Current Events > What SHOULD the US have done in Afghanistan?

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I haven't followed american military news ever, but it sounds like staying was a waste of time and leaving was a horrible failure?

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Built a wall

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Allowed refugees that wanted to emigrate to the US or other allied countries the opportunity to then bailed out and let Afghanistan run itself

The US was doomed the moment they decided to go to Afghanistan. They kind of just went in there and propped up a government, hoping that they would be able to survive long enough for a failure of an exit strategy to take place.

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I don't think they should have done anything at all.

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Jack shit

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Not been there in the first place

Whatever intelligence network we had there is now completely gone, and ISIS & Al Qaeda fighters were among the prisoners freed.

I dunno maybe we should have stayed longer?

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Then why are they being criticized for leaving?

Did they leave too abruptly?

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Njolk posted...

Then why are they being criticized for leaving?

Did they leave too abruptly?

Biden decided to move the date sooner, and then sooner again. It was originally going to be April of next year and more of a gradual withdrawal.

But he is abiding by the peace deal the Trump administration made with the Taliban back in 2020 for the U.S. to withdraw.

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Never enter.

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Irony posted...

Built a wall

Ayyyy lmao

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Never should've gone in. The war was unwinnable. We knew this from the beginning of Obama's term and did jack shit to help the people in danger of the Taliban get out. We had years to save them. The truth is America doesn't really care about the people in Afghanistan, they only care enough to use them as moral justification for invading.

So in your opinion, what would have been an appropriate response to 9/11?

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Even with hindsight I don't think there was a good answer.

Something had to be done, a non-response would have been awful.

I figure 3 options.

1) Shock and awe campaign, roughly what we did initially to get Taliban out of power.
2) Have a huge force to pacify even the country side, since they will need to protect the investments.
3) Marshall Plan 2.0. Start pumping $100B a year into their country. Build a highway system, a railroad system, upgrade their airports, invest in mining companies and make it easy for start ups to get capital needed
4) After 20 years hope that the people love the new system so much they fight to keep it.

Option 2:
1) Shock and awe
2) Install puppet government to give us military base
3) Have a permanent military base and prop up the puppet government until it can stand on its own probably like 60 years from first start of the conflict

Option 3:
1) Shock and awe
2) Get the Taliban as damaged as possible, then pull out.
3) If a few years later they begin doing stayed sponsored terrorism again, go in, shock and awe.
This won't solve anything, at best its cathartic.

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Antifar posted...

Never enter.

CommonStar posted...

Never should've gone in.

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You have to wonder why it didn't work out well like post ww2 japan and their economic miracle and rise to world dominance.

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pogo_rabid posted...

You have to wonder why it didn't work out well like post ww2 japan and their economic miracle and rise to world dominance.

Japan is a more unified country.

Countries have unsuccessfully tried to takeover Afghanistan for several centuries now I believe?

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Option 2:
1) Shock and awe
2) Install puppet government to give us military base
3) Have a permanent military base and prop up the puppet government until it can stand on its own probably like 60 years from first start of the conflict

we can now safely say this was never going to happen since the government was an abject farce

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pogo_rabid posted...

You have to wonder why it didn't work out well like post ww2 japan and their economic miracle and rise to world dominance.

Or you could wonder why it would have worked well unlike Korea and Vietnam and every other time since ww2.


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I would have gone in and destroyed every known base and killed every terrorist then let every local who helped is move to the USA and left.

Then, before we leave you meet with the Taliban off the books and tell them we get a whiff of terrorism against us we come back and do it again.

You cant stay in a foreign country in perpetuity and protect it from internal conflict.

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

I would have gone in and destroyed every known base and killed every terrorist then let every local who helped is move to the USA and left.

Then, before we leave you meet with the Taliban off the books and tell them we get a whiff of terrorism against us we come back and do it again.

You cant stay in a foreign country in perpetuity and protect it from internal conflict.

Were it so easy

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CanuckCowboy posted...

Or you could wonder why it would have worked well unlike Korea and Vietnam and every other time since ww2.

South Korea is a world economic superpower, the US pulled out of the war before it was won.

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CruelBuffalo posted...

Allowed refugees that wanted to emigrate to the US or other allied countries the opportunity to then bailed out and let Afghanistan run itself

This is like the minimally responsible thing to do, extend the timeline and let free refugee entry into the US prior to pulling out.

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WeeWeiWiiWie posted...

This is like the minimally responsible thing to do, extend the timeline and let free refugee entry into the US prior to pulling out.

Biden could have ignored Trump's deal with the terrorists and done this.

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Darmik posted...

Japan is a more unified country.

Countries have unsuccessfully tried to takeover Afghanistan for several centuries now I believe?

I think that's a modern myth, Britain controlled Afghanistan for 40 years and only left because of WW2

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hockeybub89 posted...

Biden could have ignored Trump's deal with the terrorists and done this.

Yeah but unfortunately that would have caused another spike in fighting.

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iPhone_7 posted...

Yeah but unfortunately that would have caused another spike in fighting.

It wouldn't have been the first.

Biden already made up his mind, instead of listening to his generals.

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Honestly I think one solution would have been conquering the country in whole and changing the people and their culture overtime from the bottom up. Same as we did Japan.

Inject some capitalism and bring the people and it's culture into modern day. And through it leave the taliban and its barbaric ideals behind.

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

I would have gone in and destroyed every known base and killed every terrorist then let every local who helped is move to the USA and left.

Then, before we leave you meet with the Taliban off the books and tell them we get a whiff of terrorism against us we come back and do it again.

You cant stay in a foreign country in perpetuity and protect it from internal conflict.

Take it easy John Wick.


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Prismsblade posted...

Honestly I think one solution would have been conquering the country in whole and changing the people and their culture overtime from the bottom up. Same as we did Japan.

Inject some capitalism and bring the people and it's culture into modern day. And through it leave the taliban and its barbaric ideals behind.

Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, & Biden don't have the cajones to do that.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, & Biden don't have the cajones to do that.

They themselves couldn't, but I'm sure they could have found somebody, somewhere, somehow that was capable of the task.

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Ran the U.S flag up Kabul's flagpole and said, "You guys can't run this place. We're taking it over." Then precision bomb all the Taliban holdouts and training camps, no matter where they were.

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Prismsblade posted...

They themselves couldn't, but I'm sure they could have found somebody, somewhere, somehow that was capable of the task.

And yet they didn't find anybody to do it, or were willing to give that order.

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WeeWeiWiiWie posted...

This is like the minimally responsible thing to do, extend the timeline and let free refugee entry into the US prior to pulling out.

Shit, we at least did this with the Hmongs.

Some of the kids at school were shits to the kids, but I was always proud to have em there. (before CE does its thing, not proud of the US for bringing them over, I mean proud of our allies)

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Too many people things.. I but at least recently.. Should have never freed those 5000 Taliban prisoners to start with.

I'm so pissed at the afghan army and government. They didn't put up a fight and they outnumber the Taliban at least 5 to 1.

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America would be a hated evil whether they left, stayed, or brought democracy to the region. There's no point in sacrificing more lives.

What we need is to prevent war from being a source of profit. We won this war years ago when we killed Osama Bin Laden. Yet we've lost it because we stayed so that profiteers might exploit it. They don't care. They don't care about the loss of life. They don't care what it does to America or Afghanistan. They don't care if it causes us to lose face. All they want is the money from building war machines. If you passed laws saying that money made off of wars had to be redistributed to things like building schools or advancing scientific learning, we'd never have a war which went more than two to four years.

And, even beyond that, the only thing that lets capitalists choke the lifeblood out of this country is the grand distraction of tribalism. Republicans and Democrats hate each other more than they do terrorists and will do anything in their power to trip one another up. Meanwhile, the same people financially back both parties and are probably laughing at us.

America is screwed no matter what

intervening decades ago was the mistake but at this point? There us no good answer

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shockthemonkey posted...

The US should never fucking attempt nation building, it doesnt fucking work for these shitbags. There hasnt been a peaceful plan that wont cause a humanitarian crisis in decades because the US military is not able to build true peace.

Tell that to the politicians who ordered the US Military to Occupy the area in the first place.

Remember, the US Military has to follow the US Civilian-led Government's orders and whomever is in charge at the time.

It's not like the US Military can act on it's own authority.

Just because the US has been successful with re-building Japan, Germany, South Korea.

The US led coalition of UN & NATO peace keepers were successful with dissolving Yugoslavia into smaller Nation States.

Doesn't mean the politicians will get it right every time.

Especially since we have a rotating cast of politicians in Washington DC

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anything short of full on colonization was going to lead to this issue, foreign powers dont have the ability to overthrow a theocracy and turn it into a stable democracy.

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