this war cant be "won". but abandoning afghanistan altogether would make things even worse than staying in with relatively low troop counts. (currently 8.4k, maybe soon 10-12k-ish).
also dont underestimate the importance of trump's no more nation building statement: it clearly shifts priority to stabilization of countries, away from "building a nation that resembles our ideas of state and society".

Killing bad guys and nation building hasn't stabilized Afghanistan, so the solution is to continue killing bad guys and stop nation building? That makes no sense.

maybe afghanistan would be even worse off without killing bad guys and nation building efforts. we dont know for sure, but to me it seems very plausible that the taliban would already have reconquered all of afghanistan if there were no more nato troops.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 22 2017 08:08am

actually why not try a completely different approach
the constant terror attacks against the central government make it clear that the tribes arent really interested in the state the west is trying to build
let them have their islamist taliban state and use the troops to close it off, that way they can do their thing and maybe (only maybe) leave us to live in peace

afghanistan has 5500km of land borders with its neighboring states. you cant control a border of this length in the middle of nowhere. even with 1 million soldiers you couldnt.

what you're suggesting is essentially the approach the west took with afghanistan during the 90s: let them do their own thing, let the taliban reign. the end of the story was 9/11.
was it wrong to invade afghanistan the way the US coalition did? absolutely. was it wrong to do something about afghanistan at all? imho no.

we must find some solution, and until we found it, a low cost low effort "damage control" is necessary. the current nato mission in afghanistan with something like 8 to 20k soldiers is just that: damage control. no one in their right mind can seriously think that nation building would be possible with that troop count anyway...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 22 2017 08:41am

of course you cant, even if most of the afghan borders are impassable anyway
basic control at the main points is good enough and at least in theory the idea is that these guys dont want to leave their little caliphate anyway
expansion and spreading the religion are major aspects of islam obviously, but other motivations like "they are bombing my country so i am bombing theirs" could go away

i wouldnt say 9/11 was a result of doing nothing in afghanistan, more like opposite if you go back further in time
soviet invasion, america arming mujahideen, being friends with bin laden etc

This seems like a good random topic for random US things:

Ships can navigate have radar and communicate. Naval ships tend to have a bit more of that ability...

So why the fuck are US naval ships being rammed ?

Big ships are not easy to just stop or turn around. Crowded part of the sea, someone not starting the deceleration or course change in time and you have a collision.

No big mystery there.

You think it's normal that ships collide at sea ?

i have heard about several incidents at sea where us navy ships played the tough guy and simply refused to change course with zero fucks given
wouldnt suprise me if something like that happened here and if i remember the rules at sea correctly (and compare that with the pictures) the us ship clearly is responsible from the looks of it

maybe there is a reason why this story exists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_urban_legend