Posted on 07/13/2021 6:32:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
Retirement plans warn of a "penalty for early withdrawal." Might that also apply to the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan?
If you set aside the victory by coalition forces that expelled Saddam Hussein's overmatched troops from Kuwait in 1991, the U.S. has not won a war since World War II. Not in Korea. Not in Vietnam and now, says President Biden, Afghanistan is a war we cannot win.
Osama bin Laden predicted we didn't have the staying power and would ultimately tire of the conflict. President Biden claims "America's longest war is ending." It may only get worse, because terrorism knows no state boundaries and does not conduct itself according to classic rules of warfare.
After initially saying nothing about helping thousands of translators, drivers and others who assisted Americans, Biden has promised to relocate them to a third country while their U.S. visas are processed. That is something we did not do following our withdrawal from Vietnam. Untold numbers of translators and others who assisted American troops were reportedly rounded up by the North Vietnamese and tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
U.S. air power is what largely kept the Taliban at bay. Without it they are re-capturing territories they once held before 9/11 and will again threaten the rights of women and girls to work and attend schools. Watch for a rapid return of the burqa. A generation of young Afghan women born during the last 20 years have had no experience wearing the head-to-toe garment with face covering.
resident Biden and former president Trump, who first announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces, have said that America cannot engage in "nation building." Even recent history has proved that true. The larger question is whether we can defend ourselves against further attacks on this country if Al-Qaida regroups and, with the help of Iran, stages another 9/11-type attack, or worse, this time with nuclear devices.
All wars cost money, lives and limbs. The question is whether the investment was worth it. Did it produce desired outcomes? At best the answer when it comes to Afghanistan is problematic. At worst, it is what The Economist magazine calls "a disaster."
The Military Times reports on a study by the Cost of War Project, which found that the combined cost of our involvement in Afghanistan is over $2 trillion: "Those funds do not, however, include the amount the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war."
The Cost of War Project also estimates "241,000 people have died because of the war in Afghanistan, which includes more than 2,400 American service members and at least 71,344 civilians."
Will there be a "wall" to commemorate U.S. deaths? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial still haunts me when I visit it in Washington, D.C. I knew some people whose names are carved into the black granite wall. My name might have been one of them. As an Army enlisted man, I received orders for Vietnam, but managed to get re-assigned, thanks to my position at Armed Forces Radio in New York and contacts at the Pentagon. More than 58,300 others were not as fortunate.
What did we learn from Vietnam? Obviously nothing because we have repeated history in Afghanistan. There was no "end game," except to hold off the Taliban, an entity motivated by religious fervor that has no intention of quitting.
If Al-Qaida regroups and another terror attack is launched against the U.S., what will be our response and who will be assigned blame?
That’s what she said.
I am still waiting for a column by GWB on the conclusion of his Afghanistan campaign.
We ended it just like Vietnam. We declared a victory and pulled out.
Many suggested years ago we, “Bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.”
Unfortunately, they have never left the Stone Age.
We bombed the place for years and just moved some rocks around and got a lot of good Americans killed.
If we had gone into it with the kind of blood thirsty vengeance my grandparents did after Pearl Harbor was bombed we not only would have been in Afghanistan much shorter, we would have also sent a message that few things in life are unhealthier than attacking the United States of America. There are many people who signed up for the military after 9/11 expecting to be in that kind of fight, only to learn that they'd have to "fight" with one hand tied behind their back so as not to offend the death-to-america mob.
Nation building in muzzie countries or africa is a waste of lives and effort.
That would actually be bombing them forward in time.
No kids is a penalty ?
“and will again threaten the rights of women and girls to work and attend schools.”
Don’t care. Not our problem.
L
No truer words have ever been written.
100% agree - these days you can argue that with any country but especially areas like the ones you mention with significantly different cultural values.
I had good kids so yeah.
But I realized after I posted that, it was a burn on me.
Oh well. I love a good burn even when it’s self inflected.
How would events in Afghanistan unfolded any differently if President Trump was still President? When US forces left the Taliban would have moved in no matter who is President here, correct?
We didn’t need to bomb them back to the stone age.
We needed to napalm all of their poppy fields.
The fact that we not only didn’t but even protected them speaks volumes.
Should have never got involved after chasing Bin Ladin out..the people who did this warned of sending in troops for the long haul
Read Hourse Soldiers
My comment was actually sarcasm, because I too have good kids and wouldn't trade a single moment (they're all grown now) for anything other than what God gave us.
After my tour in Afghanistan, I concluded we would need 100,000 troops on the ground for 100 years. That would be enough to bring Afghanistan forward to....about 1200 AD.
You are right. Afghans understand revenge. They understand brutality. I don’t think they HAVE “hearts and minds” to win!
The Brits and the Soviet Union also failed to impose their ideologies onto Afghanistan, and I'm sure those governments were more brutal than ours. After all, our troops were told to look the other way when homosexual pederasts were going about their evil business.
The solution is to treat the Taliban like we treat the Chinese: ignore their domestic policies, thank them for eliminating the opium poppies, conduct mutually beneficial trade with them, and hope that over the long term they become a more enlightened nation.
Blood and treasure, that is all that our national leaders, and many of our conservative and republican commentators want to burn.
We are falling apart as a nation in part because we did not listen to our founding fathers concerning foreign affairs.
Yes, you help your allies when they need it —— but Afghanistan is nothing about allies. Everyone knew it would be pointless when we went in, I didn’t listen at the time.
I now know the republicans I will never vote for (which does NOT mean I will vote for the opposing liberal), the ones that one to start something and keep it running against a people who prefer to live like stone-agers.
I even question my support of Iraqi Freedom at this point.
Also, this is no reflection on the soldiers who answered their nation’s call. But it’s the nation’s decision making leadership I call into question.
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