I must gently disagree with my co-blogger and brother-from-another-mother ASM826. This is not the time to send in more Marines to a lost cause in Afghanistan. We don't need more dead marines like Juan Restrepo.
Yes, this is Jimmy Carter 2.0. Yes, this administration is going to cause the death of many of our former allies (and their families). No, none of this is worth a single Marine's life.
This is the end of a bi-partisan f**k-up that goes back to George W. Bush and Colin Powell and runs through Barack Obama and John F. Kerry to Slow Joe Biden and whichever intellectual midget is SecState today. If Trump were still in the Oval office then the withdrawal likely would have been better handled, but the Democratic Party is clearly not about good governance these days.
The thing for everyone to remember is when the next GOP critter plants his butt in the chair behind the Resolute Desk - assuming there will ever be another free election in this Republic - and when the next terrorist strike hits New York City: remember this day. Adam Piggott sums the war up well:
The war in Afghanistan, which from the very beginning existed for no tangible military or political reasons, was a complete success for those that waged it. They rolled the dice and got twenty years. That’s twenty years of unmitigated profit in arms sales, corporate fees, expert consulting and every other aspect of the cost of running an expensive war and pretend nation building exercise in an alien land half a world away. And the poppies, don’t forget the poppies. The lucrative narcotics trade was completely taken over by the CIA and its proxies, a war on drugs indeed but not the kind of war that Nixon originally promised.
No more blood for lost causes, or to get four star Generals seats on General Dynamic's Board of Directors.
And remember Juan Restrepo.
9 comments:
If Trump were still in the Oval office we would have been out in May like he agreed to do the year before.
Borepatch, my now overriding fear is that someone in the current administration is going to feel they have to "Do Something" to make up for this and demonstrate that they can confront the bad guys. This is where the true errors begin.
Never mattered WHO was in the White House or WHAT our 'strategy' was.
This was the outcome that was going to happen no matter what. This year,
next year, 50 years from now....wouldn't have changed a thing. The ONLY way
we can keep raghead mohammedan terrorists from being ragheaded mohammedan terrorists in a country is to NEVER REMOVE OUR TROOPS....EVER. The only other alternative to the US being stuck in places like that is to EXTERMINATE every last muslim on the planet. Because as long as that sick ideology exists there WILL be adherents who will go all "taliban" whenever a superior force isn't around to keep them in hiding. Those were always our only two choices to keep the taliban from regaining control....and the US government along with most Americans simply doesn't want to choose EITHER of the two options that would actually work.
I saw this coming right after 9/11 when the neocon-rats begin pushing for invading Iraq and talking about "nation building" aka the code-word for fat stacks for cash flowing out of the treasury.
As a vet I have had several parents ask about military service for their soon to be high schools graduates in the past ten years. I couldn't recommend they throw their child's life away in foreign wars, or worse still the growing possibility they would have to face off against US citizens. So I suggest the trades if they didn't want to go to college. (I realized my uncle, a Korean War vet, suggested the same thing to me almost 40 years ago.)
As for the future, who knows. Even I didn't think the neocon-rats were this f*ing incompetent. An enemy couldn't have done a better job of destroying a country in 6 months...
Once again, the entire State Department strategy was based on hopium. They really thought the Afghan government and armed forces would stand, and thus made no plans whatsoever to get their own people out of Kabul. And now the ambassador has fled with the flag, leaving his own staffers behind.
Of course, the military already flew thousands of Afghan collaborators here to the USA. Because tribal Muslims with no loyalty to anything will fit right in. (Maybe in Minneapolis or Phoenix?)
I’m confused, BP.
So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that the US pulled out? Is Creepy Joe doing a good thing or a bad thing here? Not trying to be a dink, just trying to get a sense of what the right course of action should be? Everyone says Bush was an idiot post 911. Fine - what should have been done about terrorism at that point?
What happens now, I wonder? Does Afghanistan go back to exporting terror and poppies? If so, what will we do about that?
What will this loss do to us? One thing is clear; anyone that signs up for the services is absolutely nuts.
Time to stop pointing our guns at third-world Muslimaniacs and start pointing them at domestic enemies like Antifa.
If we go back in, turn it into a parking lot. Done. Period... We have lost enough lives in that shithole...
Today, I happened to drive on Danny Dietz Memorial Highway. I know where his statue is in Littleton. I have photographed it on a winter dawn. None of these things should have a reason to exist. Adequate words entirely fail me.
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