Afghan War ending, foretold by The Onion 10 years Ago [DT thread ruined by politics]

[Brisketexan 105,164]

3 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

There’s nothing political about saying that the people in charge of this operation are responsible for thousands of Americans at the mercy of the Taliban. It’s just a statement of fact. 

Do you include the people who functionally blocked visas for our translators etc. for years, when we had already announced our intent to withdraw (and even put a date on it)?

[DDD Dad 14,344]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Do you include the people who functionally blocked visas for our translators etc. for years, when we had already announced our intent to withdraw (and even put a date on it)?

Let's not play the blame game.

[Parliament 14,270]

Do we know what kinda military gear we left behind, and how much?

[David Dennison 18,938]

9 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Bush and Cheney got us into this fiasco so they get most of the blame.

Obama didn’t get out after killing bin Ladin so he gets some blame too. But admittedly, it ain’t easy being a black president in America.

Trump signed a shitty deal with the taliban and was too much of a coward to deal with them. Par for the course. Because he is what he is.  A coward. 
 

Biden therefore has to nut up and take the inevitable loss. Because that’s what adults do. 

And good on him for doing it.

[BabaYaga 15,302]

Just now, Brisketexan said:

Do you include the people who functionally blocked visas for our translators etc. for years, when we had already announced our intent to withdraw (and even put a date on it)?

squack...."but Trump"....but Trump......but Trump......squack

 Trump set forth a conditions-based withdrawal with a timeline that could shift based on those conditions. After negotiations with the Taliban, who promised to stop attacking the Afghan government, we started to implement that. The Taliban began violating that agreement. When Biden took over, he did not embrace the Trump policy of conditions-testing, but kept to the timeline even advanced it blindly.

Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump.  THAT IS ON HIM.

[BabaYaga 15,302]

2 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Do we know what kinda military gear we left behind, and how much?

Multiple MRAP's.  Rumors of planes missing.  No telling how many small arms, radios, etc are gone.  

[Neonmoon 38,129]

10 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

There’s nothing political about saying that the people in charge of this operation are responsible for thousands of Americans at the mercy of the Taliban. It’s just a statement of fact. 

They will be fine. We brokered a peace deal. 

[Incredulity 11,679]

2 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Multiple MRAP's.  Rumors of planes missing.  No telling how many small arms, radios, etc are gone.  

Plus everything we armed the 300K “Afghan Army” with.

So….a lot.  A plethora even.

[Brisketexan 105,164]

4 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

squack...."but Trump"....but Trump......but Trump......squack

 Trump set forth a conditions-based withdrawal with a timeline that could shift based on those conditions. After negotiations with the Taliban, who promised to stop attacking the Afghan government, we started to implement that. The Taliban began violating that agreement. When Biden took over, he did not embrace the Trump policy of conditions-testing, but kept to the timeline even advanced it blindly.

Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump.  THAT IS ON HIM.

I pointed out numerous reasons that Biden owns responsibility for this shitshow.  You absolve, completely and entirely, the prior administration, which is the one who ultimately decided we were going to pull out.  Okay, cool, hook 'em.

[babysdaddy 2,725]

13 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Bush and Cheney got us into this fiasco so they get most of the blame.

Obama didn’t get out after killing bin Ladin so he gets some blame too. But admittedly, it ain’t easy being a black president in America.

Trump signed a shitty deal with the taliban and was too much of a coward to deal with them. Par for the course. Because he is what he is.  A coward. 
 

Biden therefore has to nut up and take the inevitable loss. Because that’s what adults do. 

https://twitter.com/JTLonsdale/status/1427392532519038978?s=20

[ChickenSandwich 9,843]

700 evacuated in the last 48hrs

[BillyGoatHill 4,312]

700 evacuated in the last 48hrs

Not too good considering just over 600 were all on ONE plane….

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2,078]

US = UT.  Tons of resources.  But last big win getting further and further in the rearview mirror. We will be reminiscing about VY piloting the Enola Gay for the next 90 years, because there is so little to be proud of our record since.  

[DDD Dad 14,344]

It aint about the afghanis. Thats a strawman (strawmen?). There are your fellow compatriots still stuck over there. Some 5 digit count of them ?

[DDD Dad 14,344]

https://twitter.com/JTLonsdale/status/1427392532519038978?s=20

Hanged

[Brisketexan 105,164]

37 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Bush and Cheney got us into this fiasco so they get most of the blame.

Obama didn’t get out after killing bin Ladin so he gets some blame too. But admittedly, it ain’t easy being a black president in America.

Trump signed a shitty deal with the taliban and was too much of a coward to deal with them. Par for the course. Because he is what he is.  A coward. 
 

Biden therefore has to nut up and take the inevitable loss. Because that’s what adults do. 

But the admin still fucked up a shitload in the lead-up to this.  A plan -- one that actually could and would be executed -- should have been in motion LONG before today in order to get our citizens and friendlies out of there.

It's like watching UT football teams of old -- every unit, offense, defense (both line and secondary) special teams, shit, the waterboy, all failed to help guarantee the L.  Biden came onto the coaches booth to call plays to run out the clock after the game was completely lost.  But STILL, his job is to just run safe plays and avoid injuries.  He didn't do that.  He called some dumbass plays that got some position players hurt so they can't play the next game.

The DT thread is all about blaming Biden to meet their goal of absolving Trump.  Fuck that, Trump screwed the fucking pooch.  But.....that doesn't absolve the Biden admin of its big failures here.

[Captainant 27,682]

33 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

squack...."but Trump"....but Trump......but Trump......squack

 Trump set forth a conditions-based withdrawal with a timeline that could shift based on those conditions. After negotiations with the Taliban, who promised to stop attacking the Afghan government, we started to implement that. The Taliban began violating that agreement. When Biden took over, he did not embrace the Trump policy of conditions-testing, but kept to the timeline even advanced it blindly.

Biden spent the first days in office overturning every single policy of Trump EXCEPT THIS ONE. He had eight months to review the plans, change them, put in carrots and sticks, and he did nothing except speed up the timeline, and deceive the Afghans about the timetable so they got caught flat footed. He can't say that he inherited this and had no choice but to act like a robot and implement it when he literally undid every single other policy of Trump.  THAT IS ON HIM.

What, did Biden not free enough Taliban fighters and leaders for your liking?

Nobody is saying that Biden did this right or even remotely well. But you're just a little too eager to downplay trump's "middle east peace deal" and it's contribution to the severity of bidens fuckup

[Brothahorn 10,087]

43 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Bush and Cheney got us into this fiasco so they get most of the blame.

Obama didn’t get out after killing bin Ladin so he gets some blame too. But admittedly, it ain’t easy being a black president in America.

Trump signed a shitty deal with the taliban and was too much of a coward to deal with them. Par for the course. Because he is what he is.  A coward. 
 

Biden therefore has to nut up and take the inevitable loss. Because that’s what adults do. 

So why keep the shitty deal in place if it was so shitty? Why not trash/ignore it and come up with something better? It's not like he hasn't amended or scrapped other Trump policies. So why keep this one?

Competent adults don't do stupid shit because the person in front of them did some stupid shit.

[Aqua Buddha 14,599]

1 hour ago, brakeman said:

 

Damn.  Gonna be some good stories years from now from some of them.

[BabaYaga 15,302]

31 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I pointed out numerous reasons that Biden owns responsibility for this shitshow.  You absolve, completely and entirely, the prior administration, which is the one who ultimately decided we were going to pull out.  Okay, cool, hook 'em.

How far back are we going to go?  Bush?  Who handed to Obama, who handed to Trump?  Biden inherited a date.  A date he did NOTHING to prepare for.  He dissolved virtually every other Trump order BUT this one?  No.  This is on Corn Pop.  

[Aqua Buddha 14,599]

Richard Engel (NBC) reporting that over the past few hours, C-17’s landing one after the other with shitloads of Marines and 82nd Airborne.  Planes immediately take off again full of evacuees.

Play time over.

[Brothahorn 10,087]

7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

But the admin still fucked up a shitload in the lead-up to this.  A plan -- one that actually could and would be executed -- should have been in motion LONG before today in order to get our citizens and friendlies out of there.

It's like watching UT football teams of old -- every unit, offense, defense (both line and secondary) special teams, shit, the waterboy, all failed to help guarantee the L.  Biden came onto the coaches booth to call plays to run out the clock after the game was completely lost.  But STILL, his job is to just run safe plays and avoid injuries.  He didn't do that.  He called some dumbass plays that got some position players hurt so they can't play the next game.

The DT thread is all about blaming Biden to meet their goal of absolving Trump.  Fuck that, Trump screwed the fucking pooch.  But.....that doesn't absolve the Biden admin of its big failures here.

This shit sandwich lasted through 4 Presidents. All of them share some percentage of blame. 

 

Why you fan boi's won't accept that is troubling.

[BabaYaga 15,302]

38 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Plus everything we armed the 300K “Afghan Army” with.

So….a lot.  A plethora even.

And they are probably not happy with us right now.  We pulled out SO FAST they haven't/hadn't even been able to train to fight without our intelligence or airpower.  Kind of a big deal.  

They literally picked up a phone one day and could get a bomb on the enemy and picked it up the next day and it rang and was never answered.

THAT is what a unilateral, non conditions-based withdrawal, advanced timeline looks like on the ground.  A solid gut punch that can't help but leave you with a feeling of betrayal.  

[Brothahorn 10,087]

So who exactly are these US citizens that still need to be evacuated? Even though they have known Hurricane Taliban was coming for months. Government employees, military contractors I can understand. Who else is left? And why were they still there?

[SimonBolivar 10,958]

1 hour ago, Johnny Sack said:

 

5. Shutdown the air bases and GTFO

Don't do #5 first.

 

Yeah but then you have to figure out how to get humvees and other equipment out. That seems like a lot of work when we could just buy more. 

[SimonBolivar 10,958]

4 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

So who exactly are these US citizens that still need to be evacuated? Even though they have known Hurricane Taliban was coming for months. Government employees, military contractors I can understand. Who else is left? And why were they still there?

I would imagine a lot of dual nationals. 

[Guest Lobo]

5 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

So who exactly are these US citizens that still need to be evacuated? Even though they have known Hurricane Taliban was coming for months. Government employees, military contractors I can understand. Who else is left? And why were they still there?

Yeah, the exfiltration is amazing and I pray for their safe return.  But let's get past those same fucking questions over and over again at the press pool and have somebody ask the obvious question, "If you're not there from State, DoD, or private security...what in the flying fuck are you doing there right now?"  

And just leave the fucking armor there.  It's a logistical nightmare.  It'll cost a dozen U.S. servicemen lives to get that equipment outta there.  We are sitting on a surplus of everything from BFV to Abrams.  It's not like they're gonna roll into tel Aviv with that shit.  We have enough armor back here to wage 100 wars against AfrikaCorps.  and since that's never fucking happening again, just fucking leave it.  

Leave the Tank.  Take the Falafel.  

Remember these photos and these stories and these press conferences because they should serve as a scalding reminder in the base of our skulls to stay the fuck out of the Middle East for the rest of this century.  Keep an eye on nuclear programs, continue humanitarian aid through NGO's, stay buddies with Israel, maintain a naval or aerospace foothold where we can in case a weapons program in one of these "nation-states" gets out of hand.  But otherwise, stay the fuck out.  For decades.  For a long while.  No churches, no nation building, no missionary work.  From Amman to Lahore, from Karachi to Erbil...we were never here.  

Edited August 16, 2021 by Lobo

[Loch Ness Monster 3,533]

If I heard the Taliban were gonna be running things after May 1st seems like you would do everything in your power to GTFO months ago. 

[Brothahorn 10,087]

I hope we're not sending troops back in to save some bible thumpers and used equipment assholes.

[Ojo Rojo 1,966]

When and how was it ever supposed to end?  The only way to suppress the Taliban was to stay forever.  That couldn't happen.  The problem goes back to origination.  The mission in Afghanistan should have been narrower and smaller.  Root out and kill everyone who was associated in any way with Al Qaeda and 9/11,then GTFO and watch from afar.  We didn't have to throw all of the troops, equipment and resources at the problem to achieve that goal.

[Guest Lobo]

5 minutes ago, Loch Ness Monster said:

If I heard the Taliban were gonna be running things after May 1st seems like you would do everything in your power to GTFO months ago. 

To be fair, the Taliban kept chanting "TWO WEEKS!" But they don't adhere to the same Gregorian system we do, so we had no fucking idea what day they were talking about.

[Captainant 27,682]

2 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

I hope we're not sending troops back in to save some bible thumpers and used equipment assholes.

[Aqua Buddha 14,599]

24 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

This shit sandwich lasted through 4 Presidents. All of them share some percentage of blame. 

 

Why you fan boi's won't accept that is troubling.

Obama should have started to draw down after killing Bin Laden, prolly somewhere around 2012/2013.

[Aqua Buddha 14,599]

 Be glad to trade you some Afghan rifles. Ain't never been fired and only dropped once.

[hpslugga 4,062]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

Well, I wasn't going to go down the socialism road. We're gonna derail this mess of a thread.

Oh not even that. Just blatantly dishonest shit that they admitted in internal records like “we found a cache of Soviet marked weapons in Guatemala”, or “Mossadegh is a Russian puppet that’s sympathetic to the Tudeh Party.” There’s differences in how one defines an ideology, and there’s making shit up. 

 

[Nivek 16,946]

Did you read the linked article?  It goes into a lot of details on what was wrong. This paper was written by a boots on the ground commander and is a pretty good forecast on what was coming if/when we pulled out. This is all specific to Afghanistan, so if you’re looking for some blanket template to apply to all future nation building, it’s not helpful. I think that’s largely our problem. We try to apply a generic freedom/democracy templates to complicated ethnic and cultural issues and expect to money whip the outliers into place. In case you are a TLDR guy, the highlights I took from it were:
- A laughable 8 week training course to train illiterate poppy farmers to become the entire structure of their military, including NCOs. We purposely denied entry for the mujaheddin, which starved the new fighting force of what little functional fighters the country had, and handed them to the Taliban. 
- Trying to force diversity to unit structure in a ham fisted attempt to overcome centuries of ethnic and cultural issues. This further broke unit cohesion and also starved units of qualified bodies because guys from the north couldn’t even speak to guys in the south, too many of one tribe volunteered so they sat unused because unit x already had met that quota, etc. 
- Never addressing infrastructure beyond the big cities. Volunteers struggled to get to training centers. Trained soldiers struggled to get home on their vacations, so they just went home and never bothered to come back. Supplies and facilities in the remote areas (the places where the taliban was) were starved of resources, which led to further attrition. 
- Grossly overpaying volunteers in an effort to juice recruitment to achieve goals, despite the Afghan gov’t telling the US not to do it because they would never be able to maintain it. Coupled with the above it became a “go to a training center for 8 weeks and get a fat check” program that didn’t remotely impact retention. Guys got paid and went AWOL. 
- Providing resources that the illiterate army could never hope to maintain, which meant they had to rely on contractors to keep their army running. Of course, those contractors will GTFO the second the US pulls up their stakes, so this well trained, well equipped army was dead from the jump. 

No I didn’t read it. I read the highlighted portion which was useless.

The bullet points above are a what went wrong criticism not an analysis and does not consider why was choice A made instead of choice B, or C.

But having perfect hindsight, I would just mount a 3-4 .50 caliber machine guns at Thermopylae and defeat those pesky Persians. Stupid Spartans.

[Aqua Buddha 14,599]

Taliban now has a country to run.  Good luck with that.  There were a lot of jobs tied to the American presence.

They got bills to pay now.

[CHIEF 5,094]

One of CHIEF Jr.'s best friends (a Marine) just got orders they are shipping out to Kabul in 24 hours. The thing he is worried about is exactly who is in the Hummer that pulls up beside you. It's going to be an absolute clusterfuck. His Mom, also a good friend, is absolutely beside herself. He said his "goodbyes" to her, his young wife, and new baby.

CHIEF

[elfenix 34,330]

46 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

This shit sandwich lasted through 4 Presidents. All of them share some percentage of blame. 

 

Why you fan boi's won't accept that is troubling.

tell me you haven't read the thread without telling me you haven't read the thread.

[Nivek 16,946]

Are any afghanis tryIng to fight or resist?

[MNLonghornFUKM 8,817]

Bush and Cheney got us into this fiasco so they get most of the blame.
Obama didn’t get out after killing bin Ladin so he gets some blame too. But admittedly, it ain’t easy being a black president in America.
Trump signed a shitty deal with the taliban and was too much of a coward to deal with them. Par for the course. Because he is what he is.  A coward. 
 
Biden therefore has to nut up and take the inevitable loss. Because that’s what adults do. 

Lol.


What the fuck is the administration doing this time 7 days ago? Did anybody ever once acknowledge and say the Afghan army isn’t putting up any type of resistance while the taliban spreads like a wildfire? Taliban didn’t just show up at Kabul overnight. With our troop presence a fraction of what it used to be, this was uncontrollable once they saw their supposed trainees lay down like little dogs.


Maybe. Just maybe we should’ve started the evacs I don’t know…Wednesday. And not when they’re 50KM away the day before they take the capital without any restraint.

[elfenix 34,330]

[Sawbonz 27,580]

1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

And good on him for doing it.

The loss of life is of course terrible but as others have said that was happening while we were there and will continue long after we are gone. I have read that the biggest problem is Afghanistan is still just a bunch of individual tribes and there is nothing we (or the soviets previously) or anyone else can do to change that. Short of genocide it has to happen organically. 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8,817]

Are any afghanis tryIng to fight or resist?

They’re all on the escape planes leaving their wives and kids to fend for themselves because evidently when you look up coward in the dictionary, there’s an Afghan male

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

Interrupting this grim thread with a cool story bra....Our handyman's American name is Robert Boltwood, but still speaks his English with a heavy Vietnamese accent. If he ever told me his birth name, I can't remember it...Anyway, when he was about 13 or 14 he was working as a gardener for an American diplomat's family in or around Saigon, and they basically accepted him as one of their own. So along comes the downfall of Saigon and they just were not going to leave him behind so they took him with them to the airport...Some official was not going to let him on the plane, any plane, and each plane that took off was that much closer to being the last. He needed to see some papers before he would let Robert out of Vietnam...So the diplomat said, "Oh yeah, his papers. They are in here somewhere," and opens his briefcase and then tosses the entire contents at the official. "You'll find them! We've got to go!" he hollers, grabbing Robert and heading for the gates. (NARRATOR: There were no papers.) And they made it. Robert took that man's name and is an incredible handyman. He now owns at least two houses in Houston. Works his ass off six days a week and fishes on Sundays. He was kind of a stud back in Vietnam even at that age and about 25 or 30 years ago he was reunited with the daughter he'd left behind in his girlfriend's belly when the fall came -- she and her mom made it to France, eventually. 

[Bobby_Batronic 1,994]

37 minutes ago, Lobo said:

To be fair, the Taliban kept chanting "TWO WEEKS!" But they don't adhere to the same Gregorian system we do, so we had no fucking idea what day they were talking about.

I think the Afghanis were told “Two weeks to stop the spread” and assumed we were talking about the goat fucking, fundamentalist militants. 

[InkaUtexas 26,011]

45 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

I hope we're not sending troops back in to save some bible thumpers and used equipment assholes.

That is exactly what who I think remained. Saw on twitter some animal rights activists are pleading to be pulled out. Hmmm..... 

[berlinerbaer 678]

1 hour ago, Brothahorn said:

So why keep the shitty deal in place if it was so shitty? Why not trash/ignore it and come up with something better? It's not like he hasn't amended or scrapped other Trump policies. So why keep this one?

Competent adults don't do stupid shit because the person in front of them did some stupid shit.

This ain't the Paris climate deal, bro. Scrapping this one means the Taliban starts sending hails of bullets at our people and puts some of them in Arlington.

It's easy to forget that foreign parties negotiate with the United States, not just with Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

[Zepol87 9,188]

28 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

One of CHIEF Jr.'s best friends (a Marine) just got orders they are shipping out to Kabul in 24 hours. The thing he is worried about is exactly who is in the Hummer that pulls up beside you. It's going to be an absolute clusterfuck. His Mom, also a good friend, is absolutely beside herself. He said his "goodbyes" to her, his young wife, and new baby.

CHIEF

Fuck. Don't know what else to say

Edited August 17, 2021 by Zepol87

[The Ace of Aces 5,192]

29 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Taliban now has a country to run.  Good luck with that.  There were a lot of jobs tied to the American presence.

They got bills to pay now.

They have years of experience running tribes - they good. 

They also have essentially unlimited funds.

It doesn’t take long to murder those who don’t comply to your Dark Ages rules.