Afghanistan marks one year under Taliban rule.

General General Discussion
1

Not sure if intentional, but note all the US gear. F-ing disgusting. A year later, no official report as to the failures and poor choices made by Brandon admin there? I agree for sure, as pretty much everyone does, that we were long over due to leave, but how we left, was a travesty and spit on the graves of the US service people lost, and tens thousands of civilians killed, time, and billions (trillions?) spent.

I’m no expert here, but my take is we should have kept the airport, continued to support their mil with CAS, kept SOF there, and advisors to assist their transition to self reliance, etc for another 1-2 years. That at least gave them the best possible chances of making the transition they needed to make. It would show the world we don’t just pull up stake and leave due to political winds shifting so that no one trusts us, and that’s exactly what happened. Seemed to me, there was not nearly as much kick back and ongoing criticisms from the GOP, mil, etc about that. Why?

Sure, very possible, if not likely, they’d still fall, but we guaranteed they would by leaving in the manner we did, and got more US service members killed, armed the chit heads, emboldened our enemies, etc, etc. Fail on top of fail in my view.

At the very least, we should have kept the airport until all troops, US citizens, Afgs who should have been taken with us who earned it, etc, then either set off pre set explosives, or done an old school Arc Light mission to assure that base and gear was utterly useless down to the molecular level…

It should be noted, Ash Hess, who spent a lot of time there, and a BTDT type, had a view that surprised me. Our interview HERE.

//youtu.be/HbuYlCXcT2M

2

Rest assured that if DJT would have done the same thing with the same results it would have been impeachment number 3.

3

Should have notified them bombing strikes would commence as soon as the last aircraft was wheels up to destroy abandon items. There also should have been a heavy mix of sabotage on the choppers and other assorted equipment.

4

Well that is four months longer than Biden was able to hold it.

5

That pic in the OP would be marginally funny if they had a Reaper or two on-station high overhead and they dropped Hellfires from a gazillion feet up onto one vehicle after another (gotta go from front to rear just on principle). Kind of a “We’re still watching you” message.

6

For once it is a target rich environment.

7

F them, they had 20 years to eject the 10th century moon worshipers.
Like us they deserve the government they have .

8

Regardless how it was done, rightly or wrongly, Trump or Biden, why is America so much better off abandoning Bagram Air Base and pulling out the last few thousand troops?

9

We would have been better off running bombings missions and drone strikes for 20 years.

10

Sort of my thoughts as well, we would have been far better off keeping the airbase to run ops/drone strikes/whatever out of. I mean we keep bases all around the world for this type of activity, and that would have been a base close to the crazy all the time.

11

Could not agree more. No matter how much of a cluster the pullout was we were there for 20 years and a good chunk of it was nation building. I have a feeling we could have been there another 10 years and the same thing would have happened. I was never in Afghanistan myself but have buddy’s that we’re and they basicly said there was no sense of nation among the people. Loyalty to you tribe first. They could not break that and the people of Afghanistan were screwed because of that.

12

We should have never occupied it. We went there to destroy enemy targets. Screw Nation Building.

13

To butcher a Pashtun proverb: me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, my family against the other family, my village against the other village.

I miss that place. The “withdrawal” was bs, even if I always knew it was going to go down like that. I didn’t know it would effect me the way it has. I cried like a baby when it was going down. I can’t understand not leveling arms and vehicle depots on our way out. Giving up Bagram. Not sending all the resources in country to the Panjshir. I wonder if they are still holding out. Anybody heard anything? Fun fact: the traffic circle at the beginning of the video was called Massoud Circle. It was where the north gate to the Embassy was.