Posted on 08/10/2021 4:50:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Those who fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it." This aphorism has been attributed to Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill. Regardless of who said or wrote it first, President Joe Biden should heed it now, before his poorly planned bug out from Afghanistan and his "phase-out of combat troops" from Iraq become disastrous retreats like the sad finale of the Vietnam War in Saigon on April 30, 1975.
On April 14, Biden foolishly announced all U.S. troops would depart Afghanistan by Sept. 11. His crack national security team subsequently decided a bug out on the 20th anniversary of the deadliest attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor wouldn't play well, so they moved the date to Sept. 1. Then, on July 26, "Jumping Joe" decided "all U.S. combat troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year."
Nobody wants our military to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq forever, but how we conduct these exits is crucial. Announcing to enemies in advance the timing of any military endeavor has never been a good idea. Successfully executing a "withdrawal" (or "retreat" as Sun Tzu describes the maneuver) requires "most careful preparation ... reassuring allies" and "deception to confound enemies."
Apparently, Biden's team failed to consider these measures prior to issuing their "Afghanistan withdrawal" order. It was only after we and veterans like Republican Rep. Mike Waltz demanded the rescue of our brave Afghan "Terps" and their families did the White House agree to evacuate them. Now, with the Taliban waging a major countrywide offensive against the Kabul government, the situation looks increasingly like what happened in Saigon in April 1975.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
The comment I left for Ollie, whom I greatly respect:
Twenty years is enough to determine that a military adventure is a total failure.
From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay took under 4 years.
A policy of continuing a disaster because of the previous loss of treasure and blood is worse than stupid, it’s criminal.
Especially to those who lost their lives and limbs.
What an awful headline.
Fixing the bug?
Out in?
Once the meaning is grasped, yes, it makes some sense. But the words do not clearly flow into that intended meaning. People get paid to come up with that?
Genesis 16:12
"He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.'"
We may want to consider the source, but...
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/afghanistan_its_about_oil/
C'mon, man - We're saving this for Covid info.
That's because some bad dudes killed about 3,000 Americans one day.
Bump
Sorry but how would a Trump withdrawal be any different, other than being a few months earlier? Afghanistan was always going to end badly, had we withdrawn five years ago or stayed for five more years. Had Trump won a second term we would still be seeing stories about Taliban taking over and massacring everyone in sight. And our troops would still be home.
Agreed, and the premise of the article that we could somehow not pick a date and leave as a surprise is impossible. There is a lot of work winding up 20 years in a country. You can’t vanish in one weekend.
And we still have how many troops in Japan?
And it took about a month to take care of Afghanistan. The next 19.5 years were spent making it safe for Afghan girls to go to school.
I don’t care enough about what is going on in Afghanistan to send a single troop there.
“Afghanistan was always going to end badly,”
We weren’t there just to protect the Afghans, were we? I assume we had global strategic goals. What about those goals? Are we allowing bad guys to gain territory and power which is not in our national interest?
Regardless, I’m glad for us to be out of there. We can always conduct covert operations that don’t involve our armed forces.
I read that comment to mean that our military and political leaders did not learn from the histories of other great powers that failed in Afghanistan.
The biggest mistake was adopting Rules of Engagement that favored the Taliban, instead of our troops.
I’ve often wondered if any of the arms that Ollie sold to Iran, helped to kill our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Puh-leeze.
F-14 parts?
Likes tows and other arms. Why would you even believe .gov?
We do know the pallets of cash Obama gave to the Iranians went directly to their proxies to kill Americans in Iraq and Jews in Israel. I mean I’m just sayin.
“Sorry but how would a Trump withdrawal be any different, other than being a few months earlier? Afghanistan was always going to end badly, had we withdrawn five years ago or stayed for five more years. Had Trump won a second term we would still be seeing stories about Taliban taking over and massacring everyone in sight. And our troops would still be home.”
You commented exactly what I was going to. I’m certainly no Biden fan, but this was the inevitable ending the moment we decided to “tame” Afghanistan instead of just punishing the Taliban.
Yep, Nation Building doesn’t work in that part of the world.
Yes, that was sad but it's a wet-dream for Democrats who absolutely wanted us to lose in Vietnam.
And people see the evacuation of the embassy and think it's the North Vietnamese running our military out of town with their tails tucked between their legs.
And don't forget, the Democrats refused to give/sell the South Vietnamese any ammunition so their defeat was inevitable to the North Vietnamese who were well supplied by China and the USSR.
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