Posted on 06/12/2021 6:36:46 AM PDT by rktman
Leo Tolstoy wrote that "war is always pernicious even when successful."
The United States' ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrates the truth of this claim.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid announced on Twitter that Taliban fighters overran government security forces with ease this week in the Maidan Wardak Province, just west of Kabul.
His posts included several pictures of booty from the conquest, which included American-made machine guns, rifles, carbines and armored vehicles.
"The enemy fled on seeing the casualties, and a large number of tanks, heavy and light weapons and ammunition fell into the hands of the Mujahideen," he tweeted.
News of the Taliban's successes is merely the latest in the movement's pernicious campaign to capitalize on the U.S. withdrawal, reassert its hegemony over Afghanistan and reinstate the government that the U.S. overthrew 20 years ago.
Alas, Afghan forces are unlikely to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban without American military presence. Despite the fact that America spent more than $2 trillion on the war effort and committed two decades of training efforts, Afghan security forces are, by all measures, a joke.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Looks like a good place for an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland.
Permit me to slightly edit my post #16.
I said that the war in Vietnam was necessary. It is better, I think, to say that it appeared to be necessary at the time. So I do not fault those who said back in the early 1960s that we must stop the communists from taking over South Vietnam.
Well, the communists did take over South Vietnam. And no more dominos fell. Would that have been the case all along? Who knows?
Trump wanted the troops out quicker than Biden does. This would have happened regardless of who was in the White House because the U.S. wants out and the Afghans are incapable of defending themselves.
Libya redux
Out leaders are idiots. If they don’t want this to turn into a route it should have looked like the Stukas over Dunkirk at that position.
War is the province of chance. Every president is responsible for what goes on during his tenure. They are in command, set the strategy and ROE, and are responsible to the voters.
Biden is mismanaging the withdrawal.
You have personal experience with this topic, so I would have enjoyed continuing this conversation with you. Perhaps I would have learned something. (And that’s one great thing about FR. You can learn a lot here.)
I have considerable experience in physics. But I have never insulted anyone here, even when they say something very wrong about physics. But for some reason you are continuing with the personal insults. So I will have to break off any further conversion. You can, of course, reply to me again if you wish. But I won’t respond.
Booby trap every gun, jeep, etc left behind.
Vietnam capitulation all over again.
It was not a disaster for Biden. Don’t fall for that bull shit. It happened step by step inch by inch as Biden’s goons planned it. The only question remaining to be answered is how many Americans will be killed by and with those weapons? One can safely say, without fear of being contradicted, that with each death, both Biden and his henchmen will rejoice and celebrate.
There were four critical mistakes made during the Vietnam War:
1. We essentially took over from the ARVN because we perceived them as "too weak/corrupt" by our standards. That gave the enemy the opening to portray it as an "American war".
2. In the 60s, we had the wrong equipment and training for a Low Intensity/long haul war to protect and support the locals - which was our primary mission.
3. The American government did a crappy job of communicating to us and the world why we were there, what we were supposed to do, and what the End Game was supposed to be. As a result, the Left metastasized it's "antiwar" (pro-enemy) movement unopposed. The government should never have used draftees in combat. We had to draft people but they should have gone to Germany to cover the Fulda Gap and not been sacrificed in combat.
4. Lastly, our government insisted that we continue the "Space Race", pushed the War on Poverty, supported the Israelis in their wars with the Arabs, the expenses of manning and equipping a huge Cold War, and generally acted as though nothing was happening as we carried on a desperate, bloody fight 10,000 miles from home. We were not there to "conquer" Vietnam, we were not there to establish a colony or the 51st through 54th states, we were not there to secure oil or mineral rights. We were there to support a good bunch of people stay free and to live their lives the way they chose to.
As we get older, we get less patient with the antihistoric interpretations of us and our war.
I am, even after 54 years - very easily bruised when it comes to speaking against "our war". I lost too many friends to count and I took nearly a year in the hospitals to recover from my own wounds. I can only imagine what could have happened if our government had truly gotten behind us and convinced more of our able-bodied men to join us in our fight.
Sorry, buddy.
“The way to eradicate Taliban is kill them in their homes...... wives, kids, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins.
That is the only way to effectively deal with the Taliban
To hell with Euro laws of war. Kill and destroy the enemy, all the enemy, is the only way”
Our society doesn’t have the stomach for that, which is why we can’t win wars anymore.
Pol Pots reign of terror didn’t happen?
I noted earlier that I did not wish to continue our conversation on this matter. I will cancel that, and instead thank you for your post #33 to me. Your clarification was moving, and makes sense. Best wishes.
Hoo boy. Wait till Biden sends in the First Trans Battalion in to retake them. That’ll learn The Taliban a lesson. Thanks to that new leopard print camo, they’ll never know what hit ‘em.
Prance right prance. Sashay left. Parade cross dress rest.
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong captured huge amounts of war material when the US departed Vietnam in April 1975 during the Republican administration of Gerald R. Ford. This is nothing new.
One might also remember the Afghanistan engagement began in 2001 under the George W. Bush presidency. It lasted 20 years. Perhaps if Mr. Bush had a plan when he went in, it wouldn’t have been the longest war in American history.
Even better, perhaps Presidents Bush and Johnson should have heeded George Washington’s warning to future generations about getting involved in foreign entanglements. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan cost the nation the blood of its soldiers and trillions of dollars. The end result? Nothing for the people of the United States. In fact, today we export American jobs to Vietnamese factories.
Being defeated sucks, but we could stay another hundred years and it wouldn’t matter. The people there are ungovernable. We should have a vote and those who want us to stay should be forced to serve there, or their children and grandchildren until victory. And it should be pay as you go with those in favor of staying funding it with a special tax on their income and assets until we achieve “victory”.
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