Afghanistan

[French G.]

Biden doesn’t have to talk about the laptop and hooker of the week, CNN doesn’t have to talk about their slimy anchor, etc.

[MechAg94]

I think trumps plan was to move out fairly quickly but to leave a force there to protect our interests and people. Joe just pulled everyone out and banned the contractors and now we have 7000-8000 troops back in trying to get the people out.

And he extended the deadline to accomplish this.   

I agree with the comment about about air support.  Showing some support for the ANA and hitting Taliban units on the way out would have slowed things down at the least. 

I still figure the Taliban would eventually take over most of the territory they controlled before 2001, but slowing it down would have helped.  Now we will just wait and see.

[Ben]

Biden did a press conference just a while ago and took zero questions from the press. Oh, and headed straight back to Camp David to hole up again.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2021/08/16/no-questions-biden-couldnt-get-away-fast-enough-as-reporters-shouted-at-end-of-afghanistan-address/

[WLJ]

https://twitter.com/HamidShalizi/status/1427341653916983305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[WLJ]

[Angel Eyes]

... and the hits keep on coming:

https://thepostmillennial.com/white-house-outs-intelligence-officials-in-twitter-post

In a Twitter post published by the White House Twitter account Sunday depicting a video conference with President Joe Biden and his national security team, the White House appears to have inadvertently revealed the identities and locations of intelligence officials in the Middle East.

 

(but at least we don't have mean tweets)

[Hawkmoon]

You forgot the quotation marks around the word President.

I didn't say she was going to be MY president.

[Ron]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/how-america-failed-afghanistan/619740/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Ben]

Well, the MSM didn't last long with the actual reporting.

"95% of Americans will agree with Biden"

https://twitter.com/i/status/1427372450623463428

[Nick1911]

Well, the MSM didn't last long with the actual reporting.

"95% of Americans will agree with Biden"

https://twitter.com/i/status/1427372450623463428

I'm not convinced 95% of Americans agree on anything

[WLJ]

"95% of Americans will agree with Biden"

Is that an order?

[bedlamite]

Taliban: "Death to America!"
CNN: "They seem friendly"
Patriots: "We love America!"
CNN: "Domestic terrorists!"

[Ben]

Brian Williams, current "news" caster, former Navy SEEL:

"Biden didn't run from it, he owned it!"

I'm not sure what speech Mr "I took fire" watched, but in the one I watched, Biden pretty much pointed the finger at everyone but himself.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1427386966685913092

[Lennyjoe]

Rumor has it some of the ANA folks are heading back to areas previously controlled by Northern Alliance as a way to survive.  Seen it on a blurp or two but can’t confirm it’s authenticity

[WLJ]

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/inside-reach-871-us-c-17-packed-640-people-trying-escape-taliban/184563/

[Hawkmoon]

^^^

Seatbelts? We don' need no steenkin' seatbelts.

[AZRedhawk44]

No, we're using Chinooks and Blackhawks

https://youtu.be/aKPZ0Ldn9Bw


Top: Saigon 1975
Bottom: Kabul 2021



[ETA: the Chinook sure has had a long service life]

Rumor has it that this is the same Chinook.  Same VIN or whatever passes for such among helicopters.

[WLJ]

At least 700 armored humvees 

Equipment Captured by the Taliban
 Ed Nash's Military Matters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSoQOcq837w


Disaster At Hand: Documenting Afghan Military Equipment Losses Since June 2021 until August 14, 2021
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/06/disaster-at-hand-documenting-afghan.html

[Andiron]

At least 700 armored humvees 

Equipment Captured by the Taliban
 Ed Nash's Military Matters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSoQOcq837w


Disaster At Hand: Documenting Afghan Military Equipment Losses Since June 2021 until August 14, 2021
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/06/disaster-at-hand-documenting-afghan.html

Those things are trash.  Given haji standards for... anything,  they'll be inert hulks in no time flat.

[Viking]

https://warisboring.com/from-saigon-to-kabul-the-tragically-ironic-tale-of-the-little-sea-knight-that-could/

[BobR]

Rumor has it that this is the same Chinook.  Same VIN or whatever passes for such among helicopters.

Piss poor rumor. Long body, twin rotor, must be the same. Wrong. As was mentioned earlier in this thread the one in Saigon was a CH46 Sea Knight (Phrog) the one in Kabul is a CH47 Chinook. Very easy to tell apart even from a distance.

bob

[French G.]

What doesn't convey is the size difference. I lived with and worked on bit parts of 46s. I did one month trapped in Kentucky getting a helo out of a rework facility that also did stuff that went straight to 160th SOAR. The Chinook is huge in comparison to the Sea Knight. You could roof a 3rd world shack with that rotor blade. Crazy month, the civvie test pilots seemed to have a running competition to outstupid each other. Ever see a max speed MH-6 doing a knife edge pass between two buildings? Ah, yeah... The mighty UH-3 of ours did what it could to represent.

[kgbsquirrel]

So is there no credibility to the idea that Trump's actions were the cause?

I mean it was a Trump platform to bring troops home. It could have been predicted that pulling troops out would cause a collapse, because that should be expected unless you are really optimistic or know something I don't. So Biden getting the hot potato seems like a half reasonable take. I don't think the TaliBlitz was forseen or seen as likely scenario, so maybe the collapse was full-speed instead of the expected slow-motion. It's still embarrassing to engage in public inter-administration finger pointing but did everyone expect withdrawing from AG to go well?

A reminder for the class that if the Departments of State and Defense had obeyed Trump's direct orders to them (to withdraw from Afghanistan) this would not have happened.  The people who disobeyed direct orders to pull out, lied to the commander in chief about doing so, and then bragged about it in the media, are responsible for this.  Still waiting for them to be punished for the aforementioned, but maybe now illegitimate administration will throw those fellas under the bus to save themselves?  One can dream.

[kgbsquirrel]

Talk about short term memory loss around here, or is it just more ShoveBlue chaff and propaganda?  For all the dunces who are doing the progs work by trying to blame Trump for this, shut up and read more.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/17/leaks-and-lies-as-the-military-tries-to-undermine-president-trump/

Take James Franklin Jeffrey, a career Foreign Service hack who signed a scathing NeverTrump letter in 2016, then got a post as President Trump’s “Special Representative for Syria Engagement” anyway, and went on to sabotage the president’s plans for keeping Americans out of the Syrian mess. On his way out the door to a cozy retirement, Ambassador Jeffrey publicly boasted that he had lied to the president about troop numbers in Syria.

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” he told Defense One.

After the defeat of ISIS, the president gave orders to withdraw our troops — but the likes of Jeffrey simply defied them. Twice, in fact: in 2018 and 2019. “What Syria withdrawal?” There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey told reporter Katie Bo Williams. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times.”

The president was led to believe only a skeleton force remained. In fact, there were hundreds more troops that Deep State officials like Jeffrey never disclosed: not to President Trump nor to any other elected official.

And there's more covering their malfeasance when pushed by President Trump to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.

[kgbsquirrel]

Rumor has it that this is the same Chinook.  Same VIN or whatever passes for such among helicopters.

Try counting landing gear.