I was originally gonna subtitle this “You’ll believe a man can fly” because..well….
I’ve never been in the military, I’ve never been to Afghanistan, and I’ve never tried to ‘secure’ an airport in the middle of what is in effect the Worlds Worst Neighborhood.
But, I’ve seen ‘Blackhawk Down’ a buncha times and that makes me an armchair quarterback.
The news is full of footage that has a very last-days-of-Vietnam feel to it. And there is a really, really ugly truth in it: when you’re extracting American lives and assets, and the locals are slowing you down, whose life is more valuable? Being the ‘good guys’, we stop our airlift so no one gets run over by the planes on the runway and we fire rounds over their heads or nudge them along with helicopters. How do you suppose the Russians or Chinese would handle things? Yeah, that’s what I figured too.
Im not sure why anyone who was capable of leaving on their own would have stayed to the last minute like that (unless they were crazy enough to believe President Dementia when he said it wouldn’t be exactly what it turned out to be) when the smart money was hitting the road a good while ago. Who is left? Those poor SOB’s who bought the line that the US would stand by them for their efforts (ask the Hmong how that worked out), and anyone too poor to steal a Toyota pickup and drive in virtually any other direction out of the country.
And now the US is in the unenviable position of either a) having an airlift turn into a fizzled operation that leaves planes, people, and materiel at the mercy of the Taliban, or b) go old school and drop in troops who have been tacitly told it’s okay to kill literally anything that moves onto the runway that doesn’t have wings. Antipersonnel mines, WP grenades, whatever…gloves off as long as the planes can keep taking off. And the resultant media optics will be…bad.
Prediction? C) None of the above – drop in troops, hamstring their ROE, and watch it become BlackHawk Down II: Electric Fubaroo. And blame Trump.
Oh, and there’s now a metric boatload of veterans out there clamoring “What the hell was I over there for in the first place if we’re just gonna roll over like that?”.
Interesting times.
What I want to know is how many F15 and Nukes did they need? Well that and do they have any foe sale?
https://lethallovebirds.com/2021/06/25/f-15s-and-nukes/
“Im not sure why anyone who was capable of leaving on their own would have stayed to the last minute”
Lessons for the future, preaching to the choir. Some people leave. Vast majority will not.
Pro-tip: Buy stock in body bags.
Most natives there couldn’t get 100 miles, let alone out to another country, so the question is academic, except for the international NGO busybodies such failed states attract like flies to a dung pile.
As to the latter, F*** ’em.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
CZ:
What is the problem here?
Afghanis are getting the Government they don’t want but were DETERMINED to not prevent.
They let American idiots give them Billions in military equipment in order to placate the Taliban they expected/wanted to take over.
Handwringing from politicians who are saying how “Shocked” they are about what’s happening now is absolute lies –
They knew what would happen from the minute they decided to run away and hide.
American lives were wasted for years – and our “betters” knew it.
Is there a significant difference between Cowards and Traitors?
Not really.
Afghanis are getting the Government they don’t want but were DETERMINED to not prevent.
Don’t we all?
people don’t get the government they want, they get the one they deserve.
The most entertaining part will be looking to see how many photographers try to replicate the infamous shot of a helicopter evacuating a CIA safe house in Saigon (often mistakenly described as the American embassy roof).
It has been reported that Kabul embassy spent more time preparing for pride week, than assessing and preparing for this tragedy.
I’m sure they’re all current on their tranny-sensitivity training certs.
‘Priorities’, you unna stand.
As I see the video from Afghanistan, I’m perplexed that this could not be foretold.
When you see Afghani men trotting alongside a US cargo plane, ask yourself “where are the women?” There are none. These men fled their families, their wives, children, mothers, so they could flee their country. They won’t fight for their families, how can we think they’d fight for their country? We had 20 years to observe this behavior in them, and either chose to ignore it or failed to see it. Western men are typically “Women and children in the lifeboats first.” Not so here. These men are all AMF-YOYO ( Adios My Friend, You’re On Your Own). The news today is that the Pentagon was surprised that the Afghan army gave up so quickly. Really? You didn’t see this behavior in these men over the past 20 years ? I would do my best to get family to safety, and then remain and fight for a safe place to return them to. I guess they see nothing there worth fighting for.
Failed wars forever borne of flawed strategy. Had the goal been to “go Roman” & level that shit-hole, we could have achieved that. But “no”, we had to “make it into a pluralistic, egalitarian, gender-neutral, 21st century nation-state”.
Failure was guaranteed by November 2001.
The only goals when Bush “the shrub” put us in was force the pipeline(that the Taliban had just rejected and the Chinese just got),and the CIAs’ POPPIES addiction. The MIC 20 year gravy train was just a happy coincidence.
Just think of the death toll if one of these vermin crawling on the plane are suicide bombers. How will Joe Dementia explain that to the families of the crew? Having served in Afghanistan and having lost friends to the Taliban, having family members permanently disabled by Taliban actions, I am shocked, and probably somewhat depressed by what I am seeing. I have long felt it should simply have been a punitive mission. Go in, wreak havoc until they gave us bin Laden, and get out. You cannot build a civilized nation out of a land of savages.
Bingo….
Why waste lives and treasure ?
They tried to give us BinLaden (was in Kabul jail awaiting pickup) but that didn’t give the desired result.
When the US went into these countries 20 years ago, I said to my wife that we’d never get out of there. If we tried to leave, the countries would implode. Any other option would involve keeping troops there forever. Sometimes I HATE being right…
…We didn’t just lose Afghanistan today… We lost the world…
The good thing about the Afghanistan debacle: If you squint your eyes a bit, you can see an exit plan for us being the world’s cop.
Biden might well go down in history as making one of the worst foreign
policy decisions in the history of the US, but perhaps we can seize
this opportunity to focus on better activities than stripping our
citizens of their wealth and young soldiers and sending them overseas.
Kurt
Unfortunately true. Trouble is, if you’re not the world’s cop, you’re under the thumb of the world’s cop. How’s your Chinese-as-a-second-language coming along?…
Behind every blade of grass…
Kurt
No one is the world’s cop.
100% failure rate, since Day One of Ever.
This is just Reason #6,824 of Why You Shouldn’t Apply For That Job.
The machine comes home to be turned inward.
Utopia here we come.
Perpetual War, to keep the warpigs rolling in dough. Looking at you Haliburton (Dick Cheney made loads).
LBJ reportedly once told the warpigs like Boeing, McDonnel Douglas, Allied Chemical, etc. ‘…you boys help me get re-elected and I’ll keep the war going in Vietnam…’
I knew it was going to be bad when the Russians pulled the plug in Afghanistan after ten years.
Hope they saved dat purdy rainbow flag….
I just got an email from the VA yesterday letting veterans know about all the mental health choices available to them if they are having doubts about their service in Afghanistan because of the debacle over there.
It came with a list of questions veterans might be asking themselves . How the visuals from Afghanistan could trigger their PTSD and make them question the value of their time over there.
Yeah; I got that one too…
If Taiwan 🇹🇼 had any doubts, this should settle it!!! CCP is coming!!!
Jimmy:
Taiwan has no doubts.
Honest Americans have no doubts.
The free world has no doubts.
So-called “Intelligence Services” can’t see it…
Because politicians don’t want to know!
Ceejay
Roger that!!!!
This is the second evacuation the US has run in the ME – there was the evacuation from Tehran, in the late 70’s.
That was a well run operation.
I can think of 54 guys who might argue the efficacy of the evacuation.
NurseDaddy,
I took it he was mocking the fact that is was a failure as well, not high lighting it as a success.
Here in the UK some of us have been asking for year, ‘How come all the boats with the “refugees” are 90% young men of a military age? Why are there not more Women, Children and Old people?’.
In WW2 the young French men who ran away from the NAZIs got training and guns then went to fight back.
You just know it’s not a good group when a Brit says the French are far supra and brave people.
Sorry years
Yet another way to import “refugees” who will later on become congressmen who hate America…
Tom:
Isn’t THAT the fault of those who elect them to Congress?
We need to ask why those voters hate America…
Ceejay