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

I feel the Darkness engulfing every woman and girl in Afghanistan. I feel the loss that every living thing on our planet will now suffer because those women and girls have been cast into the Abyss. It feels like no accident that the Taliban took over now. They knew the US would not care what happens to the women and girls in Afghanistan. They knew because Americans have grown so docile that we let an Executive Order stand that says American women and girls are second class citizens in their own sports, Rape Crisis Centers and jails. If Americans would not stand up for their own women, why should they care what happens in Afghanistan??

Ok, we should do something for the interpreters, but the evacuation planes where full over 300 each. We had that much Afgan staff? They better screen them for security and Corona. And some are here already here-"in houses." Americans have LOST their houses and are homeless due to Covid and don't have a job. But these people will get a job and house! They will be able to petition for the rest of their families to come over too. A big explosion of this group during an economic down fall. And you never know, they are grateful now , but their ideologies and loyalty may bend toward radicalism. They may join the American military and we'll think that's good because they speak Afgan and we can re-implant them in Afghanistan as spies, but you never know their loyalty because their Faith gets in the way.

In his rush to surrender, China Joe left aircraft, helicopters, drones, and our highest technology for the enemy, all to be sold to China.

Remember folks, we served honorably and did what we needed to do to keep our country safe and help the Afghan people. Our current President is a fool and coward. He failed all of America and the people of Afghanistan. Anyone with half a mind knows that we would need to stay there permanently, just like Europe, Japan, S. Korea and other countries. When a war turns into a political game America loses, just like Vietnam. Aiman, soldiers, sailors, and Marines will always pay the price for some idiot politician. Don't let that destroy your morale or self worth.

Seriously embarrassed by the cowardly actions and decisions of this administration towards our military and veterans! Exactly the same as

Perhaps, it would have been different, if we did not focus so much on what we did wrong in Vietnam, however, focused more instead in what we did right with Japan and the Korean peninsula. Hence, this is a case of not expanding our view of history to make better decisions with present crisis. That old adage: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (Santayana); to paraphrase it: Those who do not have a broad perspective of history will fail to make better decisions moving forward. Particularly with Korea, we (along with allies) divided the country between those who wanted communism and those who wanted democracy. Then we (with international organizations led by the U.S.) made sure that S. Korea had all they needed to rise up economically. Then JFK with is organized Peace Corps brought the American way of education; overall, it was declared a successful policy of the U.S. by 1981 (that started with HST, about thirty years before JFK).

The world is in total turmoil and Kabul is a testament for what will happen in our futures if we don't make an effort in changing our ways.

I am disheartened as well as concerned for our allies in Afghanistan. They trusted us and we pulled out. I am quite concerned for the plight of women and girls; especially the women that trained to fight along side us. These women will be executed no questions asked.

Hey. I just joined here, and am glad to have found it. My service ended during Desert Shield in 1990. Being of Pashtun and Utah, USA descent, and a born and bred Californian, my heart is heavy. Okay, I will just say it out now. We can't save every puppy in the pound. And even though I understand that reality, it all stinks to high heaven. My Father became a Naturalized US citizen in 1962, but having fallen out with his dad in the old country,; first for marrying an American, and then for not bringing her and the kids back to the frontier when the first transgression was forgiven, dad became really bitter. They parted ways in 1957, and never saw each other again, with grandfather Juma dying in 1971. Grandpa even had a clean 1957 Chevy Bel-Air two-door sedan, and my cousins found the picture of it last year..

Mom and Dad split up in 1965, and Dad lived out his days in Brazil, Peru and Venezuela as a structural engineer, including being the Director of the Engineering Design Team for the Itaipu Hydroelectric Project. When he had a heart attack and died in Caracas in March of 1984, us kids went down to bury him there. He was going to take us to Quetta, Pakistan that November to meet the family there.

My big brother blazed the trail that fall, and me and my little sister followed in 1985 for the summer. I still remember one of my buddies in the squadron warning me 'and don't you get a friggin hair up your but and cross the Afghani border. All we need now is a friggin incident with the Soviets over your butt'. I took the advice, but I did step foot on the Pak/Afghan border, east of Kandahar. And visited some of the refugee camps.

My Dad's family was among the last to give in to British rule in the late 1880's. And the British were more than happy to pay them well not to blow up their telegraph lines. in the 1980's, the Afghans were facing genocide at the hands of the Soviets. It was during that conflict that the zealots began to hold sway, on both sides of the border, and became the Taliban of note. My father's family hammered this into me, as a warning. That, for expedience sake, we tend to back the wrong horse. I believe my dad's family hit the nail on the head over these mistakes in policy.

And it is my opinion, and that is all it is, that the US, having played a crucial part in what then to us was still proxy war between us and the Soviets, failed to understand that we had, in fact, played for the Afghans the same part that the French had played so nobly for us during our own revolution, culminating in the intervention of the French Fleet at Yorktown in 1781. I would say that the historical parallel was our supplying of the Stinger AA missiles to the Mujaheddin. And then we took our ball and went home when the Soviets pulled out. No post-apocalyptic grants, loans, or aid to those people. The Soviet Union was collapsing, and by that event, we lost sight of the trees, for the forest seemed to be ours by forfeit.

Are we responsible for the resentment the Afghani people felt at the world? No. Absolutely not. By culture, by lifestyle, by the way they dress and speak, we have little in common with these mountain folk.

But we are responsible for our own people. And that means that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we inherited more responsibility for our fellow men and women around the world. Not for a hand-out. But for a hand-up. The best way we enhance our own security in our country in this shrinking world is to lend a hand. Unconditionally, at least to start.

The rapid collapse in Afghanistan was not the fault of our brothers and sisters in uniform, but in the total erosion of any clarity of purpose at the State Department, a malaise throughout the halls of our Intelligence Agencies, and perhaps a sad leftover from the last Presidential administration; the obliteration of the administrative civil function at the heart of our own government, by the functionaries at the center of that administration.

These same ills at the center of our government, with the exception of acts bordering on sedition, happened in the 70's, after Vietnam, the protests, and Watergate.

My heart is heavy, and I pray for deliverance form danger all those men and women of good will...

What should be the feelings of veterans who put so much into serving their country only to be let down by their cowardly politicians? What are we to think about their grandiose plans of nation building and democracy in societies that have no concept of the ideas? If only we could hold them truly responsible.