Anybody thinking the way this has so rapidly unraveled is a good thing is forever big dumb. it's not the decision to leave, that's fine, and probably even good. It's how that decision was executed...which clearly was just horribly done. It's hard to even imagine how it could have been done any worse. That is bad now, and will have bad ramifications later.
If you think that this could have been done better after 20 years and 348129875194085891475 billion dollars I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This unraveled over 20 years. One person was going to be left holding the bag of excrement, but there’s a clear reason the end looks just like Vietnam. You can only prop up a less-dedicated faction for so long. Biden could have sacrificed a few more years of American casualties and expenses, maybe left our next Fox president with the same damn scene. I’m not excusing anyone, but I felt like we could see this exact end a long long time ago.
This is what no one wants to hear. Afghanistan was a disaster and mistake from day 1. There was never an alternate ending to be had.
Ad hominem attack aside, I'm trying to make sense of your post. Staying 1 more day, which would allow us to evacuate a few more at risk allies of ours would be...worse?
I very distinctly remember a bunch of relevant people with gravitas predicting exactly this as ineviatable around 2008. Im sure they saw it earlier but were maybe drowned out. Since then, the only question was going to be who was going to get left "holding the bag" and taking the blame. The same happened in Vietnam - in the mid 60s, there were tons of colonels and generals and the like who wrere discussing the situation as unwinnable. Nixon knew Rolling Thunder was little more than a PR/re-election ploy, but when speaking to the public, always spoke as if victory was just around the corner.
I don't think anyone is interested in staying a moment longer than need be....but this cannot be the best we are capable of while leaving. Even in Vietnam, we had 2 years of stability after our last troops left (aside from our Embassy Security of course).
Again, 20 years and nearly immeasurable amounts of resources. If you think it could be 'better', you're fooling yourself or you have some subconscious desire for forever war.
I disagree. Obama did it in Iraq which was also very unstable, so yeah I do think we could do better. I do agree "nation building" is quickly becoming a metaphor for "unwinnable war" though. Perhaps the lesson on that has finally been learned.
Nothing that has happened in Afghanistan over the last 40~ years has signaled that one could successfully accomplish what we set out to accomplish there. Which, if you're looking to spend a metric assload of money on an unwinnable forever war, is a dream scenario. If you're surprised that everything went to hell in a handbag the moment we left, then you simply haven't been paying attention.
I'm not at all surprised things went to hell because of how we pulled out. But for almost 2 years we've had relative peace in Afghanistan prior to this while we were drawing down our presence there from over 13,000 troops to approximately 2,500. That was accomplished without anything approaching what we've seen these past several weeks.
