I haven't written in years. When I was last on any social media platform, the great issue that would surely decide the next election was the debt ceiling crisis of 2018. I rarely miss it and can only imagine how ugly every argument on Twitter and Facebook has gotten over the last year and a half of insanity.
But God dammit, people need to be impeached, imprisoned, or lose their head over what has just occurred in Afghanistan.
The obvious things first: yes, we had to do something after 9/11 (we didn't go into Afghanistan for fun). No, we were never going to make a stable nation out of that backwards hellhole. Yes, every administration since 2001 has lied to us about "progress" in that place. And those people should be held accountable.
Yes, we needed to leave. A hundred years would not create a stable nation there.
But again, God dammit, there is a way of leaving that doesn't involve getting a place next to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest for most incompetent imperial action in history.
That part is entirely Joe Biden's fault. Trump did not brag a month ago about how strong the Afghan forces were and Trump did not brag a month ago that we will not see a Saigon like situation, that the Taliban could not retake the whole country. Trump did not fail to evacuate the embassy in a timely manner. Trump made a deal with the Taliban about drawing down, but he didn't include four months of summer for the Taliban to prepare and execute a massive operation so that we could have some 9/11 bookend to the conflict.
Trump did not go on fucking vacation while the Afghan forces melted away.
Biden might be correct, however, in that we will not see a Saigon situation. It might more closely resemble Dien Bien Phu. God help us if Kazai International Airport falls. Not sure how we will get 5,000 troops plus our staff out by any other means. Our generals read Kendi, but not Bernard Fall, apparently.
Oh yeah, it wasn't Trump's fault that we left Bagram in the middle of the night without informing the Afghans. We might really wish we had that military airport soon.
The "intelligence" community needs to be thoroughly revamped, which means most people involved need to lose their jobs and not be rehired by the government. The Taliban just launched one of the largest coordinated offensives of this century. How in the hell did you miss that? Every single time the CIA or anyone else mentions using intel resources to find January 6th protesters, a flood of rage ought to poor over them for failing to do their actual job.
The "experts" have failed entirely. These asshats told us three days ago that the Afghan government could hold out for three months. They said yesterday that Kabul was not threatened (as I type, it seems the Taliban have cut power to Kabul and are within seven miles of the city).
And stop fucking tweeting at the Taliban.
Going forward, actual soldiers should think twice before obeying orders from these generals and their civilian counterparts. Every "training" session about white privilege and such needs to be shut down, and since the experts are not going to cut off their own source of income, it needs to be the grunts in the meeting who shout it down and make it impossible to conduct. Anything not military related is not your business, and for the love of God DO NOT LET THEM MAKE IT YOUR BUSINESS.
If, God forbid, this goes full Dien Bien Phu and thousands of Americans are killed or captured, a coup might occur here. Between the economic hardship, the COVID nonsense, the blatant lies, the corruption (it has been all of a week since Andrew Cuomo had to step aside), an historical military defeat that was completely avoidable might be the last straw.
