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Afghan War ending, foretold by The Onion 10 years Ago [DT thread ruined by politics]


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Just now, Brisketexan said:

There was never going to be a clean, easy exit from Afghanistan.  This admin may have made it messier than it had to have been, but the magical thinking that "if the admin had just put me in charge, I'd have gotten everyone out, easy peasy, and no casualties!" is absolutely absurd. 

And they're too stupid to realize that unfalsifiable claims are inherently worthless.

"Trump woulda handled this better!" is right up there with "Covid woulda been just as bad or worse if Hillary'd won!"

See, you can play it either way and it'll sound compelling as long as you're talking to complete fucking morons.

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1 minute ago, BabaYaga said:

No shit.  They are also specifically trained for these types of recovery missions.

 

Two things - first, the trapped NGOs are the main problem and helpfully will not be slaughtered by the thousands which is a very real possibility. 

Second, it's chaos because of the idiotic location.  It's a fucking bowl surrounded on all sides by mountains with no means to secure it.  The generals all told him to NOT give up Bagram as it was much, much easier to secure while providing support for any units in the area.  You can point to this single fuckup as one of the largest drivers for why the ANA gave up, facilitating this chaotic nightmare.

Bagram is 30 miles from Kabul and in the same fucking valley.  Stop. With. The. Bullshit.  

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That is absolutely true.  Anyone that stuck their neck out for this was going to eat a gigantic shit sandwich because there was no good way to leave that country.  Trump ran on this and had 4 years to do it, but when push came to shove he passed the buck but still wanted credit if things went well (see below).  Even in the best case scenario Biden knew that people were going to die and they would hang all of this shit around his neck, and he went forward anyway.  
 
 

That’s a civilian. Tell us what the president said on July 8th
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1 minute ago, Muy Frio said:

The one upside to this fiasco is we can finally dispense with the notion thrown about here that CR is somehow moderate. Much water being carried here for this fiasco.

 

the evidence you presented does not support your assertion. nice try, though, I think. gold star for effort. you can have your pudding now.

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2 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

The generals all told him to NOT give up Bagram as it was much, much easier to secure while providing support for any units in the area.  You can point to this single fuckup as one of the largest drivers for why the ANA gave up, facilitating this chaotic nightmare.

You just love making shit up:

Quote

Asked about the decision to close Bagram, Milley said that the “task given to us” after the military withdrawal was to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and that keeping Bagram and a military base at the Kabul airport would have required a “significant number of military forces that would have exceeded what we had.”

Miller and Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who heads U.S. Central Command, recommended closing Bagram and keeping open a military presence at the airport, Milley said. The risk of leaving from the airport or Bagram was “about the same,” allowing the military to get down to about 600 to 700 troops, he added.

 

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1 minute ago, BabaYaga said:

No shit.  They are also specifically trained for these types of recovery missions.

 

Two things - first, the trapped NGOs are the main problem and helpfully will not be slaughtered by the thousands which is a very real possibility. 

Second, it's chaos because of the idiotic location.  It's a fucking bowl surrounded on all sides by mountains with no means to secure it.  The generals all told him to NOT give up Bagram as it was much, much easier to secure while providing support for any units in the area.  You can point to this single fuckup as one of the largest drivers for why the ANA gave up, facilitating this chaotic nightmare.

Bagram is a great location for basing military ops out of -- launching attacks, that sort of thing.  It's, ummm, sub-optimal for evacuating civilians.  Why?  Because it's in the middle of goddamned nowhere.  Most of the people we needed to evacuate are in the Kabul area.  There's nothing but 40 miles of open road.....most all of it a nice shooting gallery...between Bagram and Kabul.  Civilian evacuations need to happen from where the civilians are.

Nevermind the troop strength it takes to secure and hold Bagram, which is a much larger footprint.  Bagram....which is even closer to the mountains than Kabul.

And of course, under your scenario, the absolute first thing the Biden admin would have had to have done would be to INCREASE our drawn down troop strength of 2,500 way back up.  5,000?  10,000?

Magical thinking.  If we'd just been tougher, and acted like we all had Punisher tattoos, the ragheads would have cowered before our superior strength and we'd have had our way.  We would have easily evacuated everyone who wants out, with no civilian or military casualties.  I bet the flights out even would have had quality in-flight movies and great snacks.

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2 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

The one upside to this fiasco is we can finally dispense with the notion thrown about here that CR is somehow moderate. Much water being carried here for this fiasco.

 

And if you want to be really cynical, the next presidential election is a long three years away. 

 

Edited by David Dennison
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26 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Or, you know,  it refers to members of the elite communities that would be utilized vs. base infantry or Marines.  Maybe use the term "special ops" makes you feel better?  

My cousin’s youngest son is one of these guys fresh out of training. Completely wet behind the years. I absolutely don’t want him going over to that fuckhole. I’ll buy you a ticket though send me a PM

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He didn't leave Afghanistan. He just told the Taliban that we were leaving.

He didn’t leave Afghanistan because he was voted out before his deadline. The rest of the steps of incompetence is on bidens watch.

But if I’m reading this right, you were for getting out via trumps plan if it means leaving May 1 instead of 9/11, right?
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Just now, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

the evidence you presented does not support your assertion. nice try, though, I think. gold star for effort. you can have your pudding now.

It’s mostly just the most hardcore loyalists supporting this as job well done. They happen to just overwhelmingly reside in places like CR. 

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5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Cool.  I want to save the world.  No shit, I really do.  Every time I read a story about a car bomb in a market, or mass starvation, or any of that awful, horrific shit that our world is full of, I want us to rescue everyone.

How many American troops are you willing to sacrifice to do that?  Give us a number, please.  We can get any result you want (except victory in Afghanistan, of course - that ship sailed 1,000 years ago).  All it costs is blood and treasure.  How many more dead American troops are we willing to take to get everyone out?

The equivalency argument?  We are talking specifically about US civilians that were lied to about the faltering situation on the ground.  Carter dealt with 55 hostages.  We want to blame them for traveling into the ME, even though they knew it was dangerous.  That's a shit line of reasoning.  Biden could very well have thousands and the ONLY talking point that can be mustered is to blame them.  JFC.  

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3 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

The one upside to this fiasco is we can finally dispense with the notion thrown about here that CR is somehow moderate. Much water being carried here for this fiasco.

By whom, exactly?

I don't see anyone defending how this was handled.

What people are doing is pointing out the facts that A) this entire clusterfuck was started by Republicans and getting out was always going to be messy, and B) all of you Republicans are a bunch of transparent, disgusting fucking hypocrites for pretending to give a shit about dead Afghan civilians and/or dead American soldiers after twenty years of this crap that your boys started.

If you want to dispense with the straw man arguments and attack either of those statements, let's go.

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Just now, MNLonghornFUKM said:


He didn’t leave Afghanistan because he was voted out before his deadline. The rest of the steps of incompetence is on bidens watch.

But if I’m reading this right, you were for getting out via trumps plan if it means leaving May 1 instead of 9/11, right?

I'm just for getting out. I think it was going to be a shitshow no matter what. That's what happens when you lose a war.

If it's being handled badly, there will be political consequences. Or there won't be. The American electorate is fickle. If I had to bet, this won't have much of an impact on the next couple of elections. But it might. 

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6 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


That’s a civilian. Tell us what the president said on July 8th

Are you implying that people follow Biden's advice on potential life or death decisions without any other input?  You may want to sit down for this...

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1 minute ago, TexArcher said:

By whom, exactly?

I don't see anyone defending how this was handled.

What people are doing is pointing out the facts that A) this entire clusterfuck was started by Republicans and getting out was always going to be messy, and B) all of you Republicans are a bunch of transparent, disgusting fucking hypocrites for pretending to give a shit about dead Afghan civilians and/or dead American soldiers after twenty years of this crap that your boys started.

If you want to dispense with the straw man arguments and attack either of those statements, let's go.

The same fuckers are still polluting covid threads to this day talking about how a bunch of dead American children are an acceptable price for freedom, because most kids will survive.

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By whom, exactly?
I don't see anyone defending how this was handled.
What people are doing is pointing out the facts that A) this entire clusterfuck was started by Republicans and getting out was always going to be messy, and B) all of you Republicans are a bunch of transparent, disgusting fucking hypocrites for pretending to give a shit about dead Afghan civilians and/or dead American soldiers after twenty years of this crap that your boys started.
If you want to dispense with the straw man arguments and attack either of those statements, let's go.

Then fucking why didn’t Obama leave after he killed obl? He had 5 years to do so.
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6 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

It’s mostly just the most hardcore loyalists supporting this as job well done. They happen to just overwhelmingly reside in places like CR. 

uh, first, I have yet to meet a Biden loyalist in this forum. I have also yet to read anyone applauding the handling of evacuation. What you may have read is people saying it was the right decision, which it was (it was the right decision a long goddamn time ago). The fact that it's been a mess should be a surprise to no one. The speed with which the Taliban took over was not predicted by even the best military minds. TFG got the ball rolling and the momentum was such that Biden couldn't stop it. He bit the metaphorical bullet and did what no one else had the courage to do in the last 20 years. But yeah, it's all his fault. You got us!

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9 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

The one upside to this fiasco is we can finally dispense with the notion thrown about here that CR is somehow moderate. Much water being carried here for this fiasco.

 

False.  And a false dilemma.

The response around here is almost uniformly critical of multiple aspects of the withdrawal.  As just one example, the admin's decision to rely on the rosy intel about how long the ANA would hold out, as opposed to the more pessimistic intel.  To go back to my analogy, it looks as if multiple decisions were made that made this breakup with a crazy chick WORSE than it should have been.

Our pushback has been against the magical thinking that there's a path that would have made this all pretty, and/or would have made it pretty and NOT resulted in a bulked-up military presence in the very place we were supposed to be withdrawing from.

You're, as usual, a disingenuous POS.

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2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

I'm just for getting out. I think it was going to be a shitshow no matter what. That's what happens when you lose a war.

If it's being handled badly, there will be political consequences. Or there won't be. The American electorate is fickle. If I had to bet, this won't have much of an impact on the next couple of elections. But it might. 

Donald Trump had 4 years to get out of Afghanistan.  Whether it was political or logistical, he and his admin pushed it to 2021, after the election.  Either he was going to do it and suffer no re-election consequences during his second term or he was going to leave it to someone else to eat the shit. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/trump-wants-pull-all-troops-out-afghanistan-2020-election-n1038651

America will not fucking care about Afghanistan when they go vote in November 2022 or November 2024.  Foreign policy doesn't resonate with voters. 

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10 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

The one upside to this fiasco is we can finally dispense with the notion thrown about here that CR is somehow moderate. Much water being carried here for this fiasco.

 

Care to point out the plurality of posts on this board that say biden did a good job? Because I don't see anyone saying it worked out all nice and cleanly - but don't let me get in the way of your unsourced and uncited lies.

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By whom, exactly?
I don't see anyone defending how this was handled.
What people are doing is pointing out the facts that A) this entire clusterfuck was started by Republicans and getting out was always going to be messy, and B) all of you Republicans are a bunch of transparent, disgusting fucking hypocrites for pretending to give a shit about dead Afghan civilians and/or dead American soldiers after twenty years of this crap that your boys started.
If you want to dispense with the straw man arguments and attack either of those statements, let's go.
9e3316212463eab12339d6e90abdc6c0.jpg
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5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Bagram is a great location for basing military ops out of -- launching attacks, that sort of thing.  It's, ummm, sub-optimal for evacuating civilians.  Why?  Because it's in the middle of goddamned nowhere.  Most of the people we needed to evacuate are in the Kabul area.  There's nothing but 40 miles of open road.....most all of it a nice shooting gallery...between Bagram and Kabul.  Civilian evacuations need to happen from where the civilians are.

Nevermind the troop strength it takes to secure and hold Bagram, which is a much larger footprint.  Bagram....which is even closer to the mountains than Kabul.

And of course, under your scenario, the absolute first thing the Biden admin would have had to have done would be to INCREASE our drawn down troop strength of 2,500 way back up.  5,000?  10,000?

Magical thinking.  If we'd just been tougher, and acted like we all had Punisher tattoos, the ragheads would have cowered before our superior strength and we'd have had our way.  We would have easily evacuated everyone who wants out, with no civilian or military casualties.  I bet the flights out even would have had quality in-flight movies and great snacks.

It was suggested by the generals specifically because it was easy to control, had much longer runways for these massive military airlifts that are flying the vast majority of people out on, and isn't a giant fucking bowl ringed my mountains that we don't control.  And we had the troops strength with the ANA, who cut bait BECAUSE we abandoned Bagram.  

This rest is just blabbering nonsense.  So now we HAVE to use Kabul?  Dafuk?  Fleeing civilians out in the open can be much easier to protect and assets can target attacks on them unlike in dense urban areas where the Taliban and embedded.  This is arguably the THE single biggest fuckup Biden made for the entire exit.  Jesus Christ, you pick arguably the hardest point to defend to leave from.  Unreal....

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1 minute ago, Captainant said:

Care to point out the plurality of posts on this board that say biden did a good job? Because I don't see anyone saying it worked out all nice and cleanly - but don't let me get in the way of your unsourced and uncited lies.

It's probably a feeling, which is a liberal sentiment, so he'll never admit it.

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1 minute ago, Captainant said:

Care to point out the plurality of posts on this board that say biden did a good job? Because I don't see anyone saying it worked out all nice and cleanly - but don't let me get in the way of your unsourced and uncited lies.

Plenty of posts here saying it couldn’t have been done better. It was always going to end like this. Or some variation thereof. Really?

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9 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


He didn’t leave Afghanistan because he was voted out before his deadline. The rest of the steps of incompetence is on bidens watch.

But if I’m reading this right, you were for getting out via trumps plan if it means leaving May 1 instead of 9/11, right?

All Trump did was bitch about Afghanistan for 10 years but didn’t do anything about except push it to Biden.

He could have done this from 2017-2020 but didn’t.

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2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Care to point out the plurality of posts on this board that say biden did a good job? Because I don't see anyone saying it worked out all nice and cleanly - but don't let me get in the way of your unsourced and uncited lies.

he's lying to himself, because the essence of conservativism is lying to yourself about literally everything.

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Just now, BabaYaga said:

It was suggested by the generals specifically because it was easy to control, had much longer runways for these massive military airlifts that are flying the vast majority of people out on, and isn't a giant fucking bowl ringed my mountains that we don't control.  And we had the troops strength with the ANA, who cut bait BECAUSE we abandoned Bagram.  

This rest is just blabbering nonsense.  So now we HAVE to use Kabul?  Dafuk?  Fleeing civilians out in the open can be much easier to protect and assets can target attacks on them unlike in dense urban areas where the Taliban and embedded.  This is arguably the THE single biggest fuckup Biden made for the entire exit.  Jesus Christ, you pick arguably the hardest point to defend to leave from.  Unreal....

Stop lying.

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Just now, Muy Frio said:

Plenty of posts here saying it couldn’t have been done better. It was always going to end like this. Or some variation thereof. Really?

that's not arguing that it was done well. It's arguing that there was no possible good outcome for this withdrawl - in large part due to the state of the middle east after trump and kush's """middle east peace plan"""

But solid double down on "people are saying", very trumpy.

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Just now, BabaYaga said:

It was suggested by the generals specifically because it was easy to control, had much longer runways for these massive military airlifts that are flying the vast majority of people out on, and isn't a giant fucking bowl ringed my mountains that we don't control.  And we had the troops strength with the ANA, who cut bait BECAUSE we abandoned Bagram.  

This rest is just blabbering nonsense.  So now we HAVE to use Kabul?  Dafuk?  Fleeing civilians out in the open can be much easier to protect and assets can target attacks on them unlike in dense urban areas where the Taliban and embedded.  This is arguably the THE single biggest fuckup Biden made for the entire exit.  Jesus Christ, you pick arguably the hardest point to defend to leave from.  Unreal....

and yet it's the largest and most successful evacuation of a warzone in US history. but yeah, total failure.

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6 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


Then fucking why didn’t Obama leave after he killed obl? He had 5 years to do so.

He absolutely should have.  But he was a coward, because.....

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

He absolutely should have. He didn't want to go through exactly what we are going through right now.

.....this.

There never was a path to a graceful exit from Afghanistan.  Obama had 5 years.  Trump had 4.  What did each of them do?  Leave the shit sandwich for the next guy.  Biden decided to eat it.  I'm glad he did.  It's what I expect from my leaders.

If we want to talk about how he could have accomplished eating the shit sandwich better.....well, plenty of us have been talking about that.  He made a bad call as to how much shit was in the sandwich, when he was going to have to wolf it down by, and other metaphors.  But once he made the call -- the right call -- to take the final, hardest steps (actually LEAVING), he had done something that neither of his predecessors had the balls to do.  Both things can be true.  He had balls to make and follow through on the right call, which sets him apart from his three predecessors, and he also mishandled the execution in various ways.

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4 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

It was suggested by the generals specifically because it was easy to control, had much longer runways for these massive military airlifts that are flying the vast majority of people out on, and isn't a giant fucking bowl ringed my mountains that we don't control.  And we had the troops strength with the ANA, who cut bait BECAUSE we abandoned Bagram.  

This rest is just blabbering nonsense.  So now we HAVE to use Kabul?  Dafuk?  Fleeing civilians out in the open can be much easier to protect and assets can target attacks on them unlike in dense urban areas where the Taliban and embedded.  This is arguably the THE single biggest fuckup Biden made for the entire exit.  Jesus Christ, you pick arguably the hardest point to defend to leave from.  Unreal....

You continue to say shit that's just plain false.  Look at a goddamn map.  Bagram is CLOSER to the mountains than HKIA.  Nevermind that you have been presented with direct quotes from military leadership saying that we should not hold on to Bagram.

We could have.....with a lot more troops.

You want us to hold and defend 40 miles of road for civilians to evacuate through?  WTF?  Add another many thousands of troops for that.

You're just making shit up, and layering it with the indefensible.

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2 minutes ago, Muy Frio said:

Plenty of posts here saying it couldn’t have been done better. It was always going to end like this. Or some variation thereof. Really?

I don't know if, given practical constraints, it could've been done better. Maybe, maybe not. 

Biden is ultimately responsible because he's the President, he picked the withdrawal date, and he elected to trust the assessment (from men whom he otherwise distrusted to advise him well re: Afghanistan) that the Afghan government wouldn't fall before we were out. But even if we had done a better job of predicting the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the ANA, I'm not sure what we would've done differently.

We didn't want to put 40,000 troops back on the ground.  That's a not-well-informed guess of the kind of numbers we probably would've needed (if not more) for a reasonably secure evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from multiple points around the country. But I bet if anything I'm low, not high. We're seeing what ~6,000 troops can hold there in these conditions. And there's absolutely no way the Taliban wouldn't have start shooting at American troops if it looked like we were re-invading. 

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