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So the VA reaching out to veterans who may be distressed over current events is a joke to you? If you’ve been around for a while, I’d be willing to bet you’ve lost at least one or two squadron mates to suicide. If you’re new and you haven’t, steel yourself because you very likely will. Personally, I’ve seen my fair share, including a couple of friends for whom I never would’ve thought that would be an option. I’m all for ANYONE who reaches out & promotes veterans’ mental health.

As I read in a well written piece by a former MARSOC operator, "We weren't in Afghanistan for 20 years. We were in Afghanistan 20 times for 1 year."

They have had 7+ months to execute some form of operation that didn't result in the optics that occured the last couple of days. Regardless of what "deal" they were "stuck" with, the last two days didn't have to go down the way they did. He and the rest of the DOS/DOD own that at a minimum.

Via reddit. Source unknown.

I mostly agree, but I do think the pentagon needs to come to terms that it shares some of the blame here. We’ve rotated so much leadership through the AOR over the years it’s no wonder that continuity of purpose has been virtually non existent. I can remember the expeditionary WG/CC on my first deployment giving a hung-ho pep talk to us about how we were the tip of the spear & truly making a difference. Over the years, I deployed to the same location, listened to the same speech given by new leadership, stayed in the same Qs, ate the same food, flew the same jets in the same airspace against the same enemy. A decade later, several WG/CCs had cycled through, we called the enemy by a different name even though we were fighting the same people, and that pep talk had barely changed. It was clear that everybody just wanted to get through their deployment and back to life. Progress didn’t matter. We were running in place. Biding our time. Nothing was ever going to change appreciably. Senior military leadership failed to internalize the lesson of Vietnam. In their own careerist pursuits, they yielded to clueless civilian leadership that insisted on committing troops without a clearly defined end goal/exit strategy. I hope our military can take a hard internal look after this debacle. Twice now we have suffered the pain and humiliation of walking away from hugely costly conflicts with little to nothing to show for it except broken human beings. The small number of patriots who volunteer to serve this country should have the assurance that their toil and sacrifice will not be wasted. The responsibility for that assurance lies with senior pentagon leaders & they failed spectacularly this time around.

Amen, I was pleasantly surprised to get the Email form the VA yesterday, I am glad someone is at least trying. In all honesty I have struggled to find meaning with the sights and ensuing chaos caused by our hasty departure, it is painful to watch. I would imagine there are others who need to process and I am glad they are not alone.

Fuck that guy. Maybe less time pushing Marxist ideology on the military and acting like you are the HMFIC/CJCS.

The US needs to retake the narrative here. We didn't let Afghanistan down. Afghanistan let us down by taking 20 years of commitment and throwing it down the toilet. Repaint this. Taiwan knows they can get our support for 20 years even if they half ass their job as a partner. That's a pretty solid commitment.

Here ya go What Just Happened?

Now seeking investors for my aftermarket Toyota Hilux parts production startup.

"In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/afghanistan-your-fault/619769/ Of all the things the American public and our elected leaders in Congress regularly pontificate about, the discussion about one of our most fundamental and somber duties, the ability to wage war, is rarely debated. In the past week its now on the forefront of the American mind, as if the Afghanistan conflict suddenly arose out of thin air. The American public argues about mundane and irrelevant issues, and expects a Congressional inquiry into everything from steroids in the MLB (2004's hotbutton issue which had more time on the House floor than GWOT) to who can use what bathroom. If only we maintained some semblance of "limited but well defined" in our federal government we'd have the attention span to discuss the more important issues while leaving irrelevant ones to individuals, or at least to the state gov's. I usually hate the idea of raising taxes to fund central govt, but the concept of a wartime tax, as an additional line item on every tax paying American's weekly pay deduction (to include Social Security and welfare benefits) might possibly be enough to remind them there is a conflict being waged somewhere on their behalf. Ideally people would engage with their elected leaders and hold them to their Constitutional duties to declare war (Art 1 Sec-8 ) while holding the executive accountable (War Powers Act) but that might be asking a bit much. Maybe a 1% War Tax as a fiscal constraint, would translate into moral inquiry or social responsibility. As was said ~15 years ago, "America is not at war, America is at the mall" (exception to those serving or having a loved one in the military). That quote remains true today, although Id update to reflect the decline of shopping malls in favor of online shopping... The growth of the Executive Branch and an impotent Legislature, combined with an indifferent public is not only bad for National Security policy but governance in general. That, and the Fed's ability to print money/buy up debts doesnt help.

Any one of those unhappy senior military leaders could have pulled a "Ron Foggleman" and exited.

A lot of people placing blame on senior military leaders who’ve commanded in the last two decades. There are always things to bitch about in war, but my perspective was always that our civilian leadership was to blame. Tried to straddle the middle ground which muddied the waters and then emplaced overly restrictive ROEs further cheapening efforts.

Huh. China recognizes the name “Taiwan” and equates themselves with the Taliban all in one post. Thought their propagandists would be smarter. Also, you bet your ass I’m going to war over China attempting to take Taiwan. The PRC are a bunch of fucks and they need to keep that shit in China.

In several threads there have been a lot of discussions about cost. Labeling everything in Afghanistan a waste is a bit myopic and that thought pattern enjoys the view of knowing the outcome. In the context of the days after 9/11 we were going to do something and I doubt standing outside and launching a few airstrikes into Afghanistan would have met the will of the American People. Perhaps more appropriate to discuss if we should have left sooner rather than continue to nation build. Maybe shortly after we killed Bin Laden? Regardless, it will be interesting to watch the "economics" now. Terrorism will again flourish in Afghanistan and will most certainly be exported to other areas, hopefully not the U.S. homeland. Will we ramp up our ISR and episodically pitching Tomahawks, Hellfires and PGMs or will we walk away all together and let chaos reign in the region? I have yet to hear a wise word spoken by Milley...perhaps (I hope), he pushed back in private?

I wonder if the Taliban is training their pilots with VR headsets...

The aircrew will be fine. I hope they will also be fine mentally and remember that they got it done in the craziest conditions possible. They were in an absolutely impossible situation and got the jet home safe along with way more rescued people than anyone could have ever reasonably expected. Pretty sure it isn't aircrews job to establish a security perimeter around the airplane during a literal apocalyptic fall of a country. And at the end of it all they will have the craziest airline interview answer for "tell me about a time when you.."

Investigating the heroes who went deep into the shit on the inverse of “Night 1” would be like not offering a bonus to a bunch of AF wide body, multi-engine jet pilots during a pre-emergent airline hiring boom who already probably leaning out the door. Wait, shit…

“The Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country…” - Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 21, 2021.

I’ve always enjoyed making jokes about C-17s landing at wrong airports, or not putting their gear down. But the fact that a crew took off with 800 passengers, and I heard others did that same with numbers in the 600’s is truly heroic stuff. You are all a credit to America, and the USAF, your actions represent the best of us. I can’t even begin to imagine the chaos, and literal life and death decisions you were forced to make. Thank you, and well done! But that doesn’t begin to describe the accolades you deserve. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Just because it's no one's fault doesn't mean no one is responsible. If you lose a war, maybe we don't want you in charge of fighting the next one.

Let's be honest. This end-state for AFG was inevitable and was/is/has been a foregone conclusion. The notion that we were going to install a democracy there was absurd from day one. Period. Root cause = we defined success to be an unachievable goal from "go" - hence failure. It really is that simple. It's not Biden's fault we lost. It's not Trump's fault we lost. It's not Obama's fault we lost. It is Biden's fault we are losing in such an embarrassingly avoidable manner, however. That *is* his fault. We should be losing more gracefully.

For being the guy in the chair when the music stopped? Not sure I agree.

Some interesting takes on this forum. I’ll pitch in to the fight, not that what I think matters one bit. Most of you are younger than me, most of you have known nothing but a career of war, many of you are sick of the endless deployments and time away from your family. I get that, but I hope as military professionals your optic is not solely at the tactical level and how it impacts just you. As an O-6 I was often asked to speak at Weapons School and other leadership forums. I used to ask the audience how long they had been serving and the duration of this conflict came home when a "kid" in the audience told me he was in second grade when 9/11 happened. The past almost 20 years in Afghanistan will be dissected for centuries to come. Historians will write papers on every detail from the initial invasion to the chaos as we ran away in the middle of the night. For some of you (and for me), there will be deep feelings about what has happened and the way it went down. In reflection there are numerous questions to ask; Should be have been in Afghanistan in the first place, was our strategy correct, what did we do right, what did we do wrong, why did we leave the way we did. There will be endless debate on each point, there will be no right or wrong answers. As I watch these events, I’ve tried to look back on the last 20 years remembering the context of the situation at the time decisions were made rather than be jaundice by knowing the outcome. The first question is should we have been there. Put aside the patriot surge of emotions and quest for vengeance after 9/11, there was a logical reason to go into Afghanistan. Horrible people set up terror camps to training in Afghanistan and attack us at home. Perhaps we could have sat back and tried to bomb them into oblivion, but given the context of the day that wasn’t going to happen. The vast majority of this country wanted to invade Afghanistan...not because of fake or not fake WMD but because that was where the bad guys who attacked us were...(yes there is much that is still being covered up about the part the Saudis played). Was our strategy correct? I believe in American Excellence. As messed up as we are at times we still serve as a shining beacon for the rest of the world. That being said, not everyone wants democracy and we can’t seem to accept them some people don’t want to do the hard world that it takes to be free and live a life of self-determination. We put PRTs all over the place and tried to build schools and wells, but we rotated people in and out and changed our strategy with each new administration and each new commander. We build outposts of presence in places like the Korengal Valley, begging the Taliban to come fight then tore it down and moved away like it never mattered we were there. We build them most advanced CAS stack in the world and became highly efficient at killing bad guy in close proximity to friendly forces. We built an RPA enterprise that existed to hunt and kill bad people. We patrolled villages and met with elders to assure them we were there to help and for the duration. We did all of these things and so much more and yet we still lost. Should we have left, in my opinion no. I am sure that will anger some but at least listen to my reasoning. For the last 20 years we have had relative peace at home…why is that? Has our protection at the border been that much better than it was on 9/11? There is my opinion a very simple answer and a Machiavellian strategy that we successfully employed in Afghanistan…simply put…we fought them there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here. Afghanistan (and Iraq…and Syria), was the flame to which the evil moths were drawn. The enemy sought to defeat the Americans on the battlefield, wear them down, end their imperial invasion. Whether it was to establish a caliphate, protect ancient lands or to fight on their terms, they ran to the sound of our guns. You know when folks in that part of the world watch Star Wars, we are the empire. Our strategy was rooted in a grand strategy used in World War One…bleed them dry. At horrific battle sites like Verdun the point was never to take territory or advance the front, it was simply to kill as many of on the other side as possible. In fact, the strategy was summed up in a common phrase of the day, Bleed them white.” I would argue it worked. The 2312 Americans who died in Afghanistan bought us 20 years of relative peace at home. In grand strategy terms, a small price to pay. Now that the flame has gone out in Afghanistan we should ask some very important questions and I don’t think we will like the answers. Do you think peace is going to break out?...no more deployments…all is going to be great…candy canes and unicorns right? Are they (and others), emboldened to come after us now that they defeated us over there? What is our standing in the world community? We literally ran away in the middle of the night. Will anyone ever trust us again? We abandoned them, anyone who ever helped us will most certainly pay a horrible price, what lesson did that teach the rest of the world. I crossed that fence 179 times and if I close my eyes I can still hear the sounds, I can smell the cordite, I can hear the voices on the radio, I can hear the guns firing and I can still see the sights 20 years later. Afghanistan will be with me until I die, it is the same for many of you. Whatever your views I pray that each and every one of you who set foot in the country or flew missions over it will find perspective and peace. Afghanistan, where all great empires go to die.

As one commenter on a TPN thread stated (before some weak dick [facebook?] mod turned off comments)...."do I have safety privilege? If not, no comment."

Given that news, it makes PERFECT sense now. If I was a C-17 pilot, I too would be reluctant to put my gear down because the possibility of having to subsequently raise it and entrap some coward running away from his country may get trapped in it. Too soon?

If you needed 20 years to figure out that you could hit an asshole riding on a dirtbike without taking down a building by firing a laser guided rocket from a high-end fighter…sure… but we used 20 years times 36-69 constant caps of our high end assets on the range that are now tired and have no service life left with no viable replacement. Yuuuuge. Net. Loss. Edit: unless you’re a defense contractor [emoji385]

I don’t fault the military personalities who were given the bullshit task from on high. Most, in my opinion, were superb leaders but forced to feed poop sandwiches with PB&J labels on them. The military doesn’t decide when we go to war, but we definitely ought to have the right to decide how and where we do it. Senior military officials were given the keys to a Ferrari and told that it couldn’t be started and must be pushed everywhere. Final point: mission creep and the lack of a military objective. Not enough of one, and plenty of the other.

I've been thinking a lot about my friends on Independence 08 the last few days.

What AFG needs is a bunch of remote controlled blimps with .50 cals and sensors attached to them. We can float them there for about 1000 years and just snipe Taliban and AQ from 15-20K feet. I bet we could get the cost of a terrorist down to about $1 - $2 USD. We could even make a new AFSC for it and give big puffy wings to the operators. Also, *announce* that we don't care about their government or their values. We're just there to kick ass, permanently. Don't saddle victory with any unachievable goals (schools, muh rights, "governing"). We need to look at this a long term tax we have to pay to keep the primitive world at bay. Let it develop on its own timeline and via its own accord.

If not already mentioned, C17 landing gear is the last large aircraft gear I would attempt take a ride and survive on. Turn, twist, fold, retract, etc. Not good odds even for me having flown her for well over a decade out of Afghanistan alone. It’s just a mess…

It's not even close to any limit. I'd put the average weight at 175 max. 670 pax. Flew a flight into Bastion that was ramp to lav boxes of 40mm grenades.

having been through the AMC wringer, I refuse to believe leadership is that absurd.

RUMINT only at this point but the C-17 crew is not getting DFC's...instead they are getting investigated for the two civilian deaths that fell off the aircraft.

I would wager that they have the capacity. They lack the will.

We can always impeach Orange Man again! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

SECDEF/JCS/SECSTATE need to resign or be fucking fired SOMEONE needs to be held accountable for this shit show

Woke up this morning to videos of people falling off of C-17s mid-flight (after hanging onto the outside of the aircraft no less). I am literally speechless after seeing that. I've been to AFG a couple of times (with one tour on the USFOR-A staff) ... I understand how difficult it is to plan anything over there. Based upon the news/images/videos coming out of AFG it almost appears as if we totally assumed away our force protection and left that for the AFG government to handle. What does it say about the plan when POTUS has to get involved and order troops back into country to provide security? Somebody should be held accountable ... agree that they probably won't. The "beautiful people" will receive their Legions of Merit while the troops on the ground (pilots, SOF, Marines, etc.) are forced to execute this completely feckless plan.

You know I’d Trump had been in Maralago during something like this the media wouldn’t have shut up about it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As a total REMF who could recite the AUAB DFAC menu back in the day, I've always felt a little unworthy speaking up about AFG. I've barely set foot there, and never outside Bagram. So I respectfully defer to all those who genuinely expended their blood, sweat and tears for years in that God-forsaken landscape trying to train the locals and make something out of nothing. I have a hard time believing, however, that somewhere, somehow, there wasn't a better COA than this. I want to believe that with approx 10K troops and a few fighter squadrons, we could have held Kabul/Bagram and a few cities in perpetuity as a sanctuary for those who didn't want to live under these lunatics, especially the women. Yeah, being there forever sucks, and it's expensive, but there's a lot to be said for having a huge spec ops footprint right there in the belly of the beast. I guess if the Taliban realized we didn't intend to leave, however, the last few years would have looked a lot different.

It's how the music stopped...we left a tape recorder playing, gathered our instruments and slipped off the stage thinking no one would notice. Absolute chaos!

The end result was never going to change no matter who was in charge. im talking about this cluster f of getting our people out. He’s jcs chairman he’s responsible. And if the civilian leadership didn’t listen to his advice he should have resigned in protest.

All I know is that I keep seeing videos that have thousands of military aged males in Afghanistan who should pick up a f****ng gun and actually fight for their country and families.

The 2312 number is contentious. It doesn't include contractors or combat related suicides (which are almost 10 times the number of casualties), but for the sake of argument we'll go with 2312. I could be convinced that those numbers of casualties are worth it, if that was it. But in addition to those deaths, do you also think it was worth the $2,260,000,000,000 dollars and twenty lost years of military modernization in reference to actual peer power competitors i.e. China/Russia? https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military/killed https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/oct/27/donald-trump/did-us-spend-6-trillion-middle-east-wars/ The PLA alone has already caught up, in unclassified reports, in Ships, Missiles, and Air Defenses, among more. In many Rand studies, we have lost significant ground in dozens of areas that we had a significant advantage in only 20 years ago. https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB9800/RB9858z1/RAND_RB9858z1.pdf For reference, with $2.26T, we could have bought an entire new additional fighter platform fleet analogous to the F-35 from cradle to grave, lasting until 2070 (including development/test/operations/sustainment). https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2021-06-01/The-F-35-Joint-Strike-Fighter-the-costliest-weapon-system-in-US-military-history-now-faces-pushback-in-Congress-1618847.html You could have bought over 17 entire carrier battle groups + air wings + personnel and operated them literally every day for 50 years. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA575866.pdf You could have modernized to actually fight against the IADS, the J-20, chinese satellites, the cyber threats, anti-ship missiles, etc. We could have technologies that are relevant to peer competition. We could have replaced the E-3, the A-10, the B-52, the F-16, the EC-130, the RC-135, the AC-130, the MQ-9, the B-1, etc. The army could have upgraded the patriot. The marines and army could have developed modernized fires systems. You could have modernized our outdated nuclear triad. We could have developed hypersonics on parity with our competitors. https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-hypersonic-missiles-methods-and-motives/ But instead we decided to try to wipe out an ideology that killed 3000 American civilians. And it didn't just stop with Afghanistan - it brought us to Iraq and Syria. I have to admit, some of those sorties seemed deeply satisfying to me, at first. It felt like I was making a difference. But every year that I was there, I realized more and more that we were getting nothing done. One poignant example was fencing in to fight a faction that, only a few years ago, I was defending. That wasn't just a single event, either. If that's not an operational/strategic miscalculation, I don't know what is. I can agree with some folks on here that want to point out that we were successful tactically and operationally. Some really smart tacticians/operations commanders did a good job of fighting a conventional war against an unconventional combatant. But to say we had any clear strategic or grand strategy victories in the middle east is a huge stretch. FFS, we let Russia invade Crimea, and we pretended like it didn't happen. In the end in the middle east, we didn't just give away the 7000+ uniformed deaths, the 8000+ contractor deaths, and the 30000+ military suicides after coming back home. We gave away an unfathomable amount of money, our advantage in the future fight, and a huge portion of our strategic influence. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military/killed

I hear ya but they’ve got different goals Them - Acquire wealth and power without giving a shit about anything else or how Us - Fix everything and make everyone nice immediately We’re kinda at a disadvantage Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What’s happening now, is the unavoidable outcome unless we choose to occupy Afghanistan forever. You can’t force “American freedom” on a population who’s unable/unwilling to accept it. It’s unfortunate how quickly this country will revert to Taliban rule; but this isn’t Biden’s fault. It would have happened regardless of the sitting POTUS after a US withdraw. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Complementary Soviet sub outfit too. One ping only Vasily, we're starting our descent to FCO.... 😄