Serious question: What would you have done differently in Afghanistan?

Heard we had zero combat deaths during the last 18 months... If so, stay there. China is a shite stirrer and having a forward base of operations in their backyard will be a good thing down the line.

I would have stopped with the first thread asking this.

I wouldn't be an incompetent pussy democrat and the taliban would know I'd wreck everything they care about if they pulled this shite.

That's what trump did and it worked.

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I would have stopped with the first thread asking this.

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Considering you're still commenting in those sorts of threads I kinda doubt it.

I’d have left as soon as Bin Laden was dead

Mission accomplished. Statement made. frick with us again at your own peril.

It's not so much what we would do differently as how was our intelligence off by light years estimating the Taliban's capability?

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The Afghans did not want to fight, they were more than happy to let the Taliban in and take over. This whole war was a clusterfrick with no end. I don't want American troops over there for 100 years to try to force something the people don't want and aren't willing to fight for.

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Ok, so we left the Afghan army billions worth of equipment for the taliban to capture and use on their own people for what reason than dipshit?

You post these gotcha questions with a predetermined disposition that this shite was inevitable, but our actions don't make sense in the face of "inevitability" then

Surgical take down of the people responsible for 9/11 and then a sprawling social safety net to insulate us from people in that part of the world. If it took workers in every airport in the globe that flew to America so be it. With the amount of money we spent on the war we could have pulled off something like that.

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Remove all non military months prior or at least start the process months prior. Weeks before the date, start removing large military equipment. Basically, all non military gone prior to actually military gone, no good military equipment left behind.

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That's it.

Seems obvious the Taliban was going to try to take it back as soon as we left. Obviously Biden botched how long that would take, but whether it was 30 days or 6 months, it was going to happen, so I would not have even worried about that.

Like you said, focus on getting all American citizens out before troops are removed, and getting as much valuable equipment as you can saved should have been the goal here. Do that, then withdraw.

My first preference would be to never go in to begin with.

But if I were POTUS and saw we had to go in, my orders to the Joint Chiefs would be simple; completely destroy the enemy’s means and ability to continue to resist, no matter what that takes including and up to leveling the whole country and leaving it as a devastated graveyard that would serve as a stark example to the world of what happens to those who would dare to go against the US. There would be no “nation building”, no attempt to win hearts & minds. It would be nothing short of Armageddon from the standpoint of Afghanistan.

And once that was complete, then bring the troops home.