73% of vets have negative view of Afghanistan withdrawal, poll shows

I am also brother Michael.

Sorry but if you can't understand that nobody anticipated the complete collapse of the Afghani government you have no right to say the plan was unthoughtful and uncaring. The orderly evacuation of Afghanis who assisted our military after withdrawal of our troops had been in all plans under every administration. Unfortunately those plans were based on having a government sympathetic to our departure.

I'm sorry but this is absolutely wrong... We did anticipate the collapse! Biden was warned and advised to keep a residual force in place. The Afghans (not Afghanis... Afghani is a currency, not a people) depended on and were trained to work with Air Power assets, as they had since the first time we teamed up with the Northern Alliance forces in 2001. Their Air Force was still maturing and had a long way to go (understandable for a country with a very high illiteracy rate trying to build and maintain a technical service). I know this because I was there as an Air Advisor when Obama ultimately decided to remove roughly 90-95% of the advisors at the end of 2014 (Against Gen Dumford's/our recommendations). We could have maintained status quo for the Afghan government with air and special ops support. I would have preferred that they allowed us to continue the job of maturing their Air Force, but like I said, Obama put an end to that effort.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - I have no doubt you are 100% right about supporting the Afghans with air power and that we should have continued to support them in that way however having been on the ground working close with highly educated Afghans, how long should this have lasted? Our interpreters were Afghan physicians and did not like the Taliban rule yet the country really did nothing to be ready for our departure. Perhaps your engagement was different but mine had the non-Taliban as lazy people not wanting to do anything requiring work and the captured Taliban I interacted with much more engaged. Night and day different. The Taliban and Al Queda were intense and I am not surprised a bit they won in such a short period of time.

Comments violating community standards have been removed.

Keep it respectful. As a reminder, you can advocate for your position forcefully and demean the other's position as much as you like. However, personal attacks are not allowed and those that continue to violate the community standards risk getting an enforced time-out and repeated violations may get them a permanent one.

If you need a refresher of what those are, you can read them at https://rallypoint.my.site.com/Support/s/article/enforcement-of-rallypoint-community-standards-2020-03-13-10-21-35