I can’t explain how sick/angry/sad I am over the Afghan collapse.
-I spent 2 years there in Kandahar and Kabul supporting ISAF and RS. I spent another two years studying Afghan culture, learning Pashto (which is an unforgiving language to learn), and studying central Asian security policy for which I defended my Masters Thesis.
-If I have one more asshat tell me I am ignorant and don’t understand what I am talking about – I’m going to lose my shit. PS assshats – the people of Afghanistan are “Afghans”, the local currency is “Afghani”.
-Do not fall into the trap of blaming the Afghans … they are a small country fighting a superpower (China). If you cannot figure out that Pakistan is a China band waggoner I can’t help you. You could meme for a hundred years with Chinese gladhanding with the Taliban leaders who are about to unleash murder and rape on a horrific scale before they suck every ounce of valuable mineral resource.
-Do not conflate an ordered withdrawal with the Biden clusterfuck. The “we had no other choice” is bullshit… “we had to leave by May or we would hurt the Taliban’s feelings” is also bullshit. All that needed to happen to avoid this would have been to let the Kabul HQ shift to title 22, and have a limited presence at the major airfields: HKIA, KAF, MEZ, Bagram, and Heart… would not have taken much.
-Realize that Bidan was also sent to Iraq to “negotiate” before Isis broke out… there also all we needed to do was to hang onto Balad which would have avoided a regional disaster.
-Please encourage our rep/congress critter to draft a resolution requesting that POTUS demand the resignation of the top 20% of all Flag and General Officers, and any SES involved in this CF. We will lose some wheat with the chaff, but not much. There has to be a memorable event for the careerist officers and government civillians (almost all of them), there has to be accountability.
-Because of this failure, thousands of men, women, and children will be raped tortured, and murdered, and those that survive will be subjected to merciless despotism.