Honest question - what was the answer in Afghanistan?

roscoe

Well-known member
OK, I don't think too many folks still think the Iraq War was a good idea, but Afghanistan under the Taliban had OBL in 2001. So we went in. OBL escaped through the mountains, and there were were. We stuck around for ~20 years 'nation-building', training the military and police, building schools, making drone strikes on the Taliban. At the cost of 2,400 Americans, 200,000 Afghanis and other US-allied soldiers/civilians (plus ~50K Taliban). Cost: $3-4 trillion by the end.

But finally we left, and it collapsed in days, with the Taliban taking control yesterday. Karzai has left the country and US personnel are evacuating as we speak.

What was the answer? What should we have done? I don't think this is a liberal/conservative question, BTW.
 
Last edited:

wiscoaster

Well-known member
BTW, I agree this is not a question about liberal/conservative politics. This is a question of national sovereignty and self-determination. Afghanistan, as a sovereign nation, was never a threat to America. They should have been left alone to determine their own destiny.

International terrorists who attack America and/or kill Americans anywhere should be pursued and subdued wherever they hide, of course, with or without the cooperation of their willing or unwilling host country. But as an excuse to invade and take over the whole country and transform it into a mini-America, no.
 

Fine Figure of a Man

Well-known member
Should not have been there, but we were and are. Leaving a small number of troops there (as was advised) was the best option.

Not a left/right liberal/conservative question.

The Biden administration has the worst possible answers as usual, even the MSM is having trouble defending.

Abandoning our allies there to be butchered by the Taliban is a poor decision even by Biden standards.

There will be repercussions in the future as a result.
 
Since we were there (which we shouldn't have been) it was necessary to get out.

Biden waited far too long to start the process. He failed to realize the country would fall in a couple of days.

He should have started moving people out slowly two months ago. Instead of destroying the files and computers in the embassy we could have taken the computers and other property along.

There should have only been a hundred people or so left when the Taliban started their offensive.

Biden displayed incredible stupidity.
 

LiveLife

Active member
Withdrawal could have been done better instead of what happened ... Sad for those that worked with US soldiers who couldn't leave the country.

 
Last edited:
I'm not so sad for those who worked with U.S. soldiers.

They turned against their own brothers and their religion and sucked up to the American occupiers.

How do we know they wouldn't turn against us and become terrorists once they got here?

The last thing we need in the U.S. is more confused and problematic Muslims.
 

roscoe

Well-known member
I honestly think we should have just kept a few hundred troops there indefinitely as a deterrent to the Taliban. That part was a modest expense in lives and dollars, and was probably, in a sense, what we owed the country and our allies there, having kicked over the apple cart by invading.

You can be sure they are chuckling over in the Kremlin.
 
I honestly think we should have just kept a few hundred troops there indefinitely as a deterrent to the Taliban. That part was a modest expense in lives and dollars, and was probably, in a sense, what we owed the country and our allies there, having kicked over the apple cart by invading.

You can be sure they are chuckling over in the Kremlin.
A few hundred troops would just be targets.

That's just asking for dead Americans.
 

roscoe

Well-known member
I do agree that this is a debacle. The parallels with Saigon are obvious.

if you haven't seen it, I recommend the film 'The Fog of War', in which McNamara admits the Vietnam War was a mistake. Rumsfeld died before he ever achieved the perspective to admit the same.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
The incompetence of the Biden administration is being laughed at all over the world, and that is a national security threat.
Furthermore, he's appointed and surrounded himself with some of the worst people possible, including his "woke" military people. It's so bad I can only conclude it's deliberate. In that case, he's actually been pretty competent - at weakening America and setting the stage for its ultimate destruction and its failure. Future history must certainly rank him right up there with Aaron Burr. Or down there, to be posthumously precise directionally-wise.
 
Last edited:

LiveLife

Active member
Likely happening tonight (I also read they are taking widows under 45) - https://www.godreports.com/2021/08/afghanistan-christian-leader-faces-taliban-takeover/

“There are already posters appearing that if you have single girls, 15-years-old, you have to marry them to the Taliban soldiers. Christians fear their daughters will be taken away from them and forced to marry Taliban. They will be sent to madrasas (Islamic schools) to brainwash them. The parents may or may not be killed.”

And this is how they treat their own women.

 
Last edited:

roscoe

Well-known member
Furthermore, he's appointed and surrounded himself with some of the worst people possible, including his "woke" military people. It's so bad I can only conclude it's deliberate. In that case, he's actually been pretty competent - at weakening America and setting the stage for its ultimate destruction and its failure. Future history must certainly rank him right up there with Aaron Burr. Or down there, to be posthumously precise directionally-wise.
This is just silly.
 

roscoe

Well-known member
Well, if you have some logical and plausible explanation other than intent, feel free to share.
Your argument loses credibility when you credit Biden with intentionally weakening the US. That means any time some leader makes a miscalculation they are doing it with the intent of failure. That logic is poor.

Ultimately, the true blame falls back on the Bush II administration. Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al., set this all in motion. Without staying in Afghanistan 100 years or longer, this was never going to end well. Just ask the Brits and Soviets. Biden just decided to bite the bullet and pull the band-aid off. But, yes, he miscalculated how fast the end would happen, and should be held responsible.
 

theotherwaldo

Well-known member
We never should have entered Afghanistan.
Since we did, we should have left when we said that we would, under the conditions that we had agreed upon.
Rubbing the noses of the Afghani people in this 9/11 anniversary exit nonsense was just foolish.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
Your argument loses credibility when you credit Biden with intentionally weakening the US. That means any time some leader makes a miscalculation they are doing it with the intent of failure. That logic is poor.
No it is not - it's poor logic only when accepted that the assumed intent is success and that success is defined as you and I think it is, and you're assuming that's the operative intent and that success the operative success without solid evidence for that assumption. Actually there's more evidence for the contrary. eg Biden has already demonstrated his disregard for his oath to uphold the Constitution, his disrespect for the law and the legislature and the Court, and his failures to address multiple crises confronting the country within and without, some of which are results of his policies and Executive Orders. If his definition of success is the destruction of a Constitutional Democratic Republic and its replacement by an authoritarian socialist state then he's pretty well on his way to his definition of success, or of whoever's controlling him, but that's a success defined, by me anyway, as failure.
 
Top