re: Kabul will be Biden's Saigon.

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How do they land and supply 3500 troops when the Taliban mortars the runways?

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Ft. Bragg alert Brigade, so:

If runways compromised, airborne jump.

Land? No problem. Supply? Will be a MASSIVE undertaking.

Then, would have to secure the runways/airport to get the frick out.

Lot's of moving pieces, with clusterfrick/disaster potential high.

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We're in a pretty terrible position as things stand. All of this BEFORE agreeing to stand down.

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Yep.

Two choices: Give them their demands, with no guarantees.

Ramp up to a MASSIVE air campaign just to get our people out safely. We are easily capable of doing either.

If you see that we put combat troops into Kabul for evacuation purposes, then there won't be negotiations; we will keep them at bay with a massive bombing campaign until we get the frick out.

The ARVN crumbled when we cut all military aid. They had no ammunition, I think that their soldiers were issued less than 50 bullets/day, their artillery could fire 3-4 shells over a given time. Most of their air force and helicopters were grounded from lack of spare parts and no fuel. And they were hopelessly outnumbered.

Our policies from 65-68 set the ARVN up for ultimate failure.

Similar scenario with the Afghan troops: we have ended/halted all ground intelligence support and air support. They probably could.have held out longer with those.

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What I don't get we spent 20 yrs training the Afghan military. Obviously they have no will to fight. Why didn't we know this in training and fighting next to them? Or did we know that during training the Afghan soldier was a lost cause and just continued the training exercises anyway for 20 fricking yrs.

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Excellent question. While the Afghan Army had weapons, ammo was limited and they received boxes of potatoes for food.

Clearly their military leadership was weak and inept. I am guessing the US was micromanaging their troops without a concern for when we left. This is a failure of our military leadership to train them properly.

One would think that the US military with CIC and IC would have learned after Benghazi, though that was clearly incompetence on many levels. If anything happens to these people, I think it will be clear once again that we are all pawns in the game of life/politics.

It’s pathetic. With the tech & intel that our government has.. consider yourself fricked going against em at this point without global infrastructure. And who tf can arrange that if not already in place.

TLDR. We are watching pathetic optics play out IMO. Things can be done and can be done quickly to get the job done. Pretty sad if the military can’t even handle this issue.

If a Kabul falls in the desert, and the President isn’t there mentally to see it, does it make a sound?

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Do they not follow up with supplies/equipment to the forward bases?

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Forgive me for this way over simplistic scenario, but here is potentially what we are looking at:

Beep, ya have to understand something: The U.S. already has supplies and equipment at your aforementioned "forward bases." HOWEVER, those forward bases are NO LONGER in Afghanistan. They are in Kuwait and Qatar and probably Saudi Arabia. Look at flight times from any of those three places to KABUL, the place where the U.S. embassy is. We do not have any more forward operating bases left in Afghanistan, and the massive airbase at Kandahar is gone/lost b/c we pulled out. So, if we have to resupply a combat unit(s) now, it's going to be over a long distance.

So we have about 4k US and friendlies in Kabul (civilian/state department/embassy personnel/afghan translators who helped us), which is about to be overrun and need to GTFO of there. We are potentially sending in an Army light infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) and probably a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit); The distances with the way the Biden admin clusterfricked the drawdown puts us at a disadvantage (3 hours flight time). The Taliban and Al-Quaeda have massed and their supply lines are closer.

We drop our lightly equipped troops into Kabul for the purpose of ensuring evacuation; They are still vastly outnumbered now, on the ground. They have to secure an airport/runway, they have to shuttle people to an evacuation point, and all potentially if shite hits the fan under fire.

The only saving grace is that there is no other entity on earth save the U.S. with its air power to help out, both in terms of resupply and a sustained massive bombing/support campaign to hold the Tali/Quaeda at bay for us to get out. It's just a potential cluster frick and a potential disaster with too many moving parts that could have been avoided, and if we had an honest media, a huge black eye for the incompetent Biden administration. If a battlefield disaster occurs, all the blood is on his administration. If they allow the military just to do their own thing and execute this mission, it should be OK.
Pray for our troopers, civilians and Afghans who helped us and hope that this administration doesn't hang them out to dry.

The scenario wherein a force of a few thousand of our guys in various roles must go in and help those already there exfiltrate, that's a situation I pray doesn't develop. The prognosis on that can't be very optimistic. I mean, if it came to blows like that, you're looking at trying to egress from the center of a country then completely overrun by very, very unfriendly militants who are experienced killers and have the tools necessary to do it. If it comes close to that, we'll basically have to give them whatever the hell they ask for in order to stand down long enough to evac every person. Maybe I'm being somewhat dramatic in my thoughts on the matter, but when you get down to brass tacks, there just aren't many feasible plans to safely get our folks out.

I thought the US Government didn’t negotiate with terrorists. This is how far we have fell. Instead of having a set of balls like Trump and standing up to the Taliban. Biden wants to beg them and try to by them off. This is disgraceful and disgusting.

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The scenario wherein a force of a few thousand of our guys in various roles must go in and help those already there exfiltrate, that's a situation I pray doesn't develop.

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I pray the same davy, but events are progressing in a scary manner over there, and is developing in that direction...thus the concern you see right now.

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If it comes close to that, we'll basically have to give them whatever the hell they ask for in order to stand down long enough to evac every person.

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I don't think so. We've lost the war. Never lost a battle however. We wouldn't lose this battle.

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Maybe I'm being somewhat dramatic in my thoughts on the matter, but when you get down to brass tacks, there just aren't many feasible plans to safely get our folks out.

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You already answered your own thoughts. Forget politics, and forget how we got here. We are here. Brass tacks, there are no feasible plans to safely get (ALL) of our folks out. There are feasible plans and capability to get the vast majority of our folks out. That's probably going to be the unfortunate truth of the matter.