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Please no one quote that whole thing.

In an alternate reality: 1. Pull all Americans, and truly loyal-to-US Afghans (terps and their families, etc.), to Bagram/Kandahar/maybe Kabul 2. Evac all of those people in an organized fashion 3. Maintain offensive/defensive ops during step 1-2 4. Pull out ground troops except for those required for defensive ops of air bases (namely BAF and KAF) 5. Keep air for a while longer to destroy as much critical materiel left behind as possible, with a measurable amount destroyed end state, NTE 90 days post step 4. Kill Taliban targets of opportunity when able. 6. Pull out remaining personnel involved with step 5. I mean, it’s not that fucking hard. Copy lots of details in the background, but pretty sensible big pic plan, probably executed over a course of 4-6 months. Instead we got step 1: pull military out, step 2: Ummm, the thing, you know… step 3: Panic, send 5k back to AFG, step 4: we’ll get you out, maybe…if you made it to Kabul, if not, good luck! Fucking ludicrous…I’m pissed, and every sensible person on the planet should be as well.

Come on Man... First and foremost Trump promised to maintain U.S. Air support for the Afghans...Biden took it away. We all know our airpower was holding things in place. How do you think this would have gone down had we kept airstrikes in support of the Afghan Army in place...please answer honestly. I seriously doubt the Taliban would have won in 11 days with airpower hitting them. We most certainly would have had more time. Members of Trump's National Security team have come forward to say he was bluffing and it was part of his plan...not sure I buy that, Trump wanted us out but I don't think it would have gone down like this. Also, didn't Trump slip his initial date? Biden straight up admitted that he made the decision to do it this way. He has been wrong on EVERY foreign policy decision he has ever been associated with and this is the apex of his absolute stupidity. Look at him attempt to answer questions...utterly embarrassing as he "stands by his decision."

The French and Germans are conducting operations outside the Taliban check points to retrieve their citizens but we are not. I get it, Trump was a narcissistic asshole but this is what you wanted?

That's not what Gen Petraeus thinks: David Petraeus Reflects on the Afghan Debacle He offers unsparing words about Trump and Biden, a defense of nation-building, and he says U.S. soldiers may have to re-enter Kabul in force to rescue Americans. By Tunku Varadarajan Aug. 20, 2021 6:18 pm ET As Americans despair over the Afghanistan catastrophe, few have more cause to take it personally than retired Gen. David Petraeus. Not only was he commander of U.S. and allied forces there for 13 months in 2010-11; his son and daughter-in-law both served there in the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade. That involved an additional measure of personal sacrifice: During his command, he didn’t see his son to avoid making a target of the young man’s unit. In a Zoom interview, I ask Mr. Petraeus, 68, what effect the ignominious withdrawal will have on military morale. He chooses his words carefully without masking his indignation. “I think—particularly for those who served there—that it is very sad,” he says. “It is heartbreaking. It is tragic. And I think it is disastrous.” He asks: “Is American national security better now than it was four months ago?” Then he answers indirectly: “It’s a tough answer to arrive at if folks have given 20 years of service and sacrifice.” The general hastens to add, however, that “this is not the post-Vietnam military; there is no hollow Army.” He says what every American fighting man is inclined to say, “that this is best-equipped, best-trained, most combat-experienced military by far in the world.” It isn’t the Army he joined “as a very young lieutenant” in 1974. “That was a very different Army. That was an undisciplined Army.” He was “very fortunate” to go to an airborne battalion combat team in Italy that was “very elite, and everybody else wanted to go to.” But when he and his fellow officers would “go up to Germany at that time, the indiscipline was just stunning.” And “the racial issues were draining.” Mr. Petraeus sounds pained when comparing “the reality we had” before the pullout to the new status quo. He valued—even cherished—the fallen Afghan government. “However imperfect that government was, however flawed, however many its maddening shortcomings and corrupt activities,” he says, its leaders were “great partners” in ensuring that al Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups couldn’t re-establish the kind of sanctuary that al Qaeda had under the Taliban before 9/11. Yet he suggests the Taliban are so constrained that they may end up being less difficult to deal with than many Americans fear. Minutes before our interview, he says, he told Tony Blair : “The Taliban may discover that just like a political party, sometimes it’s easier to be an opposition than it is to actually govern.” The former British prime minister “just chuckled,” Mr. Petraeus says, declining to elaborate on Mr. Blair’s reaction. “I’m a loyal man,” he says. “Blair was my wartime prime minister.” An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens remained in Afghanistan at the time of the pullout, and the most urgent priority is to ensure the evacuation of all who wish to leave, as well as the safe passage of the 18,000 Afghan battlefield interpreters—“we call them ‘terps’ ”—and their families, who face mortal peril from the Taliban. The latter “is a very big deal, a real moral obligation which we have not met in three consecutive administrations.” The U.S. has to “continue to pressure the Taliban to enable these individuals to move to Kabul airport right now.” He is certain that the U.S. military is “examining various possible courses of action, where you go into the city—very visibly, and with very substantial capacity—and you may have to go get some of these people.” “Does the U.S. have leverage with the Taliban?” he asks. “It has enormous leverage, and the Taliban is very familiar with it.” They’ve been “on the receiving end of our leverage. That’s our military power.” We don’t want to use it, Mr. Petraeus emphasizes. “But I don’t think they want to provoke us into a position of having to use our military power against them, given that they have experienced this on innumerable occasions, most of which have ended very badly for them.” Thus, he thinks the Taliban won’t want to jeopardize their control of the country by taking hostages. “They’ve achieved what they set out to accomplish,” he says. “They control probably more of the country now than they did prior to 9/11.” As for the challenges of governing, “I assume they have to be painfully aware that they face an enormous budget deficit.” Not only have Afghan assets been frozen and Western aid withdrawn, but the “big-spending Western organizations, nonprofits, and embassies that were really a part of the ecosystem of Kabul and the major cities around Afghanistan, are gone too,” as are many Afghan entrepreneurs. The Afghan government budget is “roughly $18 billion a year,” Mr. Petraeus says. The government “might generate $2 billion in customs duties, some taxes, and so forth,” he says—and that’s “in a good year—a really good year.” They’ll supplement that with drug money, he says, but that won’t be enough. The economy is “clearly going to tank for a period of time.” The Taliban will have to pay salaries, import fuel to keep generators going, provide basic services, and repair damaged infrastructure. That’s “a pretty tall order” in itself, Mr. Petraeus says, “and they’re about to get acquainted with the reality of governing a country that generates at most one-tenth of what it needs to meet its fiscal obligations.” What happens “when they just flat run out of money and the lights go out?” Perhaps a bailout from Beijing, which has appeared to embrace the new regime in Kabul and is on the verge formally recognizing it? Mr. Petraeus says that he is “fully cognizant of the possibility that China is standing ready to try to exploit the $2 trillion or so in mineral wealth in Afghanistan,” including copper, iron, lithium and rare-earth metals. The Chinese may have an easier time than they’ve had, since they won’t have the Taliban shooting at them as happened at the Mes Aynak copper deposits, 25 miles southeast of Kabul, where the Afghan government awarded a concession to two Chinese state-owned companies in 2008. The Taliban “was shooting rockets and mortars” at Chinese operations, which eventually shut down. After the Taliban retook power, the China Metallurgical Group Corp. said it would resume mining. Besides, there are limits to what the Chinese can—and will—do. Beijing will invest in Afghanistan, says Gen. Petraeus, and “that’ll help. But keep in mind that the normal way that China goes in and does this is to bring in Chinese workers, Chinese construction materials, Chinese design . . . even Chinese food!” In any case, he adds, it will take a long time to establish the extractive industries from which the Taliban could derive revenue. On Monday President Biden blamed Afghans for the Taliban’s quick victory. “The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” the president said. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” Mr. Petraeus bridles at such criticism. “Their soldiers fought and died in very substantial numbers,” he says with the protective indignation of a fellow soldier who fought alongside them. “It’s way over 60,000 dead. Roughly 27 times as many Afghans died fighting for their country as did Americans.” He points out that it’s been 18 months since the last U.S. combat death in the country. He’s critical of Mr. Biden’s predecessor as well, calling the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban “disastrous.” The U.S. “conveyed that we wanted to leave, and we thought we could get something from the Taliban in return for our leaving—which, of course, didn’t work out.” The agreement that was struck, “negotiated without the democratically elected government of Afghanistan at the table,” provided that the government would release more than 5,000 Taliban-affiliated detainees. Most went back to the battlefield. He rejects the view that—as he sums it up—“it all went wrong when we started to nation-build.” He notes that the U.S. and its allies had 150,000 troops in the country at the height of the war, a figure that had dwindled to a few thousand “until about four months ago.” That was accomplished by “transitioning security tasks” to the Afghans. Doing so required efforts of the sort that critics deride as nation-building. Unlike in Iraq, where literacy levels are high, the coalition in Afghanistan had to teach remedial skills “before we could do basic training for the future Afghan soldiers and police. Because if you can’t read numbers, how do you get someone to be on the lookout for license plates on cars? If you can’t read an instruction manual, if you can’t add and subtract, you’ve got serious problems.” If you don’t do nation-building, “to whom do you hand off tasks that you’re performing when you topple a government and are in charge of the country?” At the same time, Pakistan was a major headache for the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. Mr. Petraeus recalls a September 2005 briefing with Donald Rumsfeld, in which Gen. Petraeus stressed to the defense secretary that “Afghanistan does not equal Iraq.” In Afghanistan, “the enemy’s headquarters were outside the country and beyond our reach.” Only occasionally was the U.S. able to strike in Pakistan, such as the 2011 raid against Osama bin Laden and the 2016 killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, Mullah Omar’s successor as head of the Taliban, who was targeted by a drone in Balochistan. Efforts to press Islamabad were complicated: “Pakistan could shut down the ground lines of communication, and we were conscious of that,” Mr. Petraeus says. “We needed them to allow that to continue, for us to go to and from Afghanistan.” Afghanistan is landlocked, with Iran to its west, and “you can’t fly everything in and out of a country when you’ve got 150,000 troops on the ground.” Mr. Petraeus is adamant that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was “sustainable,” and he expresses consternation that Mr. Biden felt compelled to follow through on a pullout to which Mr. Trump agreed. “Why did we just get so impatient that we didn’t appreciate that you can’t take a country from the seventh century—which is where it was under Taliban rule, when we toppled them—to the 21st century, in 20 years or less?” He observes that the new administration quickly reversed Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords. “There has seemed to be no compulsion to continue all that Trump had decided to do, but here, in Afghanistan, we followed through.” What lessons should friends and foes draw from the Great American Pullout? “I don’t think you can dispute that the outcome here is a blow in some fashion to our reputation and credibility,” Mr. Petraeus says. “I think you have to be forthright and acknowledge that.” The U.S. has to “begin immediately to shore up that credibility and that reputation.” Should someone in government be compelled to resign over the Afghan debacle? Again Mr. Petraeus chooses his words with care: “Without knowing who said what to whom and when, it’s impossible to answer that question. What I will say is, there is a long history in Washington and other national capitals of describing an undesirable policy outcome as intelligence failure, and we have to be keenly aware of that at present, clearly.” When I ask Mr. Petraeus—who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after retiring from the military in 2011—to elaborate, he says: “I think it’s very clear what I just said.” Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute. WSJ:

Nice. Of course, we could have 10,000 B-1 bombers dropping 1,000,000 GBU-39s, and our political class would still lose the war to a psychotic band of illiterate, fanatical goat herders.

I found another one that should resign! If this information is true (never can tell these days) then the CG of the 82nd Airborne Division should apologize to America and resign. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/us-general-tells-british-special-forces-stop-rescuing-people-in-kabul-youre-making-us-look-bad From the article: "...the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter." "...the British officer firmly rejected the request." God save the Queen!

So I just got my forth COVID shot (2x Moderna through the military, 1x J&J, and just threw in 1xPfizer for the hell of it at the local Walgreens). No adverse side effects, got some extra solid gainz at the gym this morning, and honestly feel great. As an added bonus, my phone is currently crushing it on 6G.

That’s not it.

Elections have consequences. “The buck stops with me.” Can’t forget the spineless generals and secretaries of defense/state and heads of CIA who allowed this plan to proceed either. They have some culpability as well. Heads need to roll. Lots of them.

We have become a joke on the world stage.

We are learning the hard way what happens when you elect modern democrat politicians. I hope and pray that America wakes up and votes these people out of office starting with the next midterms.

Until the clock runs out or we run out of capability? THIS IS AMERICA GODDAMNIT. Stop being such fucking losers, wtf. Now that we don’t have to pretend with the GIRoA anymore, start acting like a superpower is supposed to act.

It makes us sick but have to say they are pretty clever (if it isn't photo shopped) with their "Take that America (Biden)!"

Mujahideen requesting help! The cycle starts over.

I also wonder what their NVG capability is now.

Especially when I think of the ass pain that went into the investigation when ONE ACOG went missing from the arms room several years back. Wonder if the Taliban will sell any cheap on E-Bay

The Brits and Canadians are as well. We are the only country that is not so far as I hear.

It’s almost like the ATO is classified for a reason.

Nothing political, just a first hand reflection of a linguist who spent a lot of time listening to the Taliban during fights. What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

“The modern National Security Council, for example, created by Henry Kissinger, had no more than 50 people. It stayed around that level for most of the 20th century, though even so, by 2000 it had crept up to about 100. In the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, it doubled again. Under Barack Obama, it doubled yet again. Donald Trump shrunk it some, but President Biden has brought it back to more than 350, with lots of deputies, layers and complexity.” “New York University scholar Paul Light says that the top five tiers of the Pentagon have gone from 363 people in 1998 to 870 in 2020. At the assistant secretary level alone, the numbers have gone from 193 to 629. There are now 33 layers of bureaucracy at the top of the Defense Department.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/heres-why-us-national-security-apparatus-keeps-producing-failures/

You're mistaking incompetency for conspiracy

Except trump actually got stuff done. Not really sure what ole AK has done.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/military-doesn-t-have-capability-to-rescue-americans-who-cannot-get-to-kabul-airport-118991941602 “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people” - Sec Def We are definitely no longer the nation that won World War II, accomplished the Berlin Airlift, and put men on the moon. We can’t even get everyone successfully home from a conflict we lost. We still have individuals in this country that are capable of those feats, but not a single one of them resides in our leadership class anymore.

What the hell is he doing? He keeps attacking a significant portion of his base. LOL. If he’s intentionally trying to end his career, good for him.

I should have typed my OP in sarcasm font, that’s my b.

That video is tough to watch. I’m guessing he key’d the mic accidentally in the final panic. It will be interesting to see what the investigation yields. It kind of looked like a mini version of the 747 crash from Afghanistan a few years back. Maybe some sort of load shift, control failure, or leaving a control lock on? I have a hard time believing a pilot of his experience and skill let a perfectly good airplane get into that nose attitude on takeoff.

Damn, that’s a tough watch. Reminded me of that C-130J out of JBAD a few years back. Heartbreaking stuff.

Is there some far-right website where these are collected, or do you just have a whole folder of these memes and infographics on your computer?

It's hilarious that he has gone to great lengths to position himself as an anti Trump Republican, yet he is acting EXACTLY like Trump, right down to the moronic Twitter posts. I'm not sure who on this guys staff is telling him this is the right approach. I guess more likely is he's not listening to anyone.

I’ll bite. Agree the situation has been handled poorly. I seriously doubt the Trump admin would’ve done any better (I’m sure many here will disagree). The pentagon attempted to slow roll Trump when he decided on a complete withdrawal & they used the same strategy with Biden. When he insisted (as Trump in all likelihood would have as well), senior military leadership was obviously ill prepared to carry out the order. Pandemonium has ensued. The only likely difference is that CJCS would likely have been fired by now under Trump which is a move I didn’t support at first, but I have to admit it’s not a good look for the Biden admin to continue this debacle without demanding accountability from the Pentagon.