Well, now it's the Chinese turn
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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The withdrawal could absolutely have been civillians first, military last, yes. But short of keeping US troops there for literal generations to come, the Taliban were always going to retake the country. Honestly, there have almost certainly been less lives lost this way than would have been in a more protracted war between the puppet government and the Taliban.
Afghanistan is not a nation in the western sense of the word. It is a region full of warlords - basically mafia dons - who see the invasion of foreign empires as nothing more than an attempt to rob them of their independence and their way of life. They have been driving empires out of their territory for literal millennia. The government these mafia dons want for the region is what they negotiate amongst themselves. An oligarchy of whoever rises to the top of these familial and ethnic networks.
That's the way they want to live.
Not 'democracy', not 'global community'. Just the mutual understanding of a bunch of drug lords in the mountains.
It would be a stalemate with the jihadis if only a few thousand Americans (and allies, NATO mission continued) stayed in Bagram and few other airbases to keep them in check. Just like thousands of Americans do it in other countries (sometimes "secretly", like in Yemen or Somalia, sometimes openly, like in Iraq, Syria, Phillippines, several other African countries). There was also no public pressure to do it.
Did the warlords run the drug trade?
Some of them. The reality is that religious fundamentalists don't like opium, but when the choice is between selling drugs and being in poverty, religion magically takes a back seat.
Yeah, I've been there.
My issue is that this specific series of events did not have to happen. The US did not have to utterly surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban, let alone get a Marine squad killed, and donate $85 Billion dollars in military equipment.
*laughs in Greco-Bactrian*