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Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East--And Now, The Withdrawal From Afghanistan (M.E.T.)

jpyaks3

By jpyaks3
in The Tailgate

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tshile

tshile

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

They were eviscerated. Direct quote from the report:

 

"the intelligence community, assailed by an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries, had failed to pin down the big-picture threat posed by “transnational terrorism” throughout the 1990s and up to 9/11."


so, their rivals, the budget they were given, and the priorities they were assigned is their fault?

 

interesting. 
 

I believe the intelligence community begged them to not downsize their middle eastern division (which was staffed by a ton of women if I recall correctly) but the politicians forced them to change focus

 

i mean your own post sort of makes my claim for me. We had plenty of warning, which obviously came from the intelligence community. Your words. (And mine, and the words of the commission in their report)

 

it’s sort of been an overarching theme for about 30 years now. For some reason you don’t understand that (yet agree they gave us plenty of warning 😂)

 

your posts are confusing and your opinions aren’t backed with things that say what you claim they do. 
 

it’s sort of hard to go anywhere with this until you address that problem of yours. 

8 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Go in, kill the terrorists and make sure they cannot do it again then leave. Instead it turned into a 2 decade quagmire of us trying to change people that didnt want to be changed. 

Yup, and Trump struck the deal to end it and Biden ended it. 
 

yet you’re still somehow unhappy. 🤷‍♂️ 

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PeterMP

PeterMP

Posted
Posted (edited)

I will point out that I think if we had put several hundred thousand Americans in Afghanistan for security and to run the country, it could have worked out.

 

At one time, I did the math for how many Americans were in the German US zone and in post-WW2 Japan based on area of the country and compared it to Afghanistan.  I think it ended up being over 200,000 people being needed in Afghanistan for comparison.

 

It isn't like post-WW2 Japan or Germany had any real experience with democracy.

 

Also with respect to Clinton and Bin Laden, it was Clinton that passed on one attempt  because he was with Princes from the UAE.

 

He also did try to kill Bin Laden once, but he had already left.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/16/bill-clinton-and-the-missed-opportunities-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/

 

 

Edited by PeterMP
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tshile

tshile

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

Also with respect to Clinton and Bin Laden, it was Clinton that passed on one attempt  because he was with Princes from the UAE.

The same princes that warned them of pending missile strikes. Warnings they got as a courtesy because we didn’t want the prince hurt and/or we didn’t want certain nationals mistaking our action as an act of war (either by us or some neighbor they were highly stressed about)

 

and in return they relayed that info so they could evacuate their bases before we struck 

 

or were these different princes 😂 (sorry just poking fun at how faulty our whole strategy in the Middle East is because we can’t even trust our supposed friends )

29 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

At one time, I did the math for how many Americans were in the German US zone and in post-WW2 Japan based on area of the country and compared it to Afghanistan.  I think it ended up being over 200,000 people being needed in Afghanistan for comparison.

And how many did we deploy, roughly?

 

it’s hard to find that number at the moment because Google searches are littered with the last 6 months of troop movements :( just curious if you’re familiar with a ballpark figure 

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Jumbo

Jumbo

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, clskinsfan said:

Nice try:

July was busiest month for illegal border crossings in 21 years, CBP data shows

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/record-numbers-illegal-border-crossings/2021/08/12/e3d305e2-facd-11eb-b8dd-0e376fba55f2_story.html

 

point of order, por favor

 

 don't willfully initiate/extend major off topic digressions in these threads like you did here or you can end up getting a week off

 

also quit using large fonts in the headlines you include even if on topic, please :) 

 

thenk yew

 

so let's return the focus to the topic, and given the title of this thread and that the biden policy thread is very broad already, someone may want to start a new thread just on the withdrawl and arguing relevant history if ya think it's important enough

 

 

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  • Jumbo changed the title to Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East--And Now, The Withdrawal From Afghanistan (M.E.T.)
Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, clskinsfan said:

This argument is ridiculous. These are only the people we have caught. How many got through without being caught?


"This argument is ridiculous", says the person who:  

 

1). Posted an article that shows a record number of people FAILING to illegally enter the country, and claiming it represents proof of record numbers successfully entering. 
 

2). And when this is pointed out, responds by telling people to ignore the data that HE posted, and just "use the force" to imagine other numbers, instead. 

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Corcaigh

Corcaigh

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, tshile said:

And how many did we deploy, roughly?


MilitaryTimes says the peak US number was 100k.  https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/07/06/a-timeline-of-u-s-troop-levels-in-afghanistan-since-2001/

 

A NATO webpage says 130k from 50 countries. Assuming that might include the peak 100k US number.  https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8189.htm

 

NATO also says 352k local Afghan Army and police were trained.


It’s hard to understand why Afghan leadership could not have done better.


 

 

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clskinsfan

clskinsfan

Posted
Posted
53 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:


MilitaryTimes says the peak US number was 100k.  https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/07/06/a-timeline-of-u-s-troop-levels-in-afghanistan-since-2001/

 

A NATO webpage says 130k from 50 countries. Assuming that might include the peak 100k US number.  https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8189.htm

 

NATO also says 352k local Afghan Army and police were trained.


It’s hard to understand why Afghan leadership could not have done better.


 

 

Because a large portion of the Afghan army didn't want us there either. 

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Corcaigh

Corcaigh

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Because a large portion of the Afghan army didn't want us there either. 


And how does the attitude of the Afghan Army toward the international military presence relate to their complete folding to the Taliban?

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Corcaigh

Corcaigh

Posted
Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Why would they fight for something they dont believe in?

 

The Afghan Army was not trained to fight for a foreign military presence. They were supposed to be defending their fellow citizens (especially the women and children) against medieval warlords.

 

 

 

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The Sisko

The Sisko

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, clskinsfan said:

Owning it while blaming everyone else. This is a clown show of epic proportions.

So very true. Not at all like "The buck stops here" POTUS.

 

 

7 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

Not sure if this has been brought up or discussed, but I'm not sure why we couldn't have lit up the Taliban while they were on the roads to all the different cities in Afghanistan.  IIRC, that's a big reason we kicked the **** out of the Iraqis in the first Gulf War, Saddam was dumb enough to put his troops out on the roads in the wide open and we took advantage of it.

 

I can't believe there weren't any high ranking military officials in the Pentagon last week who didn't think to use this withdrawl as an ambush tactic in order to annihilate the Taliban as they got on the roads in their march to the different cities in Afghanistan.  

I don't think they wear uniforms. You can't send guys out with rules of engagement that amount to shoot anything with a black turban. Besides, I think we underestimated them from the beginning. They've been playing chess while we were playing checkers. Bin Laden's attempt to polish a turn by saying after the invasion that they'd bleed us in wars may have in fact been the Taliban's historic strategy. After all, they did the same thing to the Russians. Either way, they worked it perfectly.

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China

China

Posted
Posted

TALIBAN CONQUERS MUCH OF AFGHANISTAN, BANS COVID VACCINE

 

As the Taliban continues their ruthless takeover of Afghanistan, they’ve taken to banning the COVID-19 vaccine in certain regions of the country. 

 

Shamshad News, an Afghani news platform, reported on Thursday that the Taliban has banned coronavirus vaccine distribution in Paktia, a province in eastern Afghanistan, after it was captured by the group last week. Walayat Khan Ahmadzai, the provincial public health director for the region, said that the Taliban has warned regional hospital employees to stop distributing the vaccine. They’ve since closed the COVID-19 vaccine ward in the regional hospital. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

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Bacon

Bacon

Posted
Posted

The withdrawal from Afghanistan presents a wonderful opportunity to converse about a difficult subject in a balanced, realistic manner. There have been US failures spanning 20 years in the region and far beyond when one considers our misguided efforts in South Vietnam. We can't shape countries into our own image and it's rarely popular at home. This is just one more in a long line of disasters stemming from US imperialism.

 

Sadly, this complex and challenging topic with meaningful implications for our position as a world power is being approached with the same deflections and political one upsmanship as every other issue we run into these days. It's ****ing depressing but not surprising. The last four administrations have all bungled things in Afghanistan, which points to its occupation being a fundamentally bad idea to begin with.

 

Will we learn from this? I'm not sure how we would if one side is unwilling to take accountability for their role in the process. Biden, at least, did that much. But his opposition has been unwilling to do the same. 

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tshile

tshile

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, The Sisko said:

They've been playing chess while we were playing checkers.

I think this is off base. 
 

I think it’s fair to say we were arrogant about how we would be received

 

or arrogant in not understanding how little we understood the people there, the history, and their devotion to (what they believe is a correct interpretation of) their religion

 

we also had a whole revenge thing going on that was basically unchecked. We were pissed. And rightfully so. 
 

There’s a lot of ways you could critique us. Especially if you want to dive into all the various strategies over the course of 20 years. We could spend a whole evening discussing drones, droning weddings, and our prioritizing checking off a box on a kill list over all else (at times)

 

i think saying the taliban outsmarted us is way off base. We destroyed their organization and took their entire country from them for 20 years and left because we were tired of its 

 

they survived the way ****roaches survive. 
 

they didn’t outsmart us. 

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Renegade7

Renegade7

Posted
Posted

Ya, they just outlasted our resolve.  If we wanted to stay, the government would still be there, too.

 

I'm not buying we should've waited until the fighting season was over, by recent intelligence admissions, this was deteriorating far faster then the public was being told.

 

And I don't support making Afghanistan another Japan, a lot of Japanese want us to leave, same with South Korea.

 

It sucks they feel abandoned, but that anger should be pointed at their own government, not ours.  We did something no other country would do in trying to prop them up for 20 years. 

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