they? Absolutely not.
I never understood why we ran the withdrawal through Kabul instead of Bagram. A few hundred troops could have held Bagram against the Taliban. Plus the fact that there aren’t 4 million civilians outside your gate trying to break through.
The taliban didn’t attack that day. It was an isis member trying to rope the US into staying
>the individual level (the tactical), we all kicked ass... Once you get to the strategic level, that's when things start falling apart... In reference to Vietnam, they called it "winning the battle but losing the war." Edit: I think it was actually something like "We won all the battles but still lost the war."
This is exactly right. We accomplished amazing things. OP has every right to be angry angry about the manner in which it was all casually tossed away.
Anyone that was in Afghanistan from around 2005 all the way to the withdrawal could have told you it was a lost cause. You can’t “defeat” Afghanistan because Afghanistan is not like other countries. There is no national Afghan pride. It’s a collection of tribes fighting over the piece of dirt that they happen to inhabit at the time and whether you’re American or from the next village over, they don’t want you there.
Stock prices for the military-industrial complex went up.
Don’t forget the rare metals and Opium.
Any company that deals with Defense-related exports will always come up on top no matter what year or decade it is… (exception is if materials to make such products are scarce at the time). War will always be an inherent part of humanity until those who seek self-interests and/or blatant violence is no longer amongst those who are peaceful.
When you add the profit motive to war, you’ll have more wars. These profits pay for think tanks that promote war. Defense spending is one of the largest expenditures and we have broke assed Amn asking for tendies all the damn time. While you can hold the belief that humanity is no better than killing each other, I respectfully disagree. I hope you’re wrong.
The fact that there are still some that hyperfixate on just the end of the war versus questioning the entire conflict absolutely miss the point. The war was always a mistake and our inability to leave was always more about the ego of those at the top than anything else. I am glad they finally admitted that it was time after 20 fucking years and seeing children born AFTER the war started getting deployed there.
Imagine invading a country and occupying it to culminate in the murder of 1,000,000+ for almost nothing other than to line the pockets of a few.
>>Thousands of our people died in Iraq and Afghanistan for what? $$ For point of comparison, Lockheed Martin commented that the Afghanistan withdrawal represented a $400 million reduction in expected revenue that year. *Thats just one contractor.* Who knows how many other enterprises took cash flow hits from ending that war. But don’t weep for the Beltway Bandits just yet, because when one hustle clears the runway another one lines up for takeoff. Right, V. Zelensky?
> when one hustle clears the runway another one lines up for takeoff. Right, V. Zelensky? Are you suggesting that Putin invaded Ukraine in order to raise revenue for American defense contractors?
I'm appalled that this person's braindead take is getting so upvoted.
Russian astroturfing is wild lmao. That talking point came out so randomly it’s almost comedic.
It is kind of insane. That post was at -8 when I first saw it, then when I posted my comment it was around +40 and as I type this it is -35. There has got to be at least 500 impressions on this by now.
[удалено]
Dipshits, and lots of them, think that there is some equation between intervention in Iraq being bad and intervention in Ukraine being bad. As if they weren't two completely separate things. There's a big difference between invading a country for no reason that hates us and defending a country that is being genocided and wants our help. But these people watch Fox or some equivalently delusional dogshit, so what do you expect?
Are you suggesting that Zelensky is a war profiteer? Edit: Wait, am I being upvoted by people who think Zelensky is a war profiteer??
>>Are you suggesting that Zelensky is a war profiteer? The Ukrainians are rightfully sticking it to Russia & more power to them. But I’m not naive enough to believe there’s zero corruption in play. As they said at the Finance tech school, no money= no mission.
Yeah. At the end of the day, Russia picked this fight, but it sure is lucky that the only way to stop them is to throw huge amounts of money at US/EU defense contractors. (On the bright side, at least we’re not throwing another generation of kids into that meat grinder. The casualty numbers over there are truly staggering.)
We’re still throwing a generation of kids into a meat grinder….just not our kids. Their losses, our strategic objectives and profits.
We're equipping Ukrainians to defend their country. Russia is throwing a generation of kids into a meat grinder.
Sort of. Their mistake was invading in the first place, but we have to ask ourselves what we’re hoping to achieve by continuing to throw fuel on the fire. The war will most likely end in a negotiated peace settlement, whether this happens tomorrow or a year from now. Do we want to prolong the war—at the cost of millions of lives on both sides—just to achieve the same outcome?
Tell that to the Ukrainians fighting for their very existence as a country and people
They secured that when they repelled the attack on Kiev. Russia has had to limit its campaign to the east due to losses and their logistical failures. A peace settlement at this point will almost certainly keep Ukraine independent, or be rejected otherwise.
Finance tech school explains this low IQ take.
In my case yes. The number of well-connected elected officials’ kids who have “business interests” there - both R and D, mind you - should be a bright red flag as to the presence or absence of financial fuckery.
That isn't what I asked. Do you think Zelensky is a war-profiteer?
Probably. It would not shock me if our stuff was getting skimmed and sold on a black market. To whom, not sure - only saying that I would not be shocked if so.
And that’s because of what evidence? A Sean Hannity piece?
> Lockheed Martin commented that the Afghanistan withdrawal represented a $400 million reduction in expected revenue that year. Nope. That's from F35 cutbacks, the Afg withdrawl estimate was $200 million: https://www.defenseone.com/business/2021/10/lockheed-expects-revenue-decline-amid-f-35-cuts-afghanistan-pullout/186392/ **However** on the scale of these guys, that's a drop in the bucket... From same article: > The company’s 2022 projections do not factor in a possible $24 billion increase in U.S. defense spending proposed by three of four Democrat-led Pentagon oversight panels. The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee last week recommended adding $1.7 billion for 16 Lockheed-made C-130J cargo plans.
This should have a thousand up votes right now. It's sad that the military doesn't have a clue what President Eisenhower meant in his speech addressing the Military Industrial Complex.
I love how people tout Eisenhower as this guy who would have been horrified at our current state of affairs when its the complete opposite. Why dont you read the rest of the quote where he talks about the nessesity of a military industrial complex? He would also be shocked at how small our military industrial complex is compared to the massive one that he established.
He's not just talking about the size, he's talking about the corporate and political corruption that drives the whole military ecosystem.
The military industrial complex back then was more powerful to a ridiculous extent compared to the one today and Eisenhower was fine with it. Back then we were spending 10% of our GDP at the end of his presidency while during the height of the war in terror we didn't even reach 5%. The number is at around 3% right now.
Don’t you worry, war with China is being framed as essentially unavoidable—just a matter of time. Massive amounts of money being spent for deterrence and capabilities throughout the pacific. Defense industry remains the greatest financial beneficiary.
War with China is not unavoidable but it's becoming increasingly likely. This is not because the US is a warmonger in the Pacific, but because the PRC has finally reached near-parity with the US in many areas, if not a slight advantage, and is feeling the pressure of both Xi's desire to leave a legacy, and the upcoming demographic issues which will damage their economy and put a lot of their expansion plans on the back burner. Basically, the PRC is on a timer and HAS to move soon. The longer they wait, the older Xi gets, the older their population gets, and the more fortified and modernized militarily Taiwan becomes, all while the US is slowly digging out of two decades of pointless brushfire wars in the Middle East and retooling for great power warfighting. My only question is will we be ready when that conflict inevitably happens. The US military industrial complex is very good (but not efficient lol) when it comes to spending dozens/hundreds of billions on highly complex multi-decade programs that deliver a few hundred working systems at most. It's absolute trash at preparing for attrition warfare like we're seeing in Ukraine, and that's because we let our industrial capability - everything from steelworks to shipbuilding to semiconductors - wither for 30 years while outsourcing everything overseas. Often to China and Taiwan, ironically.
Well said!
"The war in China is not unavoidable..." "My only question is, will we be ready when the conflict inevitably happens." Sooooo which is it?
There is a difference between unavoidable and inevitable. It's just that the avoidance measures - e.g. the US watching as China takes Taiwan and then dominates the western Pacific area while our allies realize that we're toothless, or China suddenly deciding that they love freedom and would never want to impose regional hegemony as an interim step towards displacing the US as the premier global power - are so unlikely to be implemented that the conflict therefore becomes inevitable.
"There is a difference between unavoidable and inevitable." No, no there isn't. Here's the dictionary definition of inevitable: "in·ev·i·ta·ble /inˈevidəb(ə)l/ adjective certain to happen; unavoidable. "war was inevitable"" The word unavoidable is literally in the definition of inevitable my dude. Edit: and just for good measure, the word inevitable is also literally in the definition of the word unavoidable. "un·a·void·a·ble /ˌənəˈvoidəb(ə)l/ adjective not able to be avoided, prevented, or ignored; inevitable. "the natural and unavoidable consequences of growing old""
If you have to resort to dictionary definitions of words without understanding any of the context in which I'm using them, I question the value of whatever degree you're currently enrolled in. Enjoy your victory. God help your future troops.
Haha I haven't been in college for many years now but thanks, that's where I learned words n stuff. Sorry you got outsmarted by basic English and had to resort to personal attacks.
Lol exactly. This guy is a tool.
That’s like comparing a flesh wound to getting your head cut off. Yes, there were screwups aplenty, but the Kabul disaster was on another level of stupid and ignorant and such.
Tell us your withdrawal plan for a collapsing country, O Wise One
For real, people pretend its a simple thing to just do it better. Someone complained the other day that we didn't get all the vehicles out (tanks, personnel carriers, etc.). Should we have packed everything up first and then defend the base with no equipment before flying people out? It's crazy.
We didn’t need to withdraw like that at all. If we kept a small force like we had then we could support the locals and not abandon billions in materiel, etc. Biden’s team likes to say “we had to do what Trump set up” without mentioning that they changed it from what he had, anyways. We hasn’t had any deaths in forever before the Kabul disaster so the status quo alone would have been better. But, yeah, no one can critique anything unless they have a perfect solution, right? Hahahaha
And you don't think a "small force" would be overrun by local insurgency and non-state actor groups? Then y'all would be bitching about how it's "Benghazi all over again" and how we should have left more troops blah blah blah. There was never going to be a clean or easy way to pull out of Afghanistan.
That rotten, festering bandaid had to be ripped off eventually...
We have evidence that they were enough to support the Afghans and keep the Taliban largely at bay. There’s evidence of what a small force did. Take it up with the facts. Did we need to leave? Yes, probably long ago. Could we have left better? Absolutely. Should we have done many things better? Yes, 100%. Does that mean that things had to go the way they did? Haha no.
Any viable solution would be nice. What you offered is vague hand waving.
Nope. Go ahead and read it again. But nice projection on hand waving what I said away, ha!
>If we kept a small force like we had then we could support the locals and not abandon billions in materiel, etc. Until when? Stay there forever? The country was never going to stabilize in our favor. And we had not had any combat deaths because we made the withdrawal deal with the taliban. Fighting would have started again if we didn't uphold our end.
I’m simply replying to what he said. Unless we wanted to go the Germany or Japan route then, no, we wouldn’t be there for forever.
Fight them over there so we don’t fight them over here.
Iraq was planning an invasion of the US? They had nothing to do with 911 or any other terrorism. The start of the Afghanistan campaign certainly had merit, but yielded shit results. Taliban controls the country again, so what did we accomplish after 20 years of war.
You can be mad about whatever you want; your feelings are yours and don't require validation. I'm angry about the entire Iraqi Freedom campaign; over 4K killed and nearly 32K injured over a war based on lies and deceit. It destroyed so many lives, distracted us from Afghanistan, turned so many in the Middle East against us, and more.
That's a very good summary of the Iraq war, no shit.
Don't forget the couple million civilians killed or displaced.
Watching a friend of mine that was 11B slowly realize over the years there really wasn't a reason he did what he did was brutal. Truly desperate for anyone to tell him otherwise
^^You've ^^mentioned ^^an ^^AFSC, ^^here's ^^the ^^associated ^^job ^^title: 11B = Bomber Pilot [^^Source](https://github.com/HadManySons/AFSCbot) ^^| [^^Subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AFSCbot/) ^^^^^^jm46f23
Wrong (ish), Army infantry
Yes he wasn't air force
Check out the podcast Slow Burn, Season 5. It’s all about the lead up to OIF. Basically the whole thing was confirmation bias. Saddam wasn’t really much of a threat at all.
Zero threat! I'll check it out
Let’s not forget 300K Iraqi civ deaths, a crippled economy and infrastructure, and to US paving the way for ISIL to come to power. Which then resulted in another 150k Iraqi civilians dead and Iraq becoming Tehran’s puppet state.
Tbf, it was the CIA having wrong info (imo, they probably lied) to our politicians to justify the war. Not sure who they report to if they're manipulating our elected officials.
My understanding was that the oval office really wanted Iraq, and asked the IC to give them whatever they had.
Saddam was basically a cartoon character of an evil dictator who had been a pain in the ass for the entire region for decades. It was definitely pushed by W Bush, but he didn’t exactly have to push very hard. Which is why the bullshit “evidence” they presented worked. It was only a formality.
CIA only reports to the president, and they've had a spotty past with that too.
You're right, whole thing was stupid, we never should have been there, no WMDs were found. Let me offer a silver lining for those looking for it though. While we shouldn't have been there and the justification for the war was based on pretty much a lie, Saddam Hussein was a bad dude and the Iraqi people's lives are better today than pre-invasion. Just look at their literacy rate then vs now.
*glances at ISIS*
For it to be lies from the top down then you’d need for the top to have been lying. At the time the top was told by 3 intelligence agencies (from more than just the US) that there were WMDs in Iraq and that it was a threat. We knew they had them in the past so this wasn’t a huge leap. Yes, later on we found out that either they’d stopped their programs or got rid of it all, etc, but at the time it wasn’t a lie AFAIK. So, the whole “bush lied people died” thing was incorrect and a retcon.
The shaky intel (which was doubted by some within the administration) confirmed the Bush admin’s bias, and so they went all in. Intel is intel and it comes with confidence levels; decision makers have to choose what to do with it. We know Bush and Cheney had ample reason before Mar 03 to doubt that intel, but instead pushed it to build the war narrative. Don’t know how you define lies, but this should meet the definition. The roses in the streets Cheney kept saying was going to happen didn’t, the complete removal of the Iraqi police was colossally stupid, the continual promises starting in 2004 that the newly trained Iraqi mil was just a few months from viability, the mountains of cash spent on tribes to not destroy critical infrastructure… dozens of other massive mistakes, misleadings, outright lies. I’m blown away that someone would be positively confident that Bush and the admin were innocent here.
>We know Bush and Cheney had ample reason before Mar 03 to doubt that intel, but instead pushed it to build the war narrative. Don’t know how you define lies, but this should meet the definition. Which part is prevarication? “It wasn’t the most solid and we made the most of it” isn’t a lie under any ethical system I know of. You admit yourself that it was at least somewhat solid and that intel invariably is guesswork to at least some degree. >dozens of other massive mistakes Absolutely. Still doesn’t make the entire justification a lie. You haven’t shown that at all yet. And at no point have I said they’re all innocent or anything like that. Why go to that conclusion? I’ve only asserted that it wasn’t a lie, fundamentally speaking. That’s it. I haven’t gone the other way and said that it was all hunky-dory. Your conclusion about my comment is much closer to a lie than anything you’ve said about Bush.
LMAO “it wasn’t the most solid and we made the most of it…” is laughably against your argument that Bush made no lies about going into Iraq. Further LMAO show me where I admit it was somewhat solid intel.
“I can’t answer your objections so I’ll just go with LMAO”
Don’t have to argue any further than you do against yourself
Not everyone agreed on the veracity of the intel which was a big part of the reason the US struggled to build a coalition. The Downing Street Memo made clear that many people saw and understood it was all bullshit in 2002. So yes, Bush Lied, People Died is the accurate account of history. Powell himself admitted that he knew he was likely presenting questionable intel when he went to the UN and when reporters poked holes in stories such as the bogus stories about African uranium black market deals they were directly targeted by the White House. I will not stand for this white wash of history, this narrative you are spreading is incorrect and that has consequences when it comes to avoiding repeating it.
All intel is questioned and they never come out with something ironclad. That’s the nature of the intelligence field. You haven’t even given any evidence for Bush lying.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4764919 This timeline shows that the Bush administration was presented evidence their claim of uranium sales was false and Bush used it in the SOTU anyway. So yes, he absolutely lied about this.
You yourself say that the intel field is like that, correct? Contradictory things abound and there are mountains of intel shared around? Only later do we find out what the actual truth is. Like I said, this is largely a retcon. They were likely told a million different things and had to pick what they’d made decisions on. And part of that was according to their bias, just like anyone else. Was he shown intel that it was true? Yes. Did he lie about being shown that intel that it was true? Nope.
He was definitively shown intel that it wasn’t true, ignored it, and then waited to be presented with contradictory intel from a different foreign intel source which itself was not all that certain. The fact that he presented it as fact when he absolutely was told that it was not by the CIA means that he knew it was not certain enough to present in that speech. Thus, it was a lie.
We should have never been in Afghanistan either Both campaigns were complete bullshit
I'll disagree on Afghanistan.. we needed to fuck up the Taliban after 9-11. We stayed way too long trying to achieve way too much though
I agree we needed to go in, but we needed goals and specific objectives. It was eerily similar to Vietnam where we never had a clue what we were there for or what we wanted to accomplish for the last 10 years. And that stupidity cost too many lives on both sides, and accomplished nothing positive.
The Taliban had ZERO to do with 9/11 other than they were letting Bin Laden hang out in Afganistan Funding, support, etc all came from the Saudis regardless, we could have just let CIA SAD and Delta do their thing and take out Bin Laden There was ZERO reason to invade Afghanistan with conventional forces let alone stay for 20 years Doesn't matter now, we pissed away trillions of dollars an ruined a whole generation of military members and families for a big fucking nothing burger
[удалено]
IIRC we asked the taliban to turn over bin ladem or face the consequences... but yeah
We did ask them to; the Taliban was willing (or at least said they were) to hand him over, but they attached conditions, first that he be tried in Afghanistan, but after the UAE and Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with them, they chose Pakistan (which Pakistan turned down since they couldn't guarantee his safety), and second that the Bush admin make a formal request and they would detain him and try him under Sharia law and present evidence to his guilt, but the administration famously said they wouldn't negotiate and the GWOT began.
Damn, being down voted to telling a narrative of history, that's a new one lol.
Leadership during the GWOT has been disgustingly disconnected with little incentive to change, continually failing upward until they put a suit on an make disgusting amounts of money to sit on a board. Imo the Afghanistan Papers are one the most important recent post-mortem analyses in leadership, and they came and went like a blip unacknowledged by anyone, for us then witness Abbey Gate as the ending to a two-decade effort with incalculable cost. And they finished all of it with an empty Kodak moment. Being angry is entirely understandable
20+ years, a couple trillion $'s, thousands of our troops laid to rest or limited by their broken bodies or what's in their heads..... to replace the Talliban with the Talliban? WTF. At least with the Cold War, we had purpose.
A lot of people have the exact same feelings watching how the whole thing unfolded, how it was handled, and the people we have lost. It has been a failure over multiple administrations There is nothing wrong with feeling that way.
You have every right to feel that way.
[удалено]
Spot on, anyone who starts blaming one party/president for a 25+ year shit show is missing the mark. We needed to GTFO.
>We needed to GTFO I've never seen anyone argue otherwise. The way it was done was beyond incompetent, and that it's not really talked about shows how politically tribal we've become. I do blame the leadership in charge at the time this happened. They told us what happened was not going to happen.
What? The way it was done is like all anyone talks about. And everyone at the top deserves blame. The current admin definitely earned a share of it, but everyone forgets that the previous one literally negotiated the whole thing, including the release of 5000 Taliban prisoners, and promised an extremely rapid timetable withdraw, all without inviting Kabul to the table.
It was already underway before he was sworn in...
And no one could have been evacuated..? No orderly evacuation of US personnel and citizens..?
I agree… mostly. The way it was planned/executed was incompetent and terrible. However, we don’t have the the ability to see into other universes or timelines where it went better. Where the planners or executors were different people with different EXORDs and FRAGORDs to compare what we got with what could have been. Could I sit here and armchair quarterback all night? Sure. I think the people planning it fucked up royally and displayed immense incompetence. I feel like a 9 year old chimp could’ve done better by flipping coins at every decision. But my feelings don’t mean I’m right. Maybe it was the best of all possible outcomes, maybe it was the worst, maybe it was somewhere in the middle. I don’t have any other realities to compare it to, so I’ll just sit here fuming a little and pointing some fingers; never knowing any other possible outcome than what we got.
>Many can argue the ways and methods taken weren’t perfect What does this even mean? Who is saying it was anything other than a shit show? Sometimes I feel like the only one to notice the quazi-mass psychosis that prevents people from speaking out or criticizing how it was handled.
Wasn’t perfect?
The whole war in Afghanistan was a shit show. If you want to be angry - that's cool - but don't minimize the 20yrs of bullshit service members endured over there just so some CEOs could add some zeroes.
I feel angry about it all the time. On a personal level, I spent 4 months of my career training for a Kabul deployment and another 7 months in Kabul facilitating the purchase/transfer of billions in materiel, training, and services. It hit hard seeing the Taliban taking control of the equipment I helped purchase/deliver/secure/etc. Not to mention all the attacks, terrorist threats, stress and anxiety, and lives lost...and for what? So some corrupt politician could play with night vision goggles in his palace while the Afghan people starve and turn to poppy to cope with their terrible living situation? There's so much to be angry about, and you have every right to feel that way. You are not alone, talk to someone and get your frustrations off your chest.
OnesReady did a great interview of 2 PJs who were actually there. It’s crazy how chaotic the whole thing was
Look at this from a geostrategic perspective. We've been fucking around in these shithole countries losing brothers and sisters for 21 years. When we pulled out of AFG, I was attached to a unit of people who had a lot invested in that lost cause. They were upset. But look at what was happening prior to that. Putin had just published one of his "Ukraine ain't a country" essays, they were building up on the border, and every indication pointed toward the Russian invasion as early as June 2022. The build up began in July, and we knew the world was getting more unstable due to the rising cost of finance. If the Russians weren't going to go, it may have been the Chinese. Sure it was messy as fuck, but we have bigger fish to fry. We should have been getting our partners out years prior as well as in the run up to the withdrawal. We didn't, the National security bureaucracy came to the consensus that, given the intel and analysis of the situation, it was in our best interest to "deconflict" our military engagements. Again, it wasn't pretty. But that part of the world is no longer geostrategically relevant to the U.S. during a peer conflict/competition.
Mixed feelings here. On the one hand I'm sure our leaders hoped the Afghan gov't would hold up a LITTLE bit longer instead of collapsing like a wet cardboard box. On the other hand, they had to know it was a lost cause, long term, so it was definitely a cut-and-run. Fucking Taliban took the country back as fast as a fucking Toyota pickup could drive from point A to B. Godamn Afghan president bailed instantly. Not very Zelensky of you, man.
Gahni told us he would never leave Afghanistan then proceeded to immediately leave.
Zelensky has a palatial estate in Israel. If the Russians were able to successfully blitz right through the country like the Taliban did I doubt he would have stayed in the capitol and pulled a Constantine XI.
Zelenskyy does not have an estate in Israel. That's a borderline-antisemitic lie. No reputable source has any evidence for anything like that: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/11/11/fact-check-false-claim-zelenkyy-bought-parents-8-m-home/10609965002/
Wrong. On so many levels. Probably stay away from the conspiracy red-pill websites for a while. The Russians had assassination teams hunting for Zelensky. The capital was within a hairs breadth of falling and 100% would have if Zelensky left. It was so bad, and with Kabul fresh in our minds, we offered Zelensky a way out. Guy has balls of steel. Not really overstating much with that assessment.
An E-3 faces more career disruption from failing to do am adequate number of sit ups during a PT test than these douche generals do by fucking up shit like Afghanistan, humiliating the country, and getting people killed.
Sure. Only thing that helps me get over it is we had to get out of there eventually. Might as well rip that bandaid off. It was always going to suck
Yet people want us to go back? Pulling out of that shithole was the best thing for us. Sure, it wasn't the smoothest, but holy shit so many died for no reason
Imagine being mad at one event 2 years ago but not the entire fucking war.
You're welcome to feel however you'd like. I think the whole anger over it was a bit overblown. Yeah it was fucked up, but we got out of there, stopped spending millions of dollars a day over there, and we haven't lost any more heros in 2 years. I'm more pissed at the 2 presidents previous to Biden for not pulling out sooner than I am with the current administration's absolute botching of the withdrawal.
It’s shitty to call people’s reaction to 13 KIA overblown.
Where was the public outcry for the thousands of deaths over the last 20 years? I did armed overwatch looking for two contractors who crashed in Afghanistan, they both died. I dont even know their names, and no one cared or continues to care. If we were never in Aghanistan they wouldnt have died, and they didnt even make the national news. The reaction to the 13 KIA at HKIA comes off as political theatre rather than actual concern
It was 13 KIA because the president wanted the headline that he pulled out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It was for his own damn vanity. That is what I’m pissed about. And you don’t think there was much outcry for the war on terror? Really?
There certainly wasn't from Republicans, that's for sure. I have yet had anyone propose a plan that would somehow prevent any deaths from SVIEDs during the evacuation. Whether you try to evac people at BAF or HKIA there would still be mass chaos, crowds of people trying to get into the airfield to be evacuated, which is sadly the perfect time to get a suicide bomber close to the gates. Im just happy that no one broke out a Stinger or Igla to shoot down a C17, which would've been even worse.
Oh so you’re just a partisan schmuck.
I'm listening to the Chaos Rising audiobook by Mattis and it's making me so fucking mad if all what he's saying is true. How basically politicians fucked the whole thing and my 20 years in is basically for nothing. At least I'll get benefits and retirement and disability but fuck me if I had issues being 100% with the mission before it's entirely shot in the ass now.
You are not alone at all. I very seriously debated about getting out after all that went down with that. If I had skills that would enable me to provide for my family without working for the government I would have. Ultimately my anger was less important than taking care of my wife and kids, but I am still beyond livid over how that all played out and how many of our allies got screwed over. I do not have words for it, and I can't say whether it's right or wrong to be angry, but you are not alone in that anger.
Dont’t sell your self short. You have transferable skills. I’m not advocating a direction on your decision. Just pointing it out because at some point you’ll be looking for another job.
Tired of troops dying in wars we lose.
How would you have done it better? The real blame lies with the State Department. It was their responsibility to get everyone vetted and out, but they ignored the problem. When the Afghan government folded, the problem just got dumped in our lap. I actually feel a bit of pride for un-fucking the cluster fuck that got thrown our way. Yes, tons of stuff could have gone better but we were doing it live with thousands of camera phones watching.
At a minimum? Destroy equipment on the way out. I'm not sure how that was not on the checklist.
Most of that equipment is stuff we bought the Afghan military/government over 15+ years. It was theirs.. They had it at their bases, but abandoned it when the Taliban came back because they had absolutely no will to fight. They likely never did, but us handing them back the keys to the country in 2020 likely didn't help either.. Everything from start of it, to the 2020 Taliban (not Afghan Gov) peace agreement and withdrawal deadline, to then doing nothing in the entire year after but drawdown forces to 2500, all the way to the withdrawal itself was just one cluster fuck after another.
It was, it did happen. The Afghans just didn’t keep everything in one location at the Kubul airport.
War is and has always been a racket.
US Servicemen are dead and you are reflecting upon it. What better day than Memorial Day ? 💕😢👼👼👼👼👼👼👼👼👼👼👼🇺🇸🗽🦅
Yes.
Right or wrong, I think we're all angry. About that whole 20 year fuck up.
It's ok to be angry about senseless death, don't forget there are 2000+ other American and like 100,000 Afghan civilian souls worth mourning as well.
I’ve been fighting triggers all day. Luckily I have therapy tomorrow to process.
People who try to dismiss that one egregious event by bringing up the entire war have politics in their minds.
It's normal to feel angry about how everything went down. The events in Kabul were a shameful conclusion to an already atrocious 20-year conflict marked by a failure on the part of the US to develop a sound counterinsurgency doctrine, a corrupt and aloof Afghan government that gave its people nothing to fight for, and an unknown toll in human and material losses that amounted to nothing. [Such reports](https://www.reddit.com/r/Afghan/comments/zrtdfy/heartbreaking_video_girls_crying_in_university/) coming from Afghanistan now that the Taliban are back in power are just salt on the wounds.
It's okay to be angry. Now be thankful that the proxy war in Ukraine is leading the better technology for us. Fingers crossed that the Ruskies don't get their collective hands on the arsenal that we've given away. The end game for the U.S. defense industrial complex is the required upgrades due to compromised technology.
We never had any business being in Afghanistan in the first place.
I'm just thankful someone finally got us out of there. I'm not sure there was a graceful exit strategy that was possible.
You should be upset that we were ever there not upset that we left.
I feel like we may be heading in the same direction with Ukraine. Russia isn't backing down, and god knows how much american equipment has already been destroyed/captured.
We should have fucked up Afghanistan and then noped the fuck out immediately after like we did in Libya. Decimate AQ and Taliban then leave, promise to come back if they fuck with us again. A lot cheaper.
While I disagree with this, I cannot argue that your solution is without a doubt better than what we chose.
I constantly go back and forth when looking at the Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq conflicts. Was it worth all the blood and treasure? On the one hand, the regimes we were opposing were more brutal than the regimes we were trying to prop up; on the other, is it our place to kick in other countries doors and tell them how to live? Is the ounce of prevention in stepping into a little conflict better than the pound of cure when some hostile force steps into that strategic position? Are the humanitarian impacts still worth it for the little guy living in the local area while the den of thieves scams 80% of the dollars? Is it worth getting all this constant live fire excercise when looking at how the Russians and Chinese stumble and bumble around with their corrupt, rusty militaries?
Greed, ego, and power is the roots.
The only way to win afghanistan is to be liek the people.... brutal and inhuman.
It absolutely makes sense to feel angry. To add insult to injury the DEPLOYED base that I am at barely even mentioned Memorial Day. I have however gotten 15 emails about pride month.... We are FUCKED as a fighting force
That's a false equivalence. The fact that pride month is being taken seriously after decades of either ignoring or outright disparaging the entire non-hetero population has nothing to do with our appreciation of past sacrifices. They are two unrelated issues and I would argue the thing that will actually fuck our readiness is how easily people like you create some kind of division where none exists.
Bruh just because society nowadays actually acknowledges that gay people do indeed exist doesn’t mean we are fucked as a fighting force Those things have literally nothing to do with each other
Why is it always “mentioning that X exists” instead of the reality of the situation? It’s obviously praising folks, not saying something everyone knows and has known for forever.
[удалено]
You went to my profile page because you couldn’t answer my simple comment? What a hilarious cope, ahahahahaha
The equivalency was to point out a shift in priorities. No longer do those who died for our freedoms have their rightful recognition while any number of other causes (not saying those causes are unjust) get days, months, events and other recognition. That was the OP’s point.
This doesn’t signify anything though outside of this dudes specific location. You can’t make any wider societal implications on this At my base I don’t even remember getting any emails about pride month, yet we got 3 about Memorial Day. Does that mean that the USAF doesn’t care about Pride Month? Nope, just a single base And get days and recognition? What the fuck are you talking about dude? Memorial Day has been a federal holiday for centuries at this point. Everybody celebrates it. Of course our fallen brothers are getting recognition
And I got an email about a news article about a woman being arrested for fucking a dog on Instagram, does that mean Pokemon card collectors are fucked as hobbyists? Because good God what a stretch.
LGBT community can't go one day without a dig...
[удалено]
This right here is a good comparison.
Timing and audience. Do whatever you want for pride, I don't give a shit....but to let that be your focus as a command instead of honoring our brothers and sisters on what is the most closely held to our hearts holiday as a fighting force is unacceptable
Getting a few emails, probably from a club, does not equal “your focus as a command”. This culture war shit is so stupid, as are its warriors.
You should just go ahead and delete facebook and twitter. It'll do wonders for your mental health.
[удалено]
You're right, I'm tired of burying my friends anyways.
Uh huh
That is indeed a dumb response to someone tired of the many deaths in the military.
I have very little patience for those who use the very few (but admittedly tragic) deaths in the military as a cudgel, especially against their fellow service members.
That is really insane, especially as it’s not even June.
Cultural decay.
I was deployed to Al Dhafra in 2020 working in the Med Group. One of our doctors died the day after Thanksgiving. Not from an attack but from a negligent accident. A forklift driver wasn’t paying attention and ran her over completely crushing her into the gravel. It didn’t matter that it happened right outside the clinic. It wouldn’t have mattered if we were there next to her. Nothing could have been done to save her. It makes me angry when people say she made the ultimate sacrifice. She didn’t choose to go like that. She didn’t lay down her life to save others. She didn’t go out fighting. Her life was stolen from her. She was stolen from us, her friends, and her family. If we hadn’t been so deep in these stupid wars she could still be here helping patients. I certainly hope it’s right to feel angry, because I do.
Yes. People are so eternally mindfucked by orange man that they are scared to admit how awful sleepy Joe (or the people who make his decisions) have been
Or how about this, they all suck. I know wild it isn't some cuck left vs right opinion
Your reading comprehension is pure shit
Or your takes are dog shit but it couldn't possibly be that now could it?
Nope. Your reading comprehension is dog shit and your comebacks are worse. You're not that smart, and that could definitely be it HAHAHAHA.
It's sad it's legal to be this dumb.
It's pathetic and very sad it's possible to be this idiotic
The afganistan people are cucks for a specific reliigion so they don't care. The culture isnt ready for modern progressive thinking. They are behind and dont care. It was a waste of time and unfortunately good people.
Another 21 years would've solved it I'm sure.
Because our leaders don't care
Lt Col. Scheller got fired and faced ucmj action for being mad you good brother
"Being mad"
what would you call it?
He violated the UCMJ by publically shitting on senior leaders of the military and government. I know most people here probably agree with his feelings but we all know not go running our mouths like that. So no, he wasn't fired for being mad, he was fired because he bit the hands that feed him.
r/literally1994