Current Events > Why are we still in Afganistan?

(+) Yeah! (+)

This isn't what I voted for. And when Trump pulls a 180 on foreign policy I hope his voters don't act like Obama voters and look the other way.

I think we are still there because no president wants to lose the war that was lost before it started. The war isn't as ugly as Vietnam in terms of media coverage and US casualties, so Trump is content to just keep this quagmire going for 4-8 more years.
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Trump doesn't want to be the one to pull the plug. So he'll keep it going for however long and pass the hot potato off to the next administration
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We'll be in Afghanistan for decades more. No President wants to be the one that pulls out and allows the Taliban to regain control.
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luigi13579 posted...

My only problem with that cartoon is that the calendar assumes the war will last less that 100 years.
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AlephZero posted...

We'll be in Afghanistan for decades more. No President wants to be the one that pulls out and allows the Taliban to regain control.

I mean if the outsider who ran on "America first" isn't doing it, I don't know who will. Unreal.
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We ****ed the place up and didn't fix it afterwards. See: the rise of IS in Iraq - that was at least in part because of how we ****ed that up after removing Saddam Hussein from power.

ArchiePeck posted...

We ****ed the place up and didn't fix it afterwards.

Most of the country now has access to clean drinking water, the percentage of children enrolled in primary school is now like 90%, and the country is no longer controlled by an extremist terrorist organization but yeah we fucked it up real good.
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AlephZero posted...

We'll be in Afghanistan for decades more. No President wants to be the one that pulls out and allows the Taliban to regain control.

Taliban already has control of most of the country.

ArchiePeck posted...

We ****ed the place up and didn't fix it afterwards. See: the rise of IS in Iraq - that was at least in part because of how we ****ed that up after removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The Iraq situation is similar to Libya and what would happen in Syria. Afganistan appeared to be a failed state to begin with. I'm not super familiar with Afganistan though so I might get Scott Horton's new book, "Fool's Errand".
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He finally realised it wasn't so simple as he claimed. Hopefully others will finally realise it as well.
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Cause he isn't popular and needs the troop surge to boost his ratings.
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As long as there's opium poppies to be grown and resources to be plundered, the U.S. is never leaving.