What are your feelings as the Taliban reclaim Afghanistan after 20 years of US involvement?

Those here saying this was inevitable are deceiving themselves. There was nothing inevitable about what has, is, and will happen. I can say that so confidently because there was nothing inevitable about our withdrawal. We still have a military presence in about 150 countries around the world. We've been in Germany and Japan since WWII. South Korea since the armistice in 1953. The concept of long term occupation is not a new one to the United States. For the price of a few thousand service members stationed in Afghanistan we gained a valuable foothold into the country, and propped up a government that was objectively better than what came before it and what the Taliban offer by nearly every conceivable metric. Yes, it was corrupt. Yes, it had massive problems. It was still better than the Taliban. Now, with our abrupt catastrophe of a withdrawal we have thrown away every single benefit that we had gained by our presence. Every single life that was lost to get us to that point has now been lost in vain. My friends died for nothing, because their sacrifice was thrown away for absolutely nothing in return. This is the true tragedy, from the American perspective, of this whole cluster fuck. American men and women gave their lives, limbs, and sanity to be all thrown away for absolutely nothing in return. Those here willing to hand wave that fact away should be ashamed of themselves. Moreover, they should probably not be in uniform because they are unworthy of it.

Biden is a traitor and war criminal. His entire administration should be hung

When a country doesn't want to fight for itself, it's totally moronic for the US to try to make them fight. We gave them $millions in weapons and equipment, excellent training, and watched them run and toss their weapons as the Taliban advanced. Shame on those cowards.

Ron Paul was right decades ago, when he said we should get in, get it done, and get out. All military action should be like that But sadly, politics complicates things. Just…[See More]
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In a sense I feel bad for enlisted folks because army officers’ military education is often more robust. At the MAJ level some of us go to the Combined General Staff College to study the global, strategic, and theoretical characteristics of war. I am not bright, so the implication is I am slow to pick up on new concepts and ideas, but once it is imbued in my memory, I have a good understanding. We were exposed to several paradigms or models relating to war. I like the paradigms in my head.

Carl Von Clausewitz, an 1800s military theorist, opined wars often have three key elements, and I will indulge in our Revolutionary War to show you the paradigm and the nexus of what transpired in that war. The relevance. The three components are:

- THE PASSION OF THE PEOPLE: Americans helped the military by supporting it in various ways to include joining the military.
- MILITARY ACUMEN: It was a long war but our military knew how to fight and win eventually.
- GOOD GOVERNANCE: Americans in general accepted the legitimacy of the Continental Congress.

I don’t think Afghanistan had any of those three components. I am just guessing but I thought perhaps a 400,000 person military would give 15,000 Taliban a good fight. Once I read about the Afghan military personnel surrendering in droves, running away, and cities falling like dominos; I pretty much concluded the Taliban would win. With relatively small numbers, the Taliban easily captured large cities which tells me they were probably not defended or were not defended well. The Germans had around a million men trying to capture Stalingrad but failed to capture the city due to Russian military staunch resistance. The Russians fought like devils, the Afghan army obviously did not fight hard.

I knew Afghanistan was doomed solely on the basis the Afghan military ran away like little girls. We tried to train their military for 20 years and look at the pathetic product we got in return. It tells me their military has deep fundamental problems. The first one is they acted like a dead fish instead of a real tiger.

I'm frustrated, angry, and sad. I knew this was going to happen, but I had hope.

This is all the fault 0f the scammers who installed a fool in the White House.

Hoo boy.

Well, I'm nobody, and my opinion doesn't matter. Still, I was there, and people I knew are probably dead, about to die, or are at least afraid of dying. Maybe that "entitles" me to a meaningless few lines on an open forum. For me, it's not so much that we should've left... as it is we should never have been there; at least not like we were. We should've used strength, technology and guile to assassinate those directly responsible for 9/11, those who funded them, and those in power who dared openly support them. No one wearing a US flag on their shoulder should've been involved with any of that (the Russians have one "on us" when it comes to these things). We should've stayed the hell out of the Afghan civil war... because that's what it is, on top of a thousand other local/tribal/drug wars that are constantly going on over there.

But... we went, we set up shop, we did a thing.

Because we are us, we naively expected these people to appreciate that we were spending treasure to give them a crack at being a free and secure nation. We blithely overlooked the fact that they do not even universally agree on the borders of said "country", or that there is any such entity beyond their local/regional affiliations. We gave their deeply-held traditional beliefs a passing nod, and then failed to understand that not everyone who questioned our western values is a "terrorist".

We trained them to do what we wanted them to do... the "cool" things that we wanted to do. Because there aren't enough "cool dudes" to teach them... we sent "normal" people; people like me, to train them. Because "we" were so excited to be getting to live a year away from our "usual" lives...to actually DO cool things we'd never get to do normally... we kinda forget to also teach them how to ensure their soldiers got paid, processed formal leave requests, and had confidence in their own chain of command. Because WE were so inadequate... we overlooked important nuances. Because our bosses were inadequate... we tried to create "consistency" across 12-month stints that barely allowed us enough time to even figure out "who was who in the zoo". Those trained by our best- the Afghan Special Forces and Afghan Commandos...seem to have put up an actual fight...but without any substantive support from the larger ANA that WE trained.

Part of me is angry because we (translation-I) failed them. The other part of me thinks if someone is bold/dumb enough to try and ride a C-17's undercarriage... they should be bold/dumb enough to pick up an AK-47 and fight like they're the third monkey on the Ark, and it's just started raining.

This was always the way it ended...unless we were willing to commit to a forever presence in Central Asia. Maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing... the Brits did it in India for a long time before they finally threw in the towel.

We needed to leave, but we should have gotten out all the Afghans that wanted to leave BEFORE pulling out the last of our troops. This was a disgrace and a utter failure of our intelligence community, including the Armed Services. So sad.

Sad, frustrated, and angry. As a Vietnam combat vet I predicted this outcome for Afganistan and Iraq. It gives me no solace the prediction came true. Since Korea our civilian leadership has misused and abused the American fighting man. All representatives should be required to read Baron Carl von Clausewitz "On War"! Hopefully we will never engage our forces in combat without a clear and defined path for total victory. The military is not a social experiment.
For all my younger brothers and sisters, you are my heroes and I love each and everyone of you in ways that none who have not been there can understand.