Opinion Complete and utter disgrace.....

[MusterX]

All those planes bad helicopters could have been used to get Americans out of Afghanistan but they were left behind.

But WHY was that much equipment left to the Taliban? That's the question everyone is dancing around. We could have brought it all home, but didn't, we could have destroyed it so the Taliban couldn't have it, but didn't. We specifically gifted the Taliban BILLIONS of dollars worth of military equipment.

 

[Sara]

It was mostly in possession of the ANA, who we had planned would be able to use it to hold back the Taliban for at least a few months while we evacuated.

I feel like this possibly was a poor idea

 

[MusterX]

Probably because we didn't have the personnel in the country to operate the equipment and/or it was in a state of disrepair not worth salvaging or lacking expertise and equipment to repair.

Geez bro, how is your name rational poster, we could have just flown over the airfield and blown the shit up. We left rifles, jeeps, ammo, helicopters, planes, night vision goggles, etc. etc. to the tune of billions. We basically outfitted the fucking Taliban for the foreseeable future and you just shrug at that? Damn.

 

[White Whale]

But WHY was that much equipment left to the Taliban? That's the question everyone is dancing around. We could have brought it all home, but didn't, we could have destroyed it so the Taliban couldn't have it, but didn't. We specifically gifted the Taliban BILLIONS of dollars worth of military equipment.

It appears leaving the equipment behind was intentional. They likely want an attack or false flag to try and justify another war.

 

[Rational Poster]

Geez bro, how is your name rational poster, we could have just flown over the airfield and blown the shit up. We left rifles, jeeps, ammo, helicopters, planes, night vision goggles, etc. etc. to the tune of billions. We basically outfitted the fucking Taliban for the foreseeable future and you just shrug at that? Damn.

We outfitted the ANA who abandoned their equipment.

Majority of that stuff is completely useless without the proper maintenance and access to spare parts after a very short period, and of course, trained operators.

 

[Rational Poster]

I feel like this possibly was a poor idea

That's been the idea for over decade at this point.

 

[Ophydian]

I love this idea that people are up in arms that we left the Afghans X amount of equipment that they will somehow be able to use on a long term basis. They won’t be able to maintain or get parts for the equipment they have. It’s like giving a poor person a Ferrari. They might drive it for a few months but at some point the fuel and upkeep will be impossible to keep up.

We will find out at some point it was more expensive to bring the equipment back but the people bitching don’t care.

 

[Mr Holmes]

I love this idea that people are up in arms that we left the Afghans X amount of equipment that they will somehow be able to use on a long term basis. They won’t be able to maintain or get parts for the equipment they have. It’s like giving a poor person a Ferrari. They might drive it for a few months but at some point the fuel and upkeep will be impossible to keep up.

We will find out at some point it was more expensive to bring the equipment back but the people bitching don’t care.

I'm thinking they might try to sell it.

 

[MusterX]

We outfitted the ANA who abandoned their equipment.

Majority of that stuff is completely useless without the proper maintenance and access to spare parts after a very short period, and of course, trained operators.

I can accept that answer a little better. I still feel mad about it though. Maybe its just the situation.

 

[chardog]

it's pretty simple, it's not their money that's burning, it's YOUR money, and they have no problems with that.

The earth is round and skies are blue, government does this to you.

 

[Sara]

I love this idea that people are up in arms that we left the Afghans X amount of equipment that they will somehow be able to use on a long term basis. They won’t be able to maintain or get parts for the equipment they have. It’s like giving a poor person a Ferrari. They might drive it for a few months but at some point the fuel and upkeep will be impossible to keep up.

We will find out at some point it was more expensive to bring the equipment back but the people bitching don’t care.

The difference is them having these military grade vehicles and equipment of course being that they can further torture and overturn more of the country and start to move in on other countries to gain ground…..

 

[bobgeese]

I voted for him

Hey, no more mean tweets tho...

 

[K1levelgrappler]

That doesn't even remotely explain why we would leave 50 black hawk helicopters and multiple C-130 transports sitting on the ground and just fly away.

If that stuff wasn’t meant for the Afghan army then maybe they were planning on removing it but were caught by surprise when the Taliban took the country in a matter of weeks and there was more pressing things to worry about.

Maybe nobody gave a shit because the defense industry churns out an endless slew of that stuff and somebody will just make some more Blackhawks. These wars are primarily a giant MIC grift fest after all.

I don’t think the Taliban is going to hop in their sweet C-130 and fly to America to do some terrorism if that’s what you’re worried about.

 

[Rational Poster]

I can accept that answer a little better. I still feel mad about it though. Maybe its just the situation.

I mean that has been the plan for over a decade. Train and equip the ANA so we could leave and have a friendly government installed in the region. We had to give them something to at least facilitate the training and attempt a defense. It sucks that they were completely ineffective except for 10,000 or so best trained units. It sucks that the corrupt local officials lied to us the entire time about their combat effectiveness and were the first ones out of the country. Losing sucks. And losing a war really sucks.

The reality is if the American people really desired a more humane outcome here the work needed to start years ago. The American people didn't care about this war besides killing the terrorist who attacked us. No one signed up for nation building in the middle east. But they didn't care about fighting in it or ending it. No great sacrifices were made like we had done in previous wars. There certainly was no stomach for hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees being brought over, so why do people pretend now that they care?

 

[MaxMMA]

At this point we have no one to be mad at but ourselves. Unless you are a complete baffoon you should have seen this coming years ago.

I'm sure it will all be forgotten soon, and a similar invasion/occupation of a foreign nation will happen in the next 15-30 years.

At this point I'm just surprised that everyone else is surprised this is happening. You people really expected something else to happen?

 

[A Lurker]

Majority of that stuff is completely useless without the proper maintenance and access to spare parts after a very short period, and of course, trained operators.

The aircraft left behind is going to kill a lot of taliban over the next few weeks/ months.

 

[surrealworlds]

I don't understand servicemen and women crying over this. What did you think we were doing over there?
We lost? Lost what? What would you consider a win? How do you win war?

We literally walked into a country and owned it border to border for 20 YEARS. Lost? We chose to quit after two decades. Call it a loss if you want but I tend to disagree. There are no winners in war.

 

[MusterX]

I don’t think the Taliban is going to hop in their sweet C-130 and fly to America to do some terrorism if that’s what you’re worried about.

Of course I'm not worried they are going to hop in their C-130 and do some terrorism bro but we have to get real and start asking some really hard questions. Like for example, how it seems to be that if you go back in time all the way to the Mujahideen, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban and others all seem to get outfitted in American military equipment. This has been going on for decades that somehow terrorist organizations end up with American military equipment and it happens, over and over and over.

 

[jx820]

That said, this current fuck up is completely on Biden. The withdrawal was a complete failure. Biden owns every bit of it. I voted for him and I say that.

There's also the difficult realization that we lost. We lost the war in Afghanistan. You can't look at it any other way.

I didn't vote Biden and I look at it differently, but I don't know what you think the objective over there was.

I don't know what "winning" that war would look like. Certainly the idea of nation building was an abysmal failure, but that's not on Trump or Biden. We propped up and armed a puppet government 15 years ago under the Bush administration and it was always going to do exactly what it did when we left. So the puppet govt fell and lost their weapons. Maybe we shouldn't have armed them and pretended they had a fighting chance. We couldn't take their weapons back when we left. Lesson learned, don't prop up puppet governments.

As far as our departure, we got out on schedule, under a cease fire (credit to the Trump admin for that) losing 13 Americans to an ISIS attack. No direct conflict with the Taliban ended in loss of life. We exited a 20 year war with 13 US military casualties. That loss is tragic, but ending a 20 year war losing 13 people is not a nightmare scenario from a military perspective.

I wish we would have done better with getting refugees out of the country,

 

[jamel]

Encourage all vets to talk about this in session vs online.

Help your rating.
The court of public opinion will not be drafting nexus letters for your C&P exams.

Hold on to that anger and dont burn yourselves out talking about this shit prior to your appointment