Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

 I seems just a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. began withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan.  Then last week, the Taliban took over several cities.  Then Biden decided to evacuate the civilians from the embassy by sending in troops.  They said that maybe in weeks the Taliban will take Kabul.  Well, the take over was much faster than expected.  The Americans barely got out and who knows how many Afghans who helped us are stranded.  This makes the fall of Saigon seem like slow motion.

I think most people, including me, find it hard to believe that after twenty years of training by the American military and given weapons, the Afghan soldiers could not hold against the Taliban forces for even a few weeks.  Upon reflection, I think the major reason for this failure is that the Taliban was fighting for their religion, at least the extreme version of it, and against the infidels who invaded their land.  The government forces were fighting for a paycheck.  Most of the soldiers do not believe in their own government.  This is the same dynamics when the Soviets tried to help the communists who ran the country against the Mujahedin.  The Mujahedin were fighting for their religion and saw the Soviets as invaders.  They were much willing to sacrifice to win.

The Soviets got into the quagmire in Afghanistan.  The U.S. was too happy for that during the Cold War.  In fact they supported the Mujahedin.  What we didn't realize is that after the Mujahedin would give rise to al Qaeda and ISIS.  With the Taliban victory who knows what terrorists groups will be emboldened.  I don't have problem with going into Afghanistan to go after al Qaeda after 9/11.  But veering off to Iraq and did not finish the job led to the mess with have today.  The Russians are probably laughing at us today.

The most important lesson is that we can never listen to war hawks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz again.  They made up lies about WMDs to get us into Iraq.  I will have more in the future about these war hawks and what are they up to today.  Another lesson is that we have not won a war since WWII.  We have spent trillions, lost thousands of lives and what have we got to show for it?  It is not our military might that is the problem.  It is the leadership that lead us into stupid wars that is the problem.  Our foreign policies need to change.  Otherwise we will keep getting humiliated despite spending tons of money and losing lives overseas.

Even though Bush and Cheney started this mess and Trump had declared the withdrawal before he was voted out, Biden is going to get a lot of the blame here.  His team failed to see how quickly Kabul was going to be lost.  We almost didn't get our people out.  Almost 40 years after Saigon, we are desperately evacuating.  This is going to be hammered by the GOP.  Biden can blame Trump but he is going to look bad just as Nixon did.  Add to the COVID surge which is mostly the fault of the anti-vaxxers who are mostly Trump supporters, Biden is going to have a tough few months ahead.