We never should've fucking been there.....
I'm going to guess you're under 35 at least based on this comment.
The truth is, in the wake of 9/11 and the Taliban's refusal to hand him over (or rather, they claimed they would...IF we 1) took the death penalty off the table, 2) let him be tried in Afghanistan, and 3) showed them everything we had on him, meaning all our intelligence data and with it our sources and methods) "not going in" was never an option. There were calls to actually nuke Afghanistan flat in retaliation*.
People blame Rumsfeld for not accepting Mullah Omar's surrender in December of 2001, but that was only made after 1) we'd repeatedly asked for it and handing over bin Laden and we'd leave; 2) we had just beaten the shit out of them with less than 5,000 personnel on the ground backed up with serious airpower, and 3) the U.S. as a whole was out for blood. Omar surrendering would still have left the Taliban in charge, and at that point it was a complete non-starter.
Now, in hindsight we maybe should have told the UN to fuck off and let us spend several more years as an occupying power, but it also didn't help that we looked the other way on corruption, and in some cases ISAF didn't even bother to do cursory background checks on people they hired. I think they had either a mayor of a major city or a provincial governor who they brought on board since he had a college degree but he also turned out to have committed murder in Germany (in fact I think he'd murdered his wife? I'm fuzzy on the details but if you want I'll go back and search for it).
We tried creating a centralized liberal democracy in a country where that was never going to work, because nobody in the UN leadership has figured out that "universal values" are only a thing in Westernized nations. And those that have prefer to let the others remain deluded so they can do their own thing without interference.
The truth is more complicated than the above, of course. But the truth is, when the government you've helped build actively REFUSES to do its part in standing up, there's no hope.
They breached the white house gates, they were literally burning down the nation's capitol and raped over two thousand women when they did so.
We posted footage of Chinese people issuing orders and directing the attack on the white house and the church. Obvious foreigners and people who spoke the language used were adamant that they were directing the mob.
These generals committed treason and sided with the enemy and allowed our federal capitol to burn.
Fuck the institutions, defend the people.
Citations needed for all of the above.
I'm not slogging through hundreds of pages because you're skeptical that the fallen state that we live in, would engage in acts of brutality against its own people at the behest of another Government.
Because you should all know by now, it does it all the time.
We live under tyrannical rule, with no law and order and no functioning system.
Translation "I ain't got shit and was talking out of my ass because I'm a conspiracy theorist who regurgitates random shit I thought I saw on YouTube." When you put your dick on the chopping block like that, don't be surprised when an ax actually falls on an easy target.
There was no direct breach but Trump was evacuated to the Bunker and there was street fighting between BLM members and the Secret Service as the former tried to break the defense perimeter around the White House.
Succeeded, they actually did damage to the fencing and managed to get onto the grass before repulsed.
Now that I DO remember, although they got chased off fairly quick. But the USSS does NOT fuck around the moment even the POSSIBILITY of a threat to POTUS becomes apparent.
But that is VERY different from what you previously claimed.
I believe there needs to be some measure of justice for this.
I think CEO's from defense firms and members of the Uniparty should face treason trials, also every military leader who was involved in managing our decline by spending our power in that worthless drug-den of a nation.
Also Pharma people too because lets be real here, the greatest benefactors of the war in Afghanistan have been the makers of opiates and street corner drug dealers.
Edit- The Greeks and Romans used to be able to haul their leaders into court to determine if they shit the bed so badly during their tenure that they should twist in the wind off an olive tree or get exiled or get commended and offered a parade.
No reason the US shouldn't do the same.
You might need to get some fresh air, I think you've been around paint fumes way too long.
Anyway. The defense contractors supply the gear as requested by the military. They didn't actually do anything in terms of lobbying for this or that -the U.S. government, along with the rest of NATO and ISAF (including some non-NATO members).
The military commanders had nothing to do with it -they did their jobs, but the responsibility of making sure the government functions properly is on the Afghan government and leadership.
Seriously, when 83.3% of your military doesn't exist because your chain of command from the Army Chief of Staff on down are pocketing the paychecks of these "ghost soldiers" (or police officers; the ANP is/was just as bad), and the rank and file aren't being paid AT ALL because their officers are stealing THEIR paychecks, and the government in Kabul and their regional administrators all know it but can't or won't do shit? Lockheed and Co have nothing to do with that any more that Pfizer does.
Uncle Joe's STUPID ass decision in withdrawing military troops out of Afghanistan will come back to haunt him & the Dems in 2022 & 2024.
It won't help but most Americans are of the "forget it Jake, it's Chinatown (er, Afghanistan)" mentality. Unless you have a solution, in which case, please, go ahead.
Is it really fair to compare this to the fall of South Vietnam? The ARVN fended off the Easter Offensive in 1972 without US ground support (only air & naval support IIRC), hung on for two years after the Paris Peace Accords and the removal of all remaining American forces in 'Nam, and
still managed to occasionally put up a decent fight against PAVN forces in the final months of the war despite the suspension of all US aid before finally going down (taking thousands more North Vietnamese down with them in the process). Meanwhile it looks like the ANDSF crumbled to dust before even making it to Biden's withdrawal date with barely a whimper.
If the Afghan gov't forces were even half the men the South Vietnamese were, then at the very least they should've been able to survive that 90-day timeframe the intelligence community estimated, no?
Well, as I said above, the allegedly 300,000-man strong Army was actually only one-sixth of that. ARVN had problems but not like this. Also, the RVN government actually DID try to make significant efforts on their own (in fact, it's argued that had they continued to be supplied by the U.S. they might actually have been able to hang on. Debatable, but the government at least supported their guys in the field. The Afghan government (GIRoA for short)? Not so much. It's why you see guys like Massoud Jr, Atta Noor, and Rasheed Dostum all pulling out on their own, while the leadership in Kabul gives no fucks, and the soldiers in the field? Even after all the above, they might be inclined to fight on, but their officers kept selling them out. Seriously, if it hasn't been deleted yet, read the Twitter feed for AfghanArmyWolf (he was an Army sniper who'd made it to Germany, saw things were getting bad so returned to Afghanistan to enlist, kept fighting on and didn't want to surrender, and his officers kept him out of the way while they sold him out. He put up a fight but died Friday in Herat.
Individual soldiers have been trying, but the real problems are lack of leadership, what leadership they do have being corrupt and continuing to embezzle what they can even as everything goes to hell, and just on general the whole thing being a nightmare.
