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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
So much for intelligence. So much for experts. So much for all those who claimed to know how things really were in Afghanistan.
That a senior military official can admit that the US and its allies had no idea that a state they built was about to collapse is a spectacular admission.
(Afghanistan - Graveyard of Experts)
(Afghanistan - Graveyard of Experts)
Now we have dead Marines, killed in a situation that was preventable...
How did we get here?
Elect a dunce controlled by globalist Machiavellians.
Feed a MIIC hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and when it fails to foresee, deter or prevent a deadly attack on our soil, make sure no one gets fired, and give it more money.
Invade another nation to get the perpetrators, allow the perpetrators to escape to Pakistan, pay Pakistan billions in return, and allow do-gooders with no skin in the game to talk us into pie-in-the-sky humanitarian nation building that has nothing to do with the stated goal of the invasion.
Shun, silence and smear the experts who try to warn you off the doomed project.
Lie to the American people for 20 years.
Hire and promote bureaucrats and generals and admirals who have no problems lying to the American people.
Hire and promote bureaucrats and generals and admirals who will toady to the stupidest and most dangerous idiocies dreamed up by elected politicians.
"A Failure of Human Intelligence"
I cheered when I woke to the news a few weeks back that we had extracted all troops from Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night without telling anyone. That was great opsec. And then we heard, but wait! Embassy staff, American Civilians, and friendly Afghans are still there... We extracted our military but left our unarmed fellow countrymen and Afghan friends... Our government has perpetrated a sickening, deadly stupidity.
Kabul International Airport is not defensible territory like Bagram was. Our troops are in Fort Apache, as CI said the other day. I don't think non-military people understand the grave danger they are in. Force protection involves many concentric rings and a multi-spectral set of resources that are harder to deliver when you don't own or control the territory.
Biden needs to unceremoniously throw Milley and Austin out on their incompetent asses. The Pentagon should see a lot of stars falling in clusters of two, three and four.
People die in military operations. Hell, we lose people in training exercises. We all know its part of the deal, but this tragedy did not have to happen. Those men and women did not have to die.
This is the latest result of a chain of very bad decisions by people too stupid or too cowardly to stop it. Worst of all, its not over, and we many not be able to dictate the ending.
Please, pray for our troops and the innocent people on the ground.
Given that we failed to extricate ourselves when we should have [2002], I can think of no Afghan withdrawal scenario where an event like today was not likely to occur, in some form or fashion.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't soften the blow though.
While we still held Bagram, get the civilians out through there, talk big about bringing more troops in, the do the lights out in the middle of the night trick.
DeleteBut that would have blown the fiction about the Afghan Army fighting on without the 35,000 civilian logistics support and our air support and intel.
Ghani escaped with millions. Afghans don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind is blowing.
Our foreign policy establishment should be completely discredited in the eyes of the American people, as they now are in the eyes of the world.
How do you get the civilians out without the the Taliban and the erstwhile Afghan "leadership" noticing that something is afoot?
Delete@Jez - You don't.
DeleteI understand the calculus that went into selecting HKIA over Bagram, as the airhead. A misguided belief that the regime would be able to hold Kabul [they never really controlled any more than that without our forces anyway], the colocation of the various NATO partner embassies, NGO/Aid organizations, and our own Embassy.
DeleteWe did not have the airlift capacity to ferry all of the folks that we're in the process of evacuating, from Kabul to Bagram...and provide security for both.
And ISIS-K [or maybe ISIS-X as the former POTUS called them yesterday....] would have still capitalized on the general chaos to conduct a similar attack, and potentially indirect fire on Bagram.
Our withdrawal was always destined to be a lose-lose scenario if the ANSF crumpled like a cheap suit.
I agree with CI's response to Joseph's question. Of course you don't. But you do it from a defensible base
DeleteAs contemptible as Ghani's running away with his Rice-a-Roni cash consolation prize may be, from his perspective being excluded from Trump's surrender negotiations with the Taliban over the course of two years made it plain to see with floodlamp clarity that the Trump administration was a proud sponsor of the return of the Taliban. Without Trump, the status quo of Afghanistan at least not being overrun with fighters that *were in prison* would still exist. The Taliban does not resurge in Afghanistan without Trump's green light. Period. Any blame game that fails to mention the full ownership role of that America-hating traitorous POS is docile at best.
Delete@TC, +1
DeleteThat the Taliban would regain full control of Afghanistan upon our withdrawal, was never in doubt. The signed capitulation agreement merely codified that fact.
I was in the Navy, not ground forces, and even I know that you spread your men out so that one mortar round does not take out the entire squad. What military genius had twelve Marines so closely grouped that one explosion killed all twelve of them?
ReplyDeleteThey were processing people through the gate. I don't know how it could have been avoided.
DeleteThe biggest factor is we do not control the next outer ring of security.
Another stupid that we can put squarely upon the Biden administration is that we gave the Taliban a list of the people we're still trying to get out of Afghanistan in case their chances of escape being held hostage or killed are too high.
DeleteI don't trust the Taliban, for obvious reasons.....but it's in their self-interest to get the American presence out of Afghanistan as thoroughly and as cleanly as possible.
DeleteSilverfiddle
DeleteBegs the question. If an attack was expected and Americans were being told to stay, why were they still processing AFGHANS through the gate. We'll risk the lives of Marines for Afghans, but not for American civilian lives?
Even given the op was righteous, could it not be done with Marines more safely placed? For me there is no excuse for placing Marines so close together, unprotected, in a high threat environment.
Not sure how much "self-interest" advocates of suicide bombing with plausible deniability (it was those other terrorists from ISIS-variant) can be measured to have...
DeleteThe Taliban was a country ["Emirate"] again. The shortest route to that is our speedy departure.
DeleteJayhawk, I understand your question, and it's a good one, but I cannot defend the indefensible or explain the unexplainable.
DeleteOur foreign policy and defense establishment are both off the rails. Does anybody know what they are up to? Do they know what they are up to?
At the tactical level, it's fairly impossible to screen & vet individuals through an already labyrinthian checkpoint.
DeleteUnfortunately, enough explosive and fragmentation packed around a mans torso can mitigate even the most well-planned perimeter.
We extracted our military but left our unarmed fellow countrymen and Afghan friends.
ReplyDeleteI have a bit less sympathy for some Americans still stranded in AFG; not only was the U.S. withdrawal date well publicized, but the State Department has been warning Americans to leave the country for several months now.
We should still get them out, but sometimes you also have to be big boys and girls.
I did not realize there were that many American cats and dogs running around Afghanistan??? Are there really that many Americans just over there just to be over there? If that is so, I agree with you. That is different than getting our support staff and our contractors out
DeleteYes. San Diego news is bewailing the plight of residents who are "trapped" in Afghanistan due to "visiting family." They apparently left the US just a couple of weeks ago. I am not much sympathetic.
DeleteVisiting family? I hope they have emergency travel insurance that includes evac and God forbid, return of mortal remains.
DeleteLook, I see it like this... we travel into dangerous areas, we accept the risk. Period. I've been in some pretty dangerous spots in Mexico, never once did I ever think it was my government's job, or responsibility to get me out of things went south.
Since this is a germane forum, I'd also like to take the opportunity to clarify another theme being trafficked around the interwebz. We've seen, I'm sure....the long and illustrious list of U.S. military equipment that "we" "left" behind.
ReplyDeleteNonsense.
In almost every instance, when we essentially invade a foreign nation and rebuild their military from the ground up...we equip them. We sometimes take different approaches with regard to standardized equipment [as in Iraq, where we tended toward 'Soviet-bloc' items*].
In AFG, we leaned heavily on U.S. equipment, and a smattering of Czech and Russian, especially with regard to airframes.
This equipment, again over the past almost 2 decades, has been Divested through the Foreign Military Sales Program [which ensures that only our export models of equipment is eligible]. The equipment left behind, for the most part anyway, was divested to the ANSF. We no doubt left some ancillary gear when we withdrew from various Forward Operating Bases and Bagram...nothing of great import.
All of this equipment was dropped in place by the surrendering and running ANSF....and now the Taliban are able to kit themselves out like westerners, on the cheap.
We saw this as well in 2014 in Iraq, where ISIS took control of the vast amount of equipment we had divested to them, and gifted by running and surrendering ISF.
Our media has generally done a poor job, as they always do...of educating our public on issues such as these, and this...they become fodder to be trafficked by folks who want. to try and score political points.
*in Iraq, circa 2015/16....a coiple of Iranian-back militias became the proud, temporary owners of a couple of M1 Abrams tanks [export version of course]. They have since given them back to the Government of Iraq, which for all intents and purposes, means that the Iranians still have access to them....
Notions by many in the media circles [including a certain former POTUS] that we could have/should have either brought all of that out with us, or blown it all in place....are absurd [as are usually the ones making the claim.
DeleteYou'd think that at least the abandoned vehicular equipment could have been fitted with GPS trackers - even the cheap ones you can use to watch where your kids or cheating spouse or thieves are taking the family car - to visit later with drone strikes when they're not where they should be...
DeleteNot for the most part. Plus, we're assuming that only the Taliban has these vehicles [which run the gamut from MRAP to cargo truck]. No doubt that many an enterprising Afghan tradesman 'acquired' an abandoned truck. Good on 'em.
DeleteShort video to watch.
ReplyDeleteBlurb:
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Melissa Tate
@TheRightMelissa
Breaking: President Trump has released a video showing Biden’s America as a trail of death, destruction & disaster #BidenIsADisgrace #SaveAmerica
With all due respect to the right wing blogger, President Trump is part of the problem, along with the other past presidents going back to Bush and Cheney
DeleteWe have a real national/government problem on our hands. Partisan sniping is not going to fix it, because politicians on all sides are to blame.
DeleteSF,
DeleteI concluded a long time ago that ALL the West's meddling in the Middle East, from day one, has been a giant FUBAR!
A o w, indeed. And I agree with you that biden's presidency is a total disaster. Our nation is in danger
DeleteWho restricted visas for Afghan allies?
ReplyDeleteWho released 5000 Taliban prisoners (one of whom now runs the country)?
Who made the pull out agreement without including the Afghan Government? Who invited the Taliban to Camp David on 9/11
Who claimed to have eliminated Isis?
Who left the Kurds high and dry and left US bases in Syria for the Russians?
Trump.
Who completely bungled the withdrawal and got over 100 people killed, including 15 soldiers, sailors and Marines?
DeleteBumbling Joe Biden
I only leave your low IQ comment up to show you how easy it is to play the partisan point scoring game, Scooter.
Now go back and read the post, and then read the comments posted by the adults. We are discussing an issue that goes deeper than your mouth breathing partisanship.