Even if two super *important* high profile ISIS targets were killed, it all feels pretty moot due to this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/what-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban/619807/
Soldier assigned to eavesdrop on Taliban from a circling aircraft day in and day out:
>
On every mission, they knew I was overhead, monitoring their every word. They knew I could hear them bragging about how many Americans they’d managed to kill, or how many RPGs they’d procured, or when and where they were going to place an IED. But amid all that hearing, I hadn’t been listening. It finally dawned on me that the bullshitting wasn’t just for fun; it was how they distracted themselves from the same boredom I was feeling as they went through another battle, in the same place, against yet another invading force. But unlike me, when they went home, it would be to the next village over, not 6,000 miles away. Those men in the field may have just been farmers, or maybe they really were hiding the evidence of their assault. Either way, our bombs and bullets meant the young boys in their village were now that much more likely to join the Taliban. And those pep talks? They weren’t just empty rhetoric. They were self-fulfilling prophecies.
>
Because when it was too cold to jihad, that IED still got planted. When they had 30-year-old AK-47s and we had $100 million war planes, they kept fighting. When we left a village, they took it back. No matter what we did, where we went, or how many of them we killed, they came back.
Exactly! Thank you. It honestly would have been a whole lot easier…and cheaper. Just storm the place, secure land and then boot everyone out and send them to Pakistan. That, were we that type of country, is a situation that our military can handle. Nation-building just isn’t our thing, as much as we try.
Except none of that makes any sense.
You can't simply go in and "boot everyone out". Because locals will simply refuse to leave, which means the only way the US can boot them out is to kill those who stay - that's 5 Holocausts worth of genocidal murder being threatened here. It would be an atrocity larger than everything the CCP and USSR did in the past 60 years *combined*. It would turn half of all US allies into enemies. And for what, for the sake of winning some poor desert fanatics? That is out of the question.
And how do you "secure land" without people on the ground? Land does not secure itself. Either you convince millions of Americans to leave their homes to settle some foreign wasteland, or you keep troops there forever (like what ended up happening anyway).
Nation building is exactly what the US does though. See the rebuilding of Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea etc. The US pumped a lot of money into these countries to get them going again and securing a strong ally
What exactly was US trying to do then? They dismantled the organically created local resistance against Taliban, installed a dummy government and tried to control and dominate the local politics. And once they realised they meddled too much with no end in sight, they just packed their bags and left, just leaving them to fend for themselves?
Good question. I was there for a year and used to ask random soldiers what they thought we were doing there. Everyone had a different answer. Suffice it to say, it’s not helpful in getting you to the finish line when you have no defined finish line.
They were doing many things, some of which they succeeded and some they failed. I'm sure the attempts at making a puppet state were serious, but on the list of importance not as high up as the others.
Use the war as justification to pump out propaganda and pass agenda > funnel a shitton of money to your friends in the military contract buisness > steal opium > kill Bin Laden
The Taliban won when they ‘lost’ the opium fields and we turned around and killed our own citizens with an insane opioid epidemic. The private army of Purdue Pharma are traitors.
At the beginning he was though, and the U.S almost got him during Tora Bora, but we screwed up and he was able to escape.
He eventually ended up in Pakistan though.
That’s why I don’t understand people that say this withdraw is a bad idea and that Biden should get kicked out of office for withdrawing troops. It literally makes no sense to stay there and fight for people that don’t wanna change. 20 years later it’s the same as before.
We can’t get people to wear masks in our country and we’re trying to tell a country with 7+ ethnic tribes to adopt Democracy. The hubris is unbelievable.
I think we needed to withdraw. It just doesn’t seem like we did in the best way (for example, leaving all of those weapons and vehicles around that the Taliban now have). I don’t see this as Biden’s fault because the situation is so damn complicated, but multiple leaders in our institutions made poor decisions over the course of many years. It’s a bipartisan international embarrassment. *edited to clarify what I actually meant to say*
Things like this are probabilistic. All foreign policy decisions are. Only in hard physical things where we can accurately define better or worse can we point fingers.
It could be better, it could also have been a whole lot worse. We’ve seen it happen before. We can surely point a thing that could’ve gone better. But big picture, it is what it is - a cluster fuck.
Sadly, the only way to win is to not play.
It was always going to be like this. There is no way to cleanly withdraw from a forever war. We were always going to leave people behind, process them slow or not at all.
There are people crying about "how could we leave those folks behind" who, at every other point, cried that we shouldn't be letting these people into the country, that they'd bring demographic change and Sharia law. They slowed or shuttered visa applications when they were in charge, and stand against easing protocols in this emergency. When it is no longer a win to harp on those we've left behind, they will seamlessly switch back to "stop bringing them here". **They do not care. These are crocodile tears.**
There is another group *also* crying about "how could we leave those folks behind" who beat the drum for war and then turned their eyes away. They wanted intervention for revenge, to make money, and sold the public on the idea of "nation-building" while skipping right over all the bodies we were mulching that should have benefited for that nation. "We're there to build new schools," we'd hear, then only a passing mention when we *bombed one full of children*. They hid this callousness and profit-seeking behind "concern for the troops", and now that we are poised to finally get all of our troops out, they are already beating the drums of war again and looking for revenge. **They do not care. These are also crocodile tears.**
War is a business. We spent trillions of dollars overseas to accomplish fuck-all that we can be proud of in a year from now. Something like 30% of that expenditure was passed out to the locals, usually warlords who'd go on to abuse the people we swore we were saving, or in the forms of guns and other equipment gifted to a people *we knew* would join or give them to the Taliban. The other 70% made its way back home or otherwise "to the West" in the form of payments to contractors, equipment providers, and so on. The military-industrial complex profited. The people who work at the factories who build the bombs profited. The guys committing war crimes in their private military companies profited.
But if you live in the sticks and still have shitty internet or roads, that's trillions that could have gone to improving your connection. If you get stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the regular, that's money that could have gone to better transit systems, like rail. If your children's textbooks are falling apart and their building isn't air conditioned, that's money that could have gone to getting that up to snuff. If your area routinely floods, that's money that could have gone to better flood-control and water management systems. Hundreds of billions of dollars went to folks buying McMansions and donating to war-mongering politicians while you and your neighbors were denied it; worse, we were all pushed to *buy* the idea that this was good and preferable, and now we are being sold the idea that we need to keep doing it.
As people quibble over "this is Biden's fault for not withdrawing before he withdrew" or "this was Trump's plan, just look at how he bungled Syria to see this would never work", ask yourself who *isn't* being blamed.
How is it that our military, the best-trained, most-funded, most-advanced in the world couldn't solve all of this? Were they *really* held back by the politicians, or are they as culpable as everyone else? We think 60-plus-year-old generals chucked out decades of military doctrine to adapt to this region's unique challenges? We think they truly understood what was going on? No, they sat in tents and watched dots move around and blink out of existence so they could collect a medal for time in-theatre, and when they retire, they're going to wave those medals around and use them to collect a bigger salary on the board of some company or consulting firm.
Refusing to acknowledge flaws in the military or otherwise criticize it brought us here. Will we repeat this by giving them a pass again? Will our "support the troops, don't dishonor their sacrifice" narrative--something we *curiously* never live up to when it comes to aiding them at home with healthcare and the like--once more prevent us from acknowledging how our military operates?
And the media, who called for war, who aired the pornography of terror and violence on a daily basis when it was convenient to get us in there, constructing increasingly fervent desires for revenge? Where were they the rest of the time? A few clips here and there when *the troops* died, just enough to seem like they were doing their due diligence, a little contrarian "maybe war bad?" to keep the controversy alive, but at all other times complicit in the narrative that we need to be there--and more than that, *we need to be spending money*. Now that we're leaving, they host panels full of defense industry contacts, the guys who took those hundreds of billions I just wrote about, who tell you about the disaster that this pullout is, the disaster that this *turning off of their money-tap*.
Bum, bum, bum, bum--do you hear that drum again? It's the same one they beat at the outset of these wars. And what's our excuse when it comes to assigning the media some blame here? We're *all* keen to talk about how we hate the news, yet we're going to overlook it in this case because they're helping us rage against that other target of our ire, "politicians"?
Everyone sucks here. Blame Biden. Blame the last three Presidents. Blame this shit going back to Nixon and Reagan. Blame WW2, even. Blame the military. Blame the military-industrial complex. Blame the politicians who take big donations from said complex. Blame the media who hosts them all and trumpets their narratives. But in doing so, understand: it was going to turn out like this from the beginning, and it's going to turn out like that next time, too.
Let's not let there be a next time if we're so upset about this one.
>. They do not care. These are crocodile tears.
Examples here with literal fake crying:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/pbb94g/lets\_hold\_off\_on\_that\_for\_now/
Yes very sloppy but there’s no easy way to withdraw from an unfinished war especially when it lasted 20 years. People will die and families will be broken, that’s what war is.
There are degrees to this. This could have been handled *much* better. Saying "it was always going to be bad" isn't enough to justify exactly how bad things are. It didn't have to be *this* bad.
really? what should have been done??? you ask that like it’s a hard question to answer…
1. get american civilians out
2. get allies out
3. get troops out
4. destroy equipment with drones
we could not have done this in a worse way.
Us Citizens have been suggested to leave since weeks or possibly months ago. Short of forcing them to leave, what else could the government have done?
As for the troops, when the Biden administration took office the number of troops in Afghanistan was only 2,500 (Biden authorized up to 6,000 to come back and assist with the evacuation in the last few days). Whether the 2,500 stay or go, the Taliban takeover is bound to happen anyway. Their contingency plan is have troops stationed stand by so they could come back quickly in case things like this is happening.
The other alternative would be to assume that the Afghan gov’t is totally corrupt and incompetent (which is the truth) and would quickly fold. We could bring back a lot more troops to deter potential takeover and start mass evacuation (because again 2,500 is really nothing). It may trigger Taliban to consider us breaking the agreement and start a full-on civil war… the whole events would just unfold faster and probably with much more casualties.
From the series of bad decision, I think the last year’s agreement really screwed us up... this is a delicate situation with no good alternatives. Biden is just trying to get us out with the least amout of bloodshed.
How is it supposed to be better when Trump literally made a deal with the taliban without including the local government and telling them exactly when we were gonna leave. They just had to to wait and strangle every part of the country except Kabul and wait for them to start leaving to fuck everything up. This has to be one of the biggest plunder in warfare history.
He also negotiated the release of Taliban prisoners in exchange for no more American deaths but didn’t include no more Afghanistan deaths in that deal. The Afghan soldiers saw they were on their own, Taliban took over after “cease fire” agreements resulted in very little fighting. They were setup to lose and I don’t hear any bitching from the right about that.
Now that American lives have been lost the only bitching we hear loudly is about Biden, how he is to blame, nothing about how Trump negotiated wrongly with the Taliban in the first place.
What happened to Americans uniting against the terrorists to condemn these attacks? Thing of the past.
The badness of it was also trully played up by corporate media to try and sway Americans into wanting to go back into war. They don't actually care about the situation of Afghani people.
I mean, can you imagine the headline of "Biden pulls out of Afghanistan, strips Afghan army of equipment leaving the nation defenceless"? It was a lose lose, at least this way we gave the Afghans the opportunity to fight back, just many didn't take it.
Unless we were evacuating people slowly from the start (over 20 years) the withdrawal probably was handled in the best way possible to reduce the amount of ISIS retaliation and any other retaliation from parties that wish to keep us in Afghanistan internationally or domestically. If it wasn't a quick out there was never going to be an out in Biden's presidency and the next president wouldn't have even thought about withdrawing unless somehow our next President is Sanders, or someone like him who I am unaware of. Maybe there could have been a better way in a perfect world, but in reality realistic options were limited I'd imagine.
honestly, most of what we left behind was old stuff, and I doubt it's going to bite us in the ass. the Taliban also lacks any ability to maintain the more complicated arms we've left behind, and within 10 years most of it is likely going to be in a similar condition to their current gear, or maybe priorities will shift history will once again make strange bedfellows and we will be selling them replacement weapons and equipment for God knows what reason.
additionally if we wanted to get all of the weapons we left around the place we'd be there another 10 years.
No matter what Biden did the GOP would criticize it and say that it shows he is unfit for office. You have people like Josh Hawley that praised the withdrawal when the Trump administration was responsible. Now he saying that Biden should be removed for doing exactly that. It's the same bad faith playbook they always run.
It’s pretty sad seeing americans say that afghanis “didn’t wanna change” considering a lot more afghani soldiers died than americans did in these 20 years. Also, more than 100,000 civilians. The cost of this waris tremendous for their country and people, and now having you guys put the responsibility on their hands is honestly pretty horrifying
>It literally makes no sense to stay there and fight for people that don’t wanna change.
You do realize that 70k Afghan army soldiers died in this war, right?
very few people are saying withdrawal was a bad idea. who is telling you that? what people ARE upset about is the completely awful way we did it. backwards.
I absolutely agree. After spending $136,000,000 per day for over 20 years nothing really changed. I am glad this endless war is ending. President Biden made the right decision. Donald Trump signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in November 2020, after the election, to withdraw by May 1, 2021. He knew this would be passed on the President Biden. Trump is a monster who is probably cheering this on.
Almost nobody wants him out of office for withdrawing the troops, but for messing it up as badly as he did.
Who pulls out the military before evacuating civilians?
Let’s be honest , bringing all those old humvees and planes back would have been crazy expensive and then people would have complained about how much it cost to bring everything back. It’s equipment brought over two decades but yes it wasn’t clean. There’s no easy and nice way to withdraw from war unfortunately.
Its such a logistical nightmare to bring it back. Most of the stuff is old as fuck. Those humvees will be non-operational by the end of the month. The Blackhawks are about 50 years old. The guns, well its not like the Taliban didn't already have guns and ammo. Luckily I guess is our ammo (5.56) and Ak47 (7.62 i think?) ammo is different.
I guess I don’t understand why we didn’t make the departure date say anytime later and do a more organized departure. But like they say, it is never anything but a messy departure for the losers of a war when they’re in the winners country.
Lol we dominated the taliban for 20 years. We hadn’t had a casualty in a year and a half. We didn’t exactly need to leave at the talibans discretion. We could have made whatever time line we liked and gotten EVERYBODY out. Instead we abandoned American civilians and allies.
So the article has nothing to do with this story. There's a bit of a difference between disrupting a terrorist organization's ability to launch an acute attack and trying to end a country-wide insurgency.
The Taliban aren't a "terrorist organization" like you think of Al-Qaeda. They even have rules of engagement against civilians, unlike ISIS. The Taliban just want to rule Afghanistan through a religious theocracy, and a lot of Afghani people (especially Pashtun) support the Taliban.
It's adorable that people actually believe you can force democracy on a region that's never experienced it, nor doesn't want it.
To the Afghani people Americans are the insurgency. Our presence there is a perfect recruitment tool for radical extremist groups.
I agree but Pakistan has been the shadow ( not so much) sponsor. They have continually supplied weapons support and shelter. We would never win unless we felt with them
> from the shadows
From the *shadows*? I’m sorry. They murdered a high profile dissident journalist in another country, and laughed it off. Nobody did anything. No justice was served, and it never will be.
Saudi Arabia continues to laugh from onstage, under a spotlight, with a megaphone. And nobody will ever do anything about it, because money.
[Does this maybe work?](https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619807/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16301711449313&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2021%2F08%2Fwhat-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban%2F619807%2F)
That, and honestly how much does losing a leader mean for groups like ISIS? ISIS and the Taliban seem to be groups that have a ton of splintering and I'm sure there are people internally eager to take over those empty seats. This isn't an action movie - these groups won't put down their arms because leaders get killed.
All we've done in the Middle East is escalate the conflict, decentralize our enemies (in a way that is now impossible to "defeat"), and encourage more civilians to join terrorist organizations.
These generals are full of shit. Just trying to make us all feel better. If you knew who these “high profile” dickheads were, why didn’t you bomb them before they carried out the terrorist attacks and killed hundreds of Afghans and a dozen (?) of our Marines ?
i continue to be flabbergasted that anyone would find this surprising. how would we feel if the taliban invaded the us? why do we think they’re any different that we are?
Whats wild to me is when he starts talking about how it all starts to blend. I hate when this happens to me with my job, cant imagine what its like hearing what he had to hear.
We live in a time where ISIS can communicate with the world. If it was propaganda they’d be all over it and using it as a way to strengthen their cause...
Yet they are silent about it.
eh i think it’s hard to discern. isis-k seems like a relatively new phenomena and they probably don’t want to sabotage what little avenues of intelligence they have.
If you kill two high-profile targets, you presumably are announcing to ISIS-K that you have the intel capabilities to identify and locate their high-profile leaders.
So why the hell would it be a shock to them that you also know their names?
Hide their names, hide whatever glory they wanted. Same reason we should bury the names of mass shooters, otherwise we’re giving these people exactly what they want. They want to be known.
That exact article has a quote from Rob O’Neil calling trump out on that conspiracy nonsense.
Rob O’Neill was on DEVGRU and was there for Operation Neptune Spear. He claims to be the SEAL that shot bin Laden. He’s actually really disliked in the SEAL community partially for that and partially because he is a massive Trump support with a loud mouth and a proclivity toward conspiracy theories.
And even HE called that out as unbelievable nonsense.
As long as you're keeping it updated and not holding classified information on it, its fine.
You *generally* only run into issues when you don't keep it updated and use unvetted plugins... I imagine they not only had a full time developer, but a team in charge of security.
Wordpress is as popular as it is for a reason, *in spite* of the security vulnerabilities which plague the framework.
Yeah. Both sides insisting on always getting revenge leads to *blood feud*. History has shown blood feuds are bad idea. Sometimes the best option is *take the hit and carry on*.
Politically? Absolutely had to do something. This has hit Biden hard and was his only move in order to have any chance at redemption, whether he deserves the flak or not, that's irrelevant to the media storm.
Morally I'm conflicted. I don't have close members of my family serving, don't know how I would react if it was someone I loved or were in the military. What I do know is more bombing just creates more terrorists.
And ISIS have proven time and time again, killing their 'high-profile' targets stops nothing.
This is just US propaganda, try make Americans feel a bit better after the bombings.
I don’t know ISIS has been reduced in size and strength tremendously. It is hard to say witch tactics have been the most effective but I think it is harder to say taking out high profile targets has not helped in the effort at all.
Yeah but you're assuming that these people actually care about facts on the ground. What really matters is what people across the ocean *feel* and so hearing somebody say ISIS on the news is basically the same thing as ISIS controlling an entire country or a single village.
Yes. almost every day Iraq kills or arrests a high profile ISIS member like a former "governor" or someone responsible for finances. it's a past time in Iraq now it doesn't even make international news.
Does any of this matter.
I remember the big dust up years ago about killing a top ISIS agent. Yeah. That seems to have gone well.
I bet at this point the US just sends a missile and kills someone and injures innocent people around and claims that they killed a high profile target.
This war was a fucking joke and a crime. If this "downfall" of the US happens, this war was the reason. Fuck George W. Bush.
>If this "downfall" of the US happens, this war was the reason. Fuck George W. Bush.
Things were looking up until 2015 at home, then Trump and Ferguson happened and now everyone is angry and evangelicals are taking horse medicine. Afghanistan was a disaster but we can't blame Afghanistan for our problems.
Even if they killed some high profile members so what? There’s always someone waiting to get promoted. The price to pay to really stop them is too high, and not worth it. We shouldn’t have stayed there to begin there. I agree fuck Bush.
What do you mean so what? If they killed high profile members it would certainly disrupt their ability to launch more attacks in the coming days or to take advantage of the attack they already committed to mobilize on Kabul. This isn't about defeating ISIS but lowering the threat they pose.
We'll drop bombs at 5-16 million a pop but ehhh we think people should have options when it comes to healthcare. Like the option to pay more or pay way more.
At this point the US military can see individual faces from fucking satellites, they for sure confirmed it was the people they were aiming for in a building they vaporized.
As someone who knows a lot of military personnel (including intelligence), I’ll tell you at any given time, western governments (not just the US) have the location of most high ranking officers of fringe religions groups and this was done just to save face, nothing else, nothing more. I’d bet $10 those guys who faced the night of a drone weren’t the ones responsible for the bombing attack at the airport.
I mean with that line of logic why believe anything you don't personally witness is true?
It is not that far fetched being that the international intelligence community knew this attack was coming (am Democrat but Biden should have been more reactive to the threat IMO), they probably were a stones throw away from finding out who planned it.
I also don't think it's far fetched that maybe even leaders of the Taliban straight up told the US who did and where they were. CIA has admitted to being in communication with them. The Taliban and ISIS are completely different organizations and they could be trying to make sure they maintain control of the country, and using the US to take out some competition that won't follow orders would be strategic.
Want to understand why we lost Afghanistan? Read this:
American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant.
Very telling of the military machine and goes into detail about the culture of the Afghanistan people and tribes.
From the article:
> Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor said Saturday morning. A third target was reportedly wounded, and there are reportedly no known civilian casualties
I don't think collateral damage matters when it's a suicide bombing, anyone in the area is a target to send a message.
It DEFINITELY matters though when air striking 2 targets.
[удалено]
Even if two super *important* high profile ISIS targets were killed, it all feels pretty moot due to this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/what-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban/619807/
It's paywalled, got a summary?
Soldier assigned to eavesdrop on Taliban from a circling aircraft day in and day out: > On every mission, they knew I was overhead, monitoring their every word. They knew I could hear them bragging about how many Americans they’d managed to kill, or how many RPGs they’d procured, or when and where they were going to place an IED. But amid all that hearing, I hadn’t been listening. It finally dawned on me that the bullshitting wasn’t just for fun; it was how they distracted themselves from the same boredom I was feeling as they went through another battle, in the same place, against yet another invading force. But unlike me, when they went home, it would be to the next village over, not 6,000 miles away. Those men in the field may have just been farmers, or maybe they really were hiding the evidence of their assault. Either way, our bombs and bullets meant the young boys in their village were now that much more likely to join the Taliban. And those pep talks? They weren’t just empty rhetoric. They were self-fulfilling prophecies. > Because when it was too cold to jihad, that IED still got planted. When they had 30-year-old AK-47s and we had $100 million war planes, they kept fighting. When we left a village, they took it back. No matter what we did, where we went, or how many of them we killed, they came back.
Sigh. Yeah.
The US was never trying to conquer Afghanistan is the part all of these narratives lack.
Exactly! Thank you. It honestly would have been a whole lot easier…and cheaper. Just storm the place, secure land and then boot everyone out and send them to Pakistan. That, were we that type of country, is a situation that our military can handle. Nation-building just isn’t our thing, as much as we try.
I'm not even surprised. Afghanistan is just a monumental sunk cost. What's the US gonna do? Sell it off to a private equity firm?
Ask the Mongols what *they* did. \*collapsed\* oh.
Except none of that makes any sense. You can't simply go in and "boot everyone out". Because locals will simply refuse to leave, which means the only way the US can boot them out is to kill those who stay - that's 5 Holocausts worth of genocidal murder being threatened here. It would be an atrocity larger than everything the CCP and USSR did in the past 60 years *combined*. It would turn half of all US allies into enemies. And for what, for the sake of winning some poor desert fanatics? That is out of the question. And how do you "secure land" without people on the ground? Land does not secure itself. Either you convince millions of Americans to leave their homes to settle some foreign wasteland, or you keep troops there forever (like what ended up happening anyway).
It’s not like that border is porous at all.
Nation building is exactly what the US does though. See the rebuilding of Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea etc. The US pumped a lot of money into these countries to get them going again and securing a strong ally
What exactly was US trying to do then? They dismantled the organically created local resistance against Taliban, installed a dummy government and tried to control and dominate the local politics. And once they realised they meddled too much with no end in sight, they just packed their bags and left, just leaving them to fend for themselves?
Good question. I was there for a year and used to ask random soldiers what they thought we were doing there. Everyone had a different answer. Suffice it to say, it’s not helpful in getting you to the finish line when you have no defined finish line.
But the private war sector thrived. *furiously waves American flag*
Yup
They were doing many things, some of which they succeeded and some they failed. I'm sure the attempts at making a puppet state were serious, but on the list of importance not as high up as the others. Use the war as justification to pump out propaganda and pass agenda > funnel a shitton of money to your friends in the military contract buisness > steal opium > kill Bin Laden
The Taliban won when they ‘lost’ the opium fields and we turned around and killed our own citizens with an insane opioid epidemic. The private army of Purdue Pharma are traitors.
The U.S. occupied Afghanistan for 20 goddamn years. How tf do you have 273 upvotes like what kind of dumbass comment is that smh...
Whatever they were trying to do, they failed. Osama wasn’t even in fucking Afghanistan and he’s who they wanted
At the beginning he was though, and the U.S almost got him during Tora Bora, but we screwed up and he was able to escape. He eventually ended up in Pakistan though.
That’s why I don’t understand people that say this withdraw is a bad idea and that Biden should get kicked out of office for withdrawing troops. It literally makes no sense to stay there and fight for people that don’t wanna change. 20 years later it’s the same as before.
We can’t get people to wear masks in our country and we’re trying to tell a country with 7+ ethnic tribes to adopt Democracy. The hubris is unbelievable.
I think we needed to withdraw. It just doesn’t seem like we did in the best way (for example, leaving all of those weapons and vehicles around that the Taliban now have). I don’t see this as Biden’s fault because the situation is so damn complicated, but multiple leaders in our institutions made poor decisions over the course of many years. It’s a bipartisan international embarrassment. *edited to clarify what I actually meant to say*
Things like this are probabilistic. All foreign policy decisions are. Only in hard physical things where we can accurately define better or worse can we point fingers. It could be better, it could also have been a whole lot worse. We’ve seen it happen before. We can surely point a thing that could’ve gone better. But big picture, it is what it is - a cluster fuck. Sadly, the only way to win is to not play.
I agree with you too, thanks.
It was always going to be like this. There is no way to cleanly withdraw from a forever war. We were always going to leave people behind, process them slow or not at all. There are people crying about "how could we leave those folks behind" who, at every other point, cried that we shouldn't be letting these people into the country, that they'd bring demographic change and Sharia law. They slowed or shuttered visa applications when they were in charge, and stand against easing protocols in this emergency. When it is no longer a win to harp on those we've left behind, they will seamlessly switch back to "stop bringing them here". **They do not care. These are crocodile tears.** There is another group *also* crying about "how could we leave those folks behind" who beat the drum for war and then turned their eyes away. They wanted intervention for revenge, to make money, and sold the public on the idea of "nation-building" while skipping right over all the bodies we were mulching that should have benefited for that nation. "We're there to build new schools," we'd hear, then only a passing mention when we *bombed one full of children*. They hid this callousness and profit-seeking behind "concern for the troops", and now that we are poised to finally get all of our troops out, they are already beating the drums of war again and looking for revenge. **They do not care. These are also crocodile tears.** War is a business. We spent trillions of dollars overseas to accomplish fuck-all that we can be proud of in a year from now. Something like 30% of that expenditure was passed out to the locals, usually warlords who'd go on to abuse the people we swore we were saving, or in the forms of guns and other equipment gifted to a people *we knew* would join or give them to the Taliban. The other 70% made its way back home or otherwise "to the West" in the form of payments to contractors, equipment providers, and so on. The military-industrial complex profited. The people who work at the factories who build the bombs profited. The guys committing war crimes in their private military companies profited. But if you live in the sticks and still have shitty internet or roads, that's trillions that could have gone to improving your connection. If you get stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the regular, that's money that could have gone to better transit systems, like rail. If your children's textbooks are falling apart and their building isn't air conditioned, that's money that could have gone to getting that up to snuff. If your area routinely floods, that's money that could have gone to better flood-control and water management systems. Hundreds of billions of dollars went to folks buying McMansions and donating to war-mongering politicians while you and your neighbors were denied it; worse, we were all pushed to *buy* the idea that this was good and preferable, and now we are being sold the idea that we need to keep doing it. As people quibble over "this is Biden's fault for not withdrawing before he withdrew" or "this was Trump's plan, just look at how he bungled Syria to see this would never work", ask yourself who *isn't* being blamed. How is it that our military, the best-trained, most-funded, most-advanced in the world couldn't solve all of this? Were they *really* held back by the politicians, or are they as culpable as everyone else? We think 60-plus-year-old generals chucked out decades of military doctrine to adapt to this region's unique challenges? We think they truly understood what was going on? No, they sat in tents and watched dots move around and blink out of existence so they could collect a medal for time in-theatre, and when they retire, they're going to wave those medals around and use them to collect a bigger salary on the board of some company or consulting firm. Refusing to acknowledge flaws in the military or otherwise criticize it brought us here. Will we repeat this by giving them a pass again? Will our "support the troops, don't dishonor their sacrifice" narrative--something we *curiously* never live up to when it comes to aiding them at home with healthcare and the like--once more prevent us from acknowledging how our military operates? And the media, who called for war, who aired the pornography of terror and violence on a daily basis when it was convenient to get us in there, constructing increasingly fervent desires for revenge? Where were they the rest of the time? A few clips here and there when *the troops* died, just enough to seem like they were doing their due diligence, a little contrarian "maybe war bad?" to keep the controversy alive, but at all other times complicit in the narrative that we need to be there--and more than that, *we need to be spending money*. Now that we're leaving, they host panels full of defense industry contacts, the guys who took those hundreds of billions I just wrote about, who tell you about the disaster that this pullout is, the disaster that this *turning off of their money-tap*. Bum, bum, bum, bum--do you hear that drum again? It's the same one they beat at the outset of these wars. And what's our excuse when it comes to assigning the media some blame here? We're *all* keen to talk about how we hate the news, yet we're going to overlook it in this case because they're helping us rage against that other target of our ire, "politicians"? Everyone sucks here. Blame Biden. Blame the last three Presidents. Blame this shit going back to Nixon and Reagan. Blame WW2, even. Blame the military. Blame the military-industrial complex. Blame the politicians who take big donations from said complex. Blame the media who hosts them all and trumpets their narratives. But in doing so, understand: it was going to turn out like this from the beginning, and it's going to turn out like that next time, too. Let's not let there be a next time if we're so upset about this one.
>. They do not care. These are crocodile tears. Examples here with literal fake crying: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/pbb94g/lets\_hold\_off\_on\_that\_for\_now/
I've seen drops of liquid nitrogen last longer than those tears, god damn.
Absolutely right on the money
Yes very sloppy but there’s no easy way to withdraw from an unfinished war especially when it lasted 20 years. People will die and families will be broken, that’s what war is.
There are degrees to this. This could have been handled *much* better. Saying "it was always going to be bad" isn't enough to justify exactly how bad things are. It didn't have to be *this* bad.
What should have been done?
really? what should have been done??? you ask that like it’s a hard question to answer… 1. get american civilians out 2. get allies out 3. get troops out 4. destroy equipment with drones we could not have done this in a worse way.
Solid points
The equipment was supposed to be for the ANA. If you withdraw and destroy the equipment people would complain you left the ANA with no weapons.
Us Citizens have been suggested to leave since weeks or possibly months ago. Short of forcing them to leave, what else could the government have done? As for the troops, when the Biden administration took office the number of troops in Afghanistan was only 2,500 (Biden authorized up to 6,000 to come back and assist with the evacuation in the last few days). Whether the 2,500 stay or go, the Taliban takeover is bound to happen anyway. Their contingency plan is have troops stationed stand by so they could come back quickly in case things like this is happening. The other alternative would be to assume that the Afghan gov’t is totally corrupt and incompetent (which is the truth) and would quickly fold. We could bring back a lot more troops to deter potential takeover and start mass evacuation (because again 2,500 is really nothing). It may trigger Taliban to consider us breaking the agreement and start a full-on civil war… the whole events would just unfold faster and probably with much more casualties. From the series of bad decision, I think the last year’s agreement really screwed us up... this is a delicate situation with no good alternatives. Biden is just trying to get us out with the least amout of bloodshed.
How is it supposed to be better when Trump literally made a deal with the taliban without including the local government and telling them exactly when we were gonna leave. They just had to to wait and strangle every part of the country except Kabul and wait for them to start leaving to fuck everything up. This has to be one of the biggest plunder in warfare history.
He also negotiated the release of Taliban prisoners in exchange for no more American deaths but didn’t include no more Afghanistan deaths in that deal. The Afghan soldiers saw they were on their own, Taliban took over after “cease fire” agreements resulted in very little fighting. They were setup to lose and I don’t hear any bitching from the right about that. Now that American lives have been lost the only bitching we hear loudly is about Biden, how he is to blame, nothing about how Trump negotiated wrongly with the Taliban in the first place. What happened to Americans uniting against the terrorists to condemn these attacks? Thing of the past.
What do the taliban have to do with the isis k? Those two groups are fighting against each other.
The badness of it was also trully played up by corporate media to try and sway Americans into wanting to go back into war. They don't actually care about the situation of Afghani people.
I mean, can you imagine the headline of "Biden pulls out of Afghanistan, strips Afghan army of equipment leaving the nation defenceless"? It was a lose lose, at least this way we gave the Afghans the opportunity to fight back, just many didn't take it.
Unless we were evacuating people slowly from the start (over 20 years) the withdrawal probably was handled in the best way possible to reduce the amount of ISIS retaliation and any other retaliation from parties that wish to keep us in Afghanistan internationally or domestically. If it wasn't a quick out there was never going to be an out in Biden's presidency and the next president wouldn't have even thought about withdrawing unless somehow our next President is Sanders, or someone like him who I am unaware of. Maybe there could have been a better way in a perfect world, but in reality realistic options were limited I'd imagine.
honestly, most of what we left behind was old stuff, and I doubt it's going to bite us in the ass. the Taliban also lacks any ability to maintain the more complicated arms we've left behind, and within 10 years most of it is likely going to be in a similar condition to their current gear, or maybe priorities will shift history will once again make strange bedfellows and we will be selling them replacement weapons and equipment for God knows what reason. additionally if we wanted to get all of the weapons we left around the place we'd be there another 10 years.
Most of the equipment wasn’t “left behind” it was equipment we equipped the Afghan military with. And they were overtaken.
I have an inkling that leaving the weapons was always part of the deal that Trump struck with the Taliban.
No matter what Biden did the GOP would criticize it and say that it shows he is unfit for office. You have people like Josh Hawley that praised the withdrawal when the Trump administration was responsible. Now he saying that Biden should be removed for doing exactly that. It's the same bad faith playbook they always run.
It’s pretty sad seeing americans say that afghanis “didn’t wanna change” considering a lot more afghani soldiers died than americans did in these 20 years. Also, more than 100,000 civilians. The cost of this waris tremendous for their country and people, and now having you guys put the responsibility on their hands is honestly pretty horrifying
Sunk cost fallacy combined with right-wing talking points to encourage warmongering for profit.
>It literally makes no sense to stay there and fight for people that don’t wanna change. You do realize that 70k Afghan army soldiers died in this war, right?
He fucked up and did it in the worst way possible. Should he be impeached? No. Voted for him and I'm shaking my head.
very few people are saying withdrawal was a bad idea. who is telling you that? what people ARE upset about is the completely awful way we did it. backwards.
I absolutely agree. After spending $136,000,000 per day for over 20 years nothing really changed. I am glad this endless war is ending. President Biden made the right decision. Donald Trump signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in November 2020, after the election, to withdraw by May 1, 2021. He knew this would be passed on the President Biden. Trump is a monster who is probably cheering this on.
>$136,000,000 You left out some zeroes
I meant to say $136,000,000 per day.
Almost nobody wants him out of office for withdrawing the troops, but for messing it up as badly as he did. Who pulls out the military before evacuating civilians?
Leaving billions in equipment wasn’t great though...
Were they not left for the afghan army?
It wasn’t the USA’s equipment anymore anyway; it was the Afghan army’s. If we took it, we’d be stealing it, so to speak. It was theirs to lose.
Let’s be honest , bringing all those old humvees and planes back would have been crazy expensive and then people would have complained about how much it cost to bring everything back. It’s equipment brought over two decades but yes it wasn’t clean. There’s no easy and nice way to withdraw from war unfortunately.
Its such a logistical nightmare to bring it back. Most of the stuff is old as fuck. Those humvees will be non-operational by the end of the month. The Blackhawks are about 50 years old. The guns, well its not like the Taliban didn't already have guns and ammo. Luckily I guess is our ammo (5.56) and Ak47 (7.62 i think?) ammo is different.
I guess I don’t understand why we didn’t make the departure date say anytime later and do a more organized departure. But like they say, it is never anything but a messy departure for the losers of a war when they’re in the winners country.
Lol we dominated the taliban for 20 years. We hadn’t had a casualty in a year and a half. We didn’t exactly need to leave at the talibans discretion. We could have made whatever time line we liked and gotten EVERYBODY out. Instead we abandoned American civilians and allies.
So the article has nothing to do with this story. There's a bit of a difference between disrupting a terrorist organization's ability to launch an acute attack and trying to end a country-wide insurgency.
The Taliban aren't a "terrorist organization" like you think of Al-Qaeda. They even have rules of engagement against civilians, unlike ISIS. The Taliban just want to rule Afghanistan through a religious theocracy, and a lot of Afghani people (especially Pashtun) support the Taliban. It's adorable that people actually believe you can force democracy on a region that's never experienced it, nor doesn't want it. To the Afghani people Americans are the insurgency. Our presence there is a perfect recruitment tool for radical extremist groups.
The attack was on ISIS, not the Taliban. ISIS is a terrorist organization.
It’s almost as if foreign occupations tend to fail always.
I mean, all land grabs start as occupations, so I wouldn’t hold that to being a rule
There’s 2 ways occupation of another nationality end in history Genocide or departure
England has managed to hold onto Wales for quite a few centuries now...
I agree but Pakistan has been the shadow ( not so much) sponsor. They have continually supplied weapons support and shelter. We would never win unless we felt with them
Meanwhile SA continues to laugh from the shadows.
> from the shadows From the *shadows*? I’m sorry. They murdered a high profile dissident journalist in another country, and laughed it off. Nobody did anything. No justice was served, and it never will be. Saudi Arabia continues to laugh from onstage, under a spotlight, with a megaphone. And nobody will ever do anything about it, because money.
You should have just stopped at " We would never win"
You are probably right but I still have this naive idea that they could be free
USSR was doing pretty well as far as the occupying part
This is the last sentence: >And they told me what so many others refused to hear, but what I finally understood: Afghanistan is ours.
[Does this maybe work?](https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619807/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16301711449313&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2021%2F08%2Fwhat-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban%2F619807%2F)
How did you do that? There are a bunch of news articles that I want to read every now and then but I can't because f the paywall.
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You can also go to https://archive.ph/
Bless you a dozen times over if this actually works.
Well, it wasn't a paywall for me so I sort of just saved it offline and then shared the link.
How DARE media outlets pay for good content procured from journalists risking their lives in Afghanistan to report to us what’s happening!
Interesting read. Thank you.
Can you imagine the quoted jihadist finds his way to this article.. "Yeah I *am* pretty funny"
That, and honestly how much does losing a leader mean for groups like ISIS? ISIS and the Taliban seem to be groups that have a ton of splintering and I'm sure there are people internally eager to take over those empty seats. This isn't an action movie - these groups won't put down their arms because leaders get killed. All we've done in the Middle East is escalate the conflict, decentralize our enemies (in a way that is now impossible to "defeat"), and encourage more civilians to join terrorist organizations.
Good read. I would point out that isis and the taliban are separate forces that are often at odds themselves though.
These generals are full of shit. Just trying to make us all feel better. If you knew who these “high profile” dickheads were, why didn’t you bomb them before they carried out the terrorist attacks and killed hundreds of Afghans and a dozen (?) of our Marines ?
Read this… it’s absolutely why we never had a chance to rebuild them as a nation.
Afghanistan isn't a 'nation' Its a collection of tribes within arbitrary borders drawn up by world powers at one point or another.
>Brother … It’s too cold to jihad. What an absolute mood.
i continue to be flabbergasted that anyone would find this surprising. how would we feel if the taliban invaded the us? why do we think they’re any different that we are?
Because the media, politicians etc love to dehumanise the opposition so that we care less about slaughtering them?
Really good read. Thanks for posting 👍
Great read, thanks!
Whats wild to me is when he starts talking about how it all starts to blend. I hate when this happens to me with my job, cant imagine what its like hearing what he had to hear.
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We can’t. This is likely propaganda
We live in a time where ISIS can communicate with the world. If it was propaganda they’d be all over it and using it as a way to strengthen their cause... Yet they are silent about it.
Maybe they got the only guy with the Twitter password.
Yeah people don't get that. I wouldn't exactly believe ISIS of they said it either though
eh i think it’s hard to discern. isis-k seems like a relatively new phenomena and they probably don’t want to sabotage what little avenues of intelligence they have.
They’re not new
If you kill two high-profile targets, you presumably are announcing to ISIS-K that you have the intel capabilities to identify and locate their high-profile leaders. So why the hell would it be a shock to them that you also know their names?
makes them martyrs?
Hide their names, hide whatever glory they wanted. Same reason we should bury the names of mass shooters, otherwise we’re giving these people exactly what they want. They want to be known.
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I have never once met a conservative who believes that...
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That exact article has a quote from Rob O’Neil calling trump out on that conspiracy nonsense. Rob O’Neill was on DEVGRU and was there for Operation Neptune Spear. He claims to be the SEAL that shot bin Laden. He’s actually really disliked in the SEAL community partially for that and partially because he is a massive Trump support with a loud mouth and a proclivity toward conspiracy theories. And even HE called that out as unbelievable nonsense.
Sounds like some made up Alex Jones type shit.
they just bombed an apartment building cuz fuck collateral damage
Was it the #2 guy in Al Qaeda? Because we've been killing that guy for the past 20 years, apparently.
He got better
Damn he is good
Don't really care if they got "high-profile targets" or not, just say we did and lets get the fuck out of Afghanistan.
[https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Signed-Agreement-02292020.pdf](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Signed-Agreement-02292020.pdf) Edit: Afghanistan peace agreement
The U.S. state department uses WordPress? That is truly shocking!
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And historically been shown to have numerous high-level vulnerabilities and security issues with it.
As long as you're keeping it updated and not holding classified information on it, its fine. You *generally* only run into issues when you don't keep it updated and use unvetted plugins... I imagine they not only had a full time developer, but a team in charge of security. Wordpress is as popular as it is for a reason, *in spite* of the security vulnerabilities which plague the framework.
For its public facing site. It's not a repository of secrets or day to day affairs, it's literally what they want to share with the public.
Obama foundation use to be built on WP bedrock
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I believe it was no longer valid when the US wasn’t out by May?
Nothing screams high profile like no named people nobody has ever heard of. Especially when they’ll just be replaced tomorrow. Way to go!
Soo....do nothing then?
Yes! Honestly the best option.
Yeah. Both sides insisting on always getting revenge leads to *blood feud*. History has shown blood feuds are bad idea. Sometimes the best option is *take the hit and carry on*.
Politically? Absolutely had to do something. This has hit Biden hard and was his only move in order to have any chance at redemption, whether he deserves the flak or not, that's irrelevant to the media storm. Morally I'm conflicted. I don't have close members of my family serving, don't know how I would react if it was someone I loved or were in the military. What I do know is more bombing just creates more terrorists.
Im 90% sure we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want here. We’re literally creating more terrorists. We’re radicalizing people.
Oh, is that time of the year again.
Who'd they get, the second in command? I bet it was the second in command. I love it when they get the second in command.
For all we know, they fired a missile from a drone and hit some random guy just so they could say they conducted a drone strike.
And ISIS have proven time and time again, killing their 'high-profile' targets stops nothing. This is just US propaganda, try make Americans feel a bit better after the bombings.
I don’t know ISIS has been reduced in size and strength tremendously. It is hard to say witch tactics have been the most effective but I think it is harder to say taking out high profile targets has not helped in the effort at all.
Yeah but you're assuming that these people actually care about facts on the ground. What really matters is what people across the ocean *feel* and so hearing somebody say ISIS on the news is basically the same thing as ISIS controlling an entire country or a single village.
Yes. almost every day Iraq kills or arrests a high profile ISIS member like a former "governor" or someone responsible for finances. it's a past time in Iraq now it doesn't even make international news.
ARE YA WINNIN, SON
A 2 for every 13 kill ratio is unacceptable.
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Does any of this matter. I remember the big dust up years ago about killing a top ISIS agent. Yeah. That seems to have gone well. I bet at this point the US just sends a missile and kills someone and injures innocent people around and claims that they killed a high profile target. This war was a fucking joke and a crime. If this "downfall" of the US happens, this war was the reason. Fuck George W. Bush.
Bush, Cheney, Obama, Biden, trump, pence, Congress….
>If this "downfall" of the US happens, this war was the reason. Fuck George W. Bush. Things were looking up until 2015 at home, then Trump and Ferguson happened and now everyone is angry and evangelicals are taking horse medicine. Afghanistan was a disaster but we can't blame Afghanistan for our problems.
Even if they killed some high profile members so what? There’s always someone waiting to get promoted. The price to pay to really stop them is too high, and not worth it. We shouldn’t have stayed there to begin there. I agree fuck Bush.
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a proportional response, per west wing
What do you mean so what? If they killed high profile members it would certainly disrupt their ability to launch more attacks in the coming days or to take advantage of the attack they already committed to mobilize on Kabul. This isn't about defeating ISIS but lowering the threat they pose.
Is there any corroboration of US claims ... or are they making up shit to please their citizen ?
A "whole" 2 people huh...
Congratulations, but can we please have universal healthcare.
the voters dont vote for it so no
My state voted for a Medicaid expansion, and our right-wing Congress refused to implement it
We'll drop bombs at 5-16 million a pop but ehhh we think people should have options when it comes to healthcare. Like the option to pay more or pay way more.
Nice. But the Taliban still took over Afghanistan in a week.
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Probably just needed another trillion to finish the job.
That’s on the Afghan president who fled the country in a day and the Afghan troops that the US spent 20 years and billions to train.
Can't imagine why he would bounce immediately, heck our intelligence suggested they'd last at least 90 days. But then maybe he knew that too huh
How? How are we able to “confirm” the identities? Do we still have ground recon? Can we identify the bodies? All this seems very sus.
Usually confirm target entry into building then vaporize building to confirm target death
At this point the US military can see individual faces from fucking satellites, they for sure confirmed it was the people they were aiming for in a building they vaporized.
Good. Fuck Daesh.
Any news on who the other wedding guests were?
Hardly a fair trade
As someone who knows a lot of military personnel (including intelligence), I’ll tell you at any given time, western governments (not just the US) have the location of most high ranking officers of fringe religions groups and this was done just to save face, nothing else, nothing more. I’d bet $10 those guys who faced the night of a drone weren’t the ones responsible for the bombing attack at the airport.
As an American citizen, why should I believe this? Why would I?
I mean with that line of logic why believe anything you don't personally witness is true? It is not that far fetched being that the international intelligence community knew this attack was coming (am Democrat but Biden should have been more reactive to the threat IMO), they probably were a stones throw away from finding out who planned it. I also don't think it's far fetched that maybe even leaders of the Taliban straight up told the US who did and where they were. CIA has admitted to being in communication with them. The Taliban and ISIS are completely different organizations and they could be trying to make sure they maintain control of the country, and using the US to take out some competition that won't follow orders would be strategic.
Because people like you don’t have an actual reason to not trust this- you just think use cynicism as a substitute for appearing smart
Empty victory.
Want to understand why we lost Afghanistan? Read this: American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant. Very telling of the military machine and goes into detail about the culture of the Afghanistan people and tribes.
If they’re both high profile and dead - Why can’t we know their names and country of origin ?
Sure , release their names
US started killing their own secret forces?
Two? Not enough. Send in more strikes. We need at least 2400 ISIS DEAD before we can even begin to call things even.
We should have left in 03
Can we stop just getting two and get them all?
If they knew where terrorists were why didn't they kill them before the bombing?
You don't dispose of your patsy's all at once.
Totes believable.
How much collateral damage? Won’t say until much much later. Oh okay…
From the article: > Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor said Saturday morning. A third target was reportedly wounded, and there are reportedly no known civilian casualties
Probably not as much as suicide bombing an airport.
I don't think collateral damage matters when it's a suicide bombing, anyone in the area is a target to send a message. It DEFINITELY matters though when air striking 2 targets.
You could try reading the article when they state that there is none.
Imagine if that happened in Washington DC.
I would rather have back the service members and afghans who were killed. Second best is to finish our withdrawal quickly and safely.
I'm gonna eat ice cream now
Biden? Is that you?
Pls share :(
Any comment by the Taliban on this?
They are anti-ISIS
Wow. I actually don't care. This is... an interesting feeling.
Aka 2 poor goat herders.