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Longest War in US History Ends in Failure

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21 comments on Longest War in US History Ends in Failure

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President Biden finally pulled the plug on what was an asinine mission from the start. Both Obama and Trump failed to pull the troops after pledging many time to do so.

I would like to suggest we will learn from this failure, but we won’t.

The war monger morons on the Left and Right learned nothing from Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, or drone policy.

Their attacks on Biden today prove they learned nothing from Afghanistan either.

“Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history,” Biden said. “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

One of my readers accurately commented

“What’s striking is when you look at the photos of the Taliban soldiers you realize how young they are. We’ve been there 20 years so the original Taliban that we fought are either all dead or are old men in their rocking chairs. The ones we see now in their 20’s and early 30’s in the photos were barely born when we invaded and have always lived with a US enemy living on their soil.”

In Support of the Moderate Taliban 

To prevent those from dying in vain, warmongers insist more die in vain

Flashback 2001

https://twitter.com/Jim_NJ5/status/1427012644767256579https://twitter.com/SuqMadiq_____/status/1427011672296804352

Question of the Day

Comment of the Day

A Few Notes

Question of Strategy

Observation of the Day

New Rules

New American Century

How Long Can Kabul Last Without US Support?

What to Celebrate

Two Key Thoughts

  1. Axel Merk: You can impose a government by force, but such government will collapse the moment the force is gone.
  2. Brett Meiselas: Blaming a 20-year nightmare on the guy getting us out is an odd take.

Mish

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Mike Shedlock

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21 Comments
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jiminy
jiminy
4 years ago
How many trillions more?  How many dead Americans?  What’s it worth?  So the girls can go to school.
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Call_Me
Call_Me
4 years ago
“This is the culmination of Bush starting idiotic wars and nation building that were doomed from the start.

Place the key blame where it belongs.”

The current U.S. head of state does hold a fair amount of blame, as he was atop the Senate’s foreign relations committee when things got started in Afghanistan and elsewhere and he was quite enthusiastic about embarking on open-ended military actions. 
Lobbing praise or scorn over what may or may not be the final act of this escapade is a politically-driven effort to stake out some high ground in a ravine.  Besides, won’t everyone look foolish if an event happens in the coming days which compels Mr. Biden to increase and lengthen the military engagement?
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prumbly
prumbly
4 years ago
Sad that mish has become a Biden apologist. And he used to be so free thinking
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goldguy
goldguy
4 years ago
Getting our people out alive from Afghanistan will be quite the feat.  More body bags will be needed.  American hostages in my mind is a forgone conclusion. There are many things the Taliban want and need, one thing they desperately need is money.  Since our treasury has frozen billions in Afghanistan reserves, that would be the first demand.  Use your imagination for the rest.
Biden is a complete train wreck.
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xbizo
xbizo
4 years ago
Not sure that the majority of Afghans prefer conservative Muslim Taliban rule.  Ask the women, gay and young people.  All targets now.  Power there remains in the tribes and tribal politics prevailed.    
The reason we entered was for counter-terrorism after 9-11.  Agree that we should have been out shortly after getting Bin Laden.  What’s the plan to contain them now?  We can’t leave and have no ideas.  Especially after giving them the means to equip a 300,000 person army.
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KyleW
KyleW
4 years ago
Twitter looks fun. Maybe I should spend more time on there. Warmongers never learn.
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Jackula
Jackula
4 years ago
Pretty obvious at this point the vast majority of Afghani people preferred to be ruled by the Taliban instead of the corrupt US supported puppet government with the US military as enforcers. Must have been a horrific puppet government. Military dictatorships usually are.
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Bungalow Bill
Bungalow Bill
4 years ago
Reply to  Jackula
Look at Honduras where people are fleeing north to our border after we helped stage a coup and establish a brutal puppet government there. We don’t need a wall. We need to mind our own business and let other countries govern themselves. 
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Jackula
Jackula
4 years ago
Reply to  Bungalow Bill
Yeah, and most of the most violent countries on the face of the earth are just south of us. And the partisan BS is so thick the right doesn’t even realize the Biden admin isn’t even letting asylum seekers in currently except they may have for a few afghanis.
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Anon1970
Anon1970
4 years ago
Reply to  Jackula
The 50 most dangerous cities in the world, ranked by murders per 100,000 population, are almost all in the Western Hemisphere starting with the US and going south. See the complete list on Wikipedia.
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Lam14ers
Lam14ers
4 years ago
A Trillion Dollars here, a Trillion Dollars there, the Digital Age has added more Zeros since the Saigon Vietnam Withdrawal. What has changed, not the senseless tar pits?  Retire the corrupt FBI, CIA, DOJ, NSC, FDA, CDC and US Congress over the age of 55. 
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amigator
amigator
4 years ago
Failure all depends on your view.
If you were part of the Industrial defense complex, or a government looking at breaking down its citenzens rights to to protect them from the terrorist (and and from who knows what else), and of course the big banks that produce the dollars to finance all this then you might say the war would be deemed a success maybe even a huge success.
We assume our leaders are making decisions with “us” in mind I think that is the wrong premise to view these types issues. The dollars floating around are just too many and Captain Greed quickly works his way into equation.
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RonJ
RonJ
4 years ago
@Knotchlibre: “So do you know of any case where we have successfully changed a nation?”
Germany Japan and Italy.
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Mish
Mish
4 years ago
Reply to  RonJ
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
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Cocoa
Cocoa
4 years ago
First, off, the Taliban allowed Al Al Quaeda to train there. The initial mission was to destroy the terrorist bases. Now one could have said we should have invaded Saudi Arabia for funding Al Quaeda, but whatever. The “conventional” rationale seems to make enough sense. But, big military doesn’t need to “win” anything in the long run. The contractors make a trillion selling crap to Pentagon. The Pentagon gives a lot of it to Afghan army which promptly turns it over to Taliban. The Taliban will throw wild training parties for other terrorists, who will probably commit some atrocity on a Western power soon and we will have to go back, bomb the whole stupid pile of rocks again and again and again. Not only is it the graveyard of empires, it’s quicksand and we will go back in some form or another. Biden is a moron, but Trump never really set this up well. Obama was clueless. So we have George W, and his neocon trash friends, to blame for immense loss of human life in the whole region.
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Jackula
Jackula
4 years ago
Reply to  Cocoa
Biden may well be a moron but he had at least one coherent thought, to get us the F out. Economic power is the real front, and we are failing with recent signs of life primarily with the Chinese gov being their own worst enemy currently. Reminds me of the 80’s when the Japanese were eating our lunch economically.
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strataland
strataland
4 years ago
Biden is a train wreck
I support his decision to leave.
He grossly underestimated the resolve of the Afgan leadership and forces.
He should have made arrangements to protect or remove US diplomats, contractors and friendlies before the US troops left. 
In the words of Matisyahu:
“All my life I’ve been waiting for, I’ve been praying for the people to say
That we’re not going to fight no more, there’ll be no more war
and the people will sing. One day, one day, one day”
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Mish
Mish
4 years ago
Reply to  strataland
“He grossly underestimated the resolve of the Afgan leadership and forces.”
I believe you mean “overestimated” and I agree. But it was not just Biden. It was Obama, Trump, Biden, and military intelligence in general.
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strataland
strataland
4 years ago
Reply to  Mish
Yes, thank you, my error. Biden grossly overestimated the resolve of the Afgan leadership and forces.  
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ajc1970
ajc1970
4 years ago
Reply to  strataland
“He should have made arrangements to protect or remove US diplomats, contractors and friendlies before the US troops left. “

This is my main issue with what’s happened in the last week.

We can’t save that country (or any country that doesn’t collectively want saving) or its people.  But we could have extracted our own citizens, given the UK and other allies a chance to do the same, and between the USA & UK could have issued quick visas to the ~75,000 Afghans who risked their lives to help us over the last 2 decades.
Of course we should get out.  But the executive branch needs to… you know… execute better.
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Bungalow Bill
Bungalow Bill
4 years ago
The American empire and its imperial citizens who support bases all over the world and kicking butt forgot what the founding fathers created. I have no doubt the GOP will tell us how broken the military is now and that we must spend more on the military to avoid another Afghanistan. Of course, I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s “Peace, commerce, honest friendship with all nations … entangling alliances with none!” and John Quincy Adams’ “she does not go out in the world seeking monsters to destroy” as trillion dollar deficits will continue adding up turning a once free people into nothing more than tax slaves to fund the empire building. After all, nation building is nothing more than a puppet government and US military bases to keep the government in place and the locals in check.
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