Same bullshit argument that was used to eccuse our defeat in Vietnam. We lost there, we lost in Afghanistan. Blaming it on the ARVN and the Afgan armies excuses the blatant incompetence by those who were in command of the U.S. forces. The dopes at the Pentagon who are nothing more than politicians in a uniform, along with the buffoons in congress, all who are wanna be generals are responsible for this defeat. These worthless fucks couldn't plan a successful Sunday brunch. They blew it, we lost again, and we'll keep losing so long as we have lions lead by lambs.
Afghanistan covers 250,000 square miles, has 32,000,000 people, and had a well equipped army of 300,000. Look at this: Are you telling me this was all coordinated without phones or other digital means? BS. Our NSA and NRO knew exactly what was going on here. There's no friggin' way they didn't. In defense of Biden... I honestly think he wasn't told. Why? I have no idea. But there's people out there that knew this was coming and they also knew the stakes. Of that I am 1000% sure. ....Why? Why wasn't our President properly briefed? And tbh, I don't think Milley was either.
Austin and Milley are weasels. They compounded their disgrace by lying about their incompetence in the news briefings. For them to carry on at length about how nobody could have known this or that and that intelligence did not indicate this or that is total horsefeathers. They failed at the absolute bottom level, below what a common man on the street could have thought through. No a single thinking person in the military or civilian knows or can rationalize why the military went before the civilians, why the military base at bagram was shuttered and abandoned before they had left, why the fact that regardless of intelligence the fact that the taliban were - like clockwork- taking over 20% of the country per day so what would a few more days look like, why all the civilian processing and evacuating was not done in advance. We chose the timetable after all. And why - out of all possible times of the year to evacuate- they would choose the fighting season rather than winter and on and on and on. Why we did not destroy or remove equipment before leaving with the troops. Again, we controlled the timetable. It only became an emergency because we chose to bail out in an oddball sequence. Just basic stuff. Anyway. Yes. Other generals offer lessons. Robert E. Lee was a great general for what he had to work with. His army was smaller but had some great officers. But he also fucked up bigtime, most noticeably by ordering Pickett's charge at Gettysburg wherein he was flying almost blind by not having done adequate reconnaissance. And he said that in his after action report- not because Fox or CNN tried to extract it from him while he weaseled around. As you know, Pickett's men were slaughtered. So- in contrast to the current sleazebags we have now- how did Lee deal with it? He rode out on to the battlefield and personnally told all the men, including all of the wounded, that "it was all my fault." Alright I will leave it there. But yes to your point that this AFG disaster is a lesson in how to be or not be a general.
The fix was in. I've read that the Afghanistan forces hadn't been paid in months. But were paid to retreat by the Taliban. Oh, and the fleeing Afghanistan president left with a boat load of cash.
That's probably true, thing is, there is no way that all went down as if 300,000 soldiers were living under a 250,000 square mile SCIF. Folks knew, folks that are paid to know. The ones with all the e-toys. I don't care who's in office, the President can't be expected to know everything, that's why we have career professionals. It's their job know these things. If I was Biden... pffff.... heads are gonna roll in some of our 3 letter agencies. They dropped the ball. Was it intentional? I'd hate to think so. That's conspiracy theory stuff, and I don't believe they would put thousands of American civilian lives in jeopardy for some secret agenda. Somebody somewhere f'd up bad. Someone who's job, or whose department's job, is to play "what-if" all day long... and brief the President accordingly.
If Afghanistan is anything, it’s a political failure. It’s really a hard stretch to say we didn’t train and equip the Afghans for military readiness. What you’re essentially saying is that with the right American generals the Afghan army would have help Afghanistan together. No. We’ve always known that. That’s why we’ve been there for 20 years, because Afghanistan itself is ungovernable. You can call a cat a fish but that doesn’t mean it’ll swim.
Biden gets to make heads roll. Unfortunately for him though if he does that the intel people are going to turn on him publicly if he sacks them. Someone dropped the ball. It is not clear yet whether it is intel or Biden. My guess so far is that it was Biden and the intel folks are going to say that they provided the right info but Biden processed it either himself or with his inner circle Blinken type buddies and then the military had to deal with that decision. We saw a beginning of that yesterday with Milley. Milley was asked basically who the hell came up with the bright idea to abandon bagram before the mission was completed or even underway and he said twice "that was the task we were given." MORE TO COME. Note that Milley himself did not even attempt to explain the wisdom of the decision. Only that that was the task given to him. I will say again though that I give no weight whatsoever to this intelligence failure thing. No intelligence was even needed for them to avoid doing what they did. No military person knows why they chose to exit during the height of the taliban fighting season rather than the winter. No military person can explain why they evacuated troops before the civllians were out in a total reverse order of any other operations. No one can explain why - even if all previous intelligence was bogus- why they did not react to the fact that the Taliban was advancing and taking 20% of the country every day but which still gave time for additional troops to come in to protect kabul. I guess they thought that the trend was their friend or something. Blinken was the chief architect of the cut and run in Iraq- McCain had a pantload to say about it. He was willing to do it so aggressively that it just ended out requiring troops to be sent back in after it got messy. Sound familiar? Biden looks to Blinken and he thinks Blinken is a genius. So the intel comes in but the State Department becomes the chief reactor to it and interpreter to Biden. Versus the Pentagon or intel agencies. I mean they might have a say but it is the State Department and Susan Rice that Biden looks to in order to make sense of it. Sure the government collapse and afghan troops split but they saw how fast the Taliban was coming and that American troops had already split except for a very low level or were going and coming or coming and going or whatever the panic plan of the hour was. As Milley said: "That was the task we were given." Go ahead Joe. Fire Milley. Make my day. Milley gets to speak too though. Of course we are speaking and reacting on the assumption that Joe thinks something has not gone well. I don't know that that is true. Joe was asked by George Staphalococcus if he thought anything could have been done better. Joe said: NO. Way to go Joe. He might give Milley a medal for all we know. Blinken, I am lookin at you motherfuck. The Sullivan NSA weasel is part of the mix by not standing up to Joe who had already announced a withdrawal date and knew that Joe would not hear anything that worked against it.