Afghanistan

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ProwlerturnGas

ProwlerturnGas

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The horrible situation in Afghanistan has brought back memories of my time there. I am heartbroken that it has come to this. I think about all the promising young Americans that were maimed, killed and our national treasure that was spent there. I am terrified for the Afghan women and girls that will suffer under the Taliban.
I am mostly just angry at the politicians of both parties that allowed this to go on for 20+ years. I don’t know what to think, I am just stunned that it has come to this and wanted to get it off my chest.
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This is what happens when you don't fight a total war and instead insist on a police action. Apparently we learned nothing from Vietnam.

You know why we won WWII so decisively, and in 3 years? B/c we leveled Europe, and Japan. I'm sorry, but that's what it took. Anything short of that, and we'd still be fighting the Japanese empire and Nazis today.
 
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DrMetal said:
This is what happens when you don't fight a total war and instead insist on a police action. Apparently we learned nothing from Vietnam.

You know why we won WWII so decisively, and in 3 years? B/c we leveled Europe, and Japan. I'm sorry, but that's what it took. Anything short of that, and we'd still be fighting the Japanese empire and Nazis today.
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I agree with this. We didn't go there to win a war, we went to spend ungodly amounts of taxpayer dollars to "build" a country and make them democratic. Rather than just go all out and take everything over, we thought we could teach their own people to fight for themselves, just like we did with the South Vietnamese. They don't want to fight for themselves, they don't want freedom. This is why the Afghan Army just turned tail and abandoned their posts. Had they actually had the will to fight and defend, this would never have happened. Now the Taliban have our drones, Blackhawks, humvees, M4s, ACOG, night and thermal vision technology and all kinds of other US military technology.

It hurts to know I lost two friends from my infantry battalion over there for this to be the end result.
 
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Afghanistan and the uncertainty there was the primary reason I got out of the .mil and didn’t stay in the reserves as I planned when my time was up. That proved to be a good decision, though I actually thought it would be even worse in an open proxy war with Russia and Iran. I would have retired not long ago having served nearly all of the 20 years during wartime. There was no clear end point back then, and it just dragged on and on. We were never going to “win” and the Afghan people and their Armed Forces don’t seem to have the will to rebel against the Taliban. Until they’d rather die than live under their regime, the revolution was destined to fail.
Having said that 3 things are clear, to me anyway.
1. Biden is dangerously weak, and his intel was terrible. Maybe that’s a legacy from Trump and the “yes men”? They lost the entire country before they could even evacuate. Amazing.
2. Trump was widely criticized for trying to negotiate with the Taliban, and that opportunity was lost. Instead of propping up the DOA democracy, they should have accepted the reality of the failed revolution. If they had offered them the world, the moon, and the stars to help modernize, rebuild, food, aid, etc. in return for even modest softening of their backward oppressive system we might be able to spin a win in the western press and they could claim that they broke America and got billions of $$ in reparations.
3. We would have been better off wasting hundreds of billions of dollars essentially bribing them to be slightly less crazy than the trillions we wasted on nothing, and maybe actually helped the people and the country.

People need to accept reality, and own it. The USSR played this game before. This was a bad deal, it got worse, and we kept doubling down on the fantasy democracy in the dirt. Now they will double down on crazy, probably support terrorism in Israel and the rest of the region, maybe Europe as well, and we will shrug and wonder what the new iPhone 13 will offer.
 
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Agreed its completely surreal watching the all the images on television.

Its been over 10 years since I deployed for OEF but still feels like yesterday.

The one thing I would say is that regardless of your feelings on keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan its pretty misleading to describe the current events as finally ending some never-ending war of 20 years. The primary combat mission aka OEF ended in 2014 and since then US troops have been there as part of a small NATO led counter terrorism and government support task force. The fact of the matter is that we haven't been conducting actual combat operations in over 6 years and haven't had actual troops killed in action in over 16 months.
 
Yeah I’m just sad about it. It was clear that the ANA would fail and we just hoped it would take long enough to avoid embarrassment. Personally I’m glad we aren’t wasting a single additional American life in that place but it brings all the wasted lives back to the front of my soul.
 
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Personally, I like to think that it wasn't wasted lives, for various reasons. I think the following post is a good perspective for the work done there...

1629315260502.png
 
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militaryPHYS said:
Every vet you speak with or see...make sure they are doing OK. Their efforts and sacrifices had meaning and impact despite how the current situation feels.
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I've had this conversation several times this week with veterans coming in to see me. Several are angry. Some are just sad because they lost time, friends, etc. over there and felt like it just was for nothing. I've had several of the Vietnam vets also talking about it and they see the similarities.
 
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ProwlerturnGas said:
The horrible situation in Afghanistan has brought back memories of my time there. I am heartbroken that it has come to this. I think about all the promising young Americans that were maimed, killed and our national treasure that was spent there. I am terrified for the Afghan women and girls that will suffer under the Taliban.
I am mostly just angry at the politicians of both parties that allowed this to go on for 20+ years. I don’t know what to think, I am just stunned that it has come to this and wanted to get it off my chest.
Click to expand...
I'm mostly angry at the people of Afghanistan.

They had 20 years of essentially unlimited economic support, military support, logistics support, government support, not to mention the blood we spent there. I spent some time in Afghanistan, as did lots of people on this board, and I met some great people there. But they're a minority, unfortunately.

If a majority or even a plurality of them wanted secular democracy and friendly grown-up relations with the rest of the civilized world, they could've had it 15 years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or 5 years ago. Or last week. Apparently they don't. Maybe it's time we freely admitted that there's something wrong with their culture. Maybe they don't want what we want. Maybe they're not like us. Maybe the Taliban is what they are and what they want. I can accept that.
 
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Logically all of the replies in this thread are correct.
My intent was to share my profound grief at the situation unfolding considering 9/11 and the GWOT in Afghanistan has spanned nearly all of my professional life.
I don’t particularly care to hash out details. I wish all of my fellow brothers and sisters who spent time there, thank you for your sacrifice and work.
 
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pgg said:
I'm mostly angry at the people of Afghanistan.

They had 20 years of essentially unlimited economic support, military support, logistics support, government support, not to mention the blood we spent there. I spent some time in Afghanistan, as did lots of people on this board, and I met some great people there. But they're a minority, unfortunately.

If a majority or even a plurality of them wanted secular democracy and friendly grown-up relations with the rest of the civilized world, they could've had it 15 years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or 5 years ago. Or last week. Apparently they don't. Maybe it's time we freely admitted that there's something wrong with their culture. Maybe they don't want what we want. Maybe they're not like us. Maybe the Taliban is what they are and what they want. I can accept that.
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There was no changing the Nazi party either. It had to be wiped out.

If these $%^&%$#ers harbor another terrorist organization that commits another 9/11, it's nukes away I say. Innocent children will die? Yeah . . .those children born around 2001 are now 20-yo members of the Taliban.
 
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How did we go from no man left behind to “Goodbye and good luck!”
They can’t even get the Americans out, let alone the special visa applicants.
Another black eye for the most powerful military the world has ever known.
The video from outside the airport is unbelievable, and the Americans are hiding in safe houses with no way in.
 
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ValeRx said:
I agree with this. We didn't go there to win a war, we went to spend ungodly amounts of taxpayer dollars to "build" a country and make them democratic. Rather than just go all out and take everything over, we thought we could teach their own people to fight for themselves, just like we did with the South Vietnamese. They don't want to fight for themselves, they don't want freedom. This is why the Afghan Army just turned tail and abandoned their posts. Had they actually had the will to fight and defend, this would never have happened. Now the Taliban have our drones, Blackhawks, humvees, M4s, ACOG, night and thermal vision technology and all kinds of other US military technology.

It hurts to know I lost two friends from my infantry battalion over there for this to be the end result.
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It is painful, no doubt about it, sad, and a huge waste in every sense.

No one who mattered was unfamiliar with the reputation Afghanistan had as a graveyard of empires. Obviously we went there of necessity, to destroy the network of terrorists who attacked and killed thousands of our people. Somehow utterly crushing the Taliban out of existence, the dutiful and opportunistic hosts of Al Qaeda, was not really part of the plan.

Of course this all will be studied. We convinced ourselves we could force the Taliban to come to desirable terms and that they would somehow accept an agreement with us backed by force. Then we somehow convinced ourselves that after OBL was at the bottom of the sea we could displace that force element to an Afghan national force, something that had never existed before in a socially primitive culture that was a nation only in the sense that they had borders, sort-of. Changing their culture, something we at one level wished could have been done, would have required colonization for a long period of time, which neither we nor our allies really wanted to do. And the truth is, apparently not enough Afghans wanted the change for themselves to effectively resist the Taliban either. As a movement, they are gangsters wrapped in religious garb, winning cooperation by extortion, murder, intimidation, mass production of illicit drugs and smuggling, narco-terrorists with ambitions to be rulers of a narco-state. Their version of Islam is their convenient tool of extreme social control and maintaining power. The intelligence community has publicly admitted within the week that Al Qaeda and ISIS have elements active there under Taliban protection, while the administration is trying to plaster a happy-face on this disaster.
 
We never really meant no man left behind. It’s only been a couple years since we abandoned the Kurds in Syria. People were mad about that for a good 5 min too but we’ll be back to arguing about masks at Disneyworld soon enough
 
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Gastrapathy said:
We never really meant no man left behind. It’s only been a couple years since we abandoned the Kurds in Syria. People were mad about that for a good 5 min too but we’ll be back to arguing about masks at Disneyworld soon enough
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A lot could have been said for making Iraq into a 3 nation split, Kurds, Sunni, Shiite nations with minimal troop footprint there. The Kurds would have been a lot like Israel and been a democracy and another ally in the region and would have kept pressure on Iran to be nice. We lost that opportunity and now Iraq will devolve into another vacuum with terrorists. That's going to be real nice to deal with when we end up going into Iran or Syria. It's going to be Vietnam version 3.0 (Afghanistan was 2.0).

Oh well above my paygrade. I just go where I am told.
 
TheEarDoc said:
A lot could have been said for making Iraq into a 3 nation split, Kurds, Sunni, Shiite nations with minimal troop footprint there. The Kurds would have been a lot like Israel and been a democracy and another ally in the region and would have kept pressure on Iran to be nice. We lost that opportunity and now Iraq will devolve into another vacuum with terrorists.
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Good . . . then we should level the Middle East. The countries of Western Europe were all at war with each other (in some shape for fashion) for almost 2,000 years, until we leveled the entire continent (WWI and II), and then rebuild. Western Europe has really only been at peace for the past 80 years (their longest stretch).

You guys need to hop on board with my foreign policy, it's a very simple strategy.
 
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DrMetal said:
Good . . . then we should level the Middle East. The countries of Western Europe were all at war with each other (in some shape for fashion) for almost 2,000 years, until we leveled the entire continent (WWI and II), and then rebuild. Western Europe has really only been at peace for the past 80 years (their longest stretch).

You guys need to hop on board with my foreign policy, it's a very simple strategy.
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Scorched earth policy is sometimes the only policy that works. I won't say you're wrong. The US military has not been released without significant control by politicians since WWII. Korea saw the first time politics basically controlled what happened in the trenches policy wise. Vietnam was even worse.
 
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DrMetal said:
You guys need to hop on board with my foreign policy, it's a very simple strategy.
Click to expand...

Afghanistan’s mayhem is very personal for anyone who fled similar mayhem in their country.

I have family in Lebanon, Venezuela and Cuba. My immediate family members and I were the lucky ones in that we fled as refugees. Fast forward a few decades, I find myself at the university disagreeing with many faculty physicians, admins, staff and students who have no idea how good they've got it. Many Americans (liberals and conservatives) are spoiled rotten, clueless and ingrates for the freedoms they breathe without effort. I told a staff member today who is also from a politically devastated country, that we should import 1 foreign immigrant and export 10 ungrateful Americans, as a way to relieve their “suffering”. Let the latter live in Lebanon, Venezuela or Cuba for 30 days so that they can taste real “outrage”, seek “safe spaces” and whine about disparities.

Afghanistan could be the USA in the near future.
 
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TheEarDoc said:
Scorched earth policy is sometimes the only policy that works.
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That's what a military is for. Fight the war, in a total sense, or don't fight it at all. Diplomacy and 'winning hearts and minds' should not be the job of a military; it's a job of civilians/politicians. And if they fail in that regard and decide to use the military, it should be understood that that's an act of full aggression. Don't intend for aggression? Don't deploy your military.

Quimbara said:
Afghanistan could be the USA in the near future.
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I wouldn't go quite that far. But your point about ungrateful Americans is well-taken.
 
Unfortunately American priorities are different these days. USA’s image, prestige and respect are no longer important. All that MSM could focus on last month was how unfair it was that transgender women couldn’t participate in women’s athletics.
 
DrMetal said:
That's what a military is for. Fight the war, in a total sense, or don't fight it at all. Diplomacy and 'winning hearts and minds' should not be the job of a military; it's a job of civilians/politicians. And if they fail in that regard and decide to use the military, it should be understood that that's an act of full aggression. Don't intend for aggression? Don't deploy your military.
Click to expand...

 
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DrMetal said:
That's what a military is for. Fight the war, in a total sense, or don't fight it at all. Diplomacy and 'winning hearts and minds' should not be the job of a military; it's a job of civilians/politicians. And if they fail in that regard and decide to use the military, it should be understood that that's an act of full aggression. Don't intend for aggression? Don't deploy your military.



I wouldn't go quite that far. But your point about ungrateful Americans is well-taken.
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I usually tell people to start thinking about the military like having a hand grenade. If you’re in a fight, are you ready to pull the hand grenade out? Is the fight that bad? Is there another option? If there is, you shouldn’t pull the pin. If the fight really is that bad and you’re ready to pull the pin, just keep in mind that you can’t put the pin back in this grenade. If you’re just going to use the grenade as a blunt weapon, then you’re not using it right and there’s a chance it’s going to blow up in your face.
 
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We need a formal Congressional declaration of war like we had in WW2 and pretty much all wars before WW2. Things went bad when presidents started taking war powers from Congress
 
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Quimbara said:
Afghanistan’s mayhem is very personal for anyone who fled similar mayhem in their country.

I have family in Lebanon, Venezuela and Cuba. My immediate family members and I were the lucky ones in that we fled as refugees. Fast forward a few decades, I find myself at the university disagreeing with many faculty physicians, admins, staff and students who have no idea how good they've got it. Many Americans (liberals and conservatives) are spoiled rotten, clueless and ingrates for the freedoms they breathe without effort. I told a staff member today who is also from a politically devastated country, that we should import 1 foreign immigrant and export 10 ungrateful Americans, as a way to relieve their “suffering”. Let the latter live in Lebanon, Venezuela or Cuba for 30 days so that they can taste real “outrage”, seek “safe spaces” and whine about disparities.

Afghanistan could be the USA in the near future.
Click to expand...

I understand the sentiment but I’m not a fan of this attitude. While both sides get a bit dramatic in the US, the progression and maintenance of human rights, dignity, and liberty do not deserve any less passion just because life is relatively comfortable here.
 
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10 Marines killed in bomb explosion. Totally rushed withdrawal. Biden clearly has no idea how to act like a leader.
 
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Biden
Lawpy said:
How likely will the US return and restart the War in Afghanistan?
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This withdrawal has been a disaster. 20 years spent and Afghanistan left worse than what it was 20 yrs back. Now ISIS is back.
Would it not be more sensible to leave 2500 troops there just to prevent the conditions from developing which were there 20 yrs ago ?
 
Nephro critical care said:
Biden

This withdrawal has been a disaster. 20 years spent and Afghanistan left worse than what it was 20 yrs back. Now ISIS is back.
Would it not be more sensible to leave 2500 troops there just to prevent the conditions from developing which were there 20 yrs ago ?
Click to expand...
Indefinitely?
 
Nephro critical care said:
Biden

This withdrawal has been a disaster. 20 years spent and Afghanistan left worse than what it was 20 yrs back. Now ISIS is back.
Would it not be more sensible to leave 2500 troops there just to prevent the conditions from developing which were there 20 yrs ago ?
Click to expand...

There's 5000 troops there now and this attack still happened.

Heartbroken from today's news. Absolutely tragic.
 
HighPriest said:
Yeah, you know, until they develop an appropriately westernized world view. Or until the sun burns out. Whichever comes first.
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Why not just formally declare a war (so from Congress) and turn Afghanistan into a US territory? That's more practical than whatever that was done in 20 years and might happen again if US informally returns to war
 
Yeah, well, that’s just it. I’m not a military strategist, but I think you either turn it to glass or commit to a little lite genocide or stick around for three or four generations teaching successive generations to hate someone else more than they hate us.
If you’re not willing to commit to any of those strategies, then it seems like you’re just waiting for the “right” time to let things go down the $#otter like they are now.

I’m not saying that things couldn’t have been done differently to evacuate people, but I think this was going to be the outcome for anyone who pulled us out until or unless we got real serious about changing our game plan.
 
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Although this is the Military forums, let’s shift focus back to Military Medicine instead of politics. We want to avoid geopolitical debates on such a tense topic. Thank you.
 
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HighPriest said:
Yeah, you know, until they develop an appropriately westernized world view. Or until the sun burns out. Whichever comes first.
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The sun will burn out in about 5 billion years. That'll definitely happen before anyone in the middle East comes to their senses
 
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