Cambodia Expats Online: Forum | News | Information | Blog

20 years and at a cost of,,,,,, $2.26 trillion!!!! what a fucking waste>
and in less than 1 year it wil all be under Taliban rule and women will once again be 2nd class citizens
and they wil be cutting the right hand off of thieves
and they had to sneak out in the dead of night..
crazy
US left Bagram Airbase at night with no notice, Afghan commander says

The US military left Bagram Airfield - its key base in Afghanistan - in the dead of night without notifying the Afghans, the base's new commander said.

General Asadullah Kohistani told the BBC that the US left Bagram at 03:00 local time on Friday, and that the Afghan military found out hours later.

Bagram also contains a prison, and there are reportedly up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners left in the facility.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57682290

America’s longest war, the two-decade-long conflict in Afghanistan that started in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, killed tens of thousands of people, dogged four U.S. presidents and ultimately proved unwinnable despite its staggering cost in blood and treasure.

This final chapter, with President Joe Biden’s decision to pull all American troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, has prompted a reckoning over the war’s lost lives and colossal expenditure.

The U.S. has spent a stunning total of $2.26 trillion on a dizzying array of expenses, according to the Costs of War project.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/artic ... fghanistan

It made the shareholders of armaments companies rich though,

This was predicted ten years ago:



https://www.theonion.com/u-s-quietly-sl ... 1819572778


Seriously though, why would they tell any Afghan soldiers? They'll only give the information to the Taliban.

Had they been a bit more focused in the initial year or so and not diverted resources to Irak (which truth be told, was the main war for several years), things might have turned out differently. They probably should have requested financial/logistical aid from the Russians and Chinese, who both wanted the Taliban out and were relieved to have the US invade.

I just hope they give terps refugee status...

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote:Had they been a bit more focused in the initial year or so and not diverted resources to Irak (which truth be told, was the main war for several years), things might have turned out differently. They probably should have requested financial/logistical aid from the Russians and Chinese, who both wanted the Taliban out and were relieved to have the US invade.

I just hope they give terps refugee status...

Requested aid from the Russians and the Chinese?

Are you serious?

The Russians sent little green men into the Ukraine, and the Chinese have taken little bits of other countries by drowning them in debt through the BRI. You don’t think either would have gotten control in return from their ‘aid’?

Western countries, with all their warts, usually are there with good intentions.

Afghanistan isn’t really a unified nation to start with. Which makes things much harder.

After the defeat of Saddam Hussein, wasn’t the US coalition supposed to unilaterally pull out? But a power vacuum was created were radicals took hold.

Reality is always a thorny issue with no clear paths.

My comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it's true that the Kremlin was happy at the time to see the US dealing with Afghanistan. They obviously have a history there, but they'd been having their own serious problems with Islamists both prior to and during the war. Despite no longer sharing a border, they would only benefit from a non-Islamic state. China also obviously had fears of it spilling over their to their own Muslim populations.

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:20 pm They probably should have requested financial/logistical aid from the Russians and Chinese, who both wanted the Taliban out and were relieved to have the US invade.

Funny you should say that.....

China Has a BIG Plan for Post-U.S. Afghanistan—and It’s Worth Billions

https://www.thedailybeast.com/china-has ... h-billions

https://www.ft.com/content/49d266c6-a6c ... 34d72b22c1

Passing the Torch: US Soldiers watch as their Pokemon Go gyms at Bagram Airfield are taken over by local Afghans

All U.S. forces have left Bagram, which for much of the past 20 years was the largest military base in Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials announced Friday. But the animated critters and some of what’s left on base are visible in digitally animated form through the game app Pokemon Go.

The game allows players to walk to real-life locations and catch or battle digital monsters, who can be found using the app’s barebones version of Google Maps. Some of the Pokemon left by U.S. soldiers remain at their posts.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle ... 27917.html

Once again... the aims, the rhetoric, the boasts, the attitude, the methods...
the result

Seriously, this is more than a little relevant when we are considering taking on China
- or do we just politely forget about our pathetic record in all these little "shithole countries" ??

John Bingham wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:06 pm This was predicted ten years ago:

The pitfalls that the Coalition of the Willing tumbled into have been repeatedly documented since about 1840. (the first British folly)
I clearly remember battalions of military historians and tacticians laying them all out in 2001/2.

Maybe our troops should have been watching Italian Spaghetti Westerns (or Middle-Easterns to be more precise) in their spare time instead of playing Space Invaders.
Certainly this classic B-grader is far more tactically relevant than whatever planet our Generals and political leaders heads were at.