Man of Honour
- Joined
- 21 Nov 2004
- Posts
- 46,261
Perfect scenario for China.
Afghanistan - 20 years on
- Thread starter GreatAuk
- Start date
A deal made by the previous admin which involved the Taliban agreeing to not attack US/international forces is irrelevant to the decision made by the current admin as to whether to follow through or reneg on the deal?
LOL
Caporegime
They did reneg on the deal, why are they still there now?
Delaying a full withdrawal a few months would likely be met with much less hostility than completely disregarding the entire agreement.
Erm yes... and?
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 21 Nov 2004
- Posts
- 46,261
Soldato
I wonder if we will in the end. That or wait for the terror attacks to start again...
Soldato
I see you guys are falling down a Dowie hole.
Sad to see this but it was inevitable due to the nature of Afghanistan. They don't have much of a national identity, I don't really need to reiterate this beyond what everyone ha already said but man... those poor people at the airport.
There's going to be so many of them who want to leave and who will be trapped in this hell. Seeing their last hope leave the country with no way out. Rejected and hated by those in the countries that helped create the situation they are in, should they decide to leave and try to take up refugee status anywhere else.
Its just a massive mess. In the end only the innocent suffer.
Sad to see this but it was inevitable due to the nature of Afghanistan. They don't have much of a national identity, I don't really need to reiterate this beyond what everyone ha already said but man... those poor people at the airport.
There's going to be so many of them who want to leave and who will be trapped in this hell. Seeing their last hope leave the country with no way out. Rejected and hated by those in the countries that helped create the situation they are in, should they decide to leave and try to take up refugee status anywhere else.
Its just a massive mess. In the end only the innocent suffer.
What do you think he should have done instead?
Should he have kept US troops in indefinitely/with no concrete exit timeline and risked aggression on US service members for breaking the Trump/Taliban agreement?
or
Should he have tried to have upheld the agreement as much as possible and still commit to a full withdrawal (ie what is happening)?
He had multiple options, it's not about what I think he should have done but rather the dubious nature of this withdrawal, the rapid withdrawal of support from the Afghan government, the misplaced confidence in the ANA and Afghan government...
We might as well have pulled out back when we had the "Mission Accomplished" on the Aircraft Carrier under G.W.Bush. They'd achieved the goal of kicking out Bin Laden and his Al Quaeda buddies & their training camps by then.
Staying on requires a much longer-term commitment. Withdrawing shouldn't have relied as much on the Afghan Army holding up in its present state or the government holding it together and frankly still should have included more support.
So you don't have any better ideas? Maybe there were no better ideas/solutions?
It is quite obvious that he was left with pretty much no good options. Breaking the deal completely was very likely to end up with Taliban attacks on US/International forces and then the papers would be full of "BLOOD ON BIDEN'S HANDS FOR BREAKING WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT".
Such as?
Air support, troops...
Man of Honour
To be fair; wasn't the Mission Accomplished speech all about combat operations in Iraq?... that said its hard to argue that the last 10 years have been worth bothering with; when they got Bin Laden that was really when they should just have finished and left the Afghans to it; you can't force Western Democracy on a country that clearly doesn't want it.
The 20 years before this wasn't good enough? How much longer were the US supposed to stay there?
Yup, by which point Saddam had been overthrown, Al Quaeda had been kicked out of Afghanistan. Arguably if we weren't going to commit long-term then could have just let the Shia run Iran and the Taliban take over Afghanistan as that's basically what's happened anyway.
You're talking about withdrawal no?
Soldato
They've had over a decade of training and have been equipped with some of the latest weaponry. There is not a single reason why they couldn't have held back this Taliban advance. The truth is they didn't even try.