TEXTS FROM A FRIEND WITH A LOT OF MILITARY EXPERIENCE:

Remember 2010? While the Obama admin was in the process of pissing away the win in Iraq, and giving that place to the Iranians, predictably precipitating the rise both Iran and ISIS, Biden was given the job of deciding what to do with Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was the war the lefties liked. But only to beat up on Iraq. They said all the resources should go to Afghanistan.

But when Petraeus put forward a surge/anti-corruption reform plan for Afghanistan, Biden, directed to look at that, dithered for six months. Or maybe it was nine, I forget. Then he cut the request in half.

Trump had the Taliban at the table. Biden dropped the ball on that.

Trump would not be leaving the people who helped us to be slaughtered by the Taliban.

It’s going to be a fucking blood bath, and all that blood is on Biden’s hands. But whoever is actually running the Biden admin is shrugging about that. All they care about is it will make Biden look like shit.

Their lapdogs in the media will cast it as Bush and Trump’s fault, though. They’ll say Biden just inherited it. So they aren’t too worried about it

They’ll also wring hands and point fingers at their pals in the intelligence community, throw some blame that way.

Hey, in fairness, maybe if those guys hadn’t been so busy cooking up bs vs Trump the last four years …
There’ll be plenty of blame to go around. Go being the operative word.

Locals would have be crazy to cooperate with us in hostile zones, given our track record. That’s like marrying a wifebeater. Going on a carefree roadtrip with a serial killer.

Hey hey, Big Guy
How many Afghans did you kill today
I’m nauseated.

It’s a debacle. But a sure sign that it won’t go well for Biden is that the military brass have already thrown him under the bus with “he didn’t take our advice” leaks.

And, from another knowledgeable friend:

For what it’s worth, my thoughts on the latest defeat in detail for the US and especially for the Uniparty:

Multiple things can be true at once.

—The decision to stay in AfPak 20 years ago (as compared to punishing those who perpetrated 9/11) was a bad one. This is the first and hardest leason.

—Having made it, the Powell Doctrine—“you break it you buy it”—only applies as long as there’s political will.

—Afghans cannot be governed the same way as Western traditions hold as a model. Whatever way works isn’t that.

—Pretending it can does not help. The mass delusion of everyone thinking it could, the “clap harder if you believe in fairies” model of wishcasting that has dominated the mission there, wasn’t as deadly as Ypres, but is just as dangerous.

—The last twenty years show the US intelligence and military communities are led by no one you’d want there. The last year, especially.

—Given the decision to stay, having attempted to help the Afghan peoples build a working government and army, at some point the Powell Doctrine expires. A decade was probably enough. I will stipulate “at some point” and leave it there.

So, then, two things can simultaneously be true in the above:

—Americans are tired of forever wars, and

—Americans assumed that the exit would look less like a complete hiding and defeat in detail, given the assurances to the contrary they heard from those in charge.

Ok, three: it IS a complete hiding and defeat in detail, with the news of mass murder and the usual Taliban slavery reinstated. Plus bonus gifts of an entire war machine given to seventh century mass murderers.

Then, on to the bonus round of things that are true:

—There have not been US official casualties for over 17 months in theatre. That’s not to say operators didn’t eat it or that the Vietnamization repeat, echoes of 1971-75, didn’t play out horrifyingly fast. Not even four months, let alone four years. That there was, that it happened exactly that way, shows the mass failure of the USG and the Afghani power structure.

—The Taliban didn’t even have to use a mass tank attack to make the Afghan “government” fall, a la Saigon. Does that mean the US should have kept propping up the wretched and corrupt Afghan government forever? I say “no”. Let’s say our lesson is: “insurgencies win when no one opposes them”, for now. What else we might learn from all this blood and treasure, I don’t know yet. But that, at least.

—The Taliban’s new buddies are the ChiComs. Belt and Road. Whether they will fare better in the Graveyard of Empires than anyone else in the last 200 years is yet to be determined. But they sure are going to look to make a buck there.

—As Africa, the West Pacific, and much of the ME show, the ChiComs don’t have to be world cops. World Ferengi works just fine for them. As HK, the Spratlys and Uighurs show, they don’t much care what anyone thinks or says.

—The free people of Taiwan now know the US guarantees aren’t enough. Whether they remain free through the end of the year is yet to be seen.

And, most ominously for anyone who thinks the USG should do better, we know one very troubling thing: those who are willing to fight and die for our freedom will think at least one more time before they enlist.

This is very convenient for the Chinese, of course.

And I want to emphasize this bit: “The last twenty years show the US intelligence and military communities are led by no one you’d want there. The last year, especially.”

Yes. After this record of failure, there should be mass purges and elimination of whole agencies. But no one will be fired.

One other implication: This makes an actual domestic insurgency (not some BS larping “insurrection”) somewhat more likely, because the government, being weak and inept, looks weak and inept, yet seems to be doubling down on making Americans dislike it, while treating its own troops with disrespect. Historically, that’s a very bad formula. You may hope that American civic institutions remain strong enough to prevent that — I do — but hope is not a plan, and our political class has spent the last few decades trying to tear down those very civic institutions. We’re not yet at the point where the United States could fall as quickly as Afghanistan, and we’re not even very close, but we’re getting steadily closer and the people running the country seem oblivious.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Since this posting quotes a couple of men with military experience, y’all might want to tell them that the US military is now in for a rather large drop in public esteem and reputation. The jig is up: the military is just another bunch of government grifters and babbling wokerati. From the 1980’s until last year, the US military came back from their humiliation in Vietnam and the attending ridicule and unvarnished public contempt to become the most highly regarded public institution in the US. Why? Because the military had standards, and they maintained them. Now the military is just as incompetent as the US State Department, only vastly more expensive.”

Oh, they know.