With 300K troops, an air force of mostly American jets how the hell did the the extremist Taliban just walk over Afghanistan and into the capital Kabul with barely a whimper in response. The President fled so I guess they are a gutless people. Either that or inferior warriors, which I doubt as most of their troops were trained by NATO, or a deal was made to allow the extremists carte blanche to further the peace talks in Dohar. So what did the Taliban leader say? You let us take over the country.. and then we will talk about a peaceful transition to a power sharing agreement. If the Afghan President fell for that he is naive.. this cold blooded extremist group dont want peace they want total power to instigate their hardline Islamic ideology on the population. They have already, according to one reputable news service, taken Afghan teen girls as sex slaves. What charmers they are.
I think the problem is that we spent a crapload of money, and sacrificed far too many lives, to prepare the Afghan people to fight for a vision that was never theirs, expecting them to be motivated by national pride, ignoring the fact that theirs was a nation created by others. I don't think they have the motivation to fight for a nation that they don't identify with. Their identities are tied to various regional tribes and to their religion, not to the borders that were set by others. Before the Russians (and later the Americans and allied nations) got involved, Muslims were fighting Muslims in the Middle East. When the foreign occupies leave, they go back to their own interests or disinterests.
The Afghan people were motivated by national pride when they rebuffed three attempts by the British to impose its political will on them during the 19th century. The Brits engaged in two Anglo-Afghan Wars: 1838-1842 and 1878-81 and failed. The Russians failed and now the strongest Western nations have also failed. It is fair to say that the Afghan people have shown a great deal of national pride having not been conquered since 1747 when a home grown tribal leader was elected Afghan King.
Nation building on the other side of the world doesn't work. What's that old saying? Something like: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of fight in the dog."
Yep far fewer Aussies as we sent less troops than you. Biden did correct thing in bringing your troops home. 6K is sufficient body bags. We have to blame the weak Afghan army and government for rolling over to the Taliban.
It was a poorly managed conflict from the beginning. The Neocons wanted control of Iraq and Afghanistan to box in Iran. We never should have spent any time in Iraq and time in Afghanistan should have been to eliminate terrorist training facilities, not nation-building. We haven't fought a war to win since WWII, and if you are not in it to win, you shouldn't be in it at all. All those who lost their lives, as well as those who lost limbs and many lost their futures...for nothing except the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned against many years ago. Biden pulled out troop abruptly, lost the country, and now is blaming Trump for his own stupidity.
So, as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, 1000 airborne soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Div. (my old ABN unit) were sent to Kabul to aid in the evacuation process? In the meantime, 3000 more 82nd Airborne troops were sent to Kuwait. For what? Then, as the ultra responsible president that Biden is, he decided to go to Camp David and hide. Sounds like he took some tips from Obama. When the going gets tough, the tough finds a hiding place or goes golfing. Note: I do not know if anyone remembers the scene that took place on the rooftops in Saigon during the pullout. The people who were denied access to the evacuation was chiefly engineered by guess who? Senator Joe Biden.
If memory serves, none of the 9/11 attackers were Afghans (most were Saudis, our allies) and none of the planning for the attack was done in Afghanistan; it was done in Europe and right here in Florida. But, "War is the health of the state" and there we go. Government convinced the masses that "We have to go bomb and invade somebody," so have at it and we can all go back to our comfy American lives. Bobby Cole above mentioned this scenario in Saigon in (I think) 1975. I guess it was similar in Afghanistan in recent days:
What your wrote is indeed true but the U.S. involvement with Afghanistan was because of the Taliban’s relationship with Bin Laden, the main guy behind the 9/11 attacks. Note: The United States was never against Afghanistan but the guerrilla forces (the Taliban) that beat Russia and then took over Afghanistan with their style of Islamic rule.
And we had a hand in arming and training the "Taliban" (Mujahedeen) against the Russians in their fiasco in Afghanistan.
And now, as in Nam but a little more sophisticated, we left them with armed vehicles, drones, assorted automatic weapons, helicopters and the bases to place individual portions of their guerrilla forces. And do note: Not so coincidentally, in around 10 weeks Iran will again be able to build nuclear weapons.