i dont blame them, they were 300k strong staring down a force America failed to defeat. some humvees and jumping jack lessons aren't going to make them better than the US and we failed utterly. Our only hope now is that the Taliban softens as a governing body compared to their counter insurgency role to take back Afghanistan. Or that they're dumb enough to piss off one of the big boys in the middle east so we can tag out and let the Pakis or Saudis kill them off.

Then we're in agreement. Both that defense contractors have a massive influence which manipulated the government into giving them massive amounts of money and that you can always take it too far, like thinking they have so much control they engineered a whole war from scratch.

Pretty much nobody thinks the latter though, so I'm not sure who you're actually railing against.

Why would they stand up to the Taliban when they can easily join up and fight with a local force?

America killed way more civilians than combatants even using the government's definition of "combatant". The Taliban is likely going to be brutal and terrible, but we didn't exactly create a viable alternative. We left massive corruption in the government and spent far more bombing than building.

I just don't see why anybody thought the army would stand up to the Taliban, because they have no reason to stand up to them. If the Taliban marched on Europe, they have a massively educated population with strong economic ties to the rest of the world, a national identity and a promise for a pretty good future. First world nations have a lot to fight for. Afghani tribes have.... basically none of that, and the government we set up wasn't promising it either.

You all now see why China is fixing is Uyghur problem. The solution to the Taliban is the same. Communism would correct everything. In fact, Afghanistan was at its peak under communism from 1978 to 1992.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Aug 17 2021 01:30pm

They had everything they needed to defeat them besides balls. They outnumbered the Taliban, were better equipped, and better trained. In combat, we CRUSHED the Taliban and the only reason they weren't "defeated" is because we're apparently not allowed to use scorched earth tactics anymore. Those brutal tactics are something the ANA and ANP should not have been afraid to use given that it's THEIR country.

The Pakis won't defeat the Taliban because a lot of them ARE Pakis and the Saudis can't get them because they'd have to go through Iran. Our best hope is that they DO soften up but



Probably because they were fighting decently while we were there providing support. What do you think was going on for the past 7 years when Obama pulled out 90% of the troops?

Biden's entire message that the Taliban "wouldnt sweep the country" was based in the hopes for the Afghan army.

He knew they'd fail, they knew they'd fail, we all knew it. saying otherwise was a gaffe.

we should have been airlifting out moderates for the last 2 decades instead of leaving weapons for the Taliban.

Initial reports are that Taliban is going to let girls continue to go to school and female doctors/nurses continue care. could just be a transitional thing but lets hope it holds long term, even if they do require full niqab just short of burkas.

How does your brain even know to continue to breathe oxygen when you are this derpy

Did they know that? If they did what were they doing the past several years? I think this is bullshit revisionist history. Go ahead and scour news articles for the past few months and you'd see that very few people thought this. Obviously we need an investigation into what went wrong (DOD incompetence? State Department red tape? Intel failure?) because there's no doubt that this is a fuck up.

Saying out loud "the taliban will win" doesnt make for very good reception, shit you'd be called an anti american traitor.

but if we couldn't eradicate them in 20 years why expect our shitty replacement could? the BEST we could have logically hoped for was the Taliban to not overrun Kabul and at least have a stronghold. I think thats what DOD expected, and why airlifts are late.