Our extrication from Afghanistan, at this point, reminds me of our Vietnam exit in the 70's.
Lots of differences for sure, but a number of similarities too.
Sad for the veterans of both wars and for the locals that were on our side who will suffer the most in the near term.
When would be the right time if you were in charge and why?

There is no right time. We aren’t built to nation build and nobody is changing those people. We of course are now risking that by abandoning our allies over there we are creating our next enemies.

Our strategy over there was wrong from the beginning. Small special warfare ops and kill who needs to be killed, bomb what needed bombing, never put large force in place. Make sure everyone understood we would rinse and repeat if necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
When would be the right time if you were in charge and why?

Over a decade ago. Staying in A-Stan is asinine and costs money and military lives for nothing. The generals who bucked Trump when he tried to bring home the troops should have been buried under the capital, and people put in place who would follow the orders of the CIC.

A-Stan is a failure by any metric. As such, we should be moving troops and equipment out right now, and be clear of the country by August 1. Just make sure to have the troops burn ever single poppy field to the ground on the way out. Let's see how that S-hole country does with their main cash cow butchered.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
Our strategy over there was wrong from the beginning. Small special warfare ops and kill who needs to be killed, bomb what needed bombing, never put large force in place. Make sure everyone understood we would rinse and repeat if necessary.

Agreed. This was not a place we should have ever committed to a serious ground presence. I have had actual arguments with people trying to say we made a mess over there and now it's our responsibility to clean it up - that we can't just pick up and leave. I say that's nonsense. There's no cleaning anything up, there's nothing to gain from staying over there one more day, if we're not talking about the poppy fields and what the CIA is or isn't doing with them. I mean, what's our "win condition?" I've never seen it put in a realistic frame, like "kill all the terrorists and nation build to the point where the people decide they love democracy and the idea of a republic and do it themselves." Ask absolutely anyone who went over there wearing a uniform, and they'll tell you those people don't want it and we can't make them want it.

It's time to get the fuck out. No more dead or maimed American servicemen for a country nobody gives a shit about. We need to stop throwing money and bodies at whatever it is we think the problem is over there. Terrorists? I think our resources would be better spent on making it so nothing and nobody gets through our borders without serious scrutiny, but that's racist and xenophobic and we need to keep shedding blood on soil nobody wants because that's true patriotism or something.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
There is no right time. We aren’t built to nation build and nobody is changing those people. We of course are now risking that by abandoning our allies over there we are creating our next enemies.

Our strategy over there was wrong from the beginning. Small special warfare ops and kill who needs to be killed, bomb what needed bombing, never put large force in place. Make sure everyone understood we would rinse and repeat if necessary.

^this^^

The right time to leave would have been years ago. Why the fuck are we there? No American lives are worth that shithole. One of Trump’s biggest mistakes IMO was not getting our troops the fuck out of there and then roasting Mattis and all those like him who want to perpetuate endless wars.

Our own back yard is melting down and we spend trillions of dollars defending borders thousands of miles from our country. This is how countries die.

Afghanistan- the asshole of the planet.

I love how we flipped the power off & didn’t tell the locals Adios. Left all those vehicles behind & left them without keys. Bailing from Bagram however makes it hard to withdraw the Terps who provided us assistance out.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
There is no right time. We aren’t built to nation build and nobody is changing those people. We of course are now risking that by abandoning our allies over there we are creating our next enemies.

Our strategy over there was wrong from the beginning. Small special warfare ops and kill who needs to be killed, bomb what needed bombing, never put large force in place. Make sure everyone understood we would rinse and repeat if necessary.

Definitely. Afghanistan is a stone age country run by tribal warlords. If our leaders took the time to read a little history, they would have known not to go in there. The British tried to do some nation building of their own in the 1840s with even worse results.

Like many here, I'm old enough to have lived during the Vietnam mess and there are so many lessons from that one that should have helped guide our leaders on this one.
At the start, it was a knee jerk reaction to the emotions right after 9/11. But within a few years we should have come out from under the ether and changed course. But we thought we were smarter and more just than the Russians a few years earlier and that would make things work.
Instead we doubled down in Iraq.
Lets just hope that in another 20 years or so our population and leaders will have learned something, but recent history doesn't make me optimistic that we will do better next time. And there will be a next time.
Hopefully the Russians and Chinese will be distracted by it for a while.

GTFO, now. Sure, the Taliban will probably fully take over, but there's just nothing we can do about it. I only ask two things: don't leave weapons or equipment behind - destroy it if necessary - and give asylum to Afghans who helped us, as the Taliban will kill them.

What a dump. They're not even human there. The Chinese will bring a level of brutality so hard on them (Afghanistan has natural gas resources) the Afghans will wish the Russians and Americans were there again. At least the Iraqis had infrastructure.

The landscape of Afghanistan is actually quite beautiful. Too bad it's ruined by Afghans.

We should have left on December 10, 2001, the day after Kandahar was declared secured by Karzi's militia.

The mere fact that Russia pulled out and just left most of their fighting equipment behind says all that needs to be known.

It’s a lost cause in every way. Tribal and primitive.

It was never realistic - nor was it so in Iraq - to think they would adopt western-style democracy. They never had it, don't want it and wouldn't know what to do with it if they had it. Some people just need a boot firmly planted on their heads.

And just like other theaters we have withdrawn from in the past when the Commies had the reins, the enemy was given a target date by the Idiot in Charge. I refuse give him the honor of being called Commander.

A long fucking time ago.

Some of you have heard this story before.

I spent a year there as an advisor a decade ago. I was embedded with a helo unit (yeah, I know, it doesn't make any sense, go ask Big Blue why they did it). As advisers we were a mixed nationality unit. I worked with guys from Hungry, the Czech Republic, and Croatia, most of them pretty good guys who had been there before. Those who had been there before said we were dealing with the same problems in 2010 that they saw in 2007-8. Graft, no accountability, no command and control, no training. I saw no progress while I was there and heard the same stories from guys who were advisors 2-3 years later. The only Afghans I met that were worth a damn were some of the translators that worked for us. We can not enforce change in that country from outside. There is not a fucking thing there that is worth another drop of American blood. Fuck em.

We should have left as soon as bin laden slept with the fishes. Grab our translators and their families if they wanted to become Americans and bomb the hell out of everything of value we needed to leave.

Asscrackastain - Went there in the military and went back as a contractor. Lost cause from jump street.

We left a shit ton of vehicles, supplies and probably weapons when we bugged out.

That's the primary part of their GDP- equipment abandonded by foreign armies.