That always shocked me. "Why are we in Afghanistan?"
"What, you don't remember 8 years ago?!!"
We were at war with the Taliban because of Al-Qaeda. Depending on how the Taliban rule the country, it will be interesting to see if the very early discussions of "Could we have gotten some component of the Taliban to give us Al-Qaeda?" may finally get a real answer.
Barring that hypothetical it always grinds my gears when people say the US "lost" to the Taliban. Not really, the US just never bothered to win. The combined non-nuclear firepower of the United States Armed Forces would've been sufficient to track down and kill every single Afghan in only a few years.
Instead we spent all our time passing out hugs and building those inbred savages infrastructure they can never maintain and a 'democracy' they (correctly) recognize is retarded.
It's not much different from "losing" Vietnam, where even though we had a 10:1 kill ratio, we still 'lost' because of clownworld retard shit like "those aircraft that just bombed us are flying over the border to Cambodia, you have to let them go". Operation Linebacker II showed what could've happened if the US decided to actually stop the NVA, just turn Hanoi into a pile of rubble filled with the twisted remains of gooks.
For a little refresher, fucking Lyndon Johnson agreed to stop bombing North Vietnam as early as 1968 and wouldn't commit to fuck-all because 'muh diplomacy muh peace negotiations'. It wasn't until 1972 with Linebacker I that they resumed strikes. Holy fuck it's amazing how genuinely trash American political leadership has been.
That always shocked me. "Why are we in Afghanistan?"
"What, you don't remember 8 years ago?!!"
We were at war with the Taliban because of Al-Qaeda. Depending on how the Taliban rule the country, it will be interesting to see if the very early discussions of "Could we have gotten some component of the Taliban to give us Al-Qaeda?" may finally get a real answer.
Barring that hypothetical it always grinds my gears when people say the US "lost" to the Taliban. Not really, the US just never bothered to win. The combined non-nuclear firepower of the United States Armed Forces would've been sufficient to track down and kill every single Afghan in only a few years.
Instead we spent all our time passing out hugs and building those inbred savages infrastructure they can never maintain and a 'democracy' they (correctly) recognize is retarded.
It's not much different from "losing" Vietnam, where even though we had a 10:1 kill ratio, we still 'lost' because of clownworld retard shit like "those aircraft that just bombed us are flying over the border to Cambodia, you have to let them go". Operation Linebacker II showed what could've happened if the US decided to actually stop the NVA, just turn Hanoi into a pile of rubble filled with the twisted remains of gooks.
For a little refresher, fucking Lyndon Johnson agreed to stop bombing North Vietnam as early as 1968 and wouldn't commit to fuck-all because 'muh diplomacy muh peace negotiations'. It wasn't until 1972 with Linebacker I that they resumed strikes. Holy fuck it's amazing how genuinely trash American political leadership has been.
Trash? They've done their jobs perfectly: Wasting White lives, time and money.