The Fall of Kabul

Now all the women and girls of Afghanistan will have to suffer the consequences of what has happened.

The UK has been "into Afghanistan" a number of times in the past and it has never ended well. I fully expect that we will have to "go into Afghanistan" again with our allies at some point in the future. It maybe in 5 years, 50 years, or 150 years time, who knows?

The obvious alternative to what is happening now is for the Western Allies to go back into Afghanistan fully now. If we have to do it at a later date it could prove much more difficult and costly.

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Originally Posted by Fushigi Ojisan

Originally Posted by RCS
Someone on the news said it was like the fall of Saigon in 1975

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Amazon.com: Goodnight Saigon: The True Story of the U.S. Marines Last Days in Vietnam: 9780425224021: Henderson, Charles: Books
Excellent book on the subject.
Seems as though cannot impose freedom upon those who do not seek it.
Certain there are some there who do seek it and pray they find it. I suppose those who lost their lives falling from our aircraft truly sought freedom. Pray those who lost their lives. limbs, innocence in an effort to bring peace and a chance for freedom find peace themselves.

Something doesn't stack up........it was "us" that put the Taliban in there to run the country in 1997............so what went wrong.

One poem that rings in my ears is the poem from Rudyard Kipling and sums this current situation up, which he wrote after OUR last fiasco in the early 1800's, and one that so many highly equipped nations like ours should take heed of for the future:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

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Originally Posted by Gil Boyd

so what went wrong.

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It became a terrorist training ground and safe haven plus a multitude of other problems such as an epicentre for Optimum production amongst other things.

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Originally Posted by CINDERS

On the news today film of absolute bedlam they were clinging to the outside of a USAF cargo plane as it taxied out evacuating US personnel goodness knows if they cleared them off the plane before take off.
I guess orders are orders but yes the scenes are exactly like the ones we witnessed all those years ago with Saigon falling. So very sad.

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Cinders-- The video of the C17 taking off with people dropping off to their deaths will be the defining moment of our involvement in Afghanistan. I still remember the fall of Saigon. My late father had serve two years in Vietnam and cursed for days afterwards. I remember South Vietnam had the sixth largest standing Army in the world at the time and the country fell in 10 days. I remember a news cast of an American LST dropping off a ship load of 105mm howitzers and ammunition just before the fall of Saigon. It did not stop the March to Saigon. All for nothing, lost of lives, friends and national treasure. I can only say that I fought and looked out for my troops to get home. Screw the politicians. You politicians are going to fight the next one!! Sorry to rant!!

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Originally Posted by fjruple

I can only say that I fought and looked out for my troops to get home. Screw the politicians.

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I concur with your sentiments but you'll be hard pressed in todays world to find a pollie willing to take up the fight, although Putin may as he is ex Speznatz.

I saw those little shapes drop off the aircraft how sad it felt watching that unfold its amazing that the aircraft got off at all apparently had 680 souls on board imagine the load master calculating that one out I did see that it appeared allot of males in the group.
I feel for all you guys that have been directly involved in that area or anywhere else you were sent, it appears now that a few 0000's troops are being rushed back in to do what I do not know as the Taliban now have extra arms and hi tech gear that was ditched, all we can do is see what transpires.

April 30, 1975 After the fall of Saigon, Senator J. William Fulbright announced that he was “no more depressed than I would be about Arkansas losing a football game to Texas.”

June 7, 2021 on Afghanistan falling to the Taliban, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, "If there is a significant deterioration in security, I don't think it's going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday."

July 8, 2021, President Joe Biden, "There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy … of the United States from Afghanistan."

Do you suppose the good people of Taiwan might question what an American promise is worth?

I read an article about the last shot of the Vietnam war. The story was that a Navy vessel took off the last U.S. troops to leave Vietnam. Saigon had already fallen. No-one was left. These folks were in a tiny pocket on the coast, surrounded by NVA. When the ship got a few hundred yards off the shore, the NVA fire a single round. It landed directly in the ships wake, a couple of hundred feet back. An Army officer who had been rescued said that the artillery batteries that they had been fire on by while onshore were extremely accurate and clearly could have hit the ship if they wanted to. It was his opinion that the NVA knew they were the last and just lobbed a shell out close enough to say, "We could have gotten you if we had wanted to," in order to add insult to injury.

Bob

I don't mean to sound disrespectful to the Taliban but will they have the intelligence to actually make use of all the sophisticated military equipment that they have just acquired? On the news there appeared to be what looked like almost new A.P.C.'s parked up at the side of the road and a "fighter" "wearing" what was described as a "Special Forces Helmet". It would be very interesting to see an inventory of exactly what kit the Taliban has got it's hands on now and also what it does with it.

Never underestimate the Taliban.......they have very good training from the Chinese, and relative weapons to keep them up to date, with their numbers swollen by those who were trained by U.S and UK Forces to a "good" standard.
They have the infrastructure and knowledge to compete against the best, especially as so much has been dropped into their laps.
They took the country at speed against ALL odds and intelligence, leaving many coalition countries leaving highly sophisticated equipment behind, causing the Taliban to ensure non of it "walked" before they got their hands on it, by their countrymen.
The next few weeks will determine their strategy, and from that, how other groups like Al-Qaeda will come into focus, who are a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organisation, widely regarded as mainly terrorist orientated, founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers during the Soviet–Afghan War, and what kicked this all off after 9/11.

The issue will be whether the Taliban, allow them to operate from the safety of the country to launch their attacks from there on western countries...................WAIT OUT!!