I don’t understand why we stopped working with the rebels we trained up. Maybe if we helped the Taliban from the get go 9/11 wouldn’t have happened.
Seems right given twenty years of our occupation there
The movie Charlie Wilson’s War was a pretty good retelling of how the US lost the peace after Russia pulled out of Afghanistan. I know it was a dramatized Hollywood version of event but the over all idea of what did or did not happen was pretty solid.
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How much better could the withdrawal have been? So far bloodshed has been minimal as far as I can tell but maybe it just hasn’t been reported yet.
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Yeah I think the US part hasn’t been that bad, it’s just no one expected the Afghani military to literally drop their weapons the minute the ball started rolling. I think there’s credence to the belief that the Afghanis never thought Biden would follow through.
Although… Apparently the Afghan government hadn’t paid them in 6 months and all their supplies came via American air power. So… Maybe we SHOULD have predicted they’d cut and run.
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Ditto.
But i also lean towards open borders.
So would it have been better if we pulled out 3 months from now when they haven’t been paid in 9 months?
Apparently the US soldiers on the ground knew this but the higher ups were turning a blind eye and/or not admitting to their ineptitude.
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Depends on how you want to look at it. From the U.S. standpoint, seems to be going great: we’re getting our people out, no reports of American casualties. From the standpoint of Afghans who are going to be targeted by the Taliban? Not going nearly as well, probably not going to go well once the takeover is complete. Incredibly doubtful the Taliban rolls into newly-captured areas and offers blanket amnesty to people who aided us, supported us, fought back against their new overlords and did stuff that defies what their overlords believe in. Who knows though, maybe the Taliban will be gracious and kind in victory for a change.
yeah that’s fair, you’d think people who did this kind of evaluation as a day job would have been going crazy about that
How could that have been improved and how many would have left prior to the change if given the chance?
It might have been better if we’d convinced the Afghan government that paying your soldiers is a very high priority. Like maybe the highest priority.
We’re going to spend decades discussing this, but what we probably could (should) have done:
- Those Afghans who assisted us and were clearly going to be target #1 by the Taliban? They should have been brought out of the country as soon as we knew we were leaving, along with their families.
- Women who’ve gained an education and worked? Same thing.
- Others who were going to be really high on the Taliban’s target list? Same thing.
- Those who were on the target list who didn’t want to leave? OK, your choice. We’re giving you an out, sorry you don’t want to take it.
How many people are we talking? Probably 4-5 million at a minimum. It might be as high as 10 million. No, I don’t know where they all go. This isn’t an exhaustive thought exercise. Leaving them there when they want to get out is contributing to a massacre, though.
How does that prevent the Taliban from rolling back through the country like a hot knife through butter? It doesn’t. Afghans charged with holding the front line bailed out at the first challenge. Those who can’t fight for their freedom unless they’re paid for their service will never have it no matter the circumstances. Us staying another years, 2 years, 20 years or 200 years wasn’t going to fix that.
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My understanding is that the issue wasn’t with the central government cutting checks, (or whatever monetary instrument they use) but with layers of corruption taking that money before it got to the soldiers. By all reports I’ve heard, there were extraordinary levels of corruption.
Agree with all this. Maybe try to find other countries willing to house some of these refugees.
In addition to it being morally right, it would also have had a practical benefit the next time we are looking for local translators and other allies. “Work with us, and if things go south, we’ll give you refugee status” is a much better offer than “work with us, and if things go south we’ll leave you behind to be massacred”.
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Ah, well then we needed to deal with the corruption. It seems like it should have been incredibly obvious what was going to happen. The military folks I’d spoken to over the years were all unanimously saying it was going to be a matter of days (not months or even weeks) from when the US pulled out until the Taliban took over. I wasn’t aware of the existence of people saying otherwise but I admittedly haven’t paid a ton of attention.
So much this.
There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.’
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Fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice, … strike three.
lol baseball