NBC News: Taliban greets Pentagon's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan with cries of victory
- Thread starter KSweeley
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Also wasn't the Pentagon thrown off by this decision? It seems as if this decision was rushed without anyone really agreeing on it. Almost like it will have multiple avoidable mistakes while executing.
So, the solution is to keep American troops there indefinitely? There is no "defeating" the Taliban, especially considering that the US being there in the first place drives resentment towards them and, in turn, recruitment.
So, what's the alternative? Staying there indefinitely?
I don't see what this has to do with the argument. I'm sure that the communist-sympathisers massacred by the South Korean regime would beg to differ though.
Exactly, the North Korean government is incompetent and economically ruined, there's no way they could feasibly invade and take over South Korea.
Yes invading a nation that has nuclear weapons would have been a fantastic idea.
No one who actually knows what they're talking about on the hill support a quick and dirty withdrawal of troops. We've been through this time and time again and every time it's a mistake.
Drones have already done a ton of damage in Pakistan. We're pretty much at war with them already.
Fuck Trump, but that clusterfuck is not on him. He might even get American out of that mess by being the right type of idiot.
He also might start world war 3, so who knows really!
The Korean War was brutal and messy for citizens, I grant you that
Well that was a very short period of time where North Korea was getting huge cash influxes and loans from China and the USSR. Support from the US for SK was slow coming.
This isnt true guys, the problem is U.S did not go into the war with the thought on successful nation building partly because it wasn't willing to do what would have been necessary.
I.e take control of their government (rewrite their laws), have like 5x the troop deployment which would require a draft and have soldiers intervene in law enforcement where theirs failed. Things like this and more.
So it's not true to say they cant have been beaten, but U.S has not been doing what it needed to, to do so.
The current forces in Afghanistan really aren't there for "war"
Just a reminder, Pakistan is and was a nuclear power during 9/11 nuclear power and the main goal is to keep the Pakistan government stable so we don't have a nuclear crisis on our hands.
Bush: Sent more troops to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. Created instability in Iraq.
Obama: Killed bin Laden.
Trump: Pulled out of Afghanistan.
Obama: Killed bin Laden.
Trump: Pulled out of Afghanistan.
Lol, let's not join in with posts like that.
Afghanistan itself doesn't want U.S troops to leave because they dont think they are ready, not to mention U.S pays their soldiers/security because they cant afford it.
Beating the Taliban to the negotiating table should be what we strive for and that requires long continued cooperation including military support for Afghanistan.
Just going to ignore the mess Obama helped create in Syria and Egypt / Libya? And credit him for killing Osama. LMAO
So, I keep seeing this thrown around a lot.
The lessons learned with the last two decades of foreign policy have been lost on people. Which is explicitly that the concept of nation building has fundamentally failed with Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the core concept that exposed neo-conservatism as the horrible idea that it is, where the US believed it could just steam roll into a nation, kick out the government and rebuild it in the US's image.
That's not to say the US should be at all pulling out of Afghanistan, just that the idea of nation building in itself is horribly flawed in the way it was implemented.
Again, I am against leaving Afghanistan. We need multi generational bases there. The lives lost when we leave. The people we will abandon and have to flee.
One more place we destabilize and flake on supporting restabilization.
One more place we destabilize and flake on supporting restabilization.
Why shouldn't Obama get credit for killing Osama bin laden?
I blame Obama for not intervening in Syria when he had the chance honestly. I am not sure why you are blaming him for Egypt, all he did was suggest the leader step down when Egyptians called for it, though it led into the Muslim Brotherhood.
I am open for discussion on the Egypt one if I am missing something.
Can you explain what exactly Obama did in Egypt and Syria?
The US had nothing to do with Egypt outside of the issue of the military aid drama, and Obama literally made a point to completely avoid major intervention in Syria.
Well, it's important to make a distinction here. Yes, Pakistan is a nuclear power, but the ones with the nukes have always been on our side.
We have been supporting them and keeping the main government stable for the past 14 years, yet the war still keeps going.
At some point we have to leave.
I’m down for that. However, I’ve been seeing a lot of liberals pushing for more war and it’s dishesrtening
Now they're free to get back to planning how to fuck other peoples lives up. And when they do, the idiot populous will turn their ire, propaganda and hate to our own who have nothing to do with this nonsense.
Let’s remember that the original reason we are there was to nab Osama bin Laden, a man who was killed 7 years ago in a totally different country.
Trump or not it’s time to GTFO. US can’t nation build for shit anyway.
Trump or not it’s time to GTFO. US can’t nation build for shit anyway.
The reason you see it thrown around is because it is true, you cant rebuild a nation, expect stability and control its borders with the token force we had and allowing incompetent regimes control. It just doesn't work like that, either go in full or dont.
Think of the size of Afghanistan, at its height, if I recall the numbers, we had 130,000 (90k of which was U.S) soldiers there and allowed a corrupt president like Karzai to lead it.
Only way the US really "WINS" in Afghanista is if htey go full China and star putting people in concentration camps and moving in people friendly to them, full 1984
True story: we should have never made the mission regime change. After the initial invasion and fall of Kabul, we should have made it clear to the Taliban "we are here for OBL and al-Qaeda , not you, stay out of our way (or help us get them) and you can keep your opium farms and funny hats.". The Taliban, at the end of the day, don't give a fuck about anything outside of Afghanistan. We were never going to get rid of them permanently, not without a military and economic investment that would have been totally untenable. It was a fool's errand that met a fool's end.
OP
OP
The War in Afghanistan is just three more months (17 years, 2 months) in terms of surpassing the Vietnam War (17 years, 4 months) in total length of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_lengths_of_United_States_participation_in_wars
Will the War in Afghanistan become the longest time the U.S. has been at war? If so, how much longer should the U.S. remain in Afghanistan if indeed, the U.S. stays in Afghanistan for 17 years, 5 months+? How much more taxpayer money will be used for the rebuilding of Afghanistan, how many more deaths will there be?
Will the War in Afghanistan become the longest time the U.S. has been at war? If so, how much longer should the U.S. remain in Afghanistan if indeed, the U.S. stays in Afghanistan for 17 years, 5 months+? How much more taxpayer money will be used for the rebuilding of Afghanistan, how many more deaths will there be?
Oooookay.. no, but they could have increased the incentive to urbanize, since the spread of Afghanistan is one of the issues.
Love when people respond with hyperbole.
Cant say, it was screwed up from the beginning. U.S just needs to provide support to the Afghans until they are able to stand on their own without fear of being toppled in a couple years of us leaving.
No one educated enough on the subject can give a time table because anything can happen and it would require everything going right which isnt possible, we learned this in Vietnam.
Forgot about that part.
And to be accurate, Bin Laden was killed during Obama's tenure.
Can you point out something that Obama did that helped kill Osama? Him being in office while US agencies hunted down Osama since 2001 doesn’t really justify credit to him, just like Trumps economy isn’t because of him.
As for Syria? Arming rebel factions that would end up getting engulfed by ISIS forces and using those firearms to further destabilize the area?
Or those said armed factions distracting / damaging Syria’s Army to the point that they couldn’t stop ISIS from grabbing large swathes of territory. Obama dipped his feet into the pool in the Middle East when he should have just stayed out. He’s a war criminal just like every other president that’s had armed conflict in the last 30 years
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It's an unsolvable problem because as pointed out the Taliban have safe havens, training camps and funding from Pakistan. They come across the border, attack and go back - the Taliban was created by the US and Pakistan to do precisely this - cross border attacks on other countries to destabilize them and go back. Obama had to send the seals on a secret mission into Pakistan to take out Osama. And as pointed out Pakistan has nukes.
So nothing can be done about the Taliban. At best the Americans can stay there as peacekeepers - but it's understandable that Americans don't have to the appetite for this and just want their troops home.
At the end of the day Afghanistan is the way it is because of the West and Russia - Britain, US, Russia have all meddled in there and funded terrorism and made life hard for the common man. It will now go back to medieval sharia rule under the Taliban.
I wonder if the Saudis had any role to play in this decision considering their friendliness with the Trump administration. Pakistan and the Saudies are close buddies and Pakistan want the Taliban back in Afghanistan.
So nothing can be done about the Taliban. At best the Americans can stay there as peacekeepers - but it's understandable that Americans don't have to the appetite for this and just want their troops home.
At the end of the day Afghanistan is the way it is because of the West and Russia - Britain, US, Russia have all meddled in there and funded terrorism and made life hard for the common man. It will now go back to medieval sharia rule under the Taliban.
I wonder if the Saudis had any role to play in this decision considering their friendliness with the Trump administration. Pakistan and the Saudies are close buddies and Pakistan want the Taliban back in Afghanistan.
I am not a military strategist but that war was unwinable from the start. Pakistan was funding and harboring the Taliban the entire time (as they were Bin Laden). Russia meanwhile is probably funneling money and logistics to the Taliban also, similarly to how we contributed to the fighters against the Soviets.
A poor, group of rag-tag, uneducated people (which the pawns inside of the Taliban are) can’t sustain a war so long without outside help. They need guns, ammo, food and training. Someome is providing the Taliban this. It’s not growing on trees.
A poor, group of rag-tag, uneducated people (which the pawns inside of the Taliban are) can’t sustain a war so long without outside help. They need guns, ammo, food and training. Someome is providing the Taliban this. It’s not growing on trees.
He was the commander in chief. He greenlit the activities to track Bin Laden down and ultimately gave the go ahead for the very risky operation that took him out. Of course he deserves credit. Comparing the machinations of a relatively free capitalist economy to the military chain of command is some next level dumb shit.
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I asked about Egypt, not Syria. I felt intervention in Syria was justified at least after the chemical weapon attacks. fyi, you would have to prove the army is committing war crimes on his order with no attempts to deal with it for him to be a war criminal. To be honest, I think people use the term too loosely among the left, one of the downsides of the left imo is their fear of military use is on the extreme opposite of the rights lol.
Economy isnt the same as giving the go ahead for a commando strike in an "allied" country without said country's permission. Yes, it very much is the credit of Obama for making that call despite potential consequences.
U.S presidents barely affect the economy in 2 years, it's why no one who knows what they are talking about will give Trump credit for an economy that has been doing well and growing before and despite his election.
IIRC, Every single special ops mission must be personally reviewed and authorized by the Secretary of Defense and/or the Commander in Chief. Obama is the one who ultimately had to make the call, and he didn't do it alone, but it was also his trusted staff and advisors who were able to provide briefings and reports that he used to make those calls.
There was a guarded compound right next door to a pakistani military base. The United States intelligence community believed that the compound had about a 50/50 chance of hosting osama bin laden, the mastermind behind the deaths of thousands of americans and events that brought the country to its knees in fear. Chance of civilian casualties, or capture of US technology, the lives of special ops service members, potential diplomatic fallout if the intelligence was faulty, potential fallout if it wasn't faulty, all of these things had to be taken into consideration by Barack Obama as he made the call on whether or not to send Americans into Pakinstan to raid a heavily guarded compound. The decision would have ramifications for America, for Pakistan, for Al Quaeda, for families of 9/11 victims, potentially for innocent pakistani men, women, and children.
That's a heavy burden to carry. And it was his call to make.
Trump doesn't understand or appreciate any of this... he just does shit based on his ego and whims.
We should have pulled out a long time ago. Keeping our troops there indefinitely while we cross our fingers that things might turn the corner is a stupid plan but that seems to be what we have been doing. If there ever was a window for "victory" in Afghanistan then as far as I can tell it closed a long time ago. Now we just sit there because of pride and a fear of the what ifs.
Is this supposed to be a snarky comeback? My father went to a fucking re-education camp because of that. Not to mention what else my family suffered from believing in the USA.
Think of the money that will surely flow to social security!
Don't worry, they'll be our issue to deal with anyways since the US doesn't give a shit. Can't wait for the new racist as shit election campaigns. Just in time for EuroParl elections, far rights gonna love this.
Yepp, just left extrimist like taliban take over, what could go wrong?